Going down in flames...

I had said early in the week, it was going to be Boston or Bust. Well if you've bothered to check my live tracking, you'll already know that it was the Bust part of that statement and I went down in flames. Finish time of 3:27:40 which I suppose isn't that bad of a time, but considering I was on Boston pace up till about the 35k mark, it's a disappointing time. I had a brutal last 7km.

I went to bed at around 9:30pm last night and basically lay awake in bed for 2 hours. I tried counting sheep and I got to about 400 before I realized that it wasn't working. I ended up getting up to do some things before trying again. In all I guess I got about 3 hours of sleep. I was up at 3:30am for my morning breakfast of a bagel and PB and jam.

Headed downtown to the race start and got there with plenty of time. Used the facilities a couple of times and wandered around a bit just to ease some of the nerves. Headed to the corrals for the start and bumped into Yumke. Even though I had been placed into the Sub-Elite corral, the 3:10 pace bunny was starting the corral behind me, so I ended up joining Yumke who had voluntarily moved back and started next to him and the pace bunny.

The start
Well the plan was to stick with the pace bunny for the whole race. I had figured that he would be running fairly even splits and if I didn't make it, then I knew that it just wasn't meant to be. There would have been nothing else I could have done. I was trying to target 7:15 pace with an absolute limit of 7:17 which is 4:30 for each km or 4:32 respectively. The first couple of km went by okay and we were pretty much on pace.

1 4:34 (7:21 pace)
2 4:26 (7:08)
3 4:27 (7:10)

Then what happened was a little troublesome. According to my watch, the pace bunny then pulled off a sub 4:00 min km and then a bunch of others that were way too fast.

4 3:56 (6:20)
5 4:20 (6:58)
6 4:22 (7:02)
7 4:20 (6:58)
8 4:18 (6:55)
9 4:36 (7:24)
10 4:28 (7:11)

Hit the 10km mark at 43:46 which averaged a 7:03 pace. At some point during these km, I lost the pace bunny since I think he realized he was going too fast. Considering how much on the bubble I was in term of actually meeting a 3:10 time, I should have realized right off the bat that any km that were too fast were going to cause me grief in the end. I continued on my own hoping to be able to maintain proper pace.

11 4:18 (6:55)
12 4:36 (7:24)
13 4:14 (6:49)
14 4:38 (7:27)
15 4:27 (7:10)

I hit the 15k mark at 1:06 flat which average a pace of 7:05 from the start. This 5k was done in 22:13 which was 7:10 pace. I had actually hoped in the best case scenerio to run a 7:10 pace for the first half and then do 7:20 for the second half to run a slight positive split. Oh well, too late.

16 4:27 (7:10)
17 4:38 (7:27)
18 4:21 (7:00)
19 4:33 (7:19)
20 4:25 (7:06)

Somewhere between 16 and 20 km (actually right outside of where Yumke lives), I started chatting with some guy from Mexico who was wearing a Chicago marathon hat. I didn't remember his name, but he said his nickname was "Bull" since he used to be fat when he was a kid. He ran Chicago in 2005 and was also aiming for a 3:10 BQtime today. I ended up running with him for 10 km or so to the 25 km mark when I started to slow down. He told me after that he ended up finishing in 3:10:50 so congratulations to him.

21 4:40 (7:31)
22 4:02 (6:29)
23 4:42 (7:34)
24 4:32 (7:18)
25 4:30 (7:15)

I hit the halfway point at 1:33:20 which is a new PR for me, but not so good when you consider it as being done in the first half of a marathon. It should have been about 2 minutes slower. Unfortunately, I don't have any more splits for the race. I ended up using a Nike watch I have that even though can record 5 different runs, it can only keep track of 50 total laps. I still had my Chicago splits in the watch from last year, so it only ended up recording 25 laps before it filled up.

KM 25-30
These were out on the Leslie spit where I did a couple of my long runs. Shortly before the 30km mark, the 3:10 pace bunny passed which I know wasn't a good sign. I hit the 30km mark at 2:13:53 which was an average pace of 7:11 at that point. I was still ahead of BQ pace, but I know I was fading.

KM 30-35
At this point, my breathing had become labored and my breathing pattern was now in a 1-1 pattern which is usually reserved only for the end of races. I was struggling to maintain pace. I passed the 31 km mark and had banked almost exactly 2 minutes of time. So I knew that I could fade by 2 min over the last 11-12km and I would still be okay. This was an easy calculation to do in my head and would mean that I could slow down to around 4:40 pace (7:31 min/mile) and I would be okay. This was the pace that I averaged for the entire marathon last year. I kinda have a foggy memory of this, but a couple of the km were in 4:45 range and I knew that it was quickly starting to eat into my banked time. According to the timing website, I passed the 33 km mark at 2:30:19 which would mean that I had slipped behind Boston pace, but I'm pretty sure that the mat wasn't at exactly the 33km mark. By my pace band, I was still ahead of pace up until at least the 35 km mark. During these km, my right calf started to twitch and cramp. I found that I had to change my gait a little to keep it from spasming.

km 35 - Finish

The last 7.2 km were by far the toughest. The spasming in my calf kept getting worse and it was around the 35 to 37 km mark that I ended up taking a walk break through a water station. It was at this point that I came to the realization that a BQ wasn't in the cards today. With my funny gait, the 1-1 breathing and my ever slowing pace, there was just no way I was going to be able to do it. I still had hopes of setting a PR at this point. This however would soon not be possible either as shortly thereafter, my left calf also started to cramp. I don't think I was able to completely get rid of that trigger point that I had mentioned early in the week and it decided to come to the surface now. With both of my calves now cramping, I ended up talking extended walk breaks. Everytime I would start to run, even at a slow recovery pace, the calves would cramp again. Eventually my inner quads and the back of knee also started to cramp whenever I tried to run. In total I would guess that i probably ended up walking more than 5km of the last 7.2 k. I only started to jog a little right at the very end cause I hated people telling me that I shouldn't be walking so close to the finish line (they were right of course).

So I crossed the finish time in my second fastest time ever of 3:27:40, but it was by the far the worse I have ever felt in a marathon. In hindsight, I should have run my own race. I was familiar with the Boston pace having done extended long runs at this pace and should have relied on my own pacing abilities rather than someone else. To summarize here are the timing mat splits:

km	Time	Pace from start
10	0:43:46	0:07:03
21.1	1:33:20	0:07:07
30	2:13:53	0:07:11
33(?)	2:30:19	?
42.2	3:27:40	0:07:55

I was way too fast in the early part and ended up hitting the wall towards the end. What's next? That's a good question. I'm somewhat disappointed with this run not because of my time, but because I started out too fast. I would have been fine with running even splits and then just hitting the wall and having a slow time since I know that i wouln't have been able to do it any better. I'm pretty sure that starting out too fast and doing several km at LT pace basically killed my ability towards the latter part of the race. So the question remains, could I have BQ if I had started out slower? The answer is I really don't know. I would still like to take a shot at BQing again before the end of the year. I've been casually looking at the Tucson marathon or California International marathon which are both on December 2.

There's also another Toronto marathon in 2 weeks time. I was kinda thinking that if I recovered quickly enough that I could potentially take a shot at the Toronto one. It's a net downhill course with a couple of hills. I haven't done hill training so I'm kinda concerned with trying to tackle it. Here's the profile.



I'm not sure if being able to do a marathon only two weeks after a previous one is such a good idea. Considering that I've been tapering for 3 weeks, I would basically have to restart a taper again and would probably have lost a bit of fitness. I'll have to see how the recovery goes.

Last Run...

Did 2 miles recovery this morning. Who cares what the pace was.

Don't have much left to say. I headed down and picked up my race kit. The Running Room didn't have any 3:10 pace bands so I had to go with the official bands provided by the sponsor Addidas. Type was way too small. I also don't like that they only give you splits every 2 km and that the goal time is 3:10:00. I really think I need the extra 59 seconds that Boston affords me. I got home and decided to make my own in Excel. I think I tried every possible font and size combination and came up with something much more readable. (10 pt Century Gothic Bold in case you were wondering) It fits quite nicely into the pace band holder that I got from the Chicago expo last year.



I was hesitant to do so, but I added a link on the left hand side of the blog under the countdown timer to my live tracking. You can now witness in real time my triumph or destruction. Anyhow whatever the result, I want to think each and every one of you who has read, commented or stumbled across my blog. Not to get too sappy, but I value each and every reader and I'll be thinking of you all during my run tomorrow.

Thanks!

Knocking on wood...

Did 5 miles of recovery this morning with 6 strides at the end. Nice and cool out. Felt pretty good. Calf is still a bit tight, but I"m still working on it...

So i checked the hourly forecast for Sunday and I gotta say that it (touch wood) is (touch wood) going (touch wood) to (touch wood) be (touch wood) almost (touch wood) perfect! (touch wood)



Race starts at 7am and they're forecasting a start time temperature of 10C with the temperature 3 hours later of only 12C. There will be a bit of a wind but only a max of 12km hour. Heck I should be running faster than that. Humidity seems a bit high but I guess when the temperatures are that low, humidity shouldn't matter.

Sunday morning will require me waking up at 4am which will require me to get to bed by 9pm i figure. I'm going to try and see if I can get to sleep today at that time.

Trigger Points

I've developed a trigger point in my left calf. i always seem to develop one during the final week of the taper. i was hoping to avoid one this year by focusing on stretching my calves twice a day but i guess it didn't work. I've found that it usually needs 3 to 4 days for me to get the trigger point worked out using hourly massages. I'm hoping that this is just enough time to get it out before Sunday.

I've started the carbo and aqua loading process today and will probably have to wake up at some point in the middle of the night to pee since I drank three bottles of gatorade between 5pm and now. I guess it's better to drink more than risk not drinking enough!

4 days and counting...

Did 7 miles with 2 @ marathon pace this morning. Had to get up early and head up while it was still dark. Ran to the track since I figured to do the marathon pace portion around it and that would allow me to get some pacing feedback ever 400m.

Unfortunately since it was still dark, I couldn't actually see what my watch was saying unless I hit the light button and I didn't realize that my HR monitor went all crazy just before I started the MP portion. The HR data is pretty much useless except for the last two laps where it seemed to start working again. 7:15 pace is around 1:48 per 400m lap so that was the target.

01:50.9

01:50.9

01:47.7

01:49.1

01:47.8

01:49.7

01:47.9

01:48.8

So I was a bit slow for some of them which is okay. I didn't like where my HR was for the last two laps since these were done at a HR of 177 which is way too high. I can only hope that it was a result of the warmer temperature and the fact that I was a bit dehydrated and still half asleep.

This past spring I picked up a 3:10 pace band at the expo of the half marathon I did and I've had it posted on my cork board at work just to provide me with a daily reminder of what the target main goal was. I only really looked at it today and noticed that the split times aren't right. Apparently the pace band expects me me to travel backwards in time between miles 24 and 25. Hopefully the expo this time around will have more accurate pace bands this time!

Season Premieres

Did 6 miles recovery this morning at about 9 min/mile pace. It was about 19C when I got out this morning which is a lot warmer than normal. In fact, today it hit a record high of 33C. I have to head downtown early tomorrow which means I'm going to have to get up super early to get my 7 miles with 2 @ MP done.

So I completely forgot that the season premiere of Heroes was on last night and I also wanted to watch that new show Chuck which sounded like it had an interesting premise. Oh well. I'm watching Heroes on the TV stations website right now and as for "Chuck", well I guess I'll just have to find some other perfectly legal way to see that show. That reminded me that I've got to get a bunch of inspiration movies to watch on Saturday. The local movie rental place looks like they're shutting down and they've shipped off all of their old movies and are currently renting out only the new releases. Crap!

Indulgence and Game Plan

No running today.

So I was downtown for a work related thing and got out early. A co-worker was raving about a ridiculously priced $37 dollar burger at a certain restaurant downtown. Since I've been pretty good about not spending money this taper I thought I would indulge myself and then eat healthy for the rest of the week. Burger was nice I guess, but tasted different because of the brie cheese and the truffles. Quite a thick beef patty. Even though I asked for it medium, the patty was so thick that I think the inner portion of it was close to being rare. Hopefully no E.coli was present.

Not worth the money IMHO. Total damage (including tax and tip) for the burger, a small thingy of fries and 2 iced teas, $60. I guess the addition of exotic ingredients makes it okay to charge the extra amount if you like that sort of thing, but I don't think it really adds much to the taste. I'm sure the burger would be just as good and much cheaper if it didn't have all those fancy things in there.

So contemplating the game plan for race day is pretty straight forward. They say you're supposed to set three goals with one of them being realistic. I can only really think of two goals. Ultimate goal is a Boston qualifying time, backup goal is to set a PR and beat my Chicago time of last year.

1) 3:10:59 (BQ)
2) 3:17:04 (PR)

I'd put a third goal in that was achievable, but if I'm being perfectly honest, I would be severely disappointed if I wasn't able to at least set a PR since I'm pretty sure that I'm faster than I was last year. In the end, it'll probably be a Boston or Bust thing where I either BQ or go down in flames trying.

As for the race day weather update, the low overnight is now 12C with the high for the day of 22C. The high is up from the last forecast. Good thing however is that the wind is down to only 8km/hr which is good. If you think my paranoia about the weather is bad now, wait till Friday when they start posting the hourly forecasts for Sunday!

One more week...

Today, I did my last long run prior to the marathon next Sunday. Plan called for 12 miles but I ended up doing 13. Nice and cool this morning with temperatures similar to what they're predicting for race day so that's all good.

Lap	Lap Time	HR Avg		Lap	Lap Time	HR Avg
1	09:00.3	132		8	08:01.6	155
2	08:16.4	147		9	07:57.7	156
3	08:17.8	150		10	08:02.9	156
4	07:53.5	153		11	08:15.8	152
5	08:07.4	154		12	08:17.1	151
6	08:05.3	153		13	07:43.8	158
7	07:52.0	156

I think the taper is starting to do it's thing cause my HR was way down and it seems that the paces generally coincided with my HR (when the pace goes up, HR is up). I put together this nifty graph (can you tell I have a lot of free time lately...) relating my average HR to the pace. I only ended up using miles 5 and on since the first few miles I would consider warm-up. Pretty good correlation between HR and pace. If I extrapolate the line to my Boston pace, it's predicting a HR of 164 or so, but I'm sure it would be a little higher. I'd be happy with a HR of 170 at that pace. I have a 7 mile run with 2 @ MP this week so I'll find out how close the prediction is then.

Total for the week was 33 miles. Upcoming week is as follows:

Tuesday: 6 mile recovery
Wednesday: 7 miles including 2 miles @ marathon pace
Friday: 5 miles recovery including 6 strides
Saturday: 2 miles recovery
Sunday: MARATHON DAY!!

Okay now I'm starting to get excited!!!

Taper Update

Wednesday: 7 miles with 8 strides. Overall pace including strides was around 8:20

Friday: 5 miles recovery including 6 strides: Overall pace was around 9:10.

So I felt lethargic yesterday for my run, but I guess I'm supposed to feel that way. I've got all these nagging little pains in my muscles and I've been diligently trying to massage the knots out. I've got this really big knot (or something) in my Achilles tendon or thereabouts. I can actually physically feel a lump there and it hurts when I try to massage it. It seems to be getting better with each passing day though. My knee seems to be fine, but the muscles/tendons surrounding my knee feel a bit sore. I've been trying to massage and ice them these past few days. I have one last ART appointment next Tuesday where he's going to give me one last treatment on the legs.

I've been pretty good at cutting back on calories and not eating junk food. It's amazing the smaller portions that I'm eating these days. It's just about one week before the marathon which means it's "get a haircut even if I don't need one" day. Will do that in a couple of hours.

As for the weather for next Sunday, it's still looking okay temperature wise (touch wood) with a low overnight of 13C and a high for Sunday of 16C which seems just about perfect. One potential issue is the wind which is showing 14km/hr overnight and 28 km/hr for the day. I'm not exactly sure if this is a lot of wind, but I would much prefer to see single digits. The good thing seems to be that it's coming from the S and the WSW which means I would only have to be running into it for the first part of the race. Hopefully they'll be enough people around so I can draft off of others.

Whoops

Did 8 miles with 3x1600m at 5k pace this morning. The plan called for 7 miles including 8 strides but for some reason, when I left this morning I thought that today was interval day. By the time I got to the track, I had this nagging feeling that maybe i wasn't supposed to do intervals cause I was remembering that Pfitz usually has the longer VO2Max intervals the day after a short General Aeorbic run with strides and yesterday was a rest day. I ended up jogging around the track a couple of times trying to decide whether I should do the intervals or not. I ended up doing the intervals since I had no idea what the plan actually called for and it was a nice cool and non-windy morning. I'm going to do the strides and the 7 miler tomorrow.

Lap Time	HR Max
06:13.2	185
06:23.2	222
06:19.7	186

I wanted to target these at around 6:20 pace or so which is about 15 seconds per mile faster than i did last year. The first was a bit too fast. I ended up having to do walking recoveries of 200m which ended up being about 2:20 worth of rest. HR monitor went crazy on the 2nd interval. Still not sure if it's the monitor or if it's me.

This marks the end of the tough workouts. It's just general aerobic/recoveries and one 2 mile MP run left until race day!

I still have my doubts as to weather a 3:10:59 is possible on race day. I've been reading a lot about tapers and there are some studies that indicate that it can increase performance by a couple of percent. Here's to hoping that couple of percent come in handy!

Taper Madness

Saturday: Was going to do 10k time trial around a local track and had every intention of doing it until I got there and noticed the ridiculous amount of wind that was present. I had some serious doubts of trying to complete it which were subsequently confirmed after trying one lap. Huge wall of wind that I just didn't feel like wanting to fight. I ended up doing 4x1 mile at LT pace with one lap walking recoveries and then 1 more mile at Marathon pace.

Today: 16 miles on the schedule which I finished in about 8:20 pace or so. I forgot to recharge the batteries in my Garmin and it shut off part way through the run so I'm not entirely sure of the distance or pace. My shins and calves were really sore after the run today. I've been using my new shoes and I think that my legs haven't quite gotten use to them yet. It was really cool this morning and I had to run in a long sleeve shirt for the first time since last spring.

Total for the week was 39 miles. Upcoming week is quite pleasant with only 4 days or running

Tuesday: 7 miles including 8 strides.
Wednesday: 8 miles including 3x1600m @ 5k pace
Friday: 5 miles recovery including 6 strides
Sunday: 12 miles

As for the taper madness, today marks 14 days to the marathon which means I can start looking at the weather forecasts for race day on Accuweather. Here's the first (of what will probably be many) weather prediction. Temperature is looking good for race day.

Run Fatboy Run

Oh yeah, the movie. Pretty good for what it was. About a man who has left his pregnant wife at the alter and now wants her back but she has moved on and found someone else. He ends up deciding to run a marathon to show her that he's changed his ways. I think most of the funny bits were shown in the trailer. It gets a bit sentimental at the end and if you're wondering about the ending and don't want to know, don't look...
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He finished the marathon (probably coming in dead last) and also gets the girl! So happy endings all around!

Stuffing My Face.

I did about 4 miles recovery including 6 strides this morning. I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to do for my tune-up race tomorrow. Part of me wants to try and see if I can reach the McMillan predicted equivalent time for a 10k of 40:42 that is equivalent to a 3:10:59 marathon time, but another part of me wants to do a LT run, just to squeeze one last one in prior to the marathon. The 10k option is going to involve me running 25 laps around a track so it's not going to be the funnest thing to do, but there won't be any hills and I'll be able to get pacing feedback every 400m so it'll be a good test of my fitness.

As to your questions, I have no idea who that kid is in the picture. He was at the finish line handing out medals and since he was so small, I had to get down on one knee so he could put it around my neck. While kneeling the camera guy asked to take a picture which I naturally obliged to. I wasn't trying to represent that I knew the little guy. This actually reminds me of something that happened last year with this same event with respect to this picture. Apparently one of my co-worker found it and posted it on the fridge at work and a rumour started that she was my finance. I have no idea who started the rumour and it was kinda funny when people in the halls would congratulate me and start asking me about wedding plans and things. I have no idea who she is either.

Oh yeah, I've been wanting to eat healthy during this taper, but I kinda fell off the wagon and consumed half a bag of a Costco pack of chocolate covered almonds yesterday. So yummy, but so not good for me. I started trying to calculate how many fat calories I had eaten and how much I would have to run to burn it off and it wasn't pretty.

Week 16 of 18 Begins

First week of the taper.

Tuesday: Did 9 miles on Monday with 5x600m at 5k pace.

Lap Time	Pace	HR Max
02:21.2	06:18.7	174
02:22.3	06:21.7	176
02:21.0	06:18.2	178
02:20.3	06:16.3	179
02:19.3	06:13.6	180

My last VO2Max workout is next week with 3x1600m. I'm not sure I can extend this pace to 1600m, but my HR seemed relatively low for these things so it may be possible.

Today: Did 5 miles recovery at about 8:45 min/mile pace or so.

So I'm going to go see Run, Fatboy, Run today and two other movies which I don't quite remember the names of at the moment. I saw 5 films over the weekend and they were pretty good. I also saw a couple of movie stars.

They posted race pics from the 15k race I did a couple of weeks ago. Here are the 2 they took of me.

Week 15 done.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes!

Did 22 miles on Sunday. One thing that I've been disappointed with this season has been the pace of my long runs. According to Pfitz, for a 3:10 marathon finish, they should be done between 8:00 and 8:45 min/mile. These have usually been at about 8:20 to 8:40 or so this year and still fits into the Pfitz guidelines which isn't too bad, but this is the pace I was doing my long runs last year. For this run last year, I averaged about 8:30 pace, so I was determined today to try and do this at least 15 min/mile faster.

After commenting last week about enjoying running in the rain, i had second thoughts upon waking on Sunday morning cause it was pouring outside. I headed downtown again to do the lakeshore run in prep for race day. I figured that it would be a good day to try out the marathon day race clothing in rainy conditions since I haven't had a chance to really try them out in wet weather. I started the run and it was pretty breezy and cool and I was kinda wishing for the first mile that I'd worn long sleeves but that feeling quickly went away as soon as I warmed up a little. even with the cool and damp conditions, there sure were I lot of people running including Yumke that I saw early in the run. They was also a dragon boat racing tournament of some sort down by the waterfront which caused me to have to detour a bit since they fenced off part of the path. So here are the splits.

Lap	Lap Time		Lap	Lap Time
1	08:44.4		12	08:04.8
2	08:15.5		13	08:09.2
3	07:48.2		14	08:03.1
4	07:56.7		15	08:08.7
5	08:06.8		16	07:48.0
6	08:13.1		17	08:07.8
7	08:12.8		18	07:55.0
8	08:15.3		19	07:45.7
9	08:06.5		20	07:35.9
10	08:05.7		21	07:18.5
11	08:01.0		22	08:52.3

I ended up picking up the pace towards for the last few miles trying get myself used to what it might feel like on race day to do Boston pace. I'm actually kinda surprised how effortless this run felt. Though I'd like to think it was the training, I think a lot of it had to do with the nice cool, overcast conditions. Total for the week was 51.8 miles.

As the taper begins, this upcoming week is relatively light with the following:

Tuesday: 8 miles including 5x600m @ 5k pace
Wednesday: 5 miles recovery
Friday: 4 miles recovery + 6 strides
Saturday: 8k to 10k tune-up race
Sunday: 16 miles long run

I'm supposed to do a tune-up race on Saturday but there aren't any races nearby. I'm trying to decide whether I should do a 10k time trial around a track and see if I can hit 40:42 which, too be perfectly honest, I don't think I can or whether I should just take the opportunity to do an LT run.

Week 15 update

Thursday was my birthday. Had a quiet dinner with my parents at a Chinese restaurant. I ate way too much food.

Did 10.3 miles yesterday morning and averaged 8:05 min/mile pace. I had to be downtown yesterday at 7:30 for a work thing so I got up at 4:00 am to get my run in. No cars or people out, just me, the darkness and the endless sounds of crickets. I ended up going to the track to do laps after a few miles of warmup. Seeing this was the last mid-week semi-long run before the taper, I mixed up the pace a bit and did a couple of laps at LT pace and a couple at marathon pace.

I was supposed to attend a work golf day thing yesterday, but the scheduled work thing downtown could not be postponed so I ended up skipping it. That's okay cause I don't play golf and i was kinda worried about using muscles I haven't used before. I don't want to be getting hurt three weeks before race day. Here's a pic of me last year at the driving range trying to figure out how to hit a golf ball.

I was going to go join the work gang for dinner, but I was exhausted at the end of the day and ended up heading home instead to crash.

Today: 4.1 miles @ 9:00 min/mile. Broke out the marathon day race shoes for their inaugural run just to break them in a little. I'll do my long run tomorrow using my old shoes and then switch to the race day shoes. I may try and use the old shoes for a couple of the recovery runs during the taper though.

Cats and Dogs

Did 5 miles including strides yesterday.

Did 10 miles including 4x1200m @ 5k pace this morning.

Lap Time	Pace
04:45.7	06:23.2
04:47.5	06:25.6
04:48.3	06:26.6
04:46.8	06:24.6

Did 3 miles to the local track as warm up. It had rained overnight and so was relatively refreshing. It also meant that the track had puddles of water that didn't bother me too much though it meant kicking up water into my shorts which got heavy by the time of the last interval. Nice thing is that I had the track to myself. Normally there are others who I would term regulars. With no one there, I took the opportunity to run the intervals in the opposite direction to try and mix things up a bit. Afterwards headed home at long run pace just as it started to rain. The rain just kept coming down harder and by the time I arrived home, it was in full cats and dogs mode. I kinda enjoyed running in the rain since I haven't had the opportunity to do that this year and I found it was refreshingly cool. My shoes however were throughly
soaked. I'm hoping that they don't shrink so i can get through my 20 mile run on the weekend.

Run, Fatboy, Run...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvSgFb1Zvs

Week 14 of 18 done

Did 17.6 mile long run today. Averaged about 8:15 min/mile pace for the whole run, but that included 1 mile at the end at LT pace. Was relatively cool when I started at about 14C. Ran along the beaches area to cover part of the marathon course again. No beach volleyball players out today which I guess means that summer is coming to an end.

Lap	Lap Time		Lap	Lap Time
1	09:04.6		10	08:15.6
2	08:17.7		11	08:16.4
3	08:24.4		12	08:01.3
4	08:17.5		13	08:13.4
5	08:20.9		14	08:09.4
6	08:21.4		15	08:06.7
7	08:18.9		16	08:05.2
8	08:02.2		17	06:59.8
9	08:02.3		18	05:44.1

Total for the week was 47.6 miles. Upcoming week is as follows:

Tuesday: 5 miles including 6 strides
Wednesday: 10 miles including 4x1200m @ 5k pace
Friday: 10 miles General Aerobic
Saturday: 4 miles recovery + 3 films
Sunday: 20 miles + 2 films

So I found out whether I got my movies for the film festival and I ended up getting tickets to all of my choices. I don't know if this was because I was lucky in the lottery or if it's because I picked films that no one else wanted to see. The good thing is that I don't have to line-up for three hours on labour day which is a bit of a film festival ritual for those that are serious about getting their films.

I hope everyone is having a great long weekend.

Still on the bubble...

Yesterday: Did 4 mile recovery run including 6 strides.

Today: The training plan called for a tune-up race today. There isn't really a suitable race nearby so I decided to do a Yasso 800's workout. McMillan says that Yasso's over predict a marathon time by about 5 minutes which in my experience is about right. Last year, I did them at an average pace of 3:12.7 and ended up with a marathon time of 3:17 so this time I was going to try and do them at 3:05 in the hopes of predicting a 3:10 marathon time.

Lap Time	HR Max	HR Avg
03:03.1	179	166
03:03.6	224	211
03:04.9	186	175
03:07.4	185	176
03:06.5	186	176
03:04.6	188	178
03:05.0	188	178
03:06.3	187	178
03:06.2	189	180
03:06.1	188	180

The first two were a tad quick including my HR monitor going berserk on the the second one. I was only able to get them down to 3:05 and below a couple of times. Most of them were in the 3:06 range. Does 1 second really matter over a distance of 800m? The average for the 10 laps was 3:05.4 which predicts just over 3:10. I'm on the bubble. All three marathon predictors I've done predict a marathon time of just over 3:10, but not faster. It's going to be close come marathon day! I'm supposed to do one more tune-up race but there isn't really anything available so I may just do a time trial around the track or might do a 6 mile LT run. I haven't decided yet.

I have a 17 mile long run tomorrow and then it's one more week till the taper!