W/E July 31

Mon - 7mi city run
Tues - Pitch'n Putt Hills(1:56, 1:55, 1:55, 1:56, 1:56, 1:57, 1:56, 1:56, 1:58 off 2:15) 1:56.1 avg
Wed - 10mi w/ hill sprints
Thurs - Off(Sick)
Friday - Off(Sick) + core workout
Sat - 10mi
Sun - 10mi w/ hill sprints
'Bout 50mi total


Kind of a lackluster week. I felt a cold coming on early in the week, which is why I did the hill workout a bit early, and it finally took hold after my second last night shift, then, I worked a double(more or less) and it came on with a vengeance. Fortunately it seems to be progressing very quickly and I MIGHT be able to do a long run tomorrow. It would be ideal since I have to head to Victoria and find a place to live on Tuesday. Legs had some 'go' in them today so i'm still feeling optimistic. Happy trails!

Death March to Vic

I can't even say 'it sounded like a good idea at the time.' Because I knew before embarking on this run that it was going to be pretty tough. I got it in my head that I would run to Victoria after my night shift on thursday night because I had plans to go to the island and why not pack light and run over. I knew it would be tough coming off a night shift but I didn't think too much of sleeping for a few hours then heading over. So anyway, the plan was to run from my house to the Massey Tunnel under the Fraser River and catch the bicycle shuttle through the tunnel(you can't bike or walk through), then run from the south side of the tunnel to the Tsawassen ferry terminal, and finally run from Swartz Bay ferry terminal into town. The trick would be to get to the tunnel by 9 am because the shuttle only went through every hour. I was off work at 7am, and the run was 17.5 km, so I figured I would need at most 80mins to get there and have enough time. Unfortunately I wasn't very organized and hadn't brought my bike to work, nor packed my bag, so I walked quickly home and packed, and was out the door at about 7:50. I had no interest in just barely missing the shuttle so I hammered it pretty hard out there knowing it would probably bury me for the rest of the run. I managed to run out there in 63mins, which is only 3:45/km, but wearing a backpack that was no less than 15lbs made it much harder than you'd expect.


After this stretch I realized I was in for a very long day, and that brining my Vans was a bad decision. They are pretty much just hunks of rubber and unnecessarily heavy. The weight of the bag, with jeans, two shirts, a sweater, track pants and jacket, spare socks and unders, fuel, glasses, water and the shoes, actually, when combined with all the pavement running, was making my knees fairly sore. Not too bad, but enough to worry about.  From the south side of the tunnel I eased off on the pace running about 4:25/km for that 16.5km. Getting to the ferry I hadn't consumed nearly enough fuel through the night at work nor the run out to the tunnel, and what I had tried to eat on the way to the ferry was not sitting well. I figured my guts would work themselves out while I slept on the boat so I ate a power bar and a couple of fruit bars and promptly passed out.


Waking up at Swartz Bay ferry terminal my legs were already sore, and I actually had thoughts of phoning my brother to pick me up but earlier in the run I had this thought that it was kind of neat to have a symbolic run to Vic being as i'm moving there in a months time. I hadn't thought of this before the run but there is something appealing about the idea of going on foot. Anywho, off I went feeling decently energized after some sleep, running Lochside Trail through the Saanich Peninsula into Victoria. It is a reasonably pretty run, but much of it was lost on me. I ran the first 10k fairly well, which was primarily on asphalt, then through the next 10k things got tougher with some nice soft trail but also some very low grade asphalt that was very hard on the feet. At this point the day was heating up as well and I was just starting to suffer. The last 10k I ran out of fuel stores and water. I tried to take on fuel with a touchy stomach, but without water this was hard so I ended up just giving up on trying to refuel. This meant the last few kms were going to be brutally slow. In fact I took numerous walking breaks of about 15 seconds just to mentally regroup. I even went so far as to check on my phone to see how much distance I had left, it was a miserable crawl toward my brother's house. In the end I made it though, I stopped at a convenience store close to my bro's house and had a water and the most satisfying Coca-Cola I have ever had. All told it was around a 65km day. The difficulty didn't come from the distance itself but from the lack of sleep and nutrition, the "heavy" backpack, and the 60+km worth of pavement pounding. 


In retrospect, well actually even at the time, I kind of figured it wasn't the best idea, and in the end maybe it wasn't as I think I might be coming down with a cold(that may or may not have to do with the rest of the weekend). My knees also took quite a beating. Though the knees are feeling better because I felt it appropriate to take a couple days off to let them heal up. Today they feel better and I had a pretty kick ass hill rep session averaging 3 seconds per rep faster than last week. So I would say physically it was an OK idea, but it was a good adventure so i'm gonna give it the thumbs up, but won't be doing that again.

W/E July 24

Mon - 10mi + 5x hill sprint
Tues - 10mi + core workout
Wed - Pitch 'n Putt Hills(1:55, 2:00, 2:01, 2:01, 2:02, 2:00, 2:02, 1:55 off 2:15)
Thurs - Off
Fri - Run to Victoria(~65k) report forthcoming
Sat - Off(shattered)
Sun - Off(much better)
Things didn't quite workout the way I hoped/planned, but it was still a good week of running. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 65-70 miles.

I'm Training

There I said it.  Although i've been 'back at it' for a few months now I have maintained that I am not 'training,' in the sense that i'm just going running when I feel like it and not forcing any structure or getting stressed out about missing runs, and most of all allowing myself to cancel runs guilt free.  So what's different now, and why have I given that up? The main reason is that I have decided to head out to Edmonton and do the marathon on August 21. I haven't gotten out of town yet this summer and I have a couple of close friends in Edmonton so I decided it was a good opportunity to go out there and i'm familiar with racing there as well. I raced in Edmonton at Canadian Half-marathon championships in 2005, then again later that year at World Half-marathon championships, I had also started the half marathon in 2004 I think but dropped out, and placed 4th in the half marathon in maybe 2007, I really can't remember. So i've had mixed results out there but i'm looking forward to going and pounding out 42k, and seeing what I can do.


I'm interested to see how fast I can run because in the late summer early fall of 2008, I had retuned to school and was just getting in shape doing quite a bit of hill training. In fact it was one of the first times I really felt like I was a strong hill runner. Anyway, I jumped into the Victoria Half marathon with no expectations and I ended up winning in1:08:50. Now I realize the time is nothing to write home about but it was a surprise at the time and the ease at which I did it was a surprise. So, although for some reason I don't 'feel' like i'm a strong hill runner, the fact is i've been doing hill reps and running up mountains for at least a couple of months now, and I figure adding a little structure and honing some speed might surprise me again.


What i'm NOT interested in is being surprisingly slow, so i'm moving from a place of running casually with a few workouts and long hard runs, to being a little more disciplined to ensure i'm ready to run well. Even though i'm doing some over-distance and over-time runs, you still have to respect the marathon distance. The plan to achieve this is a relatively simple one and that is to make sure i'm doing a hill rep session and a long run at least every 10 days. The reason I say this is because I still intend on doing some very long runs, which naturally take a little more recovery, so every week might be a bit too much to ask. In addition to this i'm adding in hill sprints at the end of two off-day runs a week, which I feel are an excellent supplement to training by increasing efficiency. I will also be much more disciplined with the core workouts, doing two each week and run 7 times per week...there was a time when I ran 13 times per week so I feel like 7 is reasonable!  Of course doing some marathon specific stuff would be a good idea like some LT runs and so on, but i'm not willing to go that far. I still want to continue getting strong on long climbs. Lastly, i'm going to have to do a few runs on the roads to be sure my legs aren't too shocked come race day. Part of that plan will likely be to do the Delta half-marathon the week prior to Edmonton.


So, there it is, still a roadie for now I guess. I'll post a log on Sundays.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I think the overarching reason my run yesterday failed was because I was far to casual about going for a very long run. But it's a good exercise to break it down into specifics as this is a learning process, getting into the longer stuff. I had planned this run for a few days but wasn't treating it with the respect it deserved. The weather was heating up, which should have prompted me to make sure I was well hydrated from the outset(well I suppose this is standard for any run), and I should have left early in the morning, I left at 10 AM. Granted it was only around 18 degrees or so, but this is plenty hot for me. I have been keeping up with Alex's Sweat Science blog so I have been trying to subscribe to the idea that the detriment of running in the heat is mostly in your head, so I kept telling myself this as I was running. The problem is the lack of acclimatization, not just from the summer finally starting but from having a foot of black hair on my head this summer as well! The other problem with heat regulation was the fact that I was wearing a shirt, where I would normally go shirtless. The reason for the shirt was because I didn't trust that my backpack wouldn't wear away my skin, I just didn't want to take the chance, so again I was warmer than I am used to.


The other aspect I did not give enough respect to was my body's recovery from work. Over the long weekend I worked 4 night shifts in a row which made my sleep patterns far from normal(particularly with the sunny weather) and took a lot more out of me than I thought. I didn't feel very good from the beginning of the run but expected to improve as things progressed. So in retrospect I should have scheduled the run after another day of rest/normal sleeping patterns, or at the very least paid closer attention to my nutrition since working over-night also wreaks havoc on that.


Those were the two major factors contributing to my abortion of the run after 2 hours and bussing back into the city from Port Moody. Fortunately I brought a change of clothes which mitigated the discomfort of the people around me. Although there ware a few stinky men on there whose smell was probably attributed to me. On a positive note, I ran some new trail on the bottom of Burnaby mountain and found the Trans-Canada Trail link-up to the Inlet Trail to be some pretty decent rolling single track, despite partially skirting the industry along the shore. I have since mapped out a more solid route for the rest of the run and plan to take another crack at this ~45mi loop out to Buntzen/Diez Vistas.


In other news, the fueling experiments continue. I had picked up some E-Load, E-disc electrolyte tablets to try out a few days ago. But once I got them home I compared the Sodium and Potassium levels to that of the FruitSource 'plus Veggie,' fruit leather bars I had picked up and discovered the fruit bar already contains two tabs worth of those elements in each bar! BUT as you would expect, these bars are considerably more dense than the ones without the veggie(which don't have near the amount of Sodium and Potassium).  SO, they appear to be a good source of these elements but after having one I was having issues with burping up my stomach contents.....so perhaps a little less water, or just stick with the non-veggie, and try the E-discs. Incidentally the 'plus Veggie,' is singular for a reason, its literally just Carrot added. The journey continues.