HELL yeah! Another 14km hill-climb tempo run, complete with endorphin high and adrenaline rush to get the month off to a ludicrously brilliant start: if the lawmakers knew about it, they'd make this illegal.
The first week of May has passed more than adequately with three good runs in the bag. The first one I have already written about, albeit in rather (ahem) emotive terms. This was followed two days later with a rather good, gentle hill climb. 15.5km were covered, with an ascent of 463 metres (a little over 1,500 feet). Although a modest incline, all such climbs of course become difficult after a few kilometres, but I dealt with this quite comfortably, and with nearly 30 kilometres and 800 metres of ascent in the running log from just the first two runs of May, all was looking good. The long, slow, weekend run sat there in the diary, ready to be knocked off, and I gave it barely a thought in the two days leading up to it.
So, then. On to that barely-considered long, slow run today. As has been the norm of late, I awoke to the prospect of this outing without any form of dread at all. I had, as has been noted already, prepared well with two brilliant mid-week efforts. However, the eagerness with which I had looked forward to the long run on other weekends had for some reason vanished, and I was left with an empty, vacant kind of ambivalence. Physically, I felt sure that it presented no great difficulty, but mentally I just wasn't quite there. Neither 'gung' nor 'ho' immediately leapt to mind when trying to describe my attitude, and it is true that I took my time preparing. Rather than immediately leaping into the running kit I chose instead a leisurely half hour out in the morning sun with a mug of tea, mulling over my next Scrabble move in the game I'm playing online with my cousin Sue, who resides somewhere in Shropshire.
Tea and Scrabble dealt with however, it was time to bite the bullet and simply get on with it. And, bullet bitten, on with it I did get. The problem with this run was not the physical input required, after all, over each of the last ten weeks I've averaged 52km, which includes a very high percentage of hill climbs and tempo runs. That I was fit enough to undertake a gentle long run of 25 or so kilometres I had no doubt, but as has been promulgated in these pages several times before, the mental aspect of this game is extremely important, and in that regard I was about as prepared for this run as Pyongyang is for the dawn of democracy.
In short, I struggled. The truth is that it was just plain boring, and I really didn't want to be there. But it is just two weeks now to race day, and this was my last chance to slot in another long run before the big event, so I wasn't about to throw in the towel. I played a lot of mind games to stay focussed on the task at hand, and at times I became a little desperate. It's true that I did wonder briefly and attempted to calculate how much Riga black balsam it would take to deliver me a merciful death, but in truth these thoughts were only fleeting and of course, a great exaggeration of my anguish. Still, you get my point, I'm sure: it was a cheerless, soulless run, like the gloomy Newfoundland winters from that Annie Proux novel, full of wind and snow and general hardship. But it is interesting to see just how difficult running becomes when the brain isn't in tune with the task at hand, or the task at foot, as the case may be.
Speaking of feet, I have an injury to report! First though I'll spare you an agonising wait and tell you that I did of course, go on to complete my run, logging a tidy 25.5km, my tenth run of more than 20km this year already, and sixteenth run of greater than 15km. For me, that is unheard of, and I'm very well pleased, I can certainly assure you, especially given it is only the first week of May.
But the injury is the interesting bit. I've been losing a toenail on my left foot in recent weeks; at first it just went black, but then started to come away from the flesh. Then it settled down, but now has gone a bit yucky again. However, it doesn't hurt (much), and actually, this isn't the injury I refer to, seeing how toenail loss is a pretty normal part of distance running. Rather, when I removed my shoes and socks and gave the old black and loosened toenail the once over, I noticed with just a little alarm a large lump about the size of a marble on the top of my right foot. This was surprising, because it didn't hurt at all and its presence was a total surprise, but it looked red and angry and a little too large for my liking. However, a brief referral to Dr Google showed it to probably be nothing more than a common tendon irritation caused by tight shoes, or, more likely in this case, tight lacing. It was true that the lump was right at the point where the shoe lace was tightest, and has sometimes caused some minor irritation before. I therefore changed the lacing on my day shoes to remove pressure from that spot, and now, a few hours later the swelling and redness have reduced considerably. That I mention it at all is only to indicate how surprisingly injury-free I have been despite a major increase in running for me this year. Already I've racked up 725 kilometres for 2017, and every single one of the niggling aches and pains that I had at the start of this campaign have vanished. Pains in my knees and toes and that slightly worrying deep-seated ache in my left hip have all but gone, leaving me even more certain that the 'use it, or lose it' mantra applies ever more strongly as I get ever older.
It especially cheers me to think back 13 or so years ago to the time my GP told me my left knee would almost certainly need 'replacing' within a few years, such was its deteriorated condition at the time. More recently, toward the end of 2015, which was my worst year of running since I took up the sport, I had such severe arthritic stabbing pains in the toes of both feet that at times I felt almost crippled by them, and which motivated me to get moving again. In the following year with a careful but significant increase in running, the pains subsided, and right now it's as if I never had any pain there at all.
I'm pretty sure too, that my weight reduction through all this running also helps in reducing the impact and strain on joints and ligaments. I'm at my lowest weight ever as an adult, having run off 10 kilograms over the last six months. I wasn't exactly obese to begin with, so this is a considerable amount for me, but I'm feeling the benefits, even if Mrs MLCMM says I've lost too much and that my clothes are 'hanging off me'. But I'm happy to trade style for fitness any day, and in any case I can always buy new, smaller clothes, of course.
So, without wishing to jinx myself, I have to say that the new, smaller, fitter me is running well and looking forward to continued good health ahead. I'm still not running as fast as I used to, but I'm definitely stronger and healthier, and that, of course, is the important thing.
(06-05-2017, 01:23 PM)Hello MLCMM! Wrote: Being stronger and healthier is a fantastic thing and I'm thrilled to hear you're getting so much from running the relationship between mental and physical preparation or readiness is fascinating, isn't it? I am always interested to hear your take on that - I ponder it often too. My tactic is to try and get myself out the door before I've properly had a chance to think about what I'm about to do and I count to 100 over and over as I run to give ne somerhing to focus on. Not sure how I'd manage on long runs, never done more than 10k (as yet...)
What is the race you are training for?
... Take the National Express when your life's in a mess / It'll make you smile ...
(06-05-2017, 01:23 PM)Hello MLCMM! Wrote: Being stronger and healthier is a fantastic thing and I'm thrilled to hear you're getting so much from running the relationship between mental and physical preparation or readiness is fascinating, isn't it? I am always interested to hear your take on that - I ponder it often too. My tactic is to try and get myself out the door before I've properly had a chance to think about what I'm about to do and I count to 100 over and over as I run to give ne somerhing to focus on. Not sure how I'd manage on long runs, never done more than 10k (as yet...)
What is the race you are training for?
I'm training for a marathon and the Point to Pinnacle later in the year, but my next race is the Sydney Half on May 21st, which I haven't specifically trained for, i.e. the distance presents no problem, but it won't be fast.
Other than a couple of physical caveats such as having a modicum of physical fitness, and hitting the wall (running out of glycogen) in long events, it is largely a mental game, yes. The whole reason for adopting the Maffetone method to training and racing was to overcome the wall-hitting problem by reducing reliance on glycogen and instead burning more fat when running. Thus far, I think I've been successful, but the truth will come out when I run my next marathon.
Whatever the outcome, the journey has been most excellent.
I took my lumpy foot to the doctor today for a second opinion, not being quite convinced about the qualifications of Dr Google. My doctor, who has been my GP for nine or so years now, quickly diagnosed it as an 'exostosis' which had me wondering if he'd perhaps been influenced by an early viewing of the new Alien movie, especially when he looked at it somewhat dubiously and asked if it 'moved'. Assuring him that it didn't, he prodded it an appropriately meaningful and seemingly professional manner before confirming his diagnosis and writing me a referral for an X-ray, should I 'think it necessary' ... which I took to mean if I'm still alive in the morning, and haven't had my foot exploded by some baby exo-thing.
Well, maybe I will. I'll see what eventuates. I've made a significant and quite momentous change to my running as a result of this alien incursion of my right foot, and that's with the lacing of my shoes. Shoelace tying is quite a complex and underestimated part of our sport, and over the years I've changed lace-tying methods several times in search of the perfect technique. For a while I was an 'overlace underlace' fan; then a change of shoe brand seemed to favour the use of the 'zipper lace' method. In more recent years I've been a staunch supporter of the simple but elegant 'criss-cross poodle-lace' variation, but it's this one that may have caused my exostosis problem, so I've moved on to the Arthur Lydiard 'ladder lacing' system which removes pressure from the problem area. Whilst it's brilliantly comfortable for everyday walking, today's run with the new lacing left me a little uncertain, and it may yet require some minor adjustments.
The run itself, however, went brilliantly, with another tough hill-climb tempo run in the log, consisting of 13.5km and well over 400 metres of ascent at an increasing pace during the climb. The combination of distance, incline and increasing pace make these runs fantastic alternatives to intervals and general speed work, and with (for me, at least) far less likelihood of injury - other than the risk of alien infection of the feet, that is. I'll do four of these this week with a gradual progression of difficulty before taking a tapering stepback next week ahead of race day on the 21st.
Assuming my foot doesn't explode in the meantime, of course.
(08-05-2017, 08:47 AM)Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man Wrote: A foothugger and ladder lacing.
I'll do four of these this week with a gradual progression of difficulty before taking a tapering stepback next week ahead of race day on the 21st.
It pains me to say it... and it really does pain me after yesterday's run... but this concept of 'gradual progression' which you refer to, whilst an Alien notion to me, does seem to have some advantages.
(09-05-2017, 08:07 AM)glaconman Wrote: Intrigued about what will happen with your fat burning strategy MMCM. I really hope you've cracked it.
Wish I could keep the thing going for longer than a couple of days!
Well, we'll know in a few months ... unfortunately, the first marathon I had scheduled (in July) has had a change of date, meaning I won't be able to run it, so it will be September before I get to run the full distance under race conditions again.
Wow, these mid-week runs are getting tough. My third hill-climb tempo run for the week was the hardest so far, and whilst I got through it thinking it had been quite manageable, I'm now, several hours later feeling quite sore in the quads and calf muscles. The strategy of slow, gradual improvement may have hit a temporary holding level, perhaps. Anyway, a rest day tomorrow should sort things out, and then we'll see what Sunday brings.
I would like to talk about Eliud Kipchoge for a moment, and his new marathon record, of sorts. Running a marathon in 2h00m25s is, of course, astonishing, even under tightly controlled conditions such as he had. It just goes to show that a sub-2 hour marathon is not only possible but surely inevitable. What was interesting to me about the attempt was just how irrelevant it made the sponsors Nike seem. The whole caravan and circus show was really supposed to have been a big promotional effort to push Nike shoes and their sundry products by showing how much they can help the superior athlete achieve their goals. What actually happened, I think, is that Kipchoge was instead shown to be the key factor here, far more so than the shoes. The champion athlete that he is, I'm sure, was the actual X-factor at the end of the day, and the high-tech, superior performance Nike shoes were of probably almost insignificant consequence. I say this because the other two champions who ran with him, Lelisa Desisa and Zersenay Tadese, champion marathoners in their own right, actually ran well outside their best times despite months of preparation and sharing the ideal conditions. They had, in effect, a bad day, and no fantastic footwear was ever going to help them. The only conclusion I can draw is that the shoes were not the star of the show at all, whereas the champion athlete Kipchoge clearly was the star attraction, and he quite possibly could have run in day shoes and still broken the record.
Perhaps, in my own despairing way, I'm asking if we can perhaps for a moment focus on the humanity of our endeavours, rather than become embroiled in the sales and chic-marketing arm of some multinational manufacturing behemoth. It's all too easy to be swept up in the hype and fanfare of a major promotional push such as Nike's Breaking2 effort. I mean, yes, certainly I was excited at the prospect of what they potentially might have achieved, and to be fair, did achieve. I too wiped my sweaty palms on the thighs of my jeans in anticipation of what might have been. I mean, hose me down with vintage Moet and crust my face with Beluga caviar; I thought this really was going to be 'it', and by crikey, it nearly was. Make no mistake, the two-hour mark will be broken, and quite probably in a race not so very far in the future. Now that everyone has seen just how close Kipchoge came to the mark, it has to happen. Physiologically speaking, there is no reason it can't be done, and so it must.
Which brings me to my own, far more modest, goals. With a few good weeks of solid training now complete, I am looking ahead to two races in particular in the latter half of this year. My first major goal was to be a 'range finding' marathon at the end of July, which I would use to then set a suitable target at the Sydney marathon in September. However the July marathon is now no longer possible for me, so September will have to be 'it'. Instead of having a useful July marathon time to guide my goal-setting, I'll have to base my target purely on the strength of my training, so wish me luck there. However, a PB is an absolute 'gotta be', with the primary target being to break 4h30m, which in theory should be perfectly feasible for me so long as I don't hit the wall as I have done in both of my previous marathons. The focus of my training this year has been to build endurance without hitting the dreaded wall and will continue to be so in the weeks and months ahead.
The other target is, of course, the Point To Pinnacle in November. In my four previous efforts at this race, I've consistently improved with a PB each time, but I've yet to finish the event feeling that I did it true justice. The aim, therefore, is to, as with the marathon, finish the event without hitting the wall, and for the P2P, finish inside 2h30m.
Of course, there is a long way to go before either of those races and my record in regards to consistent training, especially through the winter months, is very far from what might be considered 'good'. But with well over 750km of training completed already this year, I think I'm entitled to feel a little optimistic about my chances.
Yes, optimism is a good thing. I think I'll take out a subscription.
I'll see you on the training track; and please put that Moet in the fridge - I think we might be needing it soon.
55 kilometres last week left me fit as the proverbial fiddle and set me up nicely for the torment of what is now taper week ahead of race day on Sunday. I say 'torment' but I'm due a step-back week anyhow, and so yesterday's short run was a welcome change. I also ditched the usual type of run and did some speed work instead, just for variety and to test my legs before race day. I haven't really trained specifically for the half marathon, having instead focussed on endurance for the full marathon distance later in the year, and also rather a lot of very early hill work for the Point To Pinnacle in November.
To give me some idea then of what to expect in Sunday's half, yesterday I mixed it up a little and tried some stints at a comfortable pace, then 2-hour pace and finally at PB pace. This actually went very well, albeit leaving me in little doubt that my setting a new PB would be about as likely Donald Trump and I becoming pen-pals, which is to say, not completely impossible but very bloody unlikely and more than just a little foolish to even attempt.
Two hours, on the hour hand ... now that's tempting. I shan't jinx myself, however. I'll just see what happens on the day.
Close enough... 2017 Sydney Half Marathon race report.
I have to say this: the Sydney half marathon course is a sod. It’s twisty, narrow and crowded, plus it has too many short, but nasty hills. A fast course it is not, as evidenced by the fact that even the elite runners (including the Kenyans) have trouble completing it in under 65 minutes. Despite that, I set my own far more modest half marathon PB of 1h54m45s in this race five years ago. That seems a lifetime ago now, and for this year I was looking to simply try and beat two hours. Even that much was going to be a serious undertaking, as I haven't run under two hours in the last three years, and my last half marathon, the Almeria event last February, saw me clock my slowest ever half marathon time of 2h14m30s, so improvement by some considerable margin was called for. My training has been very good however, and a couple of test runs during my taper week leading up to race day seemed to indicate that two hours ought to be possible.
One of the main hurdles with this race is effective pacing, one of the main reasons for that being overcrowding on what are relatively narrow roads. In an attempt to overcome the crowding problems, a change was made this year to the start. Runners have always been divided into starting pens according to their qualifying or self-seeded time, but all the different waves had started together. This year each pen was allocated a different start time, with several minutes separating each wave. The start line was also narrowed, the idea presumably being that with the race stretched out in length, crowding would be less of an issue and the event more enjoyable for all. A noble attempt, perhaps, but I'm unsure as to how well it really worked as I found it more crowded than ever.
Conditions were pretty much ideal for the race, being cool, dry and windless and, as in Almeria, I started this race at the very back of my allocated pen. To run under two hours, I had to complete each kilometre in 5m40s or better. My race plan, such as it was, was to run the first kilometre comfortably within myself, not looking at my watch until the one kilometre mark and basing my race plan on whatever time that took. Well, lo and behold, I ran that first kilometre in exactly 5m40s, so I simply settled in and continued on at that pace. Or so I intended. In fact the first half of the race was so crowded that it was almost impossible to maintain an even pace as I was continually held up by slower runners, and then once seeing a gap, bursting through and making up for lost time – hardly ideal as a pacing strategy. The result was that I ran that first half as I did the previous year, i.e. overall way too fast, hitting the 10.55km half way chip mat in just on 58 minutes, putting me well ahead of schedule, but perhaps also overcooked.
The crowds did thin out a little in the second half, but still there were sections with considerable congestion, and I found pacing very difficult. As I said, pacing is a problem in this event anyway, due to the tight, twisting route, and the skyscrapers and tunnels which render your GPS quite inaccurate, and not in any predictable way. The general lack of distance markers make it doubly difficult. Despite this being the fifth time I’ve run in the event, I managed to conveniently forget all of that and put blind faith in the GPS which told me I was comfortably ahead of schedule and should quite easily break two hours. Right, of course, why should I worry?
Similarly, I did not take heed of the fact that last year I had also reached the half way point in 58 minutes, only to blow up badly in the second half, and finishing in a sore, slow and disappointing 2h06m. This year I was at least travelling somewhat better, but even pacing was still difficult, and then by about 17km it was simply hard work, and I was definitely slowing. Knowing though that all I had to do was hang on and I was sure to beat my target time, I did simply that: I put my head down and kept chugging away. The alarm bells didn't properly start sounding until well into what I thought was the 19th kilometre. We didn't seem to be where I thought we should be at that point, and by the time I realised that my GPS was way out of kilter with reality, it was too late to undo the damage done. When I thought there was only a touch over a kilometre to go, the race marker said 2km. I ran as hard as I could in case the marker was right and my watch was wrong (heaven forbid), but the last section is uphill and brutal, reality was dawning on me and a sense of dread descended. There was no point then looking at my watch, I just had to run as hard as I could and hope I had enough of a buffer to still break two hours.
Finally crossing the line, I stopped my watch and was more than a little disappointed to see it say 2h00m17s. It claimed I had run 21.65km, and it's this extra half kilometre anomaly that caused me to think I was well on target when in fact I was running rather slower than my watch led me to believe. I'm not blaming my watch though; I knew about this problem but just didn't factor it in this year and so paid the price.
Still, as someone later on said to me, if I had missed a 400m sprint target by 17 seconds, you'd score that as a miss. Being 17 seconds outside a half marathon target is a different matter, and can pretty much be considered to have hit the mark.
Yeah, that will do nicely. And it’s a huge improvement of over 14 minutes on my Almeria time, and in just three months.
Congratulations, MLCMM! You must be very proudl I'm sure you'd have done it under two hours in a less crowded race and even better in a flatter course.Besides the improvement since Almería half has been really fantastic in just three months.Anyway, What's 18 seconds? Maybe less than the time we lose in a water station or passing slower people at the start.
Great effort MLCMM. Your hard work and consistent training is paying off. Long may it continue.
These days I tend to just use a stop watch in races to give me a feel for elapsed time. The effort I try to gauge more by feel. Each to his own I suppose. Would you consider doing away with the technology? Or are you too immersed in having the pace data to-hand?
(22-05-2017, 02:14 PM)glaconman Wrote: Great effort MLCMM. Your hard work and consistent training is paying off. Long may it continue.
These days I tend to just use a stop watch in races to give me a feel for elapsed time. The effort I try to gauge more by feel. Each to his own I suppose. Would you consider doing away with the technology? Or are you too immersed in having the pace data to-hand?
This is a subject that I have raised before, but one I keep coming back to. The day (nay the morning) before the Seaford Half, I'd decided to run sans GPS. The theory being that given my current state, doing away with the technology would mean I'd have a much better chance of running to my bodies view on matters, rather than being a slave to the on-tap recorded pace. But, like a junkie, as I left the house my hand shot out and picked up my watch.
However, I reached a compromised. I used the watch but kept it on the clock face all the way round. Yes, it vibrated every mile, but I didn't look at the mile summary data. I knew roughly how I was doing because we left at exactly 9am and there were a few mile markers around the course.
A really impressive running friend who goes by the name of Dom, is doing a 100 mile race in a couple of weeks. He doesn't use any technology. He just goes out (every day) and runs. I really like the idea, but struggling to let it go. More than anything I like to know how far I've run. Bragging rights I guess.
BTW MLCMM... excellent work on the half marathon. In my book, anything over 5 miles you round the time down to the nearest minute, so that's a 2 hour half. Great result following Almeria.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I'll write a fuller response to the tech/no-tech debate later ... meanwhile here are some race photos, including one of post-race foot trauma, especially for CC5, and yes, I had a blister as well.
Oh, and I meant to mention that as I was starting in the green wave this year, it seemed appropriate to wear the Almeria finisher's shirt, too. Fetching, I thought. And probably made me go faster!
May as well go for broke.
