Orange Silver April

[Sweder]

Sam Lambourne told me to start eating right from the start to 'keep your gut interested'. As the body tires blood is fed to those areas working hard,mie leg/ arm muscles, and away from other areas, such as the stomach. By eating little and often you keep the stomach engaged, and therefore a small blood supply at work.

Queasiness on the longer runs can come from having undigested food in the gut.
Some trial (and error) required, but it supports Dan's thesis to some extent.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Unspeakable.

Big city marathons will never be the same again, but we must continue to run ... we can't let this sort of evil win.

[Sweder]

A city marathon is a celebration of human spirit, a place of rare camaraderie, equality and friendship.
This was a most heinous crime, aimed not at runners but at their families, their loved ones.

I'll be on the streets of our capital this Sunday, yelling my lungs out for my JDRF runners. I hope record numbers of Londoners, no strangers to the evil that men do in the name of tyranny and terror, join me.

Solidarity, Boston.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

A city marathon is a celebration of human spirit, a place of rare camaraderie, equality and friendship.
This was a most heinous crime, aimed not at runners but at their families, their loved ones.

I'll be on the streets of our capital this Sunday, yelling my lungs out for my JDRF runners. I hope record numbers of Londoners, no strangers to the evil that men do in the name of tyranny and terror, join me.

Solidarity, Boston.

Yes London is going to be an amazing triumph of spirit over evil - and I have no doubt the whole planet will be watching in solidarity. Go London!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I think to be honest I had mostly made up my mind to run a third marathon anyway, but the events in Boston have today made that an absolute definite, partly to honour the victims, but also to show these terrorist assassins that they simply won't win anything through the use of craven aggression.

I've also entered the Sydney Half Marathon again on May 19 and the City 2 Surf 14km event in August. Of the two, C2S will be the one with the greatest security issues. Last year 85,000 people entered and it is perhaps Sydney's #1 and certainly its largest sporting event of the year... a prime target I suspect for insane people with a grudge or strange delusion. I imagine the race will quickly sell out, such is the determination of people to show terrorists that we are brave and they are ... subhuman cowards.

Run on!

[Sweder]

Giving serious thought to pressing JDRF for a place in Boston 2014.
I feel the need to respond with more than words.

[El Gordo]

What?

My post didn't get... posted. Monday morning, I wrote an effusively congratulatory message, linking your triumph with that Aussie chap in the Open.

But it ain't here! Could I have forgotten to hit Send?

Hot damn. Anyway, I will say again, a massive congratulations to MLCMM on the second marathon finish. And getting faster too. If you maintain this rate of improvement, you should be smashing the world marathon record in around 10 years from now. Hurrah! We were there when it all began!

[El Gordo]

Giving serious thought to pressing JDRF for a place in Boston 2014.
I feel the need to respond with more than words.

If you can, you should.

What people don't realise -- even seasoned marathoners -- is that Boston is more than a marathon. It's a huge celebration of running, always held on Patriots' Day Monday, like it has been for around 115 years now. It was already about 85 years old when the London Marathon shambled to the start line.

No other city marathon has had hundreds of books written about it and even a few movies made in its honour. It has an amazing history. I even have a painting on my wall (by Hal Higdon) depicting the 1934 finish.

It's this heritage that made yesterday's outrage on Boylston St so... outrageous.

I've no doubt that next year will be an even more incredible party than ever -- and god knows, Beantown rocks on even an average year. There aren't many charity places available at Boston. Less than 5% the year I did it. You might need to pull those strings a bit harder.

Yes, it's a road race, which you've sworn to send packing. But what a road race. And there are all those famous hills, at least.

Again. If you can -- do it.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Giving serious thought to pressing JDRF for a place in Boston 2014.
I feel the need to respond with more than words.

How many spots do JDRF have?

[Sweder]

Giving serious thought to pressing JDRF for a place in Boston 2014.
I feel the need to respond with more than words.

How many spots do JDRF have?

Good question! I'm making contact with my team now to find out.
EG got a spot with them when he ran it, but we (UK) were buying places in the WMM then (we're not now). I may be able to get some through JDRF USA though.

More soon.

[suzieq]

Many of us here in Calgary are reeling over what happened in Boston. So many friends run that race; Calgary usually has over 100 participating. It really hits home. EG said it so well - Boston is more than a marathon; what happened there hurts us all and we feel it.

On another - happier - note; Congratulations MLCMM on your race! You did it! Always good when you accomplish such a hard fought goal. Well done.


Suzie

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

It's a fine line between pleasure and pain
You've done it once, you can do it again
Whatever you done don't try to explain
It's a fine, fine line between pleasure and pain

('Pleasure and Pain' - The Divinyls)

Thanks for the comments, folks.

I've two more runs to report since race day. I took a whole week off from running following the mara, closely scrutinised by Mrs MCLMM who insisted I needed to be "fully rested" before attempting another run. Good advice, as last year I returned to training way too soon and pulled a calf muscle which resulted in two weeks enforced rest at a most inconvenient time. So having SWMBO keeping an eye out for tell-tale sweaty socks was a wholly good idea.

It is true however that I was itching to get back into it, and so last Sunday - a full seven days since the marathon - I laced up the Brooks for a lazy ten, just to get back into the swing of things and remind the legs that they still had a few more races on the calendar this year. The first half hour, it has to be said, felt a little weird, but after that it felt pretty good, and I completed a straight-forward, fairly slow 10km in 64 minutes and felt satisfied at having 'returned to the fold'. It may have only been a week, but it felt more like a month that I'd taken off.

After the compulsory rest day yesterday, I leapt back into the fray for a much more interesting tempo run. Again it was relatively simple 10km jaunt (nothing too taxing), but this time I built it up as I went from a lazy jog to a trot, to a regular training pace and then to a sprint and finally a flat out sprint to wrap it up in 55 and a half minutes. And boy did it feel great! My fastest 10km since January and it really felt good - very, very happy with this run, and I went to work afterwards feeling on top of the world. When running is going well there's hardly a feeling like it - just glorious!

So now I have 25 days to the Sydney Half Marathon. After today's run I'm entertaining ideas of maybe a PB attempt, although to be honest I'm not in exactly the kind of form I was for my PB run last year. But we'll see. Because I was so late entering the race, I had to get an entry in the last wave, along with the also-rans and pram-pushers. Well, not quite that bad, but there'll be a lot of traffic to get through - this wave is not exactly your sub-2hr group. Whatever happens, I'm sure it will be fun.

Track du Jour: Can't let the moment go without saying "Vale Chrissy Amphlett" - taken from us way too soon ... and this song seems runningly appropriate. Enjoy!



10km 1h04:37
10km 0h55:39

YTD: 556.1km

[Sweder]

Chrissie Amphlett, 53.
Jesus wept, that's no bloody age at all. How sad.

Mate, I think you're in tip top shape for a PB attempt. You have time to work on pace alone, base fitness well and truly in the bag after the long one. Speed, speed and more speed work. Fire up the Rocky themes, baby. This is ON.

[marathondan]

I second Coach Sweder.

Ride the wave!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Thanks Sweder, Dan, I appreciate your confidence, really I do. In fact, I respect your wisdom to such an extent that today I did indeed do something rather extraordinary, helped also by something EG wrote some time back about how we can actually achieve things we thought not possible and reach goals we thought only others would ever reach if only we would be a little bolder.

Neatly dove-tailing with those sentiments was the stark reality revealed by the to-my-mind most useful of the online race time predictors at McMillan Running which said that to beat my half mara PB I need to be running 10km in around 51 minutes. Now as it happens, my oldest PB is the 10km, which I ran in 50:07 way back in 2004. And those seven seconds have always bugged me. So I figured I had to give this a shot, and with your words of confidence and encouragement ringing in my ears, I set forth to give the PB a crack.

The treadmill seemed by far the best option for this attempt, given the lack of flat anywhere to run around my village. It also meant I could control the pace to the nth degree, which is invaluable.

After a 2km warm-up jog, I set the speed to a little under 5 min/km pace and headed off to the sounds of my latest 'PB playlist'. Immediately it all felt pretty good and by 2km in I was a little under my target and travelling well. I very gradually increased my speed and hit 5km in 24:45, well inside my PB time but having to maintain that pace.

From then on, hard though it was, I kept increasing the speed very slightly to give myself a little leeway should things go pear-shaped at the end. I needn't have worried. Whilst I wouldn't call the run 'easy' - it certainly was a tough run - it was very manageable, and I reached 10km in a peachy 48:57, a PB by 1:10. Given this PB has stood for over nine years and I'm now in my 50s, I was well pleased with this effort. It's never easy training at race pace on a treadmill, let alone PB pace, so I'm stoked with this time and look forward to what I may be able to accomplish under race conditions.

So thanks, everyone ... you've inspired me yet again to improve my best, and I'm feeling very confident now of a good run at the half marathon in a little over three weeks.

YTD: 568.1km

[Sweder]

RIPPER!!!!
Great stuff.

[glaconman]

Well done on everything you've achieved recently MLCMM.

If you can beat your PB on a treadmill I suspect you'll suprise yourself again if you can find a popular, flat road 10k.

Good luck for the half.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Cheers fellas!

Funny you should mention the 10k road race G'man, because this morning I ran literally smack bang into one. On my morning run I passed through Lane Cove National Park to find one of the Sydney Striders 10km handicap road series races in full swing. The Striders would be Sydney's biggest running club (and I note with interest their sister club is the Heartbreak Hill Striders of Boston) and they always have a strong presence in any race, but this is the first time I've stumbled across one of their regular runs. According to their web site, this race should have been run three weeks ago, so I don't know what happened to their calendar.

Anyway, it meant that the park was unusually full of runners this morning, and some relatively unhappy cyclists who for once were well out-numbered by us runners.

It also made me think I should watch out for their next race in my borough and maybe participate.

But back to the run. Today's effort was fairly brutal. It had everything from deafening highway to muddy, dank off-track gullies and pretty much everything in-between, including a 2km hill-climb. In all I covered a tad over 20km, and while I failed in my wishful-thinking goal time of under 6min/km pace for the entire distance, it was a more brutal run than I had anticipated so I wasn't unhappy just to finish the damned thing without suffering a coronary.

It also rounded out a 52km week of running for me, and in that number lies another little (positive) story. My days of extraordinarily long shifts at work are over. Management decided in their wisdom to cut us back to 9.5 hour shifts which means I can far more readily incorporate training into my work schedule, and significantly, no more 4 a.m. running!

Actually, I'll probably genuinely miss the early runs...






Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Feeling good, feeling on top of it all. What's next? Oh yeah, the half mara.

20.31km 2h07m

YTD: 588.4km


Track du Jour: With apologies to those doing it tough at the moment... your day will come, be assured and keep running!

A word to the God of running...



Or you could try this one:



Or this one might suit some of you better (I'm looking at you, Sweder)...

[Sweder]

Funnily enough that was the second LP I bought with my own money. The first was Rattus Norvegicus, still in my all-time top ten. There was something beautifully simplistic about the Ramones. Their influence extends through music today, clearly in the DNA of thrash metal, most clearly enunciated by Nivana and the Foo Fighters.

I rather like this succinct homage from some of my friends:

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Another good run to report, although it very nearly wasn't. Still weary from my previous couple of hard runs I took this slowly and struggled for the first couple of kilometres - indeed at about 15 minutes in I was seriously thinking of calling it a day. It was only the thought of how lousy that would look on the spreadsheet that kept me going, and of course, pretty soon it all started to come together, and by about the 5 kilometre mark I was happy again and flying. Most of this run I completed at half mara PB pace or better, so it ended up a beauty.

Odd, isn't it, how this running game presents itself? Often, if you just persist, it rewards you seemingly all out of proportion to the way you felt at the start. Gotta love that!

17.58km 1h39m

YTD 606.0 km

Track du Jour: Something of an RC favourite I think, this one, although it's the first time it has featured here. A great, great running track!