Training Update

Did 12 miles today and 4 miles yesterday. Total for the week at about 22 miles. I was hoping to get back to about 40 miles a week before the end of the year, but life is just sort of getting in the way and it's been tough to get out. I noticed today that my HR is still way up at a slower pace. I'm hoping that if I put in the mileage that it'll come down eventually.

Okay, about the nasal mucous picture. I'm still not going to post the whole picture as things that get posted on the internet have a way of multiplying and I don't think my ego could handle that, so here is a close up of the nasal area. You'll just have to imagine the rest of me. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I actually have TWO pictures with the stuff hanging out.





I still may end up posting the whole picture, but I'll probably have to be good and drunk first.

Chicago mailings.

I did 6 miles on Tuesday. Don't think I'm going to be able to run again until the weekend due to work commitments.

I did get some Chicago related mailing this week. I signed up for the newspaper delivery at the expo. I kinda got caught up in the heat of the moment and realized after it was a stupid thing to do cause I could just pick up a newspaper the following day. Anyways that came on Tuesday, almost a month after the marathon. Neat seeing my name in it.

I also received yesterday my CD with my race pics and all i can say is that I think I like the small thumbnails from the website better since I now am in possession of what may be the worst race picture ever taken. I think there was only one time during the whole marathon where some nasal mucous (ie: snot) came dripping out of my nose. Yeah, I know it sounds a bit gross. Well let me tell you that I now have that exact moment saved for posterity on CD. I'm running, waving at the camera with a 1 inch string of mucous hanging down from my nose. It is by far the funniest picture I have ever seen of myself. No, I won't be posting it, so don't ask!

Training Update. Nov 13-19

Did 6 miles on Tuesday and about 5 miles on Thursday. Did them both pretty late in the evening, after 9pm. Did them both at recovery pace.

I had company for a 12 mile long run today. Ended up having to forego the low HR training for at least today. Ran at my normal long run pace, but the course was quite hilly. Don't know if it was a hill thing or if I'm losing fitness or if it was the chatting and gasping for breath while running, but my HR was WAY up.

I also bought a new pair of shoes this past week. I had to use up a 20% coupon before it expired on Wednesday. I'm still experimenting with shoes and decided to buy a pair of Mizuno Grid Alchemy 6's. I've never tried Mizuno shoes before. Kinda pricey but really light. They're shiny and look cool.

In memorial

I haven't had a lot of time to read or post as of late. I don't know if it's just me but it seems that there are a lot more people blogging more often. I check my news reader and I'm faced with 50 new posts! I guess people have more time available to them now that it's getting cooler.

I received an industry newsletter that I get every other month yesterday. It sometimes contains interesting articles, but it's mostly just ads and announcements. There are sometimes memorials of people that have passed on. They are normally of people working in my field that have long since retired and have passed on due to old age. I tossed my newsletter out yesterday without really giving it a good look through, but a colleague of mine pointed out to me today one of the memorials which I had skipped right over.

He was about my age and he died after having run a 10km race on July 1. I had actually considered running in that particular race. i don't remember hearing anything about it at the time so I'm kind of stunned that this is the first I've heard about it. An autopsy didn't reveal any inherent heart problems and his death is still a mystery.

I didn't know him, but his death really makes me think. He didn't have heart problems like the man who passed on at the recent Scotiabank marathon and he looks healthy in the pictures. It really makes you reconsider things.

Rest in Peace, Perry.



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3013842250207676497

Slow running

Did a little under 7 miles on the treadmill at the gym cause it was raining.
Did about 12 miles today outside.
Did a little over 30 miles for the week.

I did both of these runs at recovery pace. With no more races for the year, I've moved into my base building mode for the winter which means I will try to do nothing but recovery runs and trying to keep my HR below 150. I found it worked well for me last year helping me build endurance. I read about this last year at this site. My goal is to try and give a solid 2 months of this low heart rate training. My hope is that by at the end of the 2 months, I will be able to average better than 8:30 min/miles at a HR of 150. Currently I can do a little over 9 min/miles at that HR. Based on my recent marathon time and fooling around with McMillan, that website says I should be able to average 8 min miles at that HR.

Race pics

I went out for running for about an hour today and yesterday. Did about 7 miles each time. I've been having a hard time getting motivated to get out with nothing in particular to train for. I've decided that I don't want to do a 5k before years end. Though it would be nice to have set a PR for one, I generally find them tough to do. I'll do one next spring.

They posted pictures from the 10k race I did on Sunday and mine weren't so great.


Here's me at the beginning breathing normally and staring at the butt of the person in front of me and yes Sonia if you look closely you can see my collar bone sticking out.



Here's me about 5 m from the finish line with my head down, sprinting about as fast as I can.



Here's a closer shot of me a few moments later feeling like I'm about to have a heart attack.

10 k race report

I did a 10 k race this morning. Finish time of 42:16 (chip) . I signed up for this race cause the last 10k a did a few weeks before Chicago was a bit short and I wanted to take advantage of my marathon training to see what my 10k PR was and to use it as a benchmark for next year. I picked this race cause it was "certified" meaning that it was presumably accurately measured to be at least 10k. Having said that, a part of me thinks the course was short which I'll get to.

I decided to run this with my HR monitor to see what it was like during a shorter race. I understand now why people put tape over the HR reading. It's useful to analyze the data afterwards, but its scary seeing the numbers during the race.

Here is my HR and split times

Lap	Lap Time	Pace	HR Max	HR Avg
1	04:00.9	06:27.7	187	179
2	04:11.8	06:45.2	190	188
3	04:20.1	06:58.6	191	191
4	04:16.6	06:53.0	194	191
5	04:25.9	07:07.9	195	193
6	04:26.9	07:09.5	194	191
7	04:27.8	07:11.0	191	189
8	04:18.2	06:55.5	193	192
9	04:37.0	07:25.8	192	187
10	03:10.7	5:07 (???)	194	191

Based on my recent marathon time, McMillan thinks I can do a 10k in 42:00 but considering I didn't run very much these past few weeks, I thought I'd be a bit more conservative and aim for a 42:30 finish though i would have been happy with a sub 43 minute finish which is what I was hoping for last time. I did the first km at 4:00 min and hit the 1 mile marker at just under 6:30 pace. Whoops. Try to slow down a bit but the adrenaline was still rushing. Km 3 and 4 are about right, but my HR is skyrocketing which was an alarming thing for me to see during the race. During the VO2Max training for my marathon the highest HR I ever hit was 186. During my one Yasso's workout, I topped out at 190. Now here I am just barely half way through a 10k race and my HR is hitting 194 and 195.

I fall into a comfortable pace through to 7 km, at which point I decide to try and pour it on. By the time i hit the 8 km mark, I had developed a nasty side stitch. I try deep breathing and rubbing it, but it ain't going away. I start to slow down and my HR slows down with it. I thought I was going much slower than I was, but it turned out I had slowed down to "marathon pace". I pass the 9 km marker and the stitch isn't hurting so much but I can feel it's still there. I hear some footsteps behind me and decide that I'm not going to let whoever it is pass me, so I pick up the pace. I sprint the last 400m with my stitch growing ever more painful and finish about a second ahead of him.

According to my watch, I ran the last km in 3:11 or at a 5:07 min/mile pace which can't be right so either the course was short (AGAIN) or the last km was mismarked. I'm leaning toward the short course since all of the previous km's looked pretty accurate and the one that was recorded to be slower I knew I had definitely slowed down because of the stitch. Considering that the course was supposed to be "certified", there's also a possibility that the course as a whole was accurate, but that all the markers were off which resulted in the last marker being off by so much.

I came in 13th overall and 3rd in my age group. Since the guy who finished 1st in my age group finished 2nd overall (BTW, I think i went to high school with him; his name looks familiar) and there was no double dipping, I was given the 2nd place prize in my age group which was a little nike tote bag. Sweet!

I may try and do a 5k before the end of the year just to get a PR time for that. I ran the first 5k of this race faster than my 5k PR so that needs to be updated with a true 5k only distance. But barring that I'm done with racing for the year. Time to go into maintenance mode to try keep from losing my gains for the year.

Who treats sore feet?

WE treat sore feet. I picked up my race kit for my race tomorrow. Pretty nice collection of things. A red Nike technical t-shirt and a polycarbonate water bottle were included. The shirt has a sponsor logo displayed prominently on the sleeve, but it's free so I can't really complain.

My race kit had a fridge magnet for a foot clinic. If you want to see some disgusting pictures of various foot related problems, that's the site to visit. I don't know how much they spend on advertising, but as far as I can remember, EVERY single race kit I've ever received in and around the Toronto area has had one of these fridge magnets. Here's my collection.




I did a 3 mile recovery run with some strides this morning. Nice slow pace.

I've been spending some time looking at various marathons for the spring. I'd like to do a marathon in the spring but don't like the idea of trying to put in hard training during the winter months. I did winter training for the first time this year and hated it. Granted most of the runs were at the gym and I came down with a virus which knocked out my training for about 2 weeks so my general recollection is that it sucked. I've been thinking of trying the FIRST marathon training plan. It's a 3 day a week plan. The main purpose will be to give me some structure so that I can maintain my fitness gains of the past year. I'm not sure it'll get me to a BQ in the spring, but if it does, that'll be gravy. My real BQ attempt will be sometime next fall where I will have had the whole summer to prepare.

As for the actual spring event, it's a bit tough to say. I'm looking at marathon's in May. I see a lot of RBF are doing the Flying Pig in Cincinnati. I'm leaning towards avoiding travel to a US event so I'm looking at events closer by. I did the Mississauga marathon last year and may do it again but would rather not do a race that I've already done. Two that are looking as possible candidates are Forest City and Ottawa. Don't know for sure yet, but I don't really have to decide until the new year.

Last bit of speedwork

I'm just getting over a bit of a cold. I've been sleeping 9 hours a night for the past couple of days and does it ever feel good. No more having to get up at 5am in the morning to head out for a 12 mile run.

I decided to head to the track after work today to get some speed work in prior to my last race of the season this weekend. I guess it will be the last time I run around a track until next year.
I have to say that I'm a bit lost in how to prepare for a 10k a week before the race. There really isn't a one week training plan for a 10k race out there so I decided to just do a 1200m, an 800m and 2x400m intervals at 5k race pace. I threw in a couple of strides afterwards. It was way too dark though.

I've been gorging on chocolate for the last couple of days. I purchased way too much stuff for Halloween and I have about 4 pounds of chocolate leftover. I think I'll try and pawn some it off on my co-workers tomorrow.

So I splurged and purchased a CD of all my photos from the Chicago marathon and the DVD of me running. Oh well, what's another $150? None of my photos were outstanding, but there were about 20 of them taken which is pretty good so i figure it's worth it. I'm really interested in getting the DVD to see what I look like when I running. I've never really seen myself run other than the brief glimpse I may get while running by a reflective window so that should be neat.