Has it been so long?

Wow, the blogger interface for entering new posts has changed. I guess that's what happens when you don't post for over a year. I guess I should update you all on what's new in my world.

Why the sudden post out of the blue, you may ask? Well, every time I visit, Yumke's site, his sidebar lists blogger individuals and ranks them by the date of their last post. More recent posts and you appear at the top, the oldest post appears at the bottom. Where am I located? That's right, the last individual, at the very bottom.  At least, this will get me off of the bottom for a little while!

So what's new with me? I finished grad school, now a Master of Engineering, has a nice ring to it. Started a new job. Was looking to work in-house doing legal IP stuff and for a while it was looking like I might need to relocate since most of the IP work in Toronto is in law firms and I really didn't want to go back into a law firm environment, but  thankfully found something local that I seem to like, so far.

As for running, it's been slow. I pretty much took all of 2011 off from running.  I only started to pick up some training in the months leading up to the 2011 Waterfront marathon since I was supposed to pace the half in 1:45 and there's a fear or not wanting to let others down, that forced me to get back into it.   Finished that okay on pace. 


As for this year, I'm scheduled to do a bunch of pacing gigs. Just finished one last week, pacing a 2:45 30k at Midsummer Nights run. I'm also supposed to pace 2 halfs at 1:45, one at the end of September and one in mid October.  As for the marathon, I'm registered for NYCM.  Got in through the three times a lottery loser route and have been diligently marathon training for it, but not as seriously as I have in the past.  Since they tightened the Boston qualifying times, I now need a 3:10 to get back into Boston. I was able to do that several years ago, but found the training way too tough and time consuming and I have no interest in doing that again  I'm essentially training just so I can finish in reasonable shape with a smile on my face.  My speed work and tempo runs are really more so that I can comfortably pace the half marathons that are coming up.

I was really excited about New York, but just this week, they announced that they're getting rid of the bag check which is an odd decision.  My initial thought was that this was a terrible idea as I've traveled to many marathons and have always used a bag check service.  To compensate finishers who would bring warm clothes to change into, they are providing a "Finisher's Poncho"

Waterproof and lined with fleece, it's a supposed to keep us warm until we get back to hotel/home/loved ones. The elimination of the bag check  is supposed to ease congestion at the finish line which has apparently been a problem in the past.  Will it work? Time will tell.

I hate the idea of not having a bag check. It's just one more thing I have to worry about on race day. If I travel there alone, I would have to carry my hotel key card and some ID with me during the race. Even if I had someone there with me, trying to find them afterwards is going to be almost impossible without a cell phone. NYCM is supposed to be offering a free phone calls from cell phones afterwards, but that's just not going to work very well.  Thankfully, I won't be racing this, so I don't mind if I have to carry some extra stuff with me during the race. I'd be really po'd though, if I were trying to BQ or race for a PR.

Well that's it for my ramblings for now. Until my next post...

Busy Busy Busy

So yes I thought I'd update you all.  Actually I'm trying to find ways to procrastinate.  I've been in the library working on projects since 9am this morning and it's getting around that time when I'm starting to lose my wits.  So indulge me while I procrastinate.

As for running, well there really hasn't been a lot of it lately.  I think I've run a total of 3 miles in the past month.  The reason for it is due to a bunch of things.  My free time has dropped significantly so running has been put on the back burner.  The one thing is I just don't feel like running, which is a weird feeling.  I think I've figured it out though as being a result of lack of calorie intake.  I hadn't anticipated that my eating habits would be so terrible since returning to school.  Hot dog for lunch, chocolate bar for dinner.  I'm surprised that I even have any energy at all.  Thankfully, I've only put on about 2 pounds, but I'm sure my body fat percentage has increased.  I can't even fathom trying to train for a marathon based on the food, or lack thereof I've been eating.

What this basically means is that I'm not doing the Boston marathon this year. I have a take home exam due on the day of the marathon and then another exam two days later.  I could probably go and have a terrible experience considering the lack of training and all and then regret it when I stumble into class 2 days later to try and write an exam in pain, so I figure it's best to just not go.  Yes, it will probably be the last chance of doing Boston for a while since they lowered the BQ time to 3:10 for my age group.  Did 3:10 once, not sure I could ever to it again.

Anyhow, I should probably get back to these projects.  Thanks for reading.

Bueller, Bueller ??

Yes, I know it's been a while and in case anyone is still reading and was wondering what I was up to, let this post fill you in.

Since I last left you over 5 months ago, running wise, I ..., well I'm not really sure cause it's been a while. I did pace the scotiabank half at 1:45 and then paced the full at the Toronto marathon to 3:45. The full wasnt as bad as i thought it would be. When I did Ottawa, I was pretty sure I didn't want to pace a full again cause it hurt, but a fall pacing job wasn't too bad since I think I was better prepared and wasn't too sore afterwards. Maybe I'll do it again. Signed up for Boston next year, but there's a good chance I won't be going which I'll get to in a bit.

Training wise, things have been slow as of late. I've only recently started up again after a prolonged layoff. At this point, I'm trying to build up mileage, but am starting off slow. I averaged about 10 min miles last week for most of my runs. Sometimes one starts to wonder where did all the speed go, but with time it should come back. I'm always amazed by how quickly woman who have just came off of pregnancy are able to bounce back so I'm hoping for the same (not the pregnancy part of course.)

The biggest news for me is that I've returned to school full time to pursue a Master's degree. Left my job in September, took a few months off and then spent a few weeks in China and just started back in school this week. Considering it's been over a decade since my undergrad, this is a big change. Part of me still isn't sure about this move, but I figure I'll try it for 4 months, see how I'm handling it and either continue on, switch to part-time or drop-out. We shall see.

Now this theoretically means I should have more time to run, but with studying who knows, I may have less. One interesting thing was that yesterday I noticed one of my profs was wearing a garmin 405 as a watch. Now only hard core runners would wear a garmin as a watch. I looked him up and he ran a sub 1:30 half at scotia and a 3:20 full at Toronto. Wow.

As for Boston, one of my other, non running, profs has scheduled a final exam for Monday, April 18, which as you may know happens to be the day the Boston marathon is on (Damn Patriots day). There's a small chance that it'll be moved since a couple of the other people in the class have already said they have conflicts with other exams, but considering that this is basically around exam time, I'll probably have to be studying or writing exams anyways on that day, so it looks like Boston will be out of the cards this year. 

I will try and post a little more often than once every 6 months, but can't guarantee anything.  Hope you all have a fantastic 2011!

Recovery week.

This past week was a recovery week. The purpose of these things according to Pfitz is to allow the body to recover somewhat from the increasing amounts of mileage. Mileage was scheduled to be cutback to 37 miles a week. I skipped one recovery run so I ended up at 33 miles this week. Though describing it only as skipping a recovery run seems okay, I had to move the schedule around. The first two runs on Tuesday and Wednesday went according to plan, but Thursday morning which had a scheduled modest 8 miles, I ended up skipping in the morning and it was just too warm in the evening. Friday came and went without a run and forced myself to do it on Saturday. Sunday is long run day of 12 miles and the plan originally had a recovery run the day before, but since I already did 8 miles the previous day, I skipped it.

Sunday's long run was a bit different. The Scotiabank waterfront marathon had a "tune-up" run. These are scheduled runs set up by the race to get people to run together. I don't think I mentioned this before, but I'm going to be a pacer again for the 1:45 half at the race. Being a pacer gives free entry and free gear which is a nice gig if you can get it. One of the conditions is that you have to attend one of these tune-up runs so people can get a chance to meet you and to allow the race to advertise the pacing program and the sponsor who this year is Brooks. I haven't run in Brooks shoes since 2008. Last year Asics sponsored the pacers and I think the year before that Addidas was the sponsor. Whomever is willing to pay the bills I suppose.

So the tune-up run had three options. a 20k, 10k and a 5k distance. The 20k distance would have been perfect for me since I was supposed to do 12 miles, but when I inquired about it, the organizers had other plans. Only the marathon pacers would be doing the 20k distance, whereas the half pacers would be doing the 10k. The pacers were supposed to run their race pace as part of the tune-up run. I'm not sure that this was wise. If you think about it, someone that was going to follow a pacer that they would follow in September was being asked to run 6 miles at their half marathon pace today. This is basically a 6 mile LT run on a day when they should probably be doing a long run.

With only 6 miles on tap as part of the run, I had to make up an additional 6 miles. They had staggered the start time of the three races so that we would all basically arrive at the finish line at about the same time. Since I had arrived really early to beat the rush and because I had intended on doing the 20k, i had some time to get the 6 miles in before my race. I basically just ran the 10k route which was already marked out. It felt weird passing the km markings and aid stations knowing that I was going to run this same thing again in about an hour.

As for the actual tune-up run itself, there really wasn't much to tell. I ran for the first 10 minutes and had a group around me but when I stopped for the walk break (I was doing 10 and 1's), all but one of the group kept going. I continued with one woman doing 10 and 1's, but she said the pace was faster than she was used to. I lost her at the turnaround point, though she did say after that she ended up with a faster time than she was expecting so i guess it was a good day. I finished in 50:20 which would have put me on pace for a 1:46:12 half. Close enough.

Acura 5k report

The 5k race from two weekends ago. Signed up for this at the last minute. Was intending to use this to get some experience. Based on past experience, the first 5k of my racing season tends to be a disaster (see 2009 and 2008 and 2007). I was expecting this race to be no different. Prepared for this slightly differently. Day before, I did a very short, very slow recovery run with 6 strides towards the end. One thing I did differently was I did it at the end of the day about 12 hours before the actual race. I think this may have helped.

Arrived with plenty of time. Wanted to do a proper warm up so with 20 minutes to start did a slow 1-1.5 mile jog with 3 short strides. Moved into the starting corrals with 5 minutes to go and bumped into Kenny and Lee. Goal was to try and go for 20 minutes, though realistically I thought that breaking 21 minutes was going to be a challenge.

So the gun goes off and I start out at a fairly controlled pace. Usually, I'm in a panic during the first km trying to weave around people, but this time, if I got stuck behind someone, I just hung back a bit until an opening appeared. I was trying to use my garmin to ensure that I was pacing properly and though it looked like I was right on pace, I ended up being a bit too slow in the first km hitting it in 4:07. The first little bit is under the elevated freeway so it's possible the GPS signal wasn't too great. The other thing was that the HR spiked during the first km which is usually a sign of tougher things to come.

I had thought of slowing down after the HR spike and doing the 10 miler instead, but thought I'd try to see how far I could go with the elevated HR before I started to feel like crap. Motor along and hit the 2nd km marker at 4:14 though I think I pushed the lap button a bit late since I was running through an aid station and tried to get some water in my mouth (which didn't work too well). It was probably around 4:10 or so. Hit the turnaround and head for home. 3rd km is in 4:05, but this was actual short due to my previous error so it's probably more like 4:09. So to this point, I've been fairly consistent with the pacing and the HR is still spiking. 4th km is usually where I start to fade and this was no exception, though it wasn't as bad of a fade as it normally is. I usually get this feeling of just wanting to give up during the 4th km, but I didn't get that feeling this time. Sure it was tough, but a sustainable type of tough. There were a couple people ahead of me and I just sort of tried to catch them and passed 3 or 4 people during the stretch. Even so this was my slowest km at 4:14. Last km, try to pick up the effort a bit, and end up with my fastest split of 4:06.

4:07
4:10
4:09
4:14
4:06
Total: 20:46 (6:41 min/mile)

So fairly consistent splits and all this with the HR spiking.  I should probably mention that I still haven't gotten back my heart stress test results yet and won't know till the beginning of August.  At least with this, race, I  now have a gauge of a 5k pace I can hold with the HR going crazy. This was also with almost no VO2Max training.  I did 4x800m 6:20 pace five days before the race and that was it.  I'm keen on trying another 5k since I'm pretty sure that if the HR didn't spike, I could maybe break 20 minutes or at the very least try and set a new PR (20:21 PR),but 5k races take a little too much out of me and end up messing up the marathon training.  Only time I would consider it would be on a Saturday since it still allows me to get a long run in on Sunday.  There was a 5k race this Saturday I was thinking of doing, but it's a first time event on a new course. It starts with a hill at the start and then it's all downhill.  I'd rather race on a certified course, but they are hard to find in this area.  One of these days, I may just try and do a 12.5 lap time trial at the track and see what happens.

Bonking

Let's see. Since I last posted I've gotten most of my mileage in according to Pfitz.

Thursday (July 8): 10.2 miles (8:41 min/mile pace)

Saturday: 4.1 miles recovery which included 6 strides.

Sunday: 5 k race in the morning in 20:46. 14 miles in the afternoon (9:21 pace)
Bonked pretty bad doing the 14 miles. Including the warmup for the 5k. Ended up doing 18-19 miles for the day. Race report for the 5k to come.

Tuesday: 9 miles including 5 miles at tempo pace. Bonked pretty bad on this run too. Didn't recover that well from the Sunday run and struggled to put down the 5 tempo miles at 7:38 pace.

Wednesday: 5.4 miles @ 9:24 pace

Thursday: 10 miles @ 8:47 pace

Saturday: 5.4 miles recovery

Sunday: 16.2 miles which included between 9 and 10 miles at marathon pace effort. I thought I was pretty recovered for this and thought it wouldn't be too hard since I did 11 miles of marathon pace two weeks ago. Drove downtown to do it by the lake but since the Honda Indy car race was on ended up going onto the Leslie spit where it was a little too warm. Ran into some HR spiking problems on the spit and towards the end. Had intended to do 10 miles at marathon pace, but probably only ended up with 9 and a little bit. The Marathon pace speed was a little faster than it was two weeks ago at around 7:35 to 7:40 pace.

Today: 7 miles. Supposed to do 8 miles with strides, but tried to do some 800 repeats instead. Not too good. Did 3 miles warm up and then did one 800m repeat and then proceeded to bonk during the second one and ended up switching it into 200m repeats.

I had a few good runs a few weeks ago in really warm weather, so I had thought that maybe I had adjusted okay to the higher temps and humidity, but I think that was just an anomaly cause all my runs in the warmer weather have just been terrible or rather any runs out in the sun during the warmer temperatures have been terrible. Ones done when the sun goes down, even if it's still warm outside have gone okay. Maybe it's an anti-Superman thing. The yellow sun is my kyrptonite.

Warming Up

It's gotten very hot as of late. It's funny how you go back and read about the winter training days where one prays for the warm days of summer and now I'm wishing for the cooler training days of winter.

This past week of training has gone according to plan. I did 42 miles last week which included a 16 mile long run on Sunday with about 11 miles at a marathon pace effort which came out to about 7:35-7:50 min/mile pace. Ended up driving down to the lake to do it. I'm trying to avoid driving down to the lake to do long runs this year with the exception of marathon pace runs. I like to be able to get a continuous route down by the lake where I don't have to stop for traffic lights.

I've been using the Pfitz-first edition training plan, but remembered that the 2nd edition plan (which is presumably better) is slightly different. The 2nd edition plan had an early 13 mile run with 8 at marathon pace which I was supposed to do 2 weeks ago, but since I was following the 1st edition plan I didn't. I thought I'd try the 8 marathon pace miles this past weekend though. I ended up feeling pretty good after 8 miles so I just kept going to 11.

Yesterday had me supposedly doing 8 miles with 10 strides but I wanted to try an interval workout. Up in the morning and it was very warm and humid. Did 4x800m in 3:12, 3:10, 3:09 and 3:11 with a one lap jog recovery of 2:50 in between. There's a 5k race this weekend which I was thinking of doing in my quest to break the 20 minute barrier, but based on how I was feeling on this workout, I don't think I'm ready. It could just have been the warm temperatures, so one never knows. I may end up signing up anyways just to get the experience. There's also a 10 mile race which I was considering doing instead though since there's a $10 coupon available on the website for that. Still fairly pricey though, $70 for the 10 miler and $52 for the 5k. Tough call.

Changing it up

Did 15 miles yesterday for a long run. Averaged a little slower than 9 min/miles. Course was sort of hilly. Much hillier than my normal route. I've decided to do a bit of exploring as of late. I was looking at a google earth satellite view of my area and I noticed that there are a lot of little parks in the area. In the past, I've done various loops that end up taking me back to my place so I can refill my water bottle. I wanted to try and find out how many of these parks had water fountains so I set off to search. I've found two parks with them and I'm hoping there are more. My hope is to find a 20 mile route that doesn't overlap, is not an out and back and has enough water fountains along the way to keep me hydrated.

On another note, I bought a new flavour of gatorade powder. I'm a creature of habit and have always used the orange one, but the grocery store didn't have any so I'm trying lemon-lime. I'm a rebel.

First official tempo run tomorrow morning. Gotta get to sleep for the 5am wake-up call.