Up for the challenge by FatFrank

It's been a while since I've posted here but for some reason I felt the urge to come back and write a little. I've started running again only a week ago and I'm off to a rough start as I've booked a plane ticket for the Miami Half Marathon a long ago but I've been injured since. I'll backtrack a bit here just to get the story in line. The training leading up to Chicago went very well and I was healthy the whole way thru. The marathon itself went fairly well even though I lost my wheels in the final 5k. It was nice though to cruise thru the half way point in 1:11:14 without feeling the slightest pain. It was actually the case up until 35K but a 19ish min final 5k just screwed everything up and that's where I had to settle for a 2h25 instead of the 2:23 which was well in range before taht point. Anyways, I took a couple weeks off after that and started running after my well deserved break. I had some aches but then things went from bad to worse. It started off with a calf strain and then an achilles problem. Bottom line, I've been off from consistent running eversince the Chichago Marathon.

I'm now back but with 1 week of running under my belt i'm skeptical of what I can achieve in Miami this Sunday. I'll give it a try anyways and in the worst case scenario, I'll simply drop out at 10k and consider it a victory to be able to run pain free. Either way, it's a long way until the Ottawa Marathon and that's where it counts so I'll just enjoy myself in the sun and on the beach.

Looks like I’m playing yo-yo lately. One day I’ll feel good and I’ll be willing to increase my mileage but two days later I’ll feel sluggish and will complain that I’m overtraining. What I’ve noticed is that my long runs are no longer giving me the active rest that it did when I was doing 50min jog. Let’s just say that running 1h45 cannot leave you feeling top shape for your intervals the next day, especially since I have a tendency to be taking my easy days a bit hard. It can fly on an 80K week but once you hit 130, you need to smooth out on the easy stuff. I guess that I’ll have to be careful because I’ve experienced overtraining before and it kept me slow and feeling like hell for a good 3 months. Considering where I’m at so early in the season, I have much to lose by doing a stupid mistake of that sort. Anyways, I’m still running the times on the track and with 4 easy days (because of a business trip) I’ll be ready to hurt in Ottawa. Speaking of which, looks like we’ll have stiff competition! Merga (the winner this year in Boston) is targeting the world record of 27:02. I don’t even think I could keep up for 2km but it’s gonna be nice to start side-by-side with a guy shooting for a WR.

Got some more good news as I received entry confirmation from both elite coordinators of the NYC Half-Marathon and the Chicago Marathon. Looks like the job is done really early in the season so I’ll have to set sights on other interim objectives. The first one is to break 31 for 10K; looks like a long shot really but we’ll see what happens. I can’t wait to get to Ottawa, such a festive road race – there’s an absolute buzz around the city. Oh, and also it’s great because the race is on a Saturday night giving us the possibility to have an all-out post race celebration until 3am – Right, bars close at 2am in Ontario, crap.

I guess I have to say that this first experience on half-marathon was a bit like I anticipated – which is like nothing I could’ve anticipated. The journey started out well and I had the chance to meet people from all over the world since I stayed at a youth hostel in the heart of Québec city the night before the race. They were all rallying up for a pub crawl downtown and I have to say that I was tempted to tag along - oh my Irish background betrays me again. We had good conversations though up until 11pm and I only caved once to peer pressure and only had one tasty stout while turning down another 10 at least. I made up for it by drinking another gallon of water – maybe not the wisest decision as it got me up 3 times during the night rushing to the facilities.

The next morning the legs felt super fresh and relax and I kinda knew right off the start that I was in for a fun ride. The KM markers were kinda hard to understand as there was 3 different distances on the same course. The only real split that I did manage to get was at 10k. I knew I was rollin but I was clearly not expecting a 32:15 split. I didn’t really panic knowing that I was almost at halfway point and still feeling relaxed. With 8k to go I started struggling a bit with a moderate head wind and a couple hills; just enough to make a difference. I slowed down the pace only by a few seconds but nothing major – however I was starting to get that nasty feeling of exhaustion. Was I ever glad to see that “1K To Go” banner and looking at my watch I knew I was well under the 1H11 Top 100 seed standard for Chicago and also well under my objective of 1:10:20 and that gave me enough juice to hammer a final K in style.

I ended up running a 1:08:16 with close to 8 min ahead of the second place guy. I don’t know exactly where I pulled this from but I guess it was the right decision to move up distances. Next race is now the Ottawa 10K and with a 32:15 split on Half I think that my PR on that distance might be in jeopardy.

Good running all!

I’d be lying if I told you that I wasn’t a tad nervous about the half-marathon this week-end. Actually I feel like when I first started running, not knowing at all what to expect but feeling in the back of my head that it could be surprisingly good or awfully painful. Oddly enough this time I’m not worried whether I can win it or not (well ok, maybe a bit), nor about having to reach a certain standard; I’m just nervous about having to explore that whole new territory. I’ve never had to race for longer than 10k and I can imagine that if I start hurting too early I could be in for a long ride. Actually, the reason I’m saying that is because I ran a tempo 12k to get a good feel of the pace and to have an idea of my mental state with another 9k to go. First K was a bit fast in 3:12 and then settled to 3:18-3:21 for a 33:05 10k split. I felt alright but the idea of having to keep it up for another half hour seemed like one heck of a challenge at the time. Likely I’ll be a lot more relaxed in a race set-up and knowing from the start that 12k is not the finish line will have me go thru that checkpoint in a lot less pain. Luckily workouts have shown this week that even if I’m at the highest mileage I’ve been in the past 3 years I can still record some decent times. Just last Wednesday I ran a 10x 1k in avg 3:05 with only a 1min30 rest. It’s incredible how fast I recover as long as I don’t hit that lactate threshold – in which case it’s over. Now, I have to take a look back at my training and just built the confidence as I toe the line. I truly believe I’m ready for a fast time and I’m gonna go ahead and predict a 1:10:20 if winds are calm – but that’s just me talking. Hopefully that will give me the win cause I already told friends that if I can put my hands on the first prize I’m paying a round to everyone the following week-end at our annual Open Bar / Open Grill BBQ.