September 2013 - The Fear Mounts

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

OK so August wasn't a bad month - a fair amount of running including some big hills, and a cracking run at the end with Sweder was definitely a highlight.

However the death of my treadmill (it may be partially resurrected - it still lies in the balance) and some other nuisances (mainly to do with work) meant the month ended dichotomously.

And so September is a new start. A new training schedule, incorporating less or no treadmill running, far more street running and a good deal more cross-training. But the month is also punctuated by events-beyond-my-control which will doubtless cause the training schedule to tend toward chaos and general haphazardness. And I'd prefer to be haphazardnessless, if I can.

But not today, which is downright odd. No running, no cross-training, just a quick post here on the forums to remind myself of what running is.

More soon, I promise.

YTD: 815.0 km

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

What if I say I'm not like the others?
What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays?
You're the pretender
What if I say that I'll never surrender?

[ Foo Fighters - The Pretender ]

It's been a wretched week - six long days at work, all the time fighting a lurgi which has left me with aching joints and feeling exhausted.

I have however managed to make the treadmill usable for flat runs, so it will be pressed into service as an intervals machine. After our overseas trip we aren't exactly flush with funds at the moment, so a new treadmill is out of the question, so I'm rapidly re-thinking my training methods.

First though I need to properly shake off this illness thing. My 5km this morning was a torrid affair - slow, flat and me wanting to give up after just 3km or so. Not fun at all.

However it's a (new) start. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

5km, 32:15

YTD: 820.0 km

Track du Jour: A great track, a fantastic determined-running song and a stunning video clip.

[marathondan]

Sounds like it's Phoenix from the flames time! Once you see off this lurgy. Then a straight, hard run through to the start line! Hope you can find some good training routes. Those hills you and Sweder demolished recently looked pretty good.

[Sweder]

Those hills you and Sweder demolished recently looked pretty good.

You ain't joshin', Dan. They are ball-busting climbs, especially the road home from the park. I suggested leaving a push-bike up the top and whizzing back down for a double-hillage P2P training special. Of course I'm safely headed home now *evil grin*

Don't shoot me, but can you not simply jack one end of the tready up (on planks of wood or thick running books) to create an incline? I'll get me coat ...

[marathondan]

Those hills you and Sweder demolished recently looked pretty good.

You ain't joshin', Dan. They are ball-busting climbs, especially the road home from the park. I suggested leaving a push-bike up the top and whizzing back down for a double-hillage P2P training special. Of course I'm safely headed home now *evil grin*

Don't shoot me, but can you not simply jack one end of the tready up (on planks of wood or thick running books) to create an incline? I'll get me coat ...

Yes that should work with the tready?

I like the idea of the pushbike... now wondering if it's possible to do perpetual hill reps with a training buddy? Buddy cycles up, leaves bike, runs down, you run up, cycle down, repeat. Relies on buddy cycling up / running down is faster than you running up / cycling down. So actually it might not work. Puts one in mind of MC Escher.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Don't shoot me, but can you not simply jack one end of the tready up (on planks of wood or thick running books) to create an incline? I'll get me coat ...

Yes that should work with the tready?

It might be possible, but it's not as straight-forward as that. The treadie is constructed in such a way (frame within frame) that when inclined, the force is still spread evenly through a square section that remains flush to the floor. Simply shoving a stack of books under one end actually shifts all the force onto one end, which would probably then buckle under the combined weight of the treadie and user.

They don't just throw these things together, you know!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

A much better run to report this evening. Arrived home still feeling exhausted without reason, but jumped on the treadie and pounded out 13.5 very sweaty kilometres in 75 minutes - my fastest run since May. Most gratifying, although it was hard work.

Things might have turned a corner!

13.5km 75:00

YTD: 833.4km

[marathondan]

Things might have turned a corner!

Ironic choice of words - that's the one thing you can't do on a tready...

Well done though for jumping on when you were feeling tired and letting the running work its magic.

[Sweder]

Things might have turned a corner!

Ironic choice of words - that's the one thing you can't do on a tready...

Oh I dunno.
They drive me round the freakin' bend ...

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

[marathondan]

Except where you're going, there are no plateaus - it's up all the way!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

No need to rub it in, Dan!

[Sweder]

We could plant a cake in a model castle at the summit.
The gateaux in the chateau on the plateau

[marathondan]

I think any cake coming within 10 feet of your nostrils at the finish would be swiftly inhaled...

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

P2P training is still a bit haphazard here but it's not all bad news. A good tempo run this morning, some good news from the bathroom scales and an obviously stronger core are all good reasons for optimism.

And hey, if today's track du jour doesn't get you running, nothing will!

10.8km 1hr

YTD: 844.2km

Track du jour: Those fab young lads from Ireland, The Strypes.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Work. Urgh. An unexpected two overnight shifts in the middle of my days off has turned this week into an ugly 60-hour, assorted shift nightmare and taken a blowtorch to any form of structured training.

Even so, running under adverse conditions is good preparation for tough races, and so it was on with the running shoes and see what I could squeeze into the sixty minutes I had available to get something done.

It started ugly, to be sure. I was tired and struggling to understand why I was attempting to run when my body was tired and hungry and my brain was ... somewhere else. As ever though, after a few minutes things started to come together, so I cranked the pace and squeezed out a nice, tough little tempo run, a little faster and a little stronger than my previous outing.

It feels good to get these runs under the belt, even if they are a poor compromise to my intended training - scuppered as it has been by the death of the treadie and a shortage of people at work. Whether it's enough remains to be seen, of course, but I do feel better about my running in general. I'm faster, stronger and enjoying it a little more.

Where it's headed we can only wait and see.

10.8 km, 60 mins.
YTD: 855.1 km


Track du jour: Haven't had this one for a while. Suck it up, runners!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Yay, a day off! Time for a decent long run. Only problem is waking up knowing the only thing I really want to do is sleep in for once... heavy sigh.

Wearily I climb into the running shoes and head out the door. For the first two kilometres I only want to turn around and head back to bed. By then however I'm at the bottom of the first big hill and to turn around would mean climbing back up the beast, so I press on.

Of course, things then pick up and I actually complete a good run. I headed back out to Lane Cove National Park - which is now my standard 18km long run - and which I ran with Sweder during his brief sojourn here three weeks prior. Back then I was still fighting Mrs MLCMM's lurgi and turned in a pretty dreadful run. Today's effort felt much, much stronger and was completed without too much drama (once past the first couple of kilometres anyhow), but it was still disappointingly slow, at 1h57m, albeit four minutes quicker than previously.

Never mind, it was important to get this run done today, as it will be another five days or so before the opportunity presents itself for another run of that length.

I'm still wondering if it's enough - it's a tough little run, it must be said, but the hills aren't continuous like the P2P. And that's the key - being able to run one continuous hill with no respite.

Gulp.

18.22km, 1h57:25
YTD: 873.4km

Track du jour: Apropos of nothing at all to do with running... which is perhaps why...

[marathondan]

Not sure anything can ever be enough, short of finding a 10 mile hill and running up that. But if you 're climbing a smaller hill, faster, it should be doing you lots of good. The main thing though is that you're dragging yourself out there - great work!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I’ve long been curious about weight loss, calorie intake and diet in general. It seems such a simple equation: calorie intake - less calories burned = weight lost or gained. And yet for a long time we had the French paradox of high fat and high alcohol diets yielding little or no obesity and similarly low levels of heart disease among the French.

And now we have the so-called American paradox, which is the reverse, whereby in recent years Americans have lowered their average daily calorie intake (one study says it is now well below the recommended daily requirement) and yet obesity levels have continued to rise.

I also see odd paradoxes amongst my own friends and workmates. I’ve often been puzzled by obese people at work who seem to eat hardly anything much at all during the day. Do they cram bucket-loads of fatty foods into themselves at night, I wondered? Well, clearly not. They’re generally intelligent, sensible people who do not eat themselves stupid at home. Yet they are technically obese.

I did my own self-testing over the last seven days. I’m not exactly overweight, but have about 2kgs of excess belly fat I’d like to shift before race day. So for seven days I checked my calorie intake carefully and exercised vigorously every day. Despite three nights of meals with friends which of course made things difficult, I averaged a respectable 2,014 calories per day. In theory this is 500 – 600 calories below my recommended daily intake. However, given that I ran 51 km over four days and did strenuous gym sessions on the other three days, this intake of 2,014 calories should have been well below what I actually required, i.e. I should have seen a positive result in body composition.

In fact, the result was a weight gain of 0.3kg, a slight loss of muscle and most alarmingly, a big gain in body fat of 1.1%! Good God! Why?

Even more bizarre, the previous week I paid little attention to diet, ran only 15km and did maybe one or two desultory gym sessions, yet lost 1.3kg in weight and lost exactly the 1.1% of body fat that I gained in this week of careful diet and much exercise!

This is too weird. Of course the body is an organism, not a machine, and changes to your input and output parameters won’t show instantaneous changes to its structure, but still it is perplexing.

Looking back to my training and weight stats last year I see a similar pattern. When I ran hard and fast – around 200km per month, I gained weight and body fat and lost muscle. When I followed that with an easier month, the opposite happened – I lost weight and body fat and gained muscle.

The only slightly plausible explanation I’ve read for all of this seems to go something like this: in periods of alternating calorific intake, the body adapts to operate normally at the lower level as far as it can, i.e. it becomes remarkably efficient at processing low levels of calories. Then when your calorie intake increases, it rapidly stores what are by now excess calories as fat ready for the next lean period. In other words, the only sensible way to lose weight and/or maintain a healthy weight is to get there very gradually and eat as evenly as possible each day without rapid changes in calorie intake. Which means, therefore, that diets are counter-productive, and permanent lifestyle change is the only answer.

Well, maybe.

What I do know for sure is that I feel better when:
• I run at least 30km per week.
• I cross-train at least three times per week.
• I restrict my bread intake.
• I drink less alcohol.

If I continue to do that, I really don’t need to worry about my weight – it will (eventually) take care of itself.

Anyway, another good tempo run to report. After falling asleep in the train on the way home (again) after work, I really felt impossibly tired and dreading the prospect of a run. Just walking from the station was draining, so how could I do a challenging hour of fast running?

Well, I wouldn’t be much of an endurance runner if I let a bit of tiredness get in the way, now would I? And to be honest, that thought was the only thing that got me changed into my running gear. And of course, yes, it was very oddly another good run. A little over 11 kilometres in an hour is a good run by my standards any time, but when as tired as I was, this was a little beauty, so I’m very pleased. If there’s a bad run coming up, it doesn’t matter – this past week’s four runs have all been excellent and I’m feeling pumped (despite the weight gain and body fat increase).

11.2km, 1hr
YTD: 884.6km

A special track du jour is therefore required - and this one is a beauty:

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Sunday morning, 05:10. Skies clear, temperature cool to mild, absolutely perfect - I mean superlatively ideal conditions for running.

Regrettably, although I am up and outdoors, I am standing on Gordon railway station platform 2 awaiting the 5:15 train which will take me to work. This isn't an altogether unusual scenario, except that this morning, instead of the usual three or four other early Sunday morning commuters there are nearly two hundred lycra-clad commuters all waiting to board the train which will take them to the start of the Blackmore's Sydney Running Festival, all these people being either half-marathoners or marathoners.

As astute viewers will remember, I've forsaken this event this year, partly because I had to work anyway, but mainly because I wanted to remain focussed on my P2P training and not be distracted (or worse, injured, as last year) by other race commitments.

It had occurred to me the previous day that I was likely to share my train with a horde of runners this morning. A year ago I was there with them, on my way to completing my debut marathon, so it was not without a little melancholy that I shared my early commute with them.

To really rub my salty regret into the open sore I also watched the race on TV at work, all the while grinding my teeth in uncertain frustration, wondering if I shouldn't also be out there. I feel fit enough - I could have even had a crack at a half mara PB.

But ... well ... there you go.

The highlight of the race coverage had to be the end of the men's marathon. A Kenyan (of course) had run away with it in the last kilometres and belted away for a comfortable win. As he was approaching the finish line however, a remarkable scene unravelled itself. Now, the half marathon begins an hour earlier than the full marathon and has the same finish line at the Sydney Opera House. Therefore, the early marathon finishers are crossing the line at about the same time as the half mara stragglers. As it happened, a very, very large gentleman, quite young but clearly obese had managed to waddle his way around the half marathon and was now struggling to the finish line. He looked very determined and given his size had done remarkably well and this was obviously a genuinely triumphant moment for him. As the marathon leader was approaching from behind, the crowd really began roaring their appreciation, and this poor obese bloke thought they were all cheering him. He was just about in tears with gratitude when the motorbike escort zoomed past and he realised they weren't cheering for him at all (well, I'm sure at least some of them were). The look of embarrassment upon the realisation of his mistake was heart-breaking. The poor bloke had after all probably worked harder and achieved more (relatively) than the Kenyan elite.

Anyhow, that afternoon I took out my semi-frustration on a hard and fast tempo run. I had intended to take it easy and just "do the time", but I couldn't, and I had to go at it hard, clocking a solid 11.34km in the sixty minutes. Felt pretty damn smug afterwards, too, I can tell you.

Then this morning was back out to Lane Cove National Park for a scintillating, strong and fast 18km hill-fest. Well, that was the plan. In truth, I did feel fairly strong, but my time was pretty much identical to my last outing on this course, but I have been working and running hard of late (60km this week!), so a general weariness has set in which might account for my lack of pace. Not to worry, it's still a long hard run in the bank.

In all, I'd say it's going well.

11.34km, 60mins
18.21km, 1h57:02

YTD: 914.1km

Track du jour: Oh yes... brilliant!