NaBloPoMo

3:25:48.

Yes, I will eventually post a race report. In my attempts to recommit to the blog, I will try and do the NaBloPoMo thing for November which will require me to post every day for the month. I figure I can milk the Niagara marathon for a couple of posts so that's the reason for the delay.  My life isn't that exciting that I can come up with 30 separate things to talk about over the course of a month.

Day 1

Here I Go Again on My Own ...

So it's only two more sleeps till marathon day.  Since then, I ran the Scotiabank half as the 1:45 pacer and I did a short run with 2.5 miles at marathon pace.  I was hoping to get a sense from Scotiabank where my fitness was at by doing 8 min/miles but due to some HR strap issues, I didn't get any HR data from that. 

The 7 miles this past Wednesday left me a bit more confident about my goal.  I generally run this last MP run around a track to get accurate and precise feedback.  I was able to hold 7:21min/mile pace at a HR that maxed out at 166 over 4000m which I think is around where my MP heart rate should be.  I used to use 170 as the number but that was several years ago and the basic rule is your drop a beat with every additional year.   I actually only want to hold about 7:24 min/mile pace so that's kinda good.  This would put me at a 3:14 marathon which is what I'm going to aim for.  Technically 3:14:00 probably wouldn't get me into Boston, but I figure I can probably find 15 seconds or so somewhere over the course of 42 km. 

Though that is my goal, there are a couple things working against me.  Firstly, there's the wind. Temperatures are looking great, and with a predicted overcast day, I won't have to worry about the sun beating down on me.  The wind is currently predicted to be from the west at 30 km/hr. That's not good as it's a pretty much a strong head wind over the last half of the course. If only the wind would swing a bit south and approach from the S, or even the SW I could handle. The second thing is I have a trigger point in my right calf. I noticed it on Wednesday while sticking my calves and while I've tried to work through it, it's been very painful.  Not sure, I'll get rid of it in time for race day, but hey, not much else I can do at this point. 

A part of me still thinks that maybe I should hold back and do Hamilton next weekend, but the other part of me says I probably will pig out on halloween candy next week so better to take what fitness I have now then risk my weak willpower to potentially running next week. I will admit that I have been looking at back up plan marathon in the US in the month of December, but I'm not sure I want to do that just yet.  Live in the here and now, I suppose.

Taper Time

With only a week to go before the race day, I'm well in to taper mode. Even without the relatively long early morning runs, I still find myself rushing to get ready to work. Funny how the body works that way.

I still haven't decided on a marathon goal as of yet. My recent tune-up race suggest that 3:20 is a reasonable goal. I've spent a lot of time reading previous blog posts and analyzing pace and HR data and based on comparisons to when I did Chicago (albeit in 2006), when I was aiming for 3:20 and finished in 3:17. I think I'm faster than that right now. However, when I look at the last time, I did 3:15 at Niagara Falls, 5 years ago and compare my training and HR data to that, I feel that I'm not quite as fit as I was back then. The one big "but" is that I was actually on pace at the half for a 3:13 marathon during that race, but backed off a bit in the second half due to a head wind. So without a headwind, 3:15 might be doable. Even if it is doable, the next question of course is do I go for the BQ cushion time? I really don't have an answer to that yet. Part of me says "Boston or Bust" while the other part of me says, I haven't raced a marathon in 5 years so maybe it's better to just get one under the belt and worry about BQ'ing next spring. I've always hated winter training and with the prediction of the upcoming winter being as nutso cold and snowy as it was this past winter, I'm not looking forward to it.

The weather in Niagara predicted for next Sunday is looking good temperature wise, but the wind is a concern. It's currently predicted to be from the northwest at about 20km/hr which is basically a headwind for the last half of the course.   I've also started looking at doing Hamilton instead a week later and scouting out possible hotel rooms.  Not sure I'll switch, but it's nice to have a back-up plan.

Pondering the Pace

With less than a month to go till race day, it's usually at this time that I try to decide on what marathon pace I will attempt.  I haven't quite figure it out yet.  I think I"m probably at about the same fitness level maybe a bit faster than I was at this time last year. Back then, I was thinking 3:20 was reasonable with maybe a 3:15 being a possibility.

The BQ magic number came out for next years race which was 62 seconds. That means you got in if you beat your BQ time by 62 seconds.  This was a big reduction as compared to this years race where the magic number was 98 seconds which probably has something to do with this year's event being after the bombings in 2013 and also possibly because of an increased field for next year.

So what this all means is that I could probably get into Boston, if I ran 75 seconds under my 3:15 BQ time, probably safer to say 90 seconds.  This translates into about 7:23/7:24 min/mile pace.  The fastest I've been doing my MP runs at is 7:30 min/mile pace. Though the 6 or 7 seconds per mile may not seem like a lot, I know for me it is considering that my LT pace has been at around 7:00. There really is very little room for error. Do a couple of miles at too fast a pace and I'd be basically screwed.

While originally signed up for Niagara Falls, I've been giving some serious thought to holding back a week and doing the Hamilton Marathon instead.  While Niagara Falls has about a 30m net elevation drop  with a kinda big uphill and downhill as you cross over the border in the first 8 miles or so, Hamilton is a generally flat course will no big hills, but one very big downhill at the halfway point. I'm talking a 140m drop, with the overall course being 160m net downhill.  That 160m would certainly buy me a good chunk, if not all of, the extra time I'd need.

So what this essentially means is, well, I don't really know.  I have one more tune-up race scheduled for two Saturdays from now. I was thinking of doing a Yasso's workout, but don't think that will be particularly useful at predicting my current marathon pace. There's a 10k about an hour and a half drive from Toronto, but that seems a long way to go for just a 10k race.  Way back when, before the advent of GPS watches, I had mapped out a fairly precise flat 5k loop course around the neighborhood. I once tried to do a 10k time trial on it, but I just sort of gave up after the first loop.  I never tried it again.  But seeing as this could be important indicator of my current fitness, I may just decide to take another crack at it.

Toronto Peace Marathon 10k Update

Sometime between when I posted last night and today, Sportstats corrected the results listing for the race and removed two of the people that were ahead of me. Though I don't think the two people intentionally turned around early to win the race, it could have been that they signed up for the 10k but only did the 5k route which I think was supposed to start later.

So I finished 2nd overall like I thought I did and actually finished first in my age group which means I would have certainly won a prize. I now kinda feel bad that I didn't go to the awards ceremony. I'm hoping there were no Bueller Bueller moments. It looks like it was taking place at the KCCA HQ which was across the street from Sunnybrook park. In fact, I drove by it on my way home.

Even still, I'm not sure if they corrected this prior to the awards ceremony, figured it out at the awards ceremony or this is a result of sportstats doing a post race analysis and correction of the results. Whatever the result, I'm not really miffed at missing out on a prize, since to be honest, this was more of a Korean celebration for peace and it looked pretty clear to me that everyone was having a good time. I sort of felt like an outsider who was crashing the party, especially considering I didn't understand a word of what anyone was saying.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the race and the slightly challenging course and as I said before, it's a race I would certainly consider doing again.

Toronto Peace Marathon 10k Race Report

Did the Toronto Peace Marathon today, which is not really a marathon, but either a 10k or 5k race. This was the second tune-up race in the Pfitz schedule of three race. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had some doubts as to how much of a "race" this was going to be and it didn't help that I didn't receive a single email after registering about race day logistics.  In fact, I wasn't even sure where I was supposed to go since the English version of the website simply says the race takes place in Sunnybrook park, which is not exactly a small neighborhood type park.

Start line is somewhere in here.

 

The race is put on by the Korean Canadian Cultural Association and I did some more surfing around on their website and the Korean version of the site had a bit more information and more importantly an image (in English) identifying the route as starting at "Picnic Area #2". Of course, they still didn't have a map of where the start line actually was so I had to do a bit more googling to find out where Picnic Area #2 was.  Race started at 9am and I was there about 8am to check out the landscape. Sighed a bit of relief when I saw the sportstats timing van, a finish line and a packet pickup.  Proceeded to pickup my kit which was only a bib and a shoe timing chip.  The bib's weren't the conventional ones that you pin to your shirt, but rather actually bib's that you have to tie on.   I guess on the plus side you have you bib number on both the front and the back. 

Tie on Bib's! How novel!

Proceeded to tie it on and do some warming up. Like the 5k race two weeks ago, I decided to walk out to the 1k mark to check to see if the course was marked.  Turned on the watch to measure out 0.62 miles (1km) and proceeded to check the course out which was marked at 1k at the 0.60 mile mark according to my watch.  Close enough.  Proceeded to walk back to the start line and then started my jog warmup and I quickly found that I hated the bib. The shoulder straps would constantly slip down on one side, something that I'm sure women find annoying all the time with their skinny strap tops, but I've never experienced.  With about 5 minutes to go, I decided to head back to my car to get the safety pins that I had brought along so that I could pin the straps to my shirt.  Didn't leave me much time so I was in a bit of a rush to get to the start line. When I arrive back at the start, people had already started to line-up and they even had pacers!. Unfortunately the fastest pacer they had was 1 hr pacer and he was right at the start line.  I started a little ways back, but wasn't too worried about the mass of 1 hr 10k'ers in front of me since the first part is on some wide paths where it's easy to pass.

The race starts and I try to maintain a nice steady pace.  I was trying to run by feel somewhere between 5k pace and my LT pace. Based on the 5k race 2 weeks ago, I thought that I might be able to pull off a faster than 6:50min/mi (4:15/km) pace 10k which would be about a 42:30 10K. Though I had tried to practice this pace during the week, it's hard to remember the pace on race day.  I also ran without the HR showing on my watch so I was going solely by feel.

As I approach the (maybe slightly short) 1k mark, I had passed quite a few people. Hit the lap timer and the watch reads 3:56. Crap. Way too fast. This was faster than the first km in the 5k I did two weeks ago.  Oh well whatever. I try to settle down a bit and decide that I'm going to try to gradually reel some people in by pulling up to, following for a bit and then passing individuals.  Pull up to the 2nd km marker and the lap button reads 4:11.  A little better and I think I'm finding my groove. Km 3 has a bit of a wrinkle in that has this steel bridge that passes under a road. The bridge has a steep climb and then a steep descent and is slippery because the morning dew is still on the steel surface.  Hit the 3km marker at 4:31, but I think this may have been a bit long. 

Into km 4, my HR spiked which I didn't know at the time, but it clearly evident in my HR profile. Up until then, I was a little over 180, which is what I think it should be since just below 180 is my LT pace and mid 185 is probably 5k pace. It jumped 30 beats to over 200.  Oh well I move on.  The km 4 marker was way too soon and I hit that at 2:24. Through to the turnaround point (and km 5) I think I pass one last person who had the courtesy to pull off to the side to let me pass. Approaching the turnaround, I'm on the lookout to see who is ahead of me and I count only one that I could see who was wearing a bib.  There were some other people on there who didn't look to be going particularly fast and weren't wearing any bibs so I'm not sure if they were in the race or not.  By the time I reach the turnaround point, I realize the guy ahead of me has about a minute on me and that unless he completely falls apart, there's very little chance I'm going to catch him.

Reach the turnaround point, and they have a guy there stamping your hand which I suppose makes sense to make sure that you didn't turnaround early. These guys are taking this pretty seriously.  The back half of the course was pretty lonely. Not lonely, in that I was by myself because I was passing all the people still heading towards the turnaround point, but I had no one to run and race against. No one passed me and I didn't pass anyone else. One thing I should mention is that everyone was yelling words of encouragement in Korean, which I didn't understand, but I would nod and wave in appreciation.  I did think I recognized some words that sounded like "faster" in Chinese so maybe that's what they were saying. Who knows?  So the splits in reverse were :

2:27 for km 7 (the short one), forgot to hit lap button at turnaround since I was too busy trying to figure out where to run, read the sign about getting hand stamped and getting the hand stamped
4:57 for km 8 (had the big hill, had to slow way down on this to get up the hill)
4:25 for km 9
4:11 for km 10.

So I cross the finish line at 44:02 and pick up a finishers medal (wow they were handing out medals). Not only that but they handed out a little food packet that contained a bannana, a Korean bean stuffed pastry and a bottle of water, plus they had an insulated stainless steel travel mug.  Wow. quite the SWAG bag for $25 entry fee. They were also handing out a raffle ticket.

I'm pretty sure the course was long. GPS had it measured at 6.40 miles.  Measured out manually in Google Earth has it at about 245m long so that  equates to about a 43 minute 10k or about 6:55 min/mile pace.

Now I thought I had finished 2nd overall since there was only the one guy that I saw at the turnaround so I wasn't sure if they were handing out prizes.  If they were handing out age group awards, I was pretty sure I was going to win something since the no double-dipping rule means I was guaranteed to win something being second overall. i don't run races for the prizes and this was no different as I'm not generally fast enough to be competitive in these things, but I do sort of feel that if you do win a prize, you should stick around for the prize ceremonies, if only so that the organizers aren't put into an awkward position of calling your name and no one stepping forward. So I stuck around waiting to see when the sportstats guys would post the results, but they never did. They handed the organizer some paper and he want off to talk with someone else so I wasn't sure what was happening.  I decided to check out the sportstats site on my phone to see if maybe they had wirelessly posted the results and sure enough they did.

I finished 4th overall and 2nd in my age group.

huh?? Maybe I hadn't counted properly but I don't understand how I would have missed 2 other people on the way back.  I tried doing some searches and of the three guys who finished ahead of me, only one of them has any race history and is probably the guy that I knew that was ahead of me. In any event, this meant that I probably wasn't going to win a prize now because I wasn't top three overall.

Anyhow, I was just mulling about and everyone starts leaving, so I guess they aren't handed out prizes.  I ended up giving my raffle ticket to someone else but then I realize they had not handed out the raffle prizes yet so they were probably handing them out somewhere else and maybe that's where they are handing out the prizes.  Oh well, I decided in the end, it wasn't worth the bother though I read in someone elses blog that the prize draws for this are pretty sweet included TV's and round trip flights to Korea so I guess I missed out.  With my rotten luck, the guy I gave my ticket too, probably ended up winning.

Oh well, karma will give it back to me at some point, right?

Anyhow, a good race to run, fairly cheap and okay organization. WOuld do it again, but next time, I'll have to go with someone Korean who can translate for me!

One more tune-up race in two weeks time.  There really isn't anything nearby on the day in question so I may just end up doing a tempo run of some sort.

Polar Race Info

Downsview 5k Race Report

Ran the Downsview 5k race last Saturday. This was the first "tune-up" race for this marathon training cycle.  Pfitz typically wants an 8k to 15k race and wants it done on the Saturday.  There were really only 5k races available and considering that I haven't done one in over 4 years, I thought I'd give this a go.  The race takes place in Downsview park which is sort of an urban park in Toronto, but it's not really in an "urban" part of Toronto.  It's a former military base that was recently converted into park lands. I'm sure one day it'll look nice once there's a bit more residential density in the area.

Race start was at 8:30 and temperatures were a bit cool at around 11C.  Arrived way too early at about 7:30am and trying to figure out what I could do for the next hour other than sit in my car, I decided to check out the course.  I wanted to see if the course was marked and secondly to see how hilly it was. The emails sent out kinda suggested that the course was flat, but asking the race director about it while I was picking up my bib, he said that it's not really flat.  Ended up walking out to the 1k mark and back. Not too hilly,a few rolling elevations, but not flat. I think the walking actually helped with the warmup. I usually do 3miles warmup before doing repeats, but in previous races, I find it hard to actually run for close to half an hour before a race, because it just tires me out, so the walking helped warm up the muscles.  About 10 after 8, I started my real warmup which consisted of about 1 mile of light jogging with 3 strides towards the end.

Arrived at the start line with about 5 minutes to spare and squeezed into the starting corrals. Decided to move close to the front, but not at the front. I wanted to try and start off at a comfortable pace and try and hold it for the entire race. I've been able to hold 7:00 min/mile LT pace for 7 miles in training so I was fairly certain I could go faster than than. Assuming that pace over 10k, the predictors said that a 21 minute 5k (6:45 pace) should be doable so I was going to aim for that.  To that end, I decided not to use the Garmin, but rather the polar GPS watch.  The polar GPS watch doesn't have a lap pace like the garmin which is good for pacing, but rather it has an overall pace for the entire run.  I really only need the pace info during the first mile or so when I have a tendency to go out too fast and in that sense, the polar and garmin would give me the same information.

So the race starts and the first little bit is on a curvy non paved gavellly trail. Try to hold back a bit and don't glance down at the watch for about 400m or so, when I do it registered me at 6:20 pace, whoops, a bit fast. Start to slow down a bit and try to get into a bit of a groove.  Pass the first km mark and hit the lap button, 4:07.  Feeling good.  The second km is a bit of a downhill and I try to run at a good effort and hit the lap button and it registers at 4:00.  Breathing is doing okay. At some point during this lap, I look down and see that I"m averaging about 6:30 pace for the race up until this point which seems quite a bit faster than the slightly faster than 6:45 pace I was aiming for. Get to the 3 km mark and the lap button says 3:30. Hmm, course is mismarked.  I think in hindsight, the sign was facing the wrong way as km 3 has a turnaround point so the end of km 3 was supposed to be on the coming back portion and not the going out portion like I had assumed it was.   Into km 4, I pull up behind and pass one of the profs I had while I was doing my Master's degree.  He was the prof who I had noted way back when was wearing a garmin during class.  He's also the guy who scheduled a due date for a take home exam on Boston Marathon day which I was registered for, but couldn't do that year.  At this point, I've basically passed all the people that I was going to pass since the next person ahead of me had a minute on me with only two km to go though one guy is sticking close to me, nipping at my heels.   My watch at this point has me at 6:31 pace overall which was really starting to surprise me. Normally my 4th km in a 5k sucks bad as I'm panting like a dog and wanting to slow down, but I didn't have that feeling this time around.  The lap button for km 4 says 4:45 which was long because the previous km was short.  For the two km that would be about 4:07 pace, though the watch has the distance for the two laps at about 20m longer than 2km.  Through to the finish, I'm jockying back and forth with the guy who is trailing me.  With about 400m to go, while he's ahead of me, he forgets to make a turn and I yell out for him to turn right, and as he does, I kind of zoom past him, and then tried to step on the gas through to the finish and finish about 4 second ahead of him.

Final time was 20:45 chip time (20:49 gun) which was good for 7th overall and 2nd in my age group.  The guy who finished 1st in my age group finished 6th overall and over 1.5 minutes ahead of me so there was no chance of catching him. I'm pretty sure that no one actually passed me during the race with the exception of the one guy towards the end who I was swapping back and forth with.  I was initially quite happy with the time considering the last time I ran a 5k 4 years ago I finished in 20:46, but crunching the numbers afterwards, it seems the course may have been long.

My watch has the total distance at 3.18 miles which is about 118m long.  My average pace for the whole race according to my watch had me at 6:32 min/mile pace (4:03/km) which would be a 20:16 5k and a new PR.  I realize that GPS watches aren't completely accurate, but an extra 0.07 miles over 3.1 miles seems a bit much considering that there weren't any tall buildings or tunnels to screw up satellite signals. Checking garmin connect for other peoples routes of the race, they have the course pegged at 3.21 miles (160m long) which is even longer than my measurement. I tried to map the course manually using google earth, but the satellite pictures that google has for the area are from when the park was being constructed so it's hard to plot the route precisely because there aren't any paths to trace over. I did end up uploading my gps route to Google earth and manually plotting the course that way though there's still some error in there. It measured it at 5072m which translates to a 20:27 5k and overall pace of 4:05 min/km. That feels about right since I've been doing my track repeats at a slightly faster pace.

On the plus side, no HR spike. I had run this without the HR being visible and I was happy to see no spikes in HR afterwards.  I was hoping to get an idea of my maximum HR on this. It topped out at 186, but I'm not sure if this is my actual max since it only reached 186 for a few moments at the top of the hill during km 4 and right at the end when I was basically sprinting as fast as I could. Ideally I would have liked to see if reach a number and stay there as opposed to reaching a number and then drifting back down like it did during this race. More details available here. 

Swag included some samples, a medal and a really nice T-shirt.  The t-shirt feels soft like cotton, but it's made of 100% polyester (ie, technical fabric). I'm curious to see how well it wicks sweat.

I'm not sure how good 5k's are at marathon predictors, but this does give me a general idea of paces I should aim for in the 10 k next week.

Junk Food.

Got through the week of TIFF. 21 films over the course of 6 days. Some bad, some surprisingly good. I had intended to try and eat healthy, but alas, the hot dog, poutine and burger meals ended up getting the better of me. I did try and have a few sit down meals where you actually order while sitting down, but needless to say, the crappy meals made up to majority of caloric intake last week.

While waiting in line, I tried to catch up one some magazine reading.  One of the articles I read (can't remember where) had an interesting article in it about a guy doing some unorthodox research.  He was trying to see if a recovery meal that consisted of McDonalds was just as effective as a more traditional one.  The theory being that the human body has evolved over so many years that it can figure out what it needs at any given moment and absorb whatever it needs from whatever you eat.  Sounds good in theory, and I certainly have been an unofficial test subject to this ideology.  Personally, I'd like to try and get a bit lighter since that presumably means faster times, but I'm pretty skinny to begin with and I always feel that I'm starting to lose muscle when I drop below a certain threshold of weight so I've been lately trying to do some more weight training and core strengthening to hopefully prevent that.

I got my first real test with the new training regime last Saturday with a 5k race and think I didn't pretty good considering the week of garbage food leading up to it. Hopefully with TIFF done and no more temptations (ie, Halloween) until after marathon race day, I'm hoping for better and faster things.

Milestones

I'm turning the big 40 in a few days.  To me, it's just another birthday, another year of getting older, but everyone around me thinks I should be making a bigger deal of it. Oh well, whatever. No mid-life crisis yet, no desire to buy a fast car or date a 20 year old.  After Kenny decided to run a marathon on his, I had thoughts of maybe running 40km, but that's a long way so maybe I'll wait until I turn 42 before I try that. 

I decided this year to try and do TIFF again.  It's been a few years since I have.  Not being as young as I once was, I won't be trying to do the 50 films in one week thing which I don't think I ever was able to do properly.  I ended up choosing a modest 20 films over 6 days with a rest day in the middle.  I ended up buying the tickets before remembering that I had already signed up for a 5k race on the 2nd last day of the festival. But checking the schedule, the first film for me on that day isn't until noon and the race is at 8:30am so that should be plenty of time.  I generally hate 5k's and I'm sure this won't be any different, but it's the only race in the area that kinda fit into my training schedule.

I also signed up for a 10k on Sept 27 for the Korean Peace Marathon.  I'm always a bit wary when a run that isn't 42.2k calls itself a marathon and I'm not sure if this is an actual race or more of a charity run/walk. The only reason I found it was because it was listed on the sportstats.ca website (chip timing company) as an upcoming event. It hasn't been advertised anywhere else as far as I can tell. I'm assuming that since it's being chiptimed that it will at least resemble a race.  The one thing that has me concerned is that the entry fee was dirt cheap at $25. After you pay the timing company, there probably isn't that much left over for other amenities plus the fund raising aspect of it.  At least, I kinda look Korean so if it's not an actual race, I'll still kind of fit in. 

Sports Drink

I typically use Gatordade on my runs.  Buy the canisters and mix it myself.  I've found lately though that I'm buying the gatorade bottles with the twisty caps and just using them on my runs.  They hold more liquid than my hand held and they offer more flavours than you typically get in the powdered form.  Cherry frost is my new favorite, mostly it's somewhat palatable and it's white so if you spill it on your shirt it doesn't show.

I recently bought some Honey Maxx powder.  It was a spontaneous buy while I was in line to buy some stuff at a local running store. Never tried it before, but since the marathon I'm running in the fall will be serving it, I thought I'd give it a try. I bought a 500g bag of the stuff which supposedly has 20 servings in it.  Not exactly cheap at over $20 and the bag isn't the most useful thing.  It's one of those resealable bags that you might find used for chips, but this contains powder and a little plastic scoop in it.  The scoop is much smaller than a typical gatorade one, so the first time I tried it, I just assumed that roughly the same amount of powder would do. First thing I notice is that it doesn't dissolve very well.  While Gatorade crystals dissolve relatively quick, this stuff was more like a powder (think like flour) and I had my doubts about whether it would fully dissolve by the time I took my first sip. When I did take my first sip, yikes, it was way too concentrated and sickly sweet.  Basically, like a concentrated honey.  Even though the flavour was supposed to be "orange",  there really isn't a hint of it, just the overwhelming sweetness.  I realized after, that about a scoop and a quarter is all that's needed, but it's still very sweet. It's also very gritty.  Even once fully dissolved, you can still feel some grit in there while drinking.  I think I'm getting used to the taste and it hasn't caused me any gastro distress.  They also have a lemon-lime flavour and I'm hopping that it's not terrible.

Looking at the Niagara falls race, I noticed that they only have fluid stations every other mile now.  When I last did the race back in 2009, they had one every mile which was one of the reasons I chose to run the race.  I usually need to drink quite a bit while racing a marathon so this has me worried a bit, but I guess there's no point worrying about it now.  

Cadence

Just an update on the Polar S3+ foot pod front. I received it a few weeks ago and no extra import charges so yeah to that.  I've been running with it off and on and don't really like it.  I guess I've gotten spoiled with the GPS watches which are relatively consistent.

The problem with the foot pod is it needs to be calibrated but only is accurate at the pace it was calibrated at.  For someone like me who is all over the place with paces doing 9:30 recovery runs and 7:00 LT runs, this doesn't work very well for me, so distance wise, it isn't very accurate.  But that's okay, I really got it for the cadence feed back, but what I didn't realize at the time I bought it, is that my Polar RC3 GPS watch has no way of displaying cadence during a run, which I find absolutely ridiculous.  I can find out the average once the run is over for the entire run, but if I want any more info, I have to upload the data to the polar website.  So hey I can uplaod the info and find out after the fact that I should have had a higher turnover. Of course, I already know that. I wanted to be able to determine that info by a glance at my watch as opposed to having to count my footsteps manually for 60 seconds.

As for what data i have determined, it's pretty much what I expected. I can get to 90 on recovery runs when I'm wearing my Brooks PureConnects which are minimalist shoes. For long runs when I don't really concentrate on cadence, I 'm about 86 or so and tempo runs, I'm at 92.

So here's my run as a pacer at Midsummer Night's run 15k.  https://www.polarpersonaltrainer.com/shared/exercise.ftl?shareTag=81c57d22cde9901d1d9a1c75eb424d96
even though I had calibrated it at 8:00 min/miles, it thought i was going a bit slower and so it got the mileage wrong. My cadence was around 89 for most of the race and dropped down a bit towards the end. 

Part of me is now thinking that maybe I should get the garmin footpod.  I know the garmin can display cadence on the fly and in hindsight if I had known that the polar watch didn't display cadence, I probably would have gone down that route.  It would mean having to wear two watches at times since I love the polar for HR data and absolutely despise the HR strap that comes with the garmin. But since I wouldn't need cadence data on every run, it would be doable. As it is right now, I usually wear the garmin for pace runs since the polar watch doesn't have a lap pace display which I also think is ridiculous.  Polar makes such great hardware, but their software is extremely lacking in places. 

Seeking Directions

A couple of times a year, I get stopped during one of my runs by someone seeking directions.  Sometimes it's someone walking around and other times, it's someone who pulls up besides me in a car.  Usually, I have no problem pointing them in the directions of the nearest highway, major arterial road, liquor store, etc., but sometimes I get stumped.

Last week, I got stopped by someone in a BMW asking for the location of an obscure side street, Glen Springs Drive. Sounded familiar, but maybe it could have been that almost every side street in the area includes the name of a water feature.  I was about to say that I couldn't help, when the woman started describing directions she had been given and based on that, there was only one street that I could think of that fit that description (that is BTW, neither near a Spring or a Glen) so I gave her directions to that with the caveat that if that wasn't it, she should stop to ask someone else. As it would turn out, I did give her the right directions and funny enough, it's actually part of one of the common running routes I use. I have ran on that street hundreds of times over the past decade, but I just never bothered to realize what its name was.  In fact, I realize that I've probably run on every side street in my area at some point in my running career, but I only know a handful of their names.  Of course, during my last long run, I found myself noticing the names of all  the side streets and trying to make a mental note of what they were, which got me thinking of what other types of info I've accumulated  about my neighbourhood.

Over the years, you come to realize some things about the houses you run by, not necessarily consciously, but based on general familiarity that one gets from years of running. For example, today, in the middle of summer, I can point out to you the houses that don't shovel their sidewalks and those that keep them meticulously free of snow/ice during the winter. I can point out the house with nice landscaping and the one with the old chinese woman out front who's constantly weeding her lawn. Sometimes, it's not the houses, but the people. In the early morning, you start to see familiar faces, who cheerily say good morning as you run by, or the man walking his two dogs who I've learned to give a wide birth to because they always bark and try to chase me as I run past. 

I've always thought that running the same routes over and over again gets boring after a while, but I've come to realize that there are always new things to see and notice on every run, you just have to notice and appreciate them. 

Registered!

I registered for the Niagara Falls marathon that takes place on October 26.  It was either this one or Hamilton which is a week later.  I've done Niagara falls before so am somewhat familiar with it.  Ideally would have liked to wait until the week of to register even if it was more expensive, but it looked like it was going to sell out early.  At the beginning of July, 2/3 of the 1500 spots were gone and considering the last price increase of August 1 was looming, I just decided to register and save the extra $10.

This got me thinking about the marathon majors again which I would like to do at some point.  I've done the three US based ones which are easy, the remaining three (London, Berlin, Tokyo) are more difficult to plan for.  This is also complicated in that all three have a lottery system to get in, but you can always buy your way in, if you're willing to pay.  The nice thing is that none of these three charge you to enter the lottery, unlike one marathon (*cough* New York. *cough*) and they also don't require you to automatically pay upon being selected. You still have an opportunity to not go and not pay if you want, also unlike a certain marathon.  With no chance of doing Boston next year, I thought maybe I would take a shot at crossing at least one of the remaining three off my list in 2015.  London is off the list because I forgot to enter the lottery which was available for all of one day.  Next year, I have to put it into my calendar.

Both Tokyo and Berlin both have lotteries that have yet to take place and I'll probably enter both of them with the hopes of getting into only one of them If I get lucky and get into both, there's always a possibility of doing them both since one is in February and the other in September, but I'm not sure I would be able to make at least a week long vacation out of both, but then it would seem like a waste to go all that way to just run 42.2km.  I guess I'll have to cross that bridge *if* I get to it. 

Getting Faster

I lied when I said I didn't have a goal in mind during previous post.  I would obviously like to try and meet my BQ time which would be 3:15 to run in 2016. Seems such a long time away.  In a perfect world, I would have used NY last year as a springboard for winter training to make an attempt for a spring BQ that would enable me to run next year, but a winter of being lazy recovering messed that up.

So I've been giving some thought to trying to improve my form which a foot pod should help with. I think faster turnover is better efficiency which should result in increaseed speed.  Just manually counting, I am usually around 86-87 foot falls a minute at long run pace.  I can get it to 91-92 when doing LT runs.  I've been trying to do my recovery runs at 90, but it just doesn't seem to translate when I swtich back to long runs.  90@ recovery pace just feels very unnatural to me. Maybe if I keep at it, it will eventually become the norm.

I've been spending a lot of time on youtube researching running form and the big thing seems to be the pose/chi running style of midfoot landing.  This got me thinking of how do I actually land. Judging by the wear on my shoes, I'm not quite a heel striker, but I land towards the outside of my foot about 3/4 of the way down, so not quite a mid-foot striker either. Back in my 3:10 marathon days, the forefoot would wear faster than my heel so maybe my form just naturally changes as I get faster. I'd like to change that around though and change my form so that it results in increased speed.
Decided to try and confirm with a video. Drove my DSLR camera and tripod to the track and recorded myself running at various paces. 

Channeled a bit of Baywatch and Michael Bay as I probably overkilled a bit on the slow motion. It's only about 30 sec of actual running that somehow became almost 10 minutes of video. These are at increasing paces so scroll towards the end to see the more relevant runs.

The first two are at recovery pace and I'm just sort of hopping along and the last two are at strides pace. At strides pace, I'm pretty sure I'm mid-foot landing, but it's hard to say as my foot is pointing upward until the foot almost touches and them it sweeps under me as it takes my weight to land mid-foot. At slower paces, there's the odd time that I appear to mid-foot land, but for the most part, it looks like the 3/4 foot landing.  It could be as simple a fix as just pointing my foot down or increasing my flexiblity to land more mid-foot or just increasing cadence, I'm not sure.  I'll try the video again in a few months once the speedwork starts kicking in and see if there's a difference. 

Foot pod

After thinking about it for a little while, I really think cadence information might be useful so I tried my luck on ebay and ended up buying a footpod from that place where we all get our cheap electronics from.... Israel.  I'm still trying to figure that one out.   Polar devices are made in Finland, so I suppose it's kind of close, but not really.  In all it was $62 US and depending on whether Canada Post does their job of screening imported stuff, there may be import charges and taxes of another $20 or so. 

Total damage will be a bit less than $90 CDN in worst case scenario.  Considering I can get a Garmin footpod from Amazon for less than $80 all in and shipped to my door next day, it's still a bit pricey, but they way I look at it, I won the Polar GPS watch in a contest so I suppose Polar deserves a bit of money from me. Shipped the old fashion way so I"m guessing that it will be at least 3 weeks until I get it.
  

Update

So it's that time of the year again for my first post of the year. Last year, I waited till August, so a whole month earlier is a bit of an improvement. 

Yeah I know I still haven't written a race report for NY. There's really not much to say, other than:

I went. I ran. I finished.

3:55 and change which looking back now was surprising considering the circumstances of my injury.

After a winter of forced rest and allowing my leg to heal, the training is back on.  Right now I'm targeting a fall marathon.  Tentatively was looking at Niagara falls with a back up of Hamilton.  Niagara though seems to be filling up pretty fast. It's two-thirds sold out and there's still a good 3 months till race day.  Looking like I won't be able to do the last minute registration thing like I've done in the past. 

Not sure what goal time will be, but I'll let the training dictate that and figure it out a few months from now. As for training, I'm sticking with the Pfitz plan basically but thinking that I should try and improve my running efficiency a bit. I've been very intrigued by cadence measurements that you can get in the new garmins. I use a polar GPS device and can only get cadence through a foot pod.  Not sure I want to spend over $100 to get cadence information when I can just as easily count myself during a run, but it would be nice to have it automatically collected.

I want to be a part of it....

Today is the eve of the New York marathon.  I started this training cycle with the intent of not doing a long run pace marathon, but it seems that is probably what I will end up doing tomorrow.  My calf is  better, much better than it was two weeks ago, but I haven't really tested it.  I went on a few runs over the past few weeks hoping to do at least 10k each time, but ended up calling it quits after less than a mile.  My left calf still had a dull achy feeling that made itself known as I would start to run.  I felt that any losses in cardio could be made up for by going slower during the race, a busted up calf however would force me to drop out so rest was the preferred course of action these past few weeks..  

I feel I've loss quite a bit of fitness.  My resting HR is much higher than it normally would be at peaking training and even the few runs i've done have been at more elevated HR.  A goal of 3:15 is out the window and so is 3:20.  I ended up with a 3:30, 3:40 and 3:45 pace bands from the expo, but won't make the call until after the first few miles of the race when I get a feel for my effort level and calf situation. I may end up doing the bring a camera along thing and forgoing a goal time all together.    

Whatever happens tomorrow, I'll be okay with since I've learned a lot this training cycle so hopefully bigger and better things are in store for next year.

If you're reading and interested in tracking, I'm bib 7525.  See you on the flip side.

Damn Calf

So my calf is definitely injured. I ended up doing the 1:45 pacing gig at the Scotiabank half marathon which I've done for the previous 4 years.  Whether that was a good decision or not is still up in the air.  It's a nice gig to have since they give you a bunch of free stuff including shoes. Though I had thought about droping out, the problem is that if you pull out, they expect you to pay for the stuff.  I can kinda understand why. In previous years, they would get a bunch of people signing up to be pacers, who would receive the stuff and then pull out.  Since they started the "pay if you drop out" policy, the drop out rate has been extremely low. 

I ended up finishing in 1:44:59.3 which is really just a stroke of luck.  Since they started showing video of the finish line as part of the race pictures, it's hard to "cheat" at pacing since the obvious signs of slowing down and staring at your watch as you approach the finish line can be easily seen. I could run the last 100m, 1000 times and probably not come that close ever again.  They give out a prize to the pacer that came closest to their time.  Though you'd think I would be a shoe in, nope.  One of the other bunnies came in 0.6s over their goal time.  Even though it's the closest I've ever come to my goal time, I would probably rate this performance as subpar. One of the important roles in being a pacer is not running too fast at any point in the race.  One of the km I ran was 4:33 which should have been around 4:45 based on the 10/1 pacing I was doing.  That km was on a downhill, but still it was probably too fast. I hit the 10k mark at 48:59 which should have been 49:37 for a walk adjusted split. In previous years, I hit this mark at around 49:20 or later which is about 20 seconds of banked time which is about right considering that the 10k mark is downhill from the start. An extra 20s on top of that over 10k doesn't seem like much, but as someone who's doing the run/walk thing, the pace during the run phase is faster than if the person was doing it continuously and I'm already pushing people to run at a pace that is uncomfortable for them, to run just that little bit faster can really mess things up.  Well thankfully this was the last year they are doing the 10/1 1:45 pacer.  They are going to change it to a continuous one next year. 

As for the race itself, my left calf was hurting through the whole thing. The calf was okay (ie, no pain) before the race, but I knew that something didn't feel right as it still seemed tight. I ended up wearing a compression sock on just the one leg to provide some additional support.  Never run in the thing before, but I was more worried about the calf failing then about chaffing issues. Plus, I'd been wearing the sock for most of the week without any undue rubbing so I thought I'd be okay. It was definitely the right call.  Though I got through the race with a the calf hurting through much of it, I could barely walk after the race.

Since then, I've decided to rest for the remainder of the week and will try a short run this weekend.  The calf is getting better but is still sore when I walk down stairs. I'm trying to stretch and foam roll and stick it to helpfully get it healed before NY. Not sure how much fitness I will lose.  3:15 is definitely not possible and I think 3:20 may be slipping away also.  Well whatever. At this point, if I can run it without having to hobble, I will be happy. 

Taper Time

I originally thought I was heading into the taper in pretty good shape.  Most mileage I've ever done in a training cycle and no injuries to speak of. Alas, not quite so.  Last Friday, two days before my last scheduled 20 miler, headed out for 11 miles and my calf got really sore about half way through.  Did a short run on Saturday, took Sunday off and then tried to do the 20 miler on Thanksgiving Monday, but had to stop after 7 miles. Took the last two days off. I'm supposed to pace the 1:45 half marathon on Sunday at a local race and part of me has been thinking maybe I should bow out now.  I'd hate to drop out at the last minute and leave the organizer in a lurch. Will try a short recovery run tomorrow and then make the call.

I guess neglecting with the posting in this blog also caused me to not bother to review what I've written previously which is one of the whole reasons for starting this thing.  If I had bothered to look back (here and here), I would have read that in previous marathon training, I had a tendency to develop trigger points in my calves during the taper.  This time it happened a bit earlier, but all the warning signs were there and I just ignored them.  Tight calves at the beginning of run, plantar fasciitis pain.  All things I had dealt with and supposed learnedly from before, but I guess that feeling of invincibility I had while getting through some of the longer mileage and faster mileage weeks left me feeling a bit cocky.  Now I'm paying for it.  I've been kneeding my calves every hour for the past couple of days, even bringing my Stick into work. 

I usually pick a marathon goal about a month before the race.  As I previously posted, 3:20 was a reasonable goal with 3:15 as an outside possibility.  My recent 15k race made me a little more confident that 3:15 was doable if the stars aligned.  Also, did a 19 mile long run with 14 at MP with 7 at 3:15 pace so was feeling pretty good about that. But since I last posted about goals, the BQ times have come out for next year. Last year, when they implemented the new BQ times, everyone that ran their time got in, this year you had to beat your BQ time by 1:38 to get in.

Now it could just be that there is an intense interest in doing Boston now due to the bombings this year or it could just be that it took a year for marathoners to step up their game to adjust to the new times. 

Whatever the reason, it's looking like 3:15 may not be enough. While I thought I had an outside shot at 3:15, to run a 3:13 marathon would require a 7:22 min/mile pace which I haven't trained for and am probably ill prepared to attempt.  Though it may not seem like much of a difference, as someone that tried numerous times for 3:10 and failed, getting into that sub 3:15 range is a little dicey for me.

A 3:15 that doesn't get me into Boston might as well be a 3:20 or 3:30 for that matter.  At this point, I haven't run a marathon in 3 years so any time better than a DNF would be welcome.  I still haven't made a final decision yet, but I'm leaning towards the original goal of 3:20.  This may get slower or faster depending on the outcome of this calf issue.

15K Race Report

I ran the Running Maniacs 15k race this past Saturday. The timing of the race fit in well with the Pfitzinger training plan I'm on that wanted an 8-15k race done on that day.  I did this race 7 years ago when it was only a 5 and a 10k and run for the first time.  Didn't care much for the organization at the time, but hey they've had a few years to work out the kinks, right?

Situated in the little town of Newcastle, about a 45 minute drive east of Toronto, the race is really more of a fall festival for a local running group in the area, but a race is still a race.

Decided to sign up for the 15k. Though I had thoughts of doing the 10k after my miserable 10k performance 2 weeks ago, I realized that the main goal is to race a marathon this fall so longer tune-up races were preferable.  I went into this race with a slightly different mindset.  Rather than pick a pace to try and hold or try to run on perceived effort, I decided to return to my training roots and run this by HR by keeping the HR just under 180.  If I encountered a HR spike, I was going to stop until it returned to normal.  With this mindset, I think the tension of the race went away and I just perceived it as another training run.

Wasn;t too sure about the organization so prior to the race, I started asking around about the water stations, and no one seemed to have any clue if there were any or where they would be.  One volunteer did try and be helpful by saying he was sure that there was one at 12k mark, but that seems quite late. Not taking any chances, ended up running with a water bottle, an actual water bottle with a screw cap, not a squeeze bottle, as it was the only thing I had available. Didn't really get a good chance to warm up, which essentially consisted of about 200m of slight running right before the start.

To keep from going out too fast, I started at the very back of the pack.  There were only about 80 people in the race, so there wasn't going to be a lot of jostling. Hit the first mile marker at 7:00 min even which I thought was fairly good and controlled. Only real drama was during the 2nd mile when I could hear a train in the distance and I turned a corner to see a set of train tracks up ahead and started to wonder if they train was going to coincide with me passing the tracks, but it didn't, but it did pass by about 2 minutes after I crossed so it probably did effect some people.  The race is a mix of roads and paved trails and is a bit hilly in places. I would have to cross over train tracks twice more during the race, but no sound of horns in the distance so no train worries. Not a lot of volunteers or course marshals. I eventually figured out that they had spray painted arrows on the roads when one is supposed to turn which would have been nice if they had told us ahead of time. 

Rest of the race went without incident. HR didn't spike and HR was kept just under 180 with it going above it only on the hills. Remaing splits would be 6:53, 6:52, 7:06, 7:11, 7:05,6:49, 7:00,7:14.  The slower splits are a result of uphills and the faster splits are from downhills so things looked okay. Data from my race is here. Total race distance was around 14.7 km according to the GPS so a bit short.  Average pace for the whole race was 7:00 min/mile pace even for a finish time of around 1:04.  I say around because I had to go with my watch time which I didn't stop exactly at the finish line, maybe 5 to 10 seconds after.  My "official" finishing time has me at 1:41:23 which I don't understand at all.  Maybe I was just going so fast that relativistic effects started taking place and time for everyone else started to slow down or maybe the timing guys just messed up. I'm leaning towards the latter.

I emailed the timing guys about double checking, but its been a few days and haven't heard back from them. It probably won't help much as it appears from the race results that despite the start and finish lines being at the same place and using chip tracking, they only offered gun times. Since I started at the back of the pack, I think my watch time will actually be closer to my actual time then the gun time. 

My first thought when I saw the time mess up was that I had been stiffed yet again for an award  which had happened the last time I did this race, but lucky for me, I wouldn't have placed either overall or in my age group so it didn't really matter. I would have finished 10th overall, 5th in my gender and 4th in my age group.

There was some screw up with the chips though. In fact, we had to wait over an hour for them to announce the winners and they never actually did post the times at the event. I had to wait until Sunday night to find out my time online. In fact, I don't even think they had a clock at the finish line so one could have run this race without a watch and left the race having no idea what your finish time was. Apparently, some people had taken chips that weren't assigned to their bib numbers  which ended up messing up the results.  I know I received the right chip so that couldn't have been the issue for me, but who knows. 

I'm fairly happy with the race.  The 7:00 min/mile average pace for about an hour is approximately what my LT pace should be according to Daniels which means I've been doing my LT runs at the proper pace and intensity this training cycle. This has me still considering what marathon pace I should aim for in New York, but I'll get to that in another post.

That's it for tune-up races for me. Pfitz technically has one more scheduled for two weeks from now on a Saturday, but I'm supposed to be a pacer at a local half marathon on the Sunday which probably means an all out race the day before is pretty much out of the question. 

Overall, an okay event, if you don't mind the short course, and the timing fiasco.  The timing company was one I had never heard of before in this area.  There are basically two big timing companies in the area and a bunch of smaller ones.  The one that was used (splitstiming.com) seems to be relatively new.  They don't use the Championship chip system and they don't appear to have mats. Instead they have little antennas on the sides that pick up signals. Not sure how well they work; they obviously didn't work for me. Presumably they were used because they were cheaper, but sometimes you get what you pay for. As for swag, we got a tech shirt (not a fan of the colour) and a Tim Horton's coffee mug. Not bad for a $54 last minute 15k registration fee

SWAG!