Mississauga Marathon Report

So the race starts. I have a little trick I do at the start of every race. As you may have noticed there are usually two timing mats at the beginning of every race. One is usually right at the start line and the second one is usually a couple of metres behind it. One is supposed to act as a backup for the other. I always try and keep my chip from activating on the first mat and making sure that it contacts the mat that is right at the start line. I've always thought that if I activate on the first mat that you lose the extra 1 or 2 seconds from your chip time cause it thinks you started several seconds before you actually get to the start line. Anyhow, while hopping on one foot over the first mat and making sure that my shoe with the chip on it contacted the second mat, I forgot to start my watch!! I was trying to go out slowly and maintain a nice easy pace, weaving around the couple of people who clearly had not seeded themselves properly. At some point, I glanced down at my watch to check my HR when I saw the flash of 0:00:00 on it. SHIT!! Pushed the start button and was cursing myself. I had this nice pace band with 41 km splits on it which was now going to be useless. I had spent so much time putting it together and making sure everything was legible. On a side note, I realized that I only look at the minutes and seconds so I removed the hour number from most of the splits. i found it worked well. Also the boxes around the alternating numbers make it really easy to read. I had set the pace band for 3:10:30 to leave a little room for error in case the last km was slightly long.

Back to the story, I passed the first km mark and hit the lap button and it read 2:55. The split for the first km should have been 4:31. Some quick little math and I figured the pace band would still be useful all I had to do was add 1:30 to the watch split or subtract 1:30 from the pace band split. This was relatively easy math to do, but this would be valid only if I had actually covered the first km at the right pace which I wasn't sure I had done. (As it turns out, I would figure out after the race based on the 8km and 25km timing mat splits that the actual adjustment time was 1:24, but I didn't know this at the time) First km was actually done in 4:19 which was a little fast. I had decided that the first little bit, I was going to try and run by HR. My little track session last Wednesday had convinced me that I could maintain Boston pace at a HR of less than 170 so i tried to keep the HR less than 170 at the start. What I hadn't accounted for was that the first few km were a little bit uphill so I let the HR climb slowly. I didn't want it to get higher than 175 though. First 3 km are on a bit of a climb , km 4 is a big downhill and km 5 is mostly flat. Right on pace.

KM	Split (km)
1	04:19
2	04:22
3	04:36
4	04:15
5	04:29

By this point I was trying to figure out how much time I had banked and whether I should slow down. I guessed that it was around 30 seconds or so which would put in line to finish with a 3:10:00 if i maintained the proper pace from that point forward. I endeavored to try and do this as going out too fast has burned me in the past. The start was congested. The half marathoners and full racers all start at the same time so there's quite a few people to run with. One thing I had learned from last fall was that I was going to run my own race at my own pace. I wasn't going to run with anyone else or latch onto a group. If people were passing me, I would let them pass. I skipped the first aid station drinking from the 710ml gatorade bottle that I was carrying with me. Some might thing that this wasn't a good idea, but I had trained all year carrying a bottle so this was nothing new for me. Starting in km 7 we turn into where there is a nice downhill and then a nice uphill. It was at this point, I get my first taste of the crappy water they are dishing out. It's definitely not bottled water and had a nasty taste to it. Most have come from the fire hydrants.  Really crappy. Hit the 8km timing mat at 35:29 which averages out to a 7:08 pace. Not too bad. A little fast, but nothing like the 6:59 pace I had pulled off at the 8km mark last fall. Pacing was going well.

6	04:27
7	04:43
8	04:19
9	04:09

It was during the little 4 km stretch that I encounter my first little concern with the placement of the markers. Some are definitely off. km 7 has a downhill but it measured as being slow. Km 8 has an uphill but it measures as being fast. km 9 is a bit of a downhill so that seems about right.

10	06:01
11	03:07
12	04:39
13	04:18
14	04:39
15	04:16

Km 10 was clearly long. Even though it was uphill there was no way I had slown down to 10 min/mile pace. This was confirmed by the next km split which was way too fast. Combined the two km measured about right. I was really concentrating on turning over at 180 cadence. I've found that it really helps to maintain your pace. Shortly before the 15km mark, the full marathoners turn off and separate from the halfers. It suddenly got a lot more lonely. After turning off, there was a woman I could see up ahead who kinda looked familiar. As I closed in on her, i realized that it was the same woman who had blown by me in the last 10km of the two marathons last fall. Hah. I was getting my revenge as I passed her.

16	04:28
17	04:34
18	04:33
19	04:25
20	04:28
21	04:34

Km 16 through to 21 were uneventfull and pretty much on pace. I did notice at this point little beads of water dripping from the brim of my cap which usually means my cap had become saturated with sweat. This is usually my way of testing if I'm putting out the right effort. The fact that it had taken over an hour to get to this point was a good sign. last fall, i think the little drops of water were starting to fall by the 3km mark. I hit the half way mark and saw the clock was around 1:35:00 gun time. My chip time for the half was actually 1:34:13 Or course I didn't really know the chip time for certain, but I estimated that I had banked about a minute of time which I could live with. First half average pace was 7:11 pace. Pretty good looking back in retrospect.

22	04:34
23	04:27
24	04:25
25	04:39

It was during km 22 and 23 that I noticed the wind for the first time. We were running in a southeastern direction and the wind was coming from the east. It wasn't a strong breeze but noticible. We then turn into a southwestern direction and the wind is at our backs. 25 km split was 1:51:46 or 7:12 pace from the start. Looking good. Shortly after the 25 km mark there's a turnaround and the wind now becomes a bit of a head wind. I didn't have much room for error so I trudge on trying to maintain pace.

26	04:25
27	04:30
28	04:46
29	04:21
30	04:27

I notice during km 26 through 30 that I'm passing quite a few people. I think the wind and the marathon distance was taking its toll on some others. I was checking the splits after and it's interesting to see the number of people that passed the 25km mark at about the same time as me or slightly faster that ended up finishing 5 to 10 minutes behind me. I think I had trained myself to run in the wind so it wasn't bothering me that much.  It was during these kms that I dumped my gatorade bottle which was close to empty.  I kinda felt like the scene in Apollo 13 where they let go of the lunar module and thank it for saving their lives.  That gatorade bottle had gotten me this far and I was kinda sorry to see it go. 

31	04:39
32	03:59
33	05:15
34	04:34

I had been running most of the race with a slight tilt to my head. It'll be interesting to see how the race pics look cause I really wasn't looking out for the race photographers. I think most of them will be with me looking at the ground. I generally try to be on the lookout for cameras so I can wave at them, but that didn't happen this time. Shortly before the 31 km mark, while running along admiring the fine cracks that were in the pavement, I heard my name yelled out. Whipped my head around and saw that it was a running acquaintance that I had done some long runs with who was out cheering. Nice to see a familiar face at the 30km mark.

Turning right onto lakeshore blvd heading east, we encounter the head wind. I mutter some swear words about the wind to the guy I'm passing. At least I think it was a guy. I had seen this dude (and it was a dude) at the expo the previous day as he was behind me in a line to get free frozen yogurt. HE was dressed in a pink running skirt and had a pink top. HE had has nails painted. HE had fake Boobs (i think) and HE had a masculine voice. I knew I was coming up behind him because i could hear the volunteers talking about him at the previous water station. Anyhow, this GUY was either trying to be one hell of a stunt runner or he was in the process of getting gender reassignment. I'll see if I can find a picture of him when the race pics come out. Anyhow I passed him at this point and didn't see him again.

km 34 turns off and runs by the lake. I ran this marathon back in 2006 and it was this portion that mentally defeated me. The wind back then was directly in my face and I just couldn't fight through it. Not today though. wind probably wasn't as bad and I was able to continue on.  

35	04:53
36	05:02
37	03:55

By this point I had only taken about 2 gels which were split over 4 water stations. I should have been at 3 or 4 by this point.   I don't quite remember why I hadn't taken more.  I kinda just kept saying to myself, next aid station.  As it would turn out, I would not take any more.    

Km 35 and 36 are back onto lakeshore blvd and i remeber this two km stretch from 2006 also. This is a relatively straight stretch of rolling hills. Back in 2006, I remember looking at these hills and wondering how was I ever going to get through it. Lucky for me, this year I spent most of the time looking at the ground, so it didn't bother me that much. Passing the 35 km mark I had about 30 seconds banked and was on a 3:10:00 pace. The 30 seconds was completley eaten up by the next km which I think was misplaced. The 30 seconds cushion was then immediately put back by km 37.The misplaced markers were starting to worry me. I started to worry about the time I had lost at the beginning of the race. I had assumed it was 1:30 but what if i was wrong. If it had been 2:00 it would mean that i wouldn't have any room for error from here on to the finish.

38	04:50
39	05:08

This feeling was then made worse by the next two km splits which were both slower than desired pace. Passing by the 39 km marker, I looked down at my watch and saw a horrible split.  I was too afraid to look at my pace band as I was afraid of what it would show.  If I had slipped behind Boston pace, I probably would not have been able to push on. 

At this point, I said screw the pace band and the km markers. trying to worry about pace with misplaced markers was not going to get me anywhere. I figured I had about 15 minutes left of running to do and so I started to try and focus on pace and turnover.

40	04:04
41	04:33
42.2	05:17

I continued to hit the lap button as I passed the markers, but didn't bother to look at the split. I was going to try and finish as strong as I could. Last little bit is on this really narrow trail and to compound this, the 3 hour half marathon walkers were still on the trail. I was weaving in and out trying to pass these people cause I didn't know how much time I had to spare. I was downright sprinting right at the end. Didn't even see the clock as i passed the finish line. Did the last 1.2 km at 7:05 pace. Clicked stop on my watch and saw that it read 3:08:57.

If my 1:30 estimate was right of the time I had missed at the start, I had BQ'd. If it was 2:00, it was going to be close. It it was more than that, I was going to start crying. I wandered about the finish area trying to do the mental calculations to see if I had qualified. I was too scared to go look at the results. I went and got a massage and some food and then went to pick up my bag. The first I actually knew I had qualified was about 30 minutes after I had finished when I checked my email on my bb and saw congratulations from quinto sol and yumke. You guys knew before I did!!

Looking back, if I had bothered to check the clock as i passed the finish line, I knew I would have qualified because it would have read 3:11:09. It defintely took me longer than 9 seconds to cross the start line, but it's easy to look back at it now and see how silly it was to have been worried.

Well that's it. HR graph is as follows.

Generally I was able to keep the HR below 170 for most of the race. It was above it at the start, on a couple of the hills and right at the end, but other than that it looked pretty good, i think it was a good sustainable effort. Maximum that was reached was 178 on the hill at the 8km marker. Average for the whole race was 168. I was breathing pretty heavily for the last 2 km or so. One-One breathing pattern. Based on past experience, I can usually sustain that type of breathing for 3-4 km so i started at the right time. Some stats.

First half: 1:34:13
Second half 1:36:11
1:58 positive split.

	8k	21.1k	25k	42.2k
Split	0:35:29	1:34:13	1:51:46	3:10:23
Avg Pace from Start.	0:07:08	0:07:11	0:07:12	0:07:16
Expected finish time.	3:07:10	3:08:26	3:08:40

The course is supposed to be a net downhill, but the rolling hills don't make it feel that way. I'm quite happy with the 2 min positive split.


I've always been envious of the Marathon Guide results for races cause they tell you if the person BQ'ed. I didn't like looking at my results there cause it always reminded me that I had not, whereas others that finished close to me did. Not anymore.

I've been looking at this page every day now.

Just wanted to thank you all for following me on my quest for personal glory. as I mentioned previously, one of my goals was to run Boston before I turned 35. Well I turn 34 this year which basically meant I had to qualify this year. That's why I've been into this obsessive training these past few months. To be honest, I was starting to hate it. It felt like a second job. Having to get up early do a certain number of miles at a certain pace. Now I can kick back and enjoy the summer!

Thanks for reading!

Pre-Race report

I liked how Yumke broke his report into a pre race and actual race report so I'm going to do that as well. It started at the race-expo where I picked up my bib. Those the have partaken in Toronto mrathons know that the Running Room always has a booth where they have this spin the wheel game where you can win various things. I think they changed the wheel this year so that it was almost a certainity that the only thing you could win was a small sample tube of toothpaste and that's what the previous 5 people that spun the wheel ahead of me had won. I spun the wheel expecting to win toothpast also when it landed on a 20% off coupon. I think that was the best prize they had so things were looking good.

I picked up a copy of the IRun Magazine (there has to be an Apple trademark infringement there)which they were giving away at the expo. Ended up reading it while eating dinner that night. There's a nice little blurb on Terry Fox in there. Nice inspirational story.

Lunch on Saturday consisted of pasta and meatballs and dinner conisted of just pasta and sauce. I made sure to try and stuff myself. My weight has dropped quite significantly these past few weeks and on Saturday morning I was around 141 pounds. In the past, this would be an indication that I was dehydrated, but my weight has consistenly been like that for the past few weeks so it could have been some real weight loss (not that I have much to actually lose).

I have to say that this time around, it felt different. There really wasn't an urgency to this race. It's not like in the fall where I was really nervous the day before and even this past March when I had to fly to California. To be honest, I was almost already accepting that it wouldn't be so this time around. In fact, i had signed up for the Chicago marathon a few weeks ago as a possibility for a fall race. I wouldn't normally have done Chicago again, but I thought the flat course and good crowd support would give me the best opportunity to BQ.

My shoes for this race would be the Brooks Adrenaline 6's which is a shoe I've been using before. But these weren't your ordinary Adrenaline 6's. I picked up these neon green adrenalines quite a while ago at a discounted price. I guess people didn't like the colour. Brooks is now selling the Adrenaline 8's so I figured I had to use these things eventually cause they were getting a bit old.

The night before the race, I pinned the bib to my shirt and got my stuff ready. For nutrition, I would take 5 gels, 1 of which would be consumed before the race and the other 4 to be taking during. I also brought some salt pills in a little pill box. I also brought a bottle of gatorade which I would carry with me during the race. I was still worried a bit of salt intake. I had some stomach issues in Napa and I was basically going to be doing the same thing this time around. I did some surfing around and found an article that said that it was too much to consume an entire gel at one time and that one should only eat half a gel at a time with a couple of gulps of water. This kinda made sense so I decided I would drink from my gatorade bottle every km and then would drink only water at the aid stations and take half a gel beginning at the 45 minute mark and then every 20 minutes or so when I got to an aid station. I was bringing the salt pills along, but I wasn't sure if they were going to be useful. They contain a lot more salt then what a gel has and it's quite concentrated. I think they may have been responsible for what went down in Napa, but I ws bringing them along in case I needed them.

Went to bed at about 10pm and slept fairly well. Had set the alarm for 5am, but ended up waking naturally at 4:30. Ate a bagel with PB and jam and downed some gatorade. Took a shower got changed and was out the door shortly after 6. Oh yeah, i should probably mention that with my experience at Napa, I spent 5 minutes picking away at anything that might resemble lint on the inside and outside of my socks! Smooth as silk when I put them on!

Having learned the lesson the hard way last year which had me waiting for 45 minutes to get into the parking lot at the marathon start, I ended up avoiding the main route into the shopping mall where the race starts. Instead I took a bit of a detour and was into the parking lot within 5 mintues after having gotten off the freeway. Thank you google maps!

I had about 45 minutes to the race start, first thing to do was to obviously hit the portapotties. It was still pretty early and there wasn't much of a line-up. I jogged around a bit and would end up going again 2 more times before the start. They used to have this big open field near the start where people would do their business, but they built something there this past year. People were looking for alternatives.

I decided to not wear my foot pod for the race. As I mentioned before, i didn't want to carry around this extra thing on my foot for 26 miles and risk it throwing my stride off. I put the HR monitor on and jogged around to make sure it worked okay. I stretched a bit, downed a gel and some water and then headed to the start line.

I lined up in the 3:00 to 3:30 group and squeezed into middle. The national anthem was sung and then we were off.

Boston Qualifier!!

3:10:23 chip time. Race report to come.

(edited to make picture smaller and add finish time)

Twas the night before...

Picked up my race kit today. I finally got to see the Garmin Forerunner 405 in person at the expo. Nice little thing. I was really close to buying one. That had 7 left in stock. In the end, i was able to convince myself not to endulge. They only have the 405's with a heart rate monitor. There is supposed to be a 405 that doesn't have a HRM but those aren't available in Canada yet. If they had those, I'm pretty sure I would have bought one.

I picked up a 3:15 pace band which I will stuff in my shorts pocket as a backup in case i have to bail on the BQ attempt. 3:15:00 was my original goal in Napa and I'd like to at least try and meet that. I have a 3:10:30 pace band that I made in Excel that has km splits on them (all 42 of them) as my dreal goal. I'm going to try and run even splits for the whole race even though the first half is net downhill.

I'm sorta torn on wearing the foot pod tomorrow for pacing. I think it would be useful, but I don't like the thought of wearing this extra thing on my shoe for 26 miles. I don't quite trust garmin in key pacing situations plus it's a bit of extra weight to carry around so that's out of the question (maybe i should have bought the 405...). I have decided that I will wear my HR moinitor though so hopefully that will be useful for effort feedback.

The weather is looking good. Temperatures at start of 8C and finishing at 13C. They are still predicting some headwind towards the end, but there's nothing I can do about that now. Will try and see if I can find someone to draft off of.

I included a link in the sidebar under the timer to my on-line tracking in case anyone is interested in tracking me.

See ya on the flip side.

Weather Update...

Did 6 miles recovery run today in the morning. I forgot to mention that I did a 6 mile recovery run on Tuesday also. I also did about 1.5 miles after work today to calibrate my foot pod for 7:15 pace around the local track. It felt kinda weird cause I drove to the track so that I could run around it. I'm supposed to be tapering so I didn't want to burn extra effort jogging to and from the track. Did 2 lap warmup and then started into it. Turns out that the foot pod didn't really need calibrating to begin with. Did 4 laps while doing 7:15 pace and it measured it to be 402m, 399m 396m and 398m. Close enough.

The temperature looks good for Sunday, starting at 8C and finishing at about 14C. Weather forecast is now predicting the winds again coming from the east at 30km/hr. No rain at least. I guess I was hoping yesterday that by registering yesterday it would lock the weather in at whatever the prediction was at that time. Guess not. I'm waiting for tomorrow when I can get hourly predictions of the wind forecasts. I'm still hoping that the the 30km/hr winds are going to come later in the day and won't be around in the morning.

Here I go again...

Okay so I signed up for the marathon on Sunday. It might be a foolish thing to have done, but I really wanted to take a shot at BQing in the spring. Yeah I know you've heard this from me before, but I'm writing this today in the type of fitness that I think I should have been in to run Napa but was derailed due to me getting sick about a month prior to that marathon.

Going to bed last night, I had pretty much decided that I wasn't going to do the full and rather would do the half. I was actually looking at the National Capital Marathon on May 25 as a possibility to try and still squeeze in another marathon in this spring. The weather forecast for this Sunday looked miserable. Rain and winds from the east of 30km/hr. The last quarter of the marathon is heading in an easterly direction so it would have meant a headwind for the last 10km or so. Not fun.

Anyhow this morning I was supposed to do 7 miles with 2 at marathon pace. But instead, I decided I would try and do the 7 miles with 2 at half marathon pace which I'm guessing was about 7min/miles. My main reason for doing this was to try and calibrate my foot pod at 7min/mile pace. I found it quite helpful for pacing at 8min/miles and thought it might be helfup for the half on Sunday. I jogged to the track and started into it trying to maintain a 1:45 lap, but what I found quite interesting was that my HR was not getting high at all and it felt really easy. I ended up doing 3.5 miles total rather than just 2 miles around the track cause I was trying to see if the HR would ever get higher. In total the HR touched 171 a couple of times, but averaged about 167-168 for most of these miles which averaged about 7:00min/mile. I did do one lap at my Boston pace near the end (between laps 11 and 12) and the HR average dropped to 166, but was actually closer to 164 right at the end of the lap. This had me somewhat encouraged since I've always used 170 as a general guide for my marathon pace HR. So this at least indicated that I might be in boston qualifying shape and had me rethinking whether i should do the marathon or not all day.

The only concern was still the crappy weather predicted for Sunday, but that seems to have cleared up for now. The weather forecast is now predicting only a 20% chance of rain and winds from the southeast of 10km/hr. Much better than the stuff they were predicitng last night. So with no regrets, I took the plunge and registered for the full about 30 minutes ago. I'm just hoping that the weather doesn't change again!

Long run

Did 13.4 miles today. Average 8 min/mile, though the later miles were closer to 7:50 pace or so. Ran this with the foot pod rather than the garmin. I ran a 13.25 mile course that I've measured using Google Earth and the foot pod measured it to be 13.27. Pretty accurate. Much better than what garmin would usually give me. I tacked on a little bit at my Boston pace at the end to bump it up to 13.4 miles. i think the garmin has been giving me a false sense of pace during training making me think I'm going faster than I actually am going. This recent training cycle, I've depending more on Google earth to measure pace after the fact than the garmin and found that it has worked well. It's a bit of a hassle to plot routes and things, but once you get a few routes plotted, it's easy to tack on new detours onto existing routes to add mileage.

Speaking of garmin, the garmin 405 has been released and the reviews have started trickling in. Looks neat!

Contemplating the marathon...

Thursday: Did 9 miles including 3x1600m at 5k pace. Started off with 3 slow miles to the track then launched into it.

06:16.8

06:18.7

06:19.2

In the past, I've been trying to do these in around 6:20 pace which is what I was aiming for today. HR spiked during the second one and I had to take an extended walking break to let it come down. Maximum HR during the first one was 182 and during the last one was 185. Then finished it off with a couple of miles trying to maintain the HR just below 160.

Friday: 5.4 mile recovery run. Average about 9:20 min/mile. Been doing my recovery runs lately in my Nike Free's and I think I"m starting to derive some benefits from them. My turnover has increased and I think my form is improving as well.

Today: 7 miles GA including 10 strides. Ran the first bit at a HR of less than 160. Averaged a little faster than 8min/mile for this portion. Strides also went without incident, though 10 of them is quite a bit. I was starting to get sloppy towards the end.

Next week is the last week of my between marathons schedule. I had previously decided I was going to do a half marathon next Sunday all out, but a part of me wants to take another crack at the marathon. I've had a solid 8 weeks so far of training which included 248 miles of running last month. The previous high I've ever gotten to was 218. I've gotten through it injury free and I definitely think my fitness is better than when I ran the marathon back in March. I had made a mental note to myself way back that if I could get my long run pace to below 8min/mile prior to next week, that the marathon would be an option. I still don't know if my Lactate Threshold is where it should be, but i think 3:10 is a realistic possibility. I'm still kinda upset that I wasn't able to PR in Napa and I'm certain i could.

Next Sunday is predicting a high of 14C which would be good but it looks like its going to be windy. The schedule this week includes a short marathon pace run on Wednesday. Will see how that goes before deciding for sure. Hopefully the forecast will change to be slightly cooler with less wind in the meantime.

Good luck to Yumke and JellyPepper who are in Cincinnati to partake in their marathon festivities tomorrow! Also congratulations to Ryan in becoming a father for the first time. He intentionally skipped out on the Boston marathon to be with his wife. Now is that dedication or what?

Training Update and Race Pics

Tuesday: Did about 4 miles outside. It was pouring rain but I was determined to get out in the morning to do a run while in Boston. My hotel was a block away from Boston Common which is a public park. Google Earth mapped the exterior of the park to be about a mile long so I ended up doing three laps of the park and then a couple of criss-cross paths to check out the interior. Not sure of the exact distance since garmin couldn't get a satellite lock.

Wednesday: Did 5 miles recovery. Not sure of pace, but slow.

So some race pics from Sunday.

Rabbit ears at the start (Bib 169)




Hamming it up for the camera at the finish (ear in hand)




All Finished!

So much for running in Boston...

I'm here in Boston.  Saw the Citgo sign from a distance all lit up on the ride in.  Hope to be running past that at around this time a year from now. The prospects of going out running tomorrow morning don't look good.  Just my luck I guess.  

Pace Bunny Half Marathon Report

Did the Hartwell Challenge half marathon as the 1:45 pace bunny today. The event is named after a local runner who died during a marathon back in 2001. Last weekend, there was a posting in a local web forum about the organisers looking for pace bunnies. Since I was supposed to do 17 miles today anyway, I offered to volunteer to be the 1:45 bunny since that pace of 8min/mile would be at the fast end of my long run pace.

I only realized after that the course was really hilly and it really had me worried about pacing since I wasn't sure if I could maintain 8min/mile up some of the hills. They changed the course this year which meant that the elevation data that you get from Motionbased about past runnings of the race wasn't going to be useful. While doing a little google sleuthing, I found a website made mostly for cyclists that will let you plot a route and then spit out an elevation profile for it. The neat thing I liked about the site is that it will automatically follow the contours of a road for you so you don't have to micromanage the plotting of the route. Anyhow the elevation profile it spit out looked nice in places (ie., downhills) and brutal in others (ie., uphills).

So arrived fairly early and checked in and was given a Brooks running cap with bunny ears on it that read 1:45. I was a bit paranoid about the pacing so I had calibrated my polar food pod on Saturday for 8min/mile pace. The foot pod is almost deadon accurate if you happen to be running at the pace it was calibrated at. I also had a 1:45 pace band and my garmin. While fooling around with the garmin last week, I disovered the avg/pace per current lap display which is a great tool as it lets one adjust their pace on the fly during a race without having to depend on the wonky instantaneous pace feature of the garmin. For example, if one is running 8min/miles and you happen to be 15 s behind pace at a certain point in the race, you can mentally adjust the pace to get back on track by running 7:55 over the next 3 miles. What's cool is that the avg/pace per mile in the garmin gets more accurate the farther into the lap you go, so if the avg/pace says you're doing 7:50 for the current lap, you slow down a bit until it gets back to 7:55. By the time, you reach the next mile marker you should have avergaed 7:55 which then means that you're made up the 5 seconds and now are only 10 seconds off pace. Hope that makes sense.

Anyhow the race starts and as usual I started out too fast. I didn't think I was going too fast becasue everyone was passing me, but I hit the first km at 4:44 (should have been 4:59). I felt that I was breathing a bit too hard. Other than the fast first km, things were pretty good from that point on. I had a couple of people with me at the start, but they immediately dropped back at the first hill. I had decided to try and run even splits for the race since I could use the garmin and polar to judge how fast I was going. I figureed that trying to run even effort would have made me crazy since with the big hills I was never going to know exactly how ahead or behind I was at any given point and whether or not I was going to be able to make up any differences.

Somewhere around the 4 km mark, I lost one of my bunny ears. The bunny ears were made with construction paper and they had been stapled to the hat. A little bit of sweat had gotten into the paper and with the strong wind blowing, well it ended up tearing off. I continued on with just the one ear, making sure to try and hold it in place whenever I sensed the wind blowing. About 3 km later, the other bunny ear ripped off. I went back and picked up the bunny ear and ran the rest of the race with it in my hand. This was a bit awkward since I was also carrying a bottle of gatorade, plus I had to hit the lap button on both the garmin and my Polar watch after each km marker.

By this point, I had really only picked up one other runner who was gunning for 1:45. We started chatting a bit and she was saying that she was more into the tri scene but that she was hoping to better her PR time of 1:47. I wasn't sure that this was the course to try and set a PR, but she seemed to be doing okay. Shortly after the 7km mark, there is a 60m elevation drop over about 3 km. I sent my fellow 1:45 runner on her way down the hill to bank some time since I was trying to run even splits. She ended up staying slightly ahead of me for most of the race until there was only about 5km to go.

There were a lot of rolling hills, up and down, up and down. Trying to run even pace was forcing me to push the HR up, but it wasn't too bad since it meant that I could also recover a bit on the downhills. By the 11km mark, I had banked about 40 s of time. I guess the 5 seconds here and there adds up. I used the garmin avg pace feature to slowly dwindle this down to the point where I was only 11 seconds ahead of pace by the 20k mark. I'm pretty sure the last 1.1km was a bit long cause I ended up finishing at 1:45:07 chip time. Polar measured the last little bit at 1.16km and garmin says it was 1.2km. Anyhow my fellow 1:45 runner was suffering a little bit at the end, but she ended up finsihing a little behind me at 1:45:17 for a new PR! As we shared congratulations after, she commented "Who says you can't PB on this course!"

Well a fun experience. I wanted to try and squeeze in another 4 miles afterwards since I was supposed to do 17 miles for the day. i ended up doing another mile or so but just wasn't motivated to do the rest.

So here's the HR monitor info. Notice the nice constant pace and the HR going up and down with the hills. (No HR spikes, Yah!) The elevation profile is very similar (though not identical) to the one that the bikely website spit out.

Oh yeah, someone actually picked up my other bunny ear during the race and ended up returning it to me afterward. He said he was trying to use it as motivation to catch me.

I'm going to Boston!

Wednesday: Did 11.3 miles. Average was 8:07 pace. My HR spiked part way through the run and kept high for a good portion of the run. Still not sure what's causing it or anything. There doesn't seem to be anything that triggers it and there's nothing that seems to make it suddenly stop.

Thursday: Did approximately 6 miles recovery with strides. Did these quite slow. First 2 miles were at about 10 min/mile pace and then did another 3 or so at 9:30 pace. Then did 6 strides. First three strides went okay but then the HR spiked on the fourth one and it stayed that way for the remaining strides. I did the last little portion of about 300m at a comfortable level to see if it coincided with the 8min/mile pace. It was almost perfect.

Friday: Did 5 miles recovery. Didn't run it with the HR monitor but did time it. It was about 9:40min/mile.

Saturday: Schedule called for a tune-up race. I decided to head to the track to see if I could crank out 5 miles @ 6:35 pace. HR monitor had problems during the warmup. I think I didn't wet the strap enough. Anyhow, I started into it, but 6:35 pace just wasn't doable, so I ended up doing 5miles @ LT pace. I lost track of the count and ended up one lap short so it's actually about 4.72 miles LT pace. Lt was at about 6:54 pace for the 4.72 miles. Then ran around the track for a few more miles to calibrate my food pod for 8min/mile pace. Total for the day was about 8.5 miles.

Sunday: Did half marathon as a pace bunny. Report to follow.

Oh yeah, the title. I know what your thinking, but it's not the marathon. I'm jsut going to Boston, the city tomorrow and coming back Tuesday evening. I'm suppose to do 8 miles with strides on Tuesday. I'm trying to decide if I should bring running gear with me and do it in Boston or whether I should wait until I get home Tuesday night.

Following Boston Runners

Did 9.35 miles this morning which included 6x600m @ 5k pace.

Lap Time	Pace	Max HR
02:20.0	06:15.5	169
02:18.6	06:11.8	172
02:19.0	06:12.8	173
02:18.9	06:12.6	216
02:18.8	06:12.3	212
02:20.7	06:17.4	212

All the paces were a bit fast. I've been aiming for 6:18 pace for these. I didn't run into the HR spiking thing for the first couple which I thought was a good sign, but then on the 4th interval, a high school kid who was running on the track about 50m ahead of me decided that he was going to try and stay ahead of me for the interval. Silly kid. Maybe it's the male testosterone, but I guess the competitive juices got the best of me and I turned it on a bit. I ended up passing him about 300m into the interval (he was heaving pretty bad), but I passed the 400m mark in 1:29 which is a sub 6 min/mile pace. Not good. I ended up slowing down, but the HR had already spiked again and ended up staying up like that for the rest of the session. I did an additional lap and a half practicing my 8min/mile pace and seemed to be able to hit it quite consistently. Then did 3 miles home at just under 8 min/mile pace.

So I, like much of the running community was quite unproductive on Monday while trying to track three browser windows of people running Boston. It seemed to be over so quickly. 4 hours and then it was a bit of a let down since everyone had finished. Just have to look forward to the race reports now.

Hilly Long Run

Saturday: Did 6 miles @ recovery pace. It was warm outside and I was working up a bit of a sweat. Averaged about 9min/mile, but HR was not as low as it's been in the past.

Sunday: Did 21 miles. I did a 10.2 mile route that I've done in the past and averaged 8:22 pace for that. I did this a bit slower than normal because of what I was planning to do for the second half. For the second part, I did a hilly route to prepare me for the pacing duties for next week. I tried to average about 8 min/mile to see how it would feel going up and down the hills. First major hill, I tried to maintain pace up a 6-7% grade hill. Though I was able to do it, my HR was getting up to MP HR which probably won't be to good for people that are pacing with me since that would be almost VO2Max territory for them. Next major hill, I decided to slow down a bit and not let the HR get too high. Last major hill, I ran by HR slowing down to keep the HR just under 160. By this point I had run 18 miles and didn't really feel like pushing beyond that. Average pace for the second half was 10.8 miles @8:04 pace. Total for the day was 21 miles @8:12 pace.

Total for the week was 68.9 miles. Wow, I haven't gotten injured yet (touch wood). Upcoming week is a bit of a recovery week in preparation for a tune-up race on Saturday and my hilly half marathon long run on Sunday. I'm only supposed to do 59 miles. (Crazy Pfitz...) I will probably do a LT run on Saturday since there aren't any races nearby, plus I don't want to go out too hard and burn myself out for the Sunday.

More HR training...

Thursday: Did 15.3 miles outside before work.This is the longest mid-week run I've ever done before work. Wasn't too sure how I would feel for this considering the relatively hard VO2Max workout I had done the previous day. In keeping with the HR training, I was trying to keep the HR just below 160. It was just about perfect weather for running. Started out at about 5C, finishing at 8C with no wind. First couple of miles were at recovery pace. Mile 5 was a split time of 7:45 or so. Thought that it was a garmin blip but then all the other following miles were at the same pace also. Including the first slow miles, I averaged 7:56 for the entire thing was suprised the heck out of me.

Today: Did 9.4 miles. This was supposed to be a general aerobic run but I wanted to do a bit of a LT run. Even though it's gotten a bit warm lately, there's still snow melting in the shopping mall parking lot where I usually do my LT runs and the parts where the snow has melted just has piles of crap that have accumulated over the winter and shovelled into the area. I headed to the track to try for 5 miles at LT pace. 20 laps around the track is not the funnest thing to do, but it didn't seem to bother me that much. I was really interested to see what the pace would be at my LT HR which I'm guessing is just under 180. The first lap was done at about 7:02 pace while trying to get a feel for the effort. I then settled into between 6:50 to 6:59 pace for the remaining laps. I lost track of the count after a while and did an extra one by accident which I was able to do at 6:46 pace. 21 laps in total, average pace of 6:55 over 5.2 miles or so.

I've volunteered to be a 1:45 pace bunny at a local half marathon next weekend. This is an 8 min/mile pace which at the time, I didn't think would require too much effort for the half marathon distance. I only realized about the extreme hilly nature of the course after. The lowest point in the course to the highest is about a 225 feet (68m) climb which takes place over about 1.5 miles. This is about a 2.8% grade. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to maintain that pace climbing that hill. Good thing is that we get to go down that hill afterwards.

Mother Goose

Tuesday: Did 6 miles recovery at slow pace. I didn't keep to my rule of running this at slower than 9min/mile. The last 3 miles were done at 8:40 pace or so. Nice that the HR is still down.

Wednesday: Did a little over 11 miles including 6x1000m @ 5k pace. In the past, I've always done a cumulative total of about 5000m of intervals (ie, 3x1600, 4x1200, 5x1000). Pushing beyond 5k was new for me. The first 5 went okay, but I was losing form on the last one due to fatigue which caused it to be a tad slower.

Lap Time	Pace	HR Max
03:56.6	06:20.8	215
03:55.6	06:19.2	215
03:55.2	06:18.5	183
03:55.9	06:19.6	184
03:56.0	06:19.8	182
03:58.1	06:23.2	182

I seem to still have a problem with my HR spiking. I had this problem last week too. I don't feel out of breath or anything when it happens or feel any discomfort and I'm able to finish the repeat, but I get all nervous about it when I see it happen.

So a Canadian g oose lay some eggs just outside of my office window and she seems to be diligently sitting on them everytime I check on her. Hoping to see some little goslings eventually. She laid the eggs about 1 to 2 weeks ago so I'm thinking that the little ones will be hatching in another 2-3 weeks. Her mate has gotten into protective mode and will try and scare off anything that approaches which doesn't work too well cause she's near the parking lot. He tried to attack my car yesterday as I was leaving. Not sure what he thought he was going to be able to accomplish.

Maxed out MP

Did 19.25 miles today with a little over 14 miles @ marathon pace. I used HR as a guide trying to keep the MP below 170. Averaged 7:31 pace for the marathon portion. This has gotten me into a bit of a rut. The last time I did a MP back in January, I also averaged 7:31 pace while using HR as a guide. My PR for my marathon back in 2006 is 7:31 pace and the marathon I did back in January was done at 7:32 pace. I hope I haven't hit my internal marathon speed limit cause I still need to drop another 15 seconds off.

I still haven't gotten a chance to calibrate my foot pod thingy and it's still off by quite a bit. According to it, I only did 17.8 miles.

So total for the week was a whopping 63.8 miles in 6 days of running. First time I've gotten over 60 miles in a week. This upcoming week is supposed to be 67 miles.

Saving some trees...

Friday: Did a little over 9 miles outside. Weather was not good. Just above freezing, raining and very windy. Averaged about 8:30 pace. No fast finish. I think my fastest mile was probably around 8:20 or so.

Today: Did 6 miles of recovery. I had to really slow down to keep the HR in check. First mile was almost 10 min/mile. I ended up averaging 9:30 min/mile for the whole run. This was more than 30 seconds per mile slower than what I did on Tuesday. I ended up weighing myself after and i was below my running weight which means I was dehydrated. I was thinking of maybe trying a marathon pace run tomorrow as part of my long run, but I think I may be overtraining a bit this week. If I get a 17 mile long run in tomorrow, I will have reached the 60 mile/week mark for the first time ever. If I don't do the marathon pace run, I'll probably try for 19 or 20 miles.

So I think I solved the problem of me killing some trees. I put my Runner's World subscription on vacation hold for two months. I'm not sure if this means that they won't ship the issues at all or if they'll ship all the issues I missed when it starts back up. If it's the former, I'm saving some trees, if it's the latter, well i tried.

Marathon Movie

Wednesday: Did 10 miles which included 4x1200m at 5k race pace. I was hoping to do these at 6:18 pace since this what I did on the treadmill last week. That's translates into about 47s for every 200m. To be honest, I don't think I could maintain this pace for 5k but this is what I did last year during these intervals so I'm doing it again.

Lap Time	Pace
04:44.4	06:21.4
04:49.8	06:28.7
04:42.6	06:19.0
04:44.3	06:21.3

I am usually able to keep track of pacing by keeping track of the split times every 200m. I forgot to turn off the autolap feature on my watch so during the second interval, I had a premature lap reset which caused me to lose track of how fast I was going. I definitely don't like 5k pace. I finished off with 4 miles which included the last 2 miles at sub 8min/mile pace which is pretty good considering the HR was maintained below 160.

Today: Did 13.25 miles. Average 8:23 pace. Got up at 4:45am this morning. The plan originally had me doing 15 miles but I didn't actually get out until 5:30 and ended up cutting the run a bit short. First 6 or 7 miles were done at a slower than 8:30 pace. The HR was actually quite low for this first part, almost all of it at lower than my recovery HR of 150, but my legs just felt heavy and it was hard to push the pace. I managed a couple of 8:15 during the 2nd half, including two sub 8min/miles right at the end though. This 6 days of running a week may finally be catching up to me. This is my third week of 6 days of running. I'm supposed to do a 9 miler tomorrow. I'll see how it goes tomorrow. It's not looking good as it's supposed to rain.

So went to see "Spirit of the Marathon" last night. To be honest, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be. I was expecting this to bowl me over and it didn't. It motivated me enough to get me up before 5am this morning, but I was just expecting more. I don't know what the more is, but just more. It probably didn't help that I started getting motion sickness towards the end and had to close my eyes at times. I did like the line by one of the spouses to the effect that:

Anything more than 5 miles is what cars, cabs and public transit are for. :)

It was nice seeing all the sites of the Chicago marathon again. I was thinking to myself, hey I remember that escalator at the expo, I remember that street and that corner. Kinda makes me want to do Chicago again this year. I guess we shall see...

Beef of the day...

Did 6 miles recovery this morning. Tried out the Nike Free's for the first time outdoors. Run seemed to go fine. Averaged just under 9 min/mile for the whole thing. I had to remind myself throughout the run to slow down. I've decided that I'm going to have to force myself to go slower than 9min/mile on recovery runs. I tried out the long sleeve t-shirt I got at the race on Saturday. It's a bright neon green colour. I generally don't like flashy colours, but it was a free shirt so I couldn't complain. The thing is way too big. It was a New Balance medium mens and I was thoroughly swimming in it. I noticed that my long sleeve New Balance shirt that I got last year from a 15k race I did was also on the big side. Have to remember to request a small the next time i find out that the shirts are from New Balance.

Tomorrow morning has 10 miles including 4x1200m VO2Max sessions. First opportunity since last November to get some interval work in at the local track. Tomorrow also is the day where they are showing "Spirit of the Marathon" in Canada which I will finally get to see.

My beef of the day is with Runner's World. I've been a loyal subscriber for about 6 years now and the magazine seems to get repetitive after a while, but I still subscribe to it on the off chance that there will be an interesting tidbit or story every once in while. Anyhow I got my most recent issue yesterday. I got home today to find the exact same issue in my mailbox. I thought that maybe there was a mixup and they sent it out twice. What had actually happened was that the Scotiabank marathon which i ran last year is giving a three issue trial subscription to all those who ran the marathon last year. Since my race name is different from the name I'm subscribed under, they must have assumed that I'm two different people.

I'm not so mad that i'm going to get three duplicate issues of a magazine I'm already going to receive anyways, though I guess I'm contributing to the killing of some defenseless tress by not doing anything about it. What I'm mad at is that the rate they are offering new subscriptions is way less than I'm currently paying. I renewed a couple of months ago for 1 year at $35. They are offering new subscriptions the incredible rate of $30 for 2 years. That's just not fair. I can understand trying to bring in more customers but that discounted rate really irks me.

Training by HR.

I've been generally been doing my long runs at around 8:30 min/mile which is in a comfortable zone for me. I wanted to bump up the pace a bit. I used to train based on HR which allowed me to reach whatever pace the HR dictated. Last year, I bought into the pace thing where as long as I was running in a certain pace range for an expected marathon time, I was okay. I didn't see the improvement gains I thought I should so I'm back to trying to run by HR. I've been using 160 as the upper range for my long run HR, but I've been using that for the past 4 years. I should probably re-evaulate that. Will have to try and determine my max HR at some point.

So today was 17 miles on the schedule. I decided to run the same route that I ran last week as it would allow me to make some comparisons. Last week, I did 17.2 miles in 2:26:00 for an average pace of 8:29. My legs were still a little sore from the race yesterday, but I had to try. I used my foot pod measuring thing which I haven't used in a while. the calibration is all screwed up in it. The split times are all wacky. Anyhow, I finished the 17.2 miles in 2:18:45, 7 minutes or so faster than last week which averaged out to 8:04 pace. It was getting really tough towards the end though. The HR was below 160 for most of the run. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the HR as it gets warmer since I think the HR is artificially lower when it's relatively cool outside, like it is these days.

Total for the week was 53.9 miles. This upcoming week was supposed to be a 65 mile week which included a 15 mile run on Thursday. I think I'll cut back on the 15 miler. I've been thinking of trying a marathon pace run next Sunday and don't want to burn myself out.

8k Race Report

Ran the Harry's 8k Spring run-off today. Going in I wasn't sure what a good time would be to aim for. On a perfectly flat course, I would think that 33 minutes or so would be doable. However this isn't a flat course. I also haven't really done any real fast intervals lately other than the 600m intervals I did last Tuesday and considering I've done no hill work other than the slight elevation gain that the treadmill gives me, I really wasn't sure what to aim for.

Started the morning with a bagel and peanut butter and downed a bottle of gatorade. Headed for downtown about an hour and half later. Arrived fairly early and ended up parking about 1 mile away walked to the staging area. While walking there, I got my first glimpse of a hill. I wasn't sure of the course and if we ran through this part, but I didn't like the looks of it. I arrived at the staging area and picked up my chip and then bumped into Yumke. Chatted a bit and dropped off my gear and then we both headed to the start line. We took a look at the final uphill climb at the finish line and it was worse than I had feared. It was steep. Having now been thoroughly psyched out, we headed back to the start line to get ready. This year, they introduced a starting corral system which forced people to seed themselves correctly. I had put down 33 minutes when I had signed up and so that allowed me to get into the first corral. Wishful thinking I guess.

The race starts. In hindsight I think I should have warmed up a bit and done some strides because it really felt hard during the first km. There wasn't too much elbow bumping and everyone around me seemed to be going at the right pace though a lot of people were passing me. I pass the first km marker at 4:00 minutes flat. It was actually a few seconds faster since my watch was measuring gun time. It was slightly faster than I would have liked and I tried to slow down for the second km, but there is a huge downhill in the second km. This hill is actually the same hill that we would have to run up right at the end. End up doing the second km in 4:01. Also, my HR went all crazy during these portions.

Km 3 through 5, I didn't get any split times mostly because km 3 has a big uphill on it. I ended up putting my head down and trying to go constant effort up it. By the time, I reached the top and had recovered from the climb, I had missed the 3 and 4 km markers. I hit the 5km marker at 21:04 for a 13:04 split time for the previous 3 km. That's 7:00 pace which is actually pretty good considering the hill. I kinda wish in hindsight I had pushed a little harder during this section though. Km 6 starts with a bit of a downhill and then flattens out. This was done in 4:12. At this point, i was thinking to myself that it's less than 10 minutes to the finish line and that i should step it up a bit for the next little bit. I tried to increase my turnover and run stronger. I was passing a few people but my split time for km 7 was only 4:14 though my HR has risen to 185 whereas it had been at 180-182 for most of the race. Passing the 7km marker I knew it was less than 5 minutes to the finish line, but it now included that last uphill portion. I think I worked at constant effort up the hill, and kinda turned it on right at the end. My HR got up to 189 right as i crossed the finish line. Last km split time of 4:34.

So the tale of the tape is as follows:

KM	Time	Split	Pace (min/mile)
1	03:59.5	03:59.5	06:25.4
2	08:00.4	04:00.9	06:27.7
5	21:04.0	13:03.6	07:00.4
6	25:15.6	04:11.6	06:44.9
7	29:29.5	04:13.9	06:48.6
8	34:03.0	04:33.5	07:20.2

Final time of 34:03 gun time (33:58 chip). Average pace was 6:50 min/mile. I didn't find the 8 km race too hard. I was kinda expecting it to hurt like a 5k would. But I guess the real reason is that I ended up treating this like an LT run averaging an LT pace for the whole thing. I kinda wished I had pushed a little harder in the race. Not including the portion where the HR went all crazy, I averaged a HR of 182 through to km 6. 184 for km 7 and 185 for km 8. In comparison, back in August last year, I averaged 185 for an entire 15km race. In fact my 8 km split time then was faster than today and my average pace then for the entire 15km was 1 second faster than it was today though it's hard to make a comparison with all the hills today since the 15k was a flat course.

So hung around and met up with Yumke and then waited for Jellypepper to finish also. (BTW, i've learned the big secret of where her name comes from.) I'd like to do this race again. The race is sponsored by a local Mens clothing store and some people run it in formal wear. I'd like to try running this in a suit one day. I've got a couple of unfashionable suits (think double breasted) in my closet from years gone by and think it would be cool to run a race in one of them.

Lots of cool stuff. We got a long sleeve technical shirt, a technical cap and a medal. Pretty good amount of stuff. I think this may have been a one time thing though since it's the 30th anniversary of the race.

Strides

Did a little over 6 miles today of recovery including 6 strides. Average pace for the whole run was around 9:20 pace. The strides are starting to feel easier. They've been sort of awkward to do these past few weeks. The co-ordination just didn't seem right. Today I was able to power through them. Hope it's a good sign for the race this weekend.

I was downtown this morning and decided to make a little bit of a detour to pick up my race kit for Saturday's race. While driving to the pick up spot, I noticed a big line-up that had formed on the side walk. Not sure what it was till I saw a sign that said something about free chicken, limit of 10 pounds! Huhh??! That's quite a bit. I only found out by listening to the radio later in the day that a local butcher had won 14 million in a lottery last week and decided to spread the wealth by giving away the chicken. You can read about it and see the sign here.

Quick Update

Tuesday: Did 9 miles at the gym including 6 VO2Max intervals. Did the interrvals at 9.5 mi/hr (6:18 pace) for about 0.4 miles which is about 600m or so. Finished off with 2 miles at 8:00 pace and then 1 mile @7:13 pace. HR seemed to be way down for this. I think the treadmill may have not been calibrated right cause this whole run felt too easy.

Today: Did 11.4 miles outside. Wanted to try and bang out a run with a moderate effort. Started off slow and progressively increased the pace over the first three miles. Then averaged about 8:00 pace for the remaining 8.4 miles. Ran this without the garmin. I think I've been relying too much on it for pace information so I tried to just have in a moderate consistent effort and then mapped out the route after. I ran this first portion by HR trying to get a feel for what the effort will feel like at a HR of 160 and then just tried to maintain that feeling the rest of the way. HR seemed to trail off a bit at the end. Kinda wish I knew what the pace was at that point. I think I may have to go back to using my foot pod thingy which I haven't used in a long while now.

6 days/55 miles

Finished the 6 straight days of running okay. My left knee which is the knee I've had problems with in the past was twinging a bit before and after my long run today. I'm hoping that it's due to me having not stretched after most of my runs this week and not something else. Today did 17.2 miles. Garmin says I did 17.5 miles which I know is wrong. Some of the miles were way too fast according to Garmin so manually mapping it out showed it to be a little shorter. Average pace for the whole thing was 8:30 min/mile. Today was very windy. Nice when it's at your back, not so nice when you're running into it.

Total for the week was 55.8 miles. Pfitz' schedule for this upcoming week is supposed to be another 6 days of running and 65 miles. I've decided to flip this week's schedule with next weeks since I have an 8k race this Saturday and Pfitz original schedule for next week has a tune-up race on the Saturday. Also the total mileage for the week will be 53 miles which is a little less than I did this week so I can treat it like a stepback week. The plan has some VO2Max work scheduled for this week which is good in terms of timing since it's supposed to warm up over the next few days. I'm hoping that most of the snow around the local track will melt so I don't have to do these at the gym. Plan is as follows:

Tuesday: 9 miles including 6x600m @5k race pace
Wednesday: 11 miles GA
Thursday: 6 miles recovery w/ 6 strides
Friday: 5 miles recovery
Saturday: 8km race
Sunday: 17 miles long

Nice LT run.

Thursday: Did really slow 4 mile recovery run outside. First mile was over 10min/mile. Miles 2-4 were about 9:40 or so.

Friday: Did 9 miles with 5 at LT pace. Considering the hard time I had with 3 miles at 6:48 pace last week at the gym, I decided to aim for 6:58 pace (8.6mi/hr). The temperature outside is still hovering around freezing which means icy sidewalks so no outside LT work yet. I also usually set the treadmill at level 3 of the random hills which causes the grade to fluctuate between 0 and 2.9%, but decided to cut back to level 2 which only goes up to about a 2.2% grade I think. First 2 miles were recovery at 9:13 pace. Really low HR. Didn't get to above 140. When looking back to this recovery run back in February where the first two miles were done at the same pace but I was already over 140 half way through the first mile should mean that my fitness is improving. After the recovery portion, I started into the LT miles, but noticed that the HR wasn't getting high enough. First two miles were done at a HR of less than 170 and the peak during mile 3 was only 172 or so. I bumped up the pace for mile 4 to 6:53 pace and then to 6:48 pace for mile 5. Finished off with 2 miles@ 8:00 pace. I think all the running outside lately is making the treadmill running seem easier. In hidsight, I would have liked to see if I could have handled 6:48 pace for the whole run.

Today: Did 5 mile recovery with 6 strides. Didn't wear a watch or the garmin so not sure of pace. I'm going to try and not worry so much about pace on recovery runs, but rather to just run comfortably slow. With the six days of running a week now, it'll be more important to treat these runs as true recovery runs rather than days to slip in more GA work.

Day two of six...

Did 8.5 miles including 8 strides on Tuesday. I averaged about 8 min/mile for the first 7 or so miles than did 8 strides. Garmin still says I averaged about 8:30 pace for the strides which included the slow recovery jogs.

Did 12.1 miles today at an 8:30 pace. I thought of maybe trying to speed these up a bit but I ended up doing this at my regular long run pace since I'm on day two of six consecutive days of running which includes a 5 mile LT run on Friday and a 17 mile long run on Sunday. Speed I can worry about later. I have to make sure that that my body can handle the ramp up in mileage which should be easier if I stay in my comfort zone.

Entering uncharted territory...

Did 9 miles at a moderate pace including some strides on Friday. I think I"m going to try and do these runs at a brisker pace. I've been generally doing them at a slow pace but think it might be helpful if I bump it up a bit.

Did 5 mile recovery run on Saturday and13 miles yesterday.

Total for last week was about 43 miles.
So this upcoming week is a bit different. I'm supposed to do 55 miles which I've done before but it marks the beginning of 6 days of running a week which is new. Next week is even tougher since it requires a 65 mile week which might be a bit much. I may cut that back to 60 or so.

So i signed up for an 8k race in two weeks time. I've never done one before. 5k races I don't like, 10 k races are bearable. An 8k race, I'm not too sure of yet.

Back into a tempo kinda feeling

Did 5 miles recovery at the gym on Tuesday

Did 9 miles General Aerobic at the gym on Wednesday. Looking ahead to the training plan, I'm supposed to do a 5mile LT run next week. I haven't done a real LT run in 4 weeks so I decided I would try and do 3 miles at 6:48 pace to see how it would feel. The warmup of three miles at recovery went well and then the first 2 miles @ lt pace were okay. The last LT mile was kinda tough though. HR was getting super high. Finished it with 3 miles at recovery pace.

I'm going to try and do 9 miles later this evening with some strides.

So the "Spirit of the Marathon" has finally gotten around to being shown in Canada. One day, one time showing, April 9 and the tickets go on sale today! One of the theaters is about a 5 minute drive from where I work, so I'll definitely be checking it out.

Also, I finally got my notebook computer fixed which means I was finally able to get my pictures from Napa off of it. Here's one of the Bale Grist Mill.

Old Bale Grist Mill

Winter time tan

Did 10.2 miles today. 9:24 min/mile overall pace. Woke up this morning a bit dehydrated, but thought that 10 miles wouldn't be too bad. Very tough run. HR was hovering around 160 for most of the run. Post run weigh-in of 139 pounds which means I was very dehydrated. It probably didn't help that this was the third straight day I've run.

Temperature today was just below freezing which meant that most of the puddles of water had a thin crust of ice on them. I like running though them and cracking the ice. I ran today with a winter touque and sun glasses. When I got home and removed them, I noticed quite pronounced tan lines on my face. One clear tan line across my forehead and one around my eyes. I had hoped that maybe it was just dirt that would wash off, but a shower later, it was definitely a tan line. Crap. I had to mail letter so rather than just dump it in the nearest mailbox, I walked to the post office in a nearby shopping mall to spend some additional time out in the sun and it seems to have evened out the tan. Just a word of warning to you all. wear sun screen.

Melting...

Did 7 miles with 8 strides on Friday and did 5 miles recovery today. I've been running much of these runs without the HR monitor and just going by feel, but I'm starting to suffer withdrawl symptoms from my little graphs. Based on my past experience, the first two weeks after a marathon are pretty much a write off in terms of getting any useful data so I haven't been recording them. I'll probably wear it tomorrow for my 10 mile long run though.

So the mass of snow that has fallen and piled up over the past few weeks has started to melt which means that spring is almost here. This also means that there are huge puddles of water everywhere. Stomping through puddles, fun stuff. It was warm enough today that I went out in knee length shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt for today's run. Had a kid yell at me that I should put some pants on. Kids say the darndest things.

Recovery runs.

Did 9 mile recovery run on Sunday, 5 miles of recovery yesterday at the gym and 5.4 miles outside today also recovery. I've moved into the Pfitz 10 week between marathon program. Actually I skipped the first week so it's actually a 9 week program. I'm not going to try another marathon in 10 weeks, but rather, I'm aiming for a half marathon in 10 weeks. After that, it's 2 weeks of recovery or so and than 18 weeks to an end of September marathon. It sounds all nice and easy now in the planning but I'm sure things will change. Anyhow the 10 weeks between marathon program of Pfitz is interesting since it ramps up quite quickly to 6 days of running a week and 67 miles a week which is new territory for me. I'm just hoping that all this snow that's around melts soon before the mileage gets too high.