Ottawa Marathon Pace Bunny Report

Pre-Race
Lots to document so excuse the length. Picked up some take out pasta and drove about a quarter of the distance to Ottawa before taking a dinner break at a highway rest stop. Arrived in Ottawa just before 11pm or so.

Saturday morning had the friendship run which is sponsored by the Running Room at city hall. It's a short 2 mile run and breakfast. Pretty basic food: bagels, fruit cup, coffee and hot chocolate. Picked up my pacing kit which consisted of a shirt, sign and the bunny hat. Had the opportunity to meet several people from Running Mania who were also pacers.

Also met up with the other 3:50 pace bunny. I was doing continuous and he was doing 10 and 1's. That's me, second from the right.

After the friendship run, headed back to the hotel to change and then hit the expo to pick up my kit. They have shuttle buses that run from city hall to Landsdown park where the expo is. Picked up the kit and noticed they had free bus marathon course tours. Decided to do the bus tour thing. Though they did do the tour of the route, it was more like an actual tourist tour where they point out interesting buildings and historical facts. Glad I did it. Didn't get back to the hotel till about 4:30.

As bunnies, they also gave out free tickets to the pasta dinner which I gladly accepted. I was trying to arrange to buy a ticket before hand. You couldn't buy a ticket online only to the pasta dinner, you had to bundle it with a race entry fee, but since i wasn't paying for the race, it wouldn't let me do it. I emailed around and after some email tag and telephone calls trying to arrange payment with a credit card, the race decided to just give us free tickets. That was nice of them. Pasta dinner was at 6pm and I was there prompt and early cause with a 7am start the next morning, I had to make sure my dinner was good and digested and out of my system before race start. Chatted with a lady from Quebec and found out that she had run with me at the Niagara half last year when I paced 2 hours. Small world. Left dinner at 7pm and had to go meet up with some friends who had made dinner plans for 7:30. I thought 7:30 was a bit too late to have dinner so i just dropped by to say hi, swap some stories and have a beverage. I was back at the hotel by 9:00.

Prepared my race stuff for next morning. One benefit of staying in the overpriced "Gold" floor at the Chateau Laurier (which is the only non-suite rooms they had available when I booked) is they give you free continental breakfast. Breakfast started at 7am which wouldn't be good for me, but they did set out saran wrapped bagels the day before which helped. With that taken care of, I decided to do one last foam roll of the legs and stick my calves. I noticed that one part of my legs was really tender which had me concerned about the race. I looked it up after and it was the peroneus (fibularis) longus. This was coupled with the fact that the weather forecast was predicting temperatures of 14C at race start with the sun out in full force. I started having doubts. Anyways headed to bed at about 10:00pm. Woke up at 4:00 and ate half a bagel with some peanut butter i had taken from the friendship run and downed it with some water and gatorade. I actually wanted to eat the whole bagel, but for some reason i just felt full. I then decided to go back to sleep for an hour. I've seen that other people do this, and i've never had the opportunity to, but with my hotel being a 5 minute walk to the start line, i could afford to catch some extra rest. Woke up again at 5:30, had a shower got changed and headed out at 6:15am for the short walk to the start line. Arrived and checked my gear, used the facilities one last time. About 10 minutes before the start, I downed a gel with some water and then headed to the start line. A woman came over to me and said she was going to run the race with me. So we entered the proper corral, where i located the other 3:50 bunny and then the race starts.

Race

Really crowded at start which helped as I usually tend to start races too fast. A lot of people had some garmin problems at the start. I was luckily able to get a satellite lock, but if you check out the Garmin Connect route below, it's pretty clear that it wasn't the greatest. I was carrying my sign and a bottle of gatorade. I had decided to run with the full bottle of gatorade at the start. As i've mentioned before, there was only one concern that I had and that was having to stop to use the restroom, but recalling my analysis of that fateful day back in 2007 when I bonked trying to BQ on a slightly warm day, i realized that it would be better to have to stop and finish a minute late then bonk and finish 10 minutes later. Thanks to Tedlee for the pic.

I passed through the first km in 5:35. I had decided to run the race with both the garmin and my Polar watch. i was going to rely on the Polar and a pace band to determine how I was doing overall, but I was going to use the Garmin for pacing. I also wanted to wear my HR monitor to see how the effort level was. During the first km, my HR spiked. Now I've done three marathons in the past with a HR monitor and though I've had HR spiking problems in training, it's never happened during the marathon. Normally during training, I would slow to a walk and eventually it would come back down, but I obviously couldn't do this in the race as a pacer so i trudged on hoping it would come back down which it did at the 6km mark. The first 5km are about on pace, slightly fast, but a net elevation loss means i'm right on target.

5k: 26:56 (8:40 min/mile) Should have been 27:15 (8:47 min/mile)

The first two km pass by parliament hill and the Supreme Court building and are quite nice, but then the route goes through Hull which is a bit of a dump. I had passed the 10:1 3:50 bunny during the first km. Technically he should have been ahead of me cause his run portion for the 10 minutes of running should have been faster than what I was doing. Ideally, we would have swapped the lead going back and forth where he would pass me on the run portion and then I would pass him on the walk portion. Well up until 8k, I was ahead of him, then during the 9th km, I see him tear ahead of me on his own. I thought that maybe he had to use the facilities and wanted to get ahead of his group, but checking the 10km split time, he was over a minute ahead of me.  I started to notice a slight twinge in my right achilles/ankle area.  It wasn't pain, just a dull ache.  I started to worry that it might get worse, but it never did.

5 to 10k: 27:21 (8:48 pace) 54:17 (should have been 54:30, -13s difference)

The course up until this point had rolling hills. This marathon course is definitely not flat. So we leave Hull and then move into what was probably my favourite part of the course. We ran by the prime ministers and governor general's residence and then through Rockliffe which has a lot of really nice homes. People were out in full force cheering and the tree cover provided some needed relief from the sun.

10 to 15k: 27:06 (8:43 pace) 1:21:23 (1:21:45, -22s)

Coming up to 15k, there's a bit of a stretch out in the open. I had some problems holding up the sign at this point cause the sign would act as a bit of a sail and there was quite a bit of wind. I kept the sign close to my body while occasionally sticking it up in the air to let people know where I was. All the while, the km are ticking by. I had a pretty good group of people with me. It was hard to know for sure since I was running continuously. When you're doing 10:1's, it's easy to see how big a group you have when you take a walk break cause everyone's walking with you.

15 to 20k: 27:19 (8:48 pace) 1:48:42 (1:49:00, 18s)

I hit the half mark at 1:54:31 or 29s ahead and on pace for a 3:49 marathon. I was pretty happy with this. I had personally been burned by bunnies going out too fast and I was determined not to let this happen here. Now after the half mark, the race then proceeds back onto the main roads of Ottawa and away from tree cover. As the sun was now out in full force, it was starting to get warm.

20k to 25k: 27:12 (8:45 pace) 2:15:55 (2:16:15, -21s)

Somewhere around the 23k mark, I made the decision to toss my 3:50 pace sign which I did at a water station. I had been carrying the thing for more than a half marathon and with my gatorade bottle running low on fluids, I knew that I was going to have to start relying more on the aid stations, grabbing 2 to 3 cups at a time. The crowd around me had thinned out enough that I didn't think people would have difficulty seeing the bunny ears to know where I was. I probably should have announced that i was going to toss the sign, as i bunch of people starting asking me whether i was bailing on the 3:50. Nope. Just getting sick of carrying the sign I said.

25 to 30k: 27:23 (8:49 pace) 2:43:17 (2:43:30, -13s)

Between 25 and 30k, I finally caught up to the 10:1 3:50 pace group during one of their walk breaks. The other pacer had started out a bit fast and was slowing down. Unfortunatley, when the other group started running again and passed me, most of my group left me for the other one so that I was basically running alone. :( From this point on, we would trade the lead back and forth though I think most people ended up appeciating the walk breaks more so they stuck with the other group.

30 to 35k: 27:13 (8:46 pace) 3:10:31 (3:10:45, -15 s)

I ended up emptying and tossing my gatorade bottle shortly after the 31k mark, relying solely on the aid stations and gels. In total, I started with 4 gels, but only took 2 total in the end. Can't remember exactly where, but I only ate half a gel at a time with a couple of gulps of water. At this point, things were getting tough. They had a couple of stations where they would hand out sponges with cold water in them. These things were great. I found out that squeezing water onto my quads gave them a refreshing breather, so much so that I would end up spilling water on my legs at the remaining aid stations. Around the 34k mark is a bit of an overpass on Heron Rd. affectionally called the "Heron Hump". This was a really tough climb for me trying to maintain pace as there was a full on head wind uphill. My HR hit the highest point in the race and this was my slowest km. I probably couldn't have gone much faster if I had tried. I didn't check, but i wouldn't have been surprised if I lost everyone that was running with me here.

35 to 40k: 27:24 (8:49 pace) 3:37:55 (3:38:01, -5s)

The distance between 35 and 40k was pretty tough mentally. I was pretty sure that I could maintain the pace, but I was just starting to wish that the race was over. In my mind, I was counting down the km and minutes to when it would be over. For the first time in the race, I was conciously trying to run the tangents. This was moreso to prevent me from losing time as I figured I had only about 10-15s in the bank. Around the 38k mark is when the half marathoners merge with the full course. Though there was a lot more energy with all the additional runners, it was also sort of demoralizing because all these people were streaming past us on fresher legs. The crowd support I have to say was pretty good at this point.

The last 2.2 kms i ran pretty evenly. I had 5s banked at 40k and I wanted to maintain that through to the end which I did crossing at 3:49:56, 4s under where I should have been.

It was hard to know if anyone gunning for 3:50 crossed the line with me. There were a lot of half marathoners around, so it was hard to know who was doing the full and the half. I ended up looking through the split times after and there were two people who were with me through the 10k, half and 30k split times who would end up finishing within 2 minutes of me. I think that was the closest anyone came to sticking with me for the whole race. One of these people was the woman who had found me at the beginning of the race and said she was going to run with me. She ended up thanking me afterwards while I was waiting in line for food.

The peroneus (fibularis) longus tenderness that I was experiencing the night before never materializerd though it was still quite tender both before and after the race.  Guess I don't use it that much when I run.

So for all you non-math people, ignore the next little part cause these are the stats. i missed a couple of the markers. If you're interested in the ottawa marathon route, you can see it in my Garmin Connect Route.

km	Lap Time	Time	Diff		km	Lap Time	Time	Diff
1	05:34.5	0:05:35	+00:08		22	10:38.2	1:59:21	-00:34
2	05:08.9	0:10:43	-00:11		24	11:01.1	2:10:22	-00:27
3	05:21.5	0:16:05	-00:16		25	05:33.0	2:15:55	-00:21
4	05:26.5	0:21:31	-00:17		26	05:28.0	2:21:23	-00:20
5	05:24.8	0:26:56	-00:19		27	05:30.9	2:26:54	-00:16
6	05:20.0	0:32:16	-00:26		28	05:28.4	2:32:22	-00:14
7	05:31.8	0:37:48	-00:21		29	05:30.1	2:37:52	-00:11
8	05:33.9	0:43:22	-00:14		30	05:25.4	2:43:17	-00:13
9	05:22.7	0:48:45	-00:19		31	05:26.8	2:48:44	-00:13
10	05:32.3	0:54:17	-00:13		32	05:21.3	2:54:06	-00:19
11	05:22.1	0:59:39	-00:18		33	05:25.6	2:59:31	-00:20
12	05:30.0	1:05:09	-00:15		34	05:37.9	3:05:09	-00:09
13	05:31.6	1:10:41	-00:11		35	05:21.5	3:10:31	-00:15
14	05:16.2	1:15:57	-00:21		37	10:46.3	3:21:17	-00:23
15	05:25.7	1:21:23	-00:23		38	05:34.9	3:26:52	-00:15
16	05:32.4	1:26:55	-00:17		39	05:30.7	3:32:22	-00:11
17	05:26.8	1:32:22	-00:18		40	05:32.8	3:37:55	-00:05
18	05:36.1	1:37:58	-00:08		41	05:25.9	3:43:21	-00:06
19	05:15.5	1:43:13	-00:20		42	05:26.0	3:48:47	-00:07
20	05:29.1	1:48:42	-00:18		42.2	01:06.8	3:49:54	-00:06

	5k split	pace
5k	26:56.2	08:40.2
10k	27:20.7	08:48.1
15k	27:05.6	08:43.2
20k	27:19.9	08:47.8
25k	27:12.3	08:45.4
30k	27:22.8	08:48.8
35k	27:13.1	08:45.6
40k	27:24.7	08:49.4

So I had a couple of people come up to me after the race and thank me. In hindsight, I probably should have been a bit more motivating during the race. It would have been nice to be able to carry at least one person with me the whole way. I do much of my training alone, so talking while I run is not something i do very often. Oh well.

One thing with my pacing was I ended up winning the pace bunny prize for coming closest to my time without going over. I ended up winning a 2 lb bag of carrots and a chocolate easter bunny. Yah! Though I told them to donate it to a local food bank cause it seemed like a waste to spend more money on shipping the stuff to me then the stuff was actually worth.

So had lots of fun. Though, I'm not certain I would want to pace a full again. I don't mind pacing halfs since I run that distance at that pace almost every week on my long run. Running 26 miles even at a slow pace on the other hand is something I only do during a marathon race and it still hurts after like I had raced it. I probably would be thinking differently if it wasn't so warm during the race. I was definitely dehydrated afterwards and suffering in the last few km's.

I really like the medal. It's a double spinner.The maple leaf spins independently from the inner ring which spins independently from the outer ring.

Here are some additional pictures from after the race from around Parliament Hill.

 

  

  

  

 

4 days and counting

Did 6 miles recovery on Tuesday at recovery pace. I did 7 miles today with 2 miles at around 7:35 min/mile which is where I think my marathon pace should be based on my HR. To be honest, I don't think i could maintain that for 26.2 miles at this time. As I'll only need to average 8:47 pace this weekend, I hope there's enough of a buffer there.

So on the injury front, my knee still has a smallish scrape on it. I took off the fancy bandage I had and replaced it with a regular band-aid. The fancy bandage supposedly keeps the wound from scabbing by keeping the area moist. At this point, it's healed up sufficiently that I don't mind a small area scabbing up. I think it's more important that i be able to run on Sunday without a bandage.

Second issue is that my new Saucony Omni Grid 6's that I've been trying to break in have been giving me blisters on the side of my left big toe. I noticed it a few weeks ago when I ran the Mississauga half. When I change shoes, it doesn't blister, but when I put the Sucony's on, it blisters again in the same spot. I felt around in the inside of the shoe, but didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. I've never had problems with blisters so this is new to me. I'm going to buy some body glide and see what the drug store has to cover up blisters. Worse case scenerio, I go back to my previous shoes, but I'm kinda worried about them cause the last time i used them I had achilles and calf problems which basically tell me that they were done.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I signed up for the lottery for the NYC marathon and didn't get in which is good as i didn't really want to run it this year. I just wanted to start the ball rolling on the 3 strikes and you're in policy, but sometimes it doesn't work the way you planned. Yumke got in on his second try and he didn't want to. As it is right now, he's scheduled to do 3 marathons in 3 weeks in the fall. Hard core!

Week so far

Tuesday: Did little over 8 miles with 8 strides thrown in.

Wednesday: Did 8 miles with 3 of them @7min/mile pace. Was supposed to do 3x1600m at 5k pace but i don't want to cram in too much speed at this point. I have a 5k race in the middle of June and I should probably start working in repeats after Ottawa.

Friday: Did 5 miles recovery. Didn't get back from run until after 11pm. Though running at recovery heart rate, pace was under 9 min/mile which is probably a result of it being cool outside.

So marathon is next Sunday. Look at the weather forecasts for the week has been interesting. A couple of days ago, they were predicting highs of 26C for race day. Yikes! Now its a high of 18C which is a little more reasonable though still a bit warm for someone that's been running in sub 10C weather for the past few months.

Looks like i'm driving to ottawa next week. i was torn between flying and driving. Flying has less hassles and i don't have to sit in a car for 5 hours each way, but with driving I can bring more stuff and can come and go as i please. In the end, the bringing more stuff with me won out. I can bring my foam roller and stick which wouldn't make it past security in my carry-on. Also, with the more space, i can bring my tripod which will allow me to get some nice night time pictures of Parliament Hill. Here's one from a few years ago.

So i still have a bandage on my knee. The bandage is supposed to be left on as long as possible. I'm going to take it off on Monday morning if it lasts till then. I can't fully bend my knee because of it and i haven't been able to stretch one of my quads which means there's a bit of an imbalance in my stretching routine. My one leg is more flexible than the other. Probably not good.

12 miles tomorrow. I was thinking of driving downtown to run by the lake, but it's looking to be quite cool and windy. Will probably do it up here.

Mississauga half report

Hmm, what do i have to say about the race? I've done the half course three times previously and done the full twice. I set out to do this in 1:55 which is the pace i need to hold for a 3:50 full. Just for future google reference for anyone that takes the 403 to Square One on race morning, do not exit at Hurontario St. as it'll take you forever to get into the parking lot. I made this mistake for two years when it took me 45 minutes to get from the offramp to a parking space. Exit at Mavis Rd and get onto Rathburn and approach Square One from the south. Much faster.

So race starts, as usual, I started out too fast and hit the first km at 5:09 when it should have been 5:27. Was able to settle down though. Clicked through the k's steadily, though with each passing km, the need to use a porta potty would increase. I spent most of the race trying to figure out if I could hold it till the end. They seemed to only have the odd PP setup through the course and it always was occupied. Just after the 19km mark, there was a bank of about 6 or 7 PP, all of which were empty and I considered this a sign from above that I wouldn't make it to the end without an "incident" so I took my bathroom break. After leaving, I was well behind schedule so I decided to race to the end and try and pass as many people as i could. I forgot to hit the stop button on my garmin at the end, so I don't have a pace for the last km. I do recall seeing a 4:06/km average pace when i glanced at the garmin at some point. Finish time of 1:54:10.

Stuck around the finish line to see Yumke finish. I wasn't sure if he was trying for a BQ so I wanted to wait in the offchance he was. I got all nostalgic when 3:11:09 rolled around on the race clock since that was my gun time when i crossed that same finish line last year. Saw Kenny cross at around 3:25 and then also got to witness a forumite from running mania cross the finish line who was going for a BQ (which she got!).

BTW, I ran this race with a bandage on my scrapped knee and suprisingly the thing stayed on for the whole race. I was walking around all funny prior to the race trying to keep the thing from falling off and it looks like i didn't need to cause the thing was not coming off anyways!

Learning Lessons

One lesson I learned while training in the winter was to take turns with extreme caution. Having wiped out several times while making turns, i learned to slow down to an almost complete stop before making a turn. The couple of seconds lost is more than made up for by the certainty of not doing a face plant. With the winter all but a distant memory, I headed out this morning for a short 5 mile recovery run in the rain. Got through almost the whole run without incident, but on the final turn for home, having forgotten lessons learned from winter training, i tried to take a corner without slowing down and I wiped out. Right knee was scraped and has road rash on it. Covered it up with a type of band-aid I haven't seen before and am hoping that it can heal to a point that I can still do the half on the weekend without having to have a dressing on it.

Lesson learned.

BTW, I did 8 miles on Wednesday including some 600m VO2Max repeats. Also did a couple at LT pace. The calf I think is on its way to recovery. It's feeling a tad looser now and I have been doing ultrasonic stuff on it and sticking and foam rolling it.

Wellsphere Spam

Feel hounoured now that I've received the Wellsphere email inviting me to become a part of the Wellsphere Health Network. Of course, they probably send this message out to everyone who has an email address posted on their blog.

For those that don't know, Wellsphere is a company who resyndicates content written by others. They send out an email praising your blog and content with the hopes of getting you to sign up with them. By agreeing to their terms, you basically allow them to resell anything you've written. Of course, none of that money will go to you. They say that you still own your own content which i suppose is technically true, but you end up granting them a "a royalty-free, paid-up, non-exclusive, worldwide, license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and publicly display your Health Blogger Content..." which means you are giving them free use of your content and allowing them to do whatever they want with anything you've written. It's almost as if you are making them a co-owner of your content.

Be aware.

Humbled

Did 20.4 miles today. The last time I did a 20 mile training run was about a month ago and I didn't carboload or water load and was able to do the whole thing at faster than my expected marathon pace for Ottawa. So with that and my relative ease at doing 26.2 miles two weeks ago, I was thinking that todays run would be but a formality and i thought I would try to do the no carboload or water load thing again. Things didn't go quite as planned. I didn't head out until 3:30 or so and it was about 15C. My previous runs had been done in very cool weather and today i ended up working up quite the sweat. First half I did at about 9min/mile pace. During the second half, my left achilles tendon started to get sore and I ended up walking portions. Second half with the walking averaged 10min/mile.

So i'm hoping that todays little set back was not a symptom of a larger problem. I don't think my body has quite adapted to the warmer weather which caused me to be dehydrated which when combined with the not eating or drinking thing led to a crappy run. I also tried to get back to 50 miles this week when I did all of 13 miles the week before. Probably not too smart either. Lastly, i've been negligent in my stretching as of late which means my calves are getting tight which causes a bunch of other things to be thrown out of whack. Easily fixed.

What this does mean is that I won't do the 10k race next weekend. I haven't been doing any track intervals lately and I'm probably ill prepared to crank out 6 miles at a sub LT effort and only risk getting injured, plus i don't think i would be able to PR anyways. I am still looking to sign up for the half to practise the pacing in a crowd. I'm just balking at the $75 price tag right now.

Weight gain.

My weight as of late has dropped. I've noticed in the past that right after a marathon I'm usually a few pounds lighter and Boston was no exception. I'm hovering at around 140 pounds when normally i would be around 143. I consumed a Costco bag worth of of M&M's this past week and thought i would probably put on some pounds, but nothing yet. Maybe because the rest of my diet has been pretty poor trying to compensate for the increase in calories. No more junk food until after Ottawa.

Did 10.2 miles on Friday and averaged about 8:35 pace and did 4.1 miles today at recovery pace.

Changed the battery in my Polar HR monitor today. I've been getting weird measurements on it as of late. Sometimes it works fine, other days, it's very finicky. The manual says that if i use it for an hour a day, it should last about two years. I think i changed it last a little over a year ago. The run today had no problems; will have to see how the 20 miler tomorrow goes. It may have only lasted a year cause I used a cheap Radio Shack battery that probably doesn't pack much juice. i ended up buying a Sony battery from the local watch jeweler this time that should hopefully last longer.

Mississauga races...

I had hoped to jump back into the final pre-taper week of Pfitz' 18 week program today, but the plan called for 10 miles with 4x1200m at VO2Max pace. I skipped the VO2Max sessions from each of the two past weeks and wasn't too sure I would be able to do the one today. Instead I ended up doing the 10 miles with 3 at an LT pace at just under 7min/mile. I don't really see the point in doing the hispeed track work at this point cause i think my VO2Max is more than adequete to handle a 3:50 marathon. Right now I've got to work on getting comfortable with the 3:50 marathon pace.

So the rest of the week is 10 miles on Friday, 4 on Saturday and 20 on Sunday to get to a total of 49 for the week. Then the taper starts. I've been thinking of racing the Mississauga 10k on May 9 since the Pfitz plan has a tune-up race on that day, though I've been thinking that I should sign up for the half to practise my expected marathon pace. Maybe I can do both?

Boston Marathon Race Report

Just some preliminary things to document. I arrived and picked up my race kit on the Friday which is by far the least crowded day. I waited about 15 minutes to purchase my jacket. By Sunday, it was chaos at the expo with waits of over an hour. Also all the good free stuff gets handed out on Friday. They either run out or are hoarding the stuff come Sunday. They were offering cheap gatorade (endurance, energy, recovery) drinks on Sunday for 2 for $1. Not sure if this was being offered on the Friday, but it was a good deal on the Sunday. They hand out an addidas poster with every participants name in the background.

Pasta dinner is included with the entry fee and is pretty good. Pasta and tomato sauce, mac and cheese, pasta salad and green salad and all the beer and water/juice you can drink. Line-up seemed very long to get in, but it moved fairly quickly. Ate once at about 6:30 and then again at about 7:30 due to a meeting mix-up. Retired for the night at 10:00pm.

Woke up at about 5:00 and ate a bagel. Was at Boston Common to board the buses at 7:00am and had to wait. Quite the long line-up.

Ahead and Behind Me

Eventually made it to the front of the line and boarded the bus at about 7:30. The buses were very well organized. The police would stop traffic to let the buses through. Felt like we were VIP's or as VIP as one could feel like while sitting in a yellow school bus. The trip to Hopkinton took a little over an hour. Arrived at Hopkinton and just kinda followed everyone. I was in awe at everything.


At the Athelete's Village, they were serving bagels, water and coffee. I had lugged along some water and realized i didn't have to. I downed a bottle of gatorade energy about an hour before race start. It's not your standard gatorade It packs quite the calorie punch with over 300 calories in a 12 oz bottle.Wish they sold the stuff in Canada. Headed over to the start line at about 9:45 which requires a fairly long walk. Made my way to the back of wave one and found Alex who had indicated that he would try and run with me for the first few miles, but who would end up staying with me for the entire race.

Back of the first wave. No one behind me.

So the race starts and since there are over 10000 people in front of us, it takes a while to reach the start line. My quest to be the last person to cross the start line in the first wave didn't pan out. I was technically the last person in the wave when the race started, but as i proceeded forward, people who were late kept jumping in behind me. At first, we let them pass, but by the time we reached the start line and were walking really slow, there were still people coming in from behind us. I didn't want to wait too long because we had to keep some distance between us and the wave 2 people. So we crossed the start line and the race begins.

I had picked up one of those Nike pace bands at the expo. This one is similar to the one I've used in the past that I got from the Chicago marathon but is a bit wider. The pace band is course adjusted so it accounts for elevations. I knew that we had to average 9:30 min/mile. The first mile was very slow at about 10 min/mile. This included the stop to get a picture in front of the mile marker. During mile two, i stopped for the first of two bathroom breaks which were unavoidable. It was actually pretty neat running the first little bit because we had the crowd support all to ourselves. I think we spent most of the first couple of miles high-fiving all the kids that were around. Here's a pic during the first few miles. There's no one around except for us and a couple of bandits running. I think most of the people around us at the start were bandits. It's really easy to jump onto the course early on.

So i don't really have split times for each of the markers. Well, I do, but with all the hassles of trying to get my camera phone out and have the picture taken and making sure i put it back in its holdser, I kept forgetting to hit the lap button or i hit it very late. Just going to rely on the timing splits. So hit the first 5k marker at 29:47 which is 9:35 min/mile pace which is pretty good considering the largest elevation drop takes place in the first three miles.

Next 5k is also on target at 29:04 which is at 9:28 pace. The following 5k was fast at 27:47 which was 9:18 pace. I remember commenting that we had almost three minutes banked and that we should probably slow down a bit (or a lot). Between 15km and 20km, we ended up averaging 9:28 pace but this included a lot of walking and another bathroom break. Shortly before the half, we went through the Wellesley scream tunnel. I, being a complete rookie, just ran through it hi-fiving everyone. Alex on the other hand decided to partake in some of the offerings from the Wellesley girls and I ended up having to wait for him a bit at the end. In hindsight, I probably should have taken some time here cause I needed to bleed off the 2 or so minutes of banked time that we had. Oh well, next time. So after Wellesley is the half mark. With the goal of running a personal worse and a negative split, we knew that if I crossed the half mark before a certain time, it would be only possible to do one, but not both. So we ended up walking the last little bit before the timing mat. Between 20k and 21.1, we averaged 11.5 min/mile pace. Crossed the half at 2:05:32.

Between the half and about 35k, we proceeded to ever so slightly increase our pace. Not consciously, but it was tough with all the people passing us not to want to at least keep up them. Our increase in pace included going up through the Newton Hills, including heartbreak. In fact, the mile with heartbreak hill was done at 9:25 pace and this included the time needed to get this picture at the mile 21 marker. Heartbreak wasn't as bad as i had imagined. Mind you, I wasn't really pushing the effort.

So down into Boston we go.

Pass the Citgo sign and with 1 mile to go, I needed to average over an 11 minute mile to get my personal worst time. Very hard to do with people screaming at you to keep going every time you try to stop to walk. I ended up taking pictures as that seemed like a legitimate excuse to slow down or stop.

So shortly before the finish line, I hear my name being yelled and look around to see my dad so i stop to pose for a picture.

Now at this point, we had realized that there was no 26 mile marker and so Alex had taken off to finish strong and he ended up finishing about 1 minute ahead of me. I on the other hand ended up doing a very slow jog from here to the finish line cause I needed to bleed off the remaining banked time I had. This included me standing at the finish line for a brief moment, just before the timing mat. If you want to see the video, you can see it here. Just fast forward to 2:00 and you can see me at the far left of the screen doing a very slow jog, then a walk and then standing around and checking my watch and then finally crossing the finish line. I think the announcer may have said something about me waiting there, but I can't make out what he actually said. I actually thought I had a personal worst time by two seconds or so, but my official time actually matched my personal worst.

So first half done in 2:05:32, second half in 2:04:23 for a little over a minute negative split. Granted, I had to cheat to get the negative split by walking/stopping before the half, but I'll take it.

Had a great time. Never thought I would ever want to do Boston again, nor did i feel like I ever wanted to try and qualify again but I have to admit, it was the best race I've ever done and I want to go back! The crowd support is awesome! The volunteers are awesome! The participants are awesome! Every thing is just really awesome! Only downer for the trip is that I didn't get to see the Red Sox play as the game was rained out and couldn't make the make-up game the following day. I got some pretty good seats at face value only 4 rows from the field, but i guess not everything can be perfect. At least I got in to see Fenway. Maybe next year...

So the question is how do I get back. My qualifying time slows down by 5 minutes next year. While 3:10 took way too much effort and training and I never want to do that again, i think 3:15 is probably acheivable with a moderate level of training. So the goal is to try and qualify in the fall. Next decision though is what race to try at??

The Human Spirit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj-vIajzBRs

And send healing vibes to Steve who finished the Boston marathon in just over 7.5 hours and found himself in the hospital. He seems to be doing okay. You can read more about it here.

Still thinking about what I want to say about Boston. Maybe this weekend.

Boston Marathon Done.

Just a quick update.  Mission accomplished.

1. Run a personal worse time... Check (Actually tied it)
   
2. Run a negative split... Check (little over a minute neg. split)
   
3. Take a picture at every mile marker... Almost Check (they didn't have a 26 mile marker)
   

Final time of 4:09:55.  Thanks to Alex who decided to run with me and be my own personal photographer.  Had a blast.  Will post more detailed commentary later.

Boston so far...

Did a short 3-4k run yesterday.  Will probably go out for a 2 mile run sometime soon.  Pics and story so far.

At airport

Bib Number pickup.

Blurry pic of me picking up

They have a wall where you can post a pick of yourself with your bib number.  All the prime spots were filled (start, finish, heartbreak).  I picked near Wellesley.

Me and Steve 

Dick and Rick Hoyt

Ryan Hall (Had to wait almost and hour but I got his autograph)

Watched Josh Cox give presentation.  Good to know that even elites have crappy days and throw up during races.

Captive audience on a video of the marathon course

Expo wasn't so bad on Friday, it was a major zoo yesterday.

Had dinner with Alex

the "jacket"

Prepping for a personal worse...

Firstly, thank you all for the well wishes. I'm in phili waiting for my next flight to Boston. Didn't get much sleep last night as I had a 6:45 flight this morning. There's a guy next to me wearing a 2003 Boston shirt. I wonder how many people on this flight are doing the marathon. So I'll probably post a few more times before the race as this I'd all fairly new to me. I don't think I'll be blogging during the race but I will be twittering the odd pic or statement so you can keep track of that by following my twitter account in the sidebar.

So prior to each marathon, I usually set some goals for the race. This race is a bit different since this is the first time I'm not going in with a certain agressive time goal in mind. So my goals for Boston are as follows:

1) to run a personal worse time. My slowest marathon to date is 4:10 and come hell or high water I will be slower than that. This dates back to a time when a bq was just a far off goal. I would tell anyone who would listsen that my goal was always to qualify. It was about the journey to get there that was important and not so much the final destination. So in keeping with that, slower than 4:10 is my goal.

2) run a negative split. Though this might contradict goal number 1, it's entirely possible to do both. In the 8 marathons I've done, I've never run a negative split so I think now would be the perfect opportunity to do so. Also considering that Boston is known to be difficult to run a negative split on, it would be a noteworthy accomplishment, even if it might be a bit artificial in nature.

3) get a picture of myself in front of every mile marker. I saw a guy do this in my first marathon and I thought it was a great way to memorialize the race. This has always been something that I wanted to do and here is my chance.

So in order to accomplish all of the above I've decided to start at the very back of the first wave. I'm in corral 5, but I'll be moving to coral 13. I'm hoping to be the last person in the first wave to cross the start line. This will give me about a 10 to 15 minute head start on those in wave 2, but means I won't be in anyones way in the first wave.

For those interested in tracking me, I'm bib 5505. Next post will be from Boston!

Getting prepped...

Did 9.5 miles this morning at 8:52 pace.  It's still dark when I got out, but that should hopefully change tomorrow since I have a relatively short run which means i can actually leave after sunrise and get back in time to prep for work.  My leg muscles are a bit tight I'm been foam rolling and "Stick"ing them.  I probably should have booked a massage appointment for this week.  

So there are a couple of things I have to do before leaving for Boston.  I obviouslly have to pack, which is a bit troublesome since the weather seems to be forecasting rain.  I'd like to bring my running gear in my carry-on but with wide ranging weather forecasts I don't think i can cram everything I want in there. 

There's supposed to be a Runners World Forum Event on Saturday in which a gift exchange occurs. They guy I'm buying for a fellow Canadian in Sarnia.  I ended up buying the new edition of "Once a Runner"  (Thanks Audrey) which just came out last week.  The book which has been out of print usually sells for ridiculour prices second hand, so it was perfect timing.  I ordered it online on Friday and I'm still waiting for it to be delivered. I'm hoping that it gets here before I leave cause otherwise I'm going to have to find something else or buy the book  at a brick and mortar store. 

8 days and counting (again)...

Well I guess it's actually 8 days today till race day (i.e., a week tomorrow).  yesterday I was going by the countdown timer which today says 7 days and a bit.  Did 17.3 miles today at 8:49 pace.  It was very blustery and the temperature was probably just above freezing.  It was sunny though.  Did an initial short 4 mile loop and then did 13 miles.  I was hoping to do the last mile or two at a marathon pace effort, but just didn't have it in me.  Probably for the best. 

So the original plan for this upcoming week goes out the window since I have to work in a bit of a taper and a marathon distance on the following Monday.   The way I see it, I will probably do as follows:

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 9 miles GA
Wednesday: 4 miles Recovery
Thursday: 8 Miles including 2@ LT pace.
Friday:  Rest (travel day)
Saturday:  5 Miles Recovery/Some strides
Sunday: 2 Miles Recovery
Monday:  26.2 miles

8 days and counting...

Did a little over 9 miles on Friday with 5x600m at VO2Max pace.  Pace wise these were all over the place.

06:32.7
06:24.9
06:49.8
06:38.0
06:17.7

I did the first one at about the right pace and then did a 90 second recovery as is customary with Pfitz's 600m VO2Max recovery.  Did the second one also at the right pace with the 90 second recovery but when I launched into the third one I was sucking wind pretty bad and ended up having to slow down.  Then proceeded to take a 4.5 minute break cause I was pretty pooped.  Then did the last two with more extended recovery periods. 

Today I did a 4 mile recovery run at about 9:40 pace. 

So a little under a week from now, I will be in Boston.  I booked my flight, but I'm not to happy with it. My flight leaves at 6:30 in the morning on Friday and has a stopover in Philadelphia. At the time I booked it, it was almost double the cost to do anything else.  If I had waited a few more days, I could have picked up a direct flight leaving at a reasonable time for only about a hundred dollars more which I would have more than happily have accepted.

I found myself shopping for a running outfit today for race day.  I'm not normally fashion conscious when it comes to races but thought i should probably look to see if anything caught my eye.  Nope.  I also picked up a copy of the May issue of Runner's World today cause I noticed there are a few articles on Boston related things.

So I"ve been trying to see if it might be possible to blog during the actual race.  I'm not entirely sure if it would be worthwhile to suffer the aggrevation that I would get from work about the roaming charges for data if I did.  I set up a twitter account based on Yumke's recommendation and i'm still trying to figure out how it works but that may be an option.  I may end up giving that to people I know but I'm still trying to keep the blog away from people from work so I'll have to see if i can keep my worlds from colliding! It can be found here.

Unexpected Taper

Well I commented last weekend that I thought I was coming down with something and by Monday my nose was runny and I was a bit lightheaded. Took the afternoon off. Guess the 30 miles in two days thing on the weekend probably wasn't too great of an idea. Add to that, we had snow Monday morning.  Old man winter is getting his last kick at the can. I was able to survive the entire winter without getting sick and it hits me now in the first week of April. Go figure. In any event, i think it started after my 7 mile LT run last week at the gym. Come to think of it, the last time I got sick was also shortly after a 7 mile LT run at the gym over a year ago.  Coincidence? Nasty gym germs....

Anyhow, I haven't run since Sunday and I may try and go out for a short run later tonight and again tomorrow.  This next upcoming week is a bit of a mystery as to how it'll go.  This weekend was supposed to be a tuneup race and a 17 mile long run and next week is supposed to be week 13 of 18 of a training plan  that includes a 17 mile long run with 14 at marathon pace next weekend.  Obviously I won't be doing that cause I will actually be running a marathon the following Monday...

Angus Glen 10 Miler Race Report

So things went according to plan.  Got to the race fairly early to stash my stuff.  They had lockers for everyone and not just crummy lockers that you would find at the gym.  These were nice and spacious.  This golf course hosted the Canadian Open back in 2007 and they have little name tags on top of each locker, presumably because this is the locker that the individual used.  My locker was used by Tag Ridings.  Ever heard of him?  I haven't either.  I ended up googling him and you can find information on him here. Weird thing is that he was born one day after i was.  Uncanny eh?

Vijay Singh locker was also just across from mine.  I thought that he won the tournament that year but apparently he came in second.  I did a little searching for Tiger Woods, but couldn't find it.  Apparently he didn't play that year.

So the plan was to do 10 miles first and then get back to do the 10 mile race for a total of 20 for the day.  I decided to head out for 5 miles and then turn around and come back.  First 10 mile route is here.  A couple of things I wanted to try.  The first was to to try and run with the camera phone in a holdster.  Ended up putting it in my waistband so that it fit into the small of back.  Here are a couple of pics from the first 10 miles.  The neighbourhood and houses are great looking.   If you're looking to buy a house, this one is for sale.  Close to a really nice park.

I wanted to time the first 10 mile run so that I would get back just as the race was starting.   I ended up getting back about 5 minutes before the race started which was good since I wouldn't cool down.  Another thing I wanted to try was to not have to use the restroom for the 20 mile run today.  I have only one fear in being the pace bunny in Ottawa and that is that I would have to stop to use the restroom at some point.  With my two pee break performance last week, i wanted to see if i could survive a 20 mile run with limited liquids and no requirement of a restroom break so I did not carboload or water load the day before. 

So the race starts.  Actually they had waves of starters which worked a lot better than I thought it would.  They had waves based on 10k times and everyone seemed to seed themselves correctly.  Being ever so meticulous, last night I had punched in a 8:45 pace for 10 miles into McMillan and got a 10k time of just over 52 minutes so I decided to start in the 49-52 minutes wave since i guessed everyone in that wave would be doing round 8:45 pace. 

The rest of the race went without incident.  I was trying to maintain an 8:45 pace, but most of the splits were slightly fast.  The course was really hilly.  The hills were short, but they were really steep.  I thought I had read somewhere that there would be a 5 mile timing mat, but there wasn't.  My plan was to run a negative split which I think I did, but I'm not entirely sure how much of a negative split cause the garmin didn't follow the course exactly and it read the course as being a bit short.  I tried to do an LT km right at the end, but there was a killer hill.  It was still my fastest km, but it was more like marathon pace.  Final time of 1:24:41 for an average pace of 8:28.  The course route is here.  They had a pretty good BBQ lunch afterwards. Angus Glen puts on a half marathon and 10k in the fall and they put out a good spread of food there also.

I didn't need to use the restroom during the race, but I was pretty dehydrated afterwards.  I drank one bottle of gatorade over the first 15 miles of todays run with the occasionaly extra cup of water handed out at the aid station.  My HR was higher than it normally would be for a long run.  This could have been do to a lot of things though as i ran 10 miles yesterday and didn't drink or eat a lot.  I got a whole bunch of pictures from the race today.  Some of them are below.

 

Race pics

Was supposed to due 12 miles on Friday but it rained the entire day and I still wasn't in the mood to run in the rain.  I also think I may be coming down with something so I skipped the run yesterday and did 10 miles this morning at the gym a little faster than recovery pace cause it was really windy this morning.  I picked up my race kit for the Angus Glen 10 miler tomorrow.  I'm supposed to do 20 miles and what I think I'll do is get there early and squeeze in 10 miles before and then run the race as a long run.  I don't think it's going to be a really fast course cause it's on golf course paths.  People are supposed to seed themselves based on their 10k time, but in my experience self seeding doesn't work that well and when you throw in that the paths are only a bit wider than the average sidewalk, i think there's going to be a lot of difficulty in running it unless you're right at the front.

Race pics for ATB came out.

This is me doing my superman impression.  I ran with a jacket over my bib number and realized that I wasn't going to get any pics if I didn't show it.  I never did get the bib number showing and instead flashed my napa marathon shirt from last year.  I had to browse through the lost and found to find this. They may have been more of me, but I lost interest after browsing through over 1000 pics.

This is the finish line pic with the jacket fully unzippered.

In the midst of the 55 mile week

Did 6 miles at recovery pace on Tuesday with 6 strides. Strides felt surprisingly smooth. They've felt very unnatural these past few weeks and with last week being a recovery week and just having done a relatively slow 30k, i was surprised how well they went.

I'm in the midst of the peak week for the 55 miles/18 week training plan for Pfitz. Yesterday was the training run that scares off most people from Pfitz' training plans. The dreaded 12 miles with 7@LT pace. I woke up in the morning but it was raining outside and having spent most of the 30k race on Sunday running in the rain, I was not in the mood to repeat it, so i waited until after work. Problem was that after work, the wind was blowing around like crazy and I wasn't in the mood to run laps around a track with the wind, so i decided to head to the gym. I think this has been the latest in the winter training season that I've been to the gym. I still have to cancel my membership at some point cause I know i won't go back there until next winter.

So the run went better than I thought it would. I warmed up with 3 miles @9:40 pace and then started in at 7:13 pace which is what I've been able to handle in the buildup over the past few months and is consistent with my MP run two weeks ago. HR was barely squeaking over 160 for the these first three miles so I started to ramp up the speed with each subsequent mile to 7:08, 7:03, 6:58 and finally 6:53. Even at the end of it, my HR maxed out at 174 when it normally would be closer to 180. Then finished off with two miles or so at 8:00 min/mile and the HR was below 160. I know the treadmill can sometimes make you think you are faster than you actually are, but this was encouraging and I'd like at some point to see if I can maintain this pace outside.

BTW, my Boston marathon mail kit showed up a few days ago. Only 17 days to go!!