Forums >Racing>2024 The Waltons: Racing & Training Thread
Waltons ThreadLord
Upcoming Races
03/02 Darkwave One City Half-Marathon
42.6 miles is my highest weekly total since the marathon last fall. My pace run went well once my RP & worked out a few hill issues and my long run was the best HM long run workout I've had in close to a year. With two weeks to go until the first of two halves this spring, I hope it's not too little too late. I'll just stay optimistic.
Working in one of the early Covid epicenters, New York City, I've gotten all the boosters and, four years since it hit, I've yet to fall ill with Covid, so I'm going to give the vaccines some credit. That said, I have no idea what vaccines were available or distributed in other parts of the world, so I'm only commenting on my local experience.
5k 23:48.45 (3/22); 4M 31:26 (2/22); 5M 38:55 (11/23); 10k 49:24 (10/22); 10M 1:29:33 (2/24); Half 1:48:32 (10/22); Marathon 4:29:58 (11/23)Upcoming races: Scotch Plains 5k, 6/12; Firecracker 4-miler, 7/4
Hot Weather Complainer
Always a risky subject...I had Pfizer and definitely wouldn't get it if I had my time again but each person needs to make their own decisions.
I actually still haven't fully got my taste back from whatever I had last week. Could be Covid but felt nothing like the first round - no way I would have run a race a few days after recovering the first time.
5km: 18:34 11/23 │ 10km: 39:10 8/23 │ HM: 1:26:48 9/23 │ M: 3:34:49 6/23
2024 Races:
Motorway Half Marathon February 25, 2024 1:29:55
Christchurch Half-Marathon April 21, 2024 1:27:34
Selwyn Marathon June 2, 2024
Dunedin Half Marathon September 15, 2024
James - good luck with the knee.
Watson - 3 x 20 @ MP seems like a pretty big workout, probably a good call to pull the pin if you weren't feeling it.
Steve - you could set your watch by those splits! I know it's a pretty flat course but still. Considering it was a warm day, you'd been sick, and already had a few km's in the legs when you started, that's a very good effort. Also, what idiot race director does a 9am start for a race in summer?! All the HM's up here are typically 7:30am starts in summer - actually 7am for Waterfront.
Fred - good to hear the workout went well... that can really boost the confidence. With two weeks to go, it sort of is what it is at this point anyway, so I wouldn't second guess yourself too much.
3,000m: 9:07.7 (Nov-21) | 5,000m: 15:39 (Dec-19) | 10,000m: 32:34 (Mar-20)
10km: 33:15 (Sep-19) | HM: 1:09:41 (May-21)* | FM: 2:41:41 (Oct-20)
* Net downhill course
Last race: Runway5 / National 5k Champs, 16:22, National Masters AG Champ!
Up next: Still working on that...
"CONSISTENCY IS KING"
I'd definitely have preferred 7:30am. This one is run by a small husband and wife events team - I'm not sure what the logic on that late start is, I would have thought logistically it would be easier to get the paths closed with an earlier event. They have another summer race in December that used to start at 10am but now 9am, but it's still even worse with an earlier sunrise in December.
It's okay for B races though, and I'd never have an A race in summer. Hopefully it just serves to toughen me up, then I'll get a nice calm day in April, with some cloud cover.
Last Sunday of Nov 2019, I had a 9am half-marathon. It was really hot and I had a massive fade. In hindsight I would have walked the drink stations.
https://www.strava.com/activities/2886729884
Steve - why wouldn't you have Pfizer again? Did you have significant side-effects? I hope it's not anti lock down thinking, as that's conflating a few things.
PRs: 5km 18:43 (Dec 2015), 10km 39:59 (Sep 2020), half 1:26:16 (Sep 2016), full 3:09:28 (Jun 2015)
40+ PRs: 5km 19:31 (Oct 2020), 10km 39:59 (Sep 2020), half 1:29:39 (Jun 2018), full 3:13:55 (Sep 2022)
2023 PRs (hope to beat in 2024): 5km 20:34, 10km 41:37, half 1:32:32, full 3:21:05
2024 PRs: 5km 20:25
My week:
Monday rest
Tuesday pm 3 with strides
Wednesday am 6.5 with 8x4 min HM effort pm strength training
Thursday rest
Friday am strength training pm 8 miles
Satruday 3 easy + core
Sunday 10
Mark, nice week! Congrats to Miss 6 on her new PR. Decapitated roadkill? Yikes.
JamesD, hopefully the knee continues to improve.
Watson, I would think any of those 4 things could impact your run. I find running is really rough for several days after the covid vaccine. Day after, I usually wund up taking a sick day and barely move, forget running. I had read somewhere there is a dip in vo2max post vaccine.
mmerkle, nice job on the 10 miler. Assuming the course hasn't changed much, that is a tough course. It felt like they found every single hill in Columbia.
Steve, nice job on the HM, especially in less than ideal conditions. That seems like you are on track for your goal race. In the US, it seems like they are calling it a yearly covid vaccine. I skipped the booster this year because I just couldn't bring myself to feeling really awful again. I won't take Moderna again. Besides the being sick, a week after the vaccine, I then spent the next week randomly breaking out in hives.
Darkwave, yep, in the smaller races, aside from running club ones, it's pretty rare to see anyone in the 16 minute range. So the 13 minute ones should have been a dead giveaway. It also remains the race with the oddest raffle prize ever--free pet spay or neuter. Overheard by the winner "I don't have a pet".
Fred, nice week. How much time do you have between the HMs?
Last Sunday of Nov 2019, I had a 9am half-marathon. It was really hot and I had a massive fade. In hindsight I would have walked the drink stations. https://www.strava.com/activities/2886729884 Steve - why wouldn't you have Pfizer again? Did you have significant side-effects? I hope it's not anti lock down thinking, as that's conflating a few things.
I've actually heard of a lot of people who faded or crashed on Sunday. Lucky for me it was a progression that turned into even splits, which I suppose is a fade in terms of goals if not splits. A guy in our coaching group ran 1:23 last year and said he suffered badly in the second half and faded to 1:26.
I got shingles soon after the second shot, which is a documented side effect but obviously nowhere near as bad as some that other people had. In terms of risk and reward, given it doesn't prevent Covid and Covid is very mild, it doesn't meet the threshold. Lockdown is another issue entirely but a similar mindset to "mandatory" vaccinations (it's not really optional if it means you lose your job and get banished from a lot of public places). Thank goodness that shameful episode is behind us.
Woops, I went all 2020 again. Never go 2020.
Oh, so you think Shingles may be correlated? I remember you getting shingles, but didn't realize you thought it was vaccine side-effect (I probably just skimmed over that).
It can be really, really hard to know sometimes whether it's causation, partially causation, or just correlated.
Covid can be really mild for some people and sometimes not. I know a few people who first time it effectively was just a mild cold, and next time they were wiped out for a week.To be clear, I'm not telling you what you should / not do.
My first bout I was wiped out for a few days and didn't run for a week. I'd still take that over shingles.
I can't prove the causation but the evidence is quite compelling - the inventor of the mRna technology highlighted shingles and similar conditions which generally strike a compromised immune system as being a risk. I reported it as vaccine injury and there were tons of other reported cases especially in age groups which are a low risk of getting shingles (generally under 50). I got it 2 weeks after the second shot. Then got Covid 2 months after shingles cleared up.
At the time, with the information we were being given (a lot of which has since turned out not to be true i.e. no tests were done on whether the vaccine reduced transmissibility), it seemed like the right call. I'm definitely not opposed to vaccines in general - in NZ you can only get the Shingles vaccine once you turn 50. I'll be getting that one which has been effective over many years.
Half Crazy - That sounds terrible and I can understand why you'd skip it.
Even though there seem to be differing opinions, it's so good that it can be discussed openly now in a civil way. They were some crazy times...
Steve, there is a non-Mrna vaccine that got approved in the US. Some claim it has less harsh side effects. I dragged my feet on getting anything this year. I'll probably get it in May when I'm 90 days out. I got Pfizer in 2022, that one was similar side effects to Moderna, minus the hives. I have no proof, but fairly certain I got covid less than a week after the hives rersolved. It was during a huge peak in Maryland and testing wass near impossible. I felt very simiilar to how I did with this confirmed case and running afterwards has been similar. I'm also fairly cecrtain I got OG covid as well. That was awful and did lead to me dealing with the sucky side effects up until this year. By awful--2 weeks off work, developed pnuemonia on top of whatever vial hell I had, 104 fevers, needed rest breaks when doing things like showering, could only sleep sitting up for a month, etc.
Agreed on all counts, especially on keeping it civil.
Here it's definitely stayed civil. I ultimately work for a huge healthcare organization and the initial covid series is required for employment (so is proof of usual childhood vaccines and a yearly flu shot). We also will go to universal masking when needed. I think most people have accepted it, although there is push back when masks become required.
Fred - Will you be updating the table with results?
At this point I think it's more or less comparable to the flu. It'll go around every year or whatever, there's a vaccine, you may or may not choose to get the vaccine, which like any vaccine has some side-effects. There was some misinformation on the way along, and probably too much use of fear-based media from the previous government here in NZ that I think probably moved some people permanently away from considering risks in a balanced way on this topic (you can have a civil discussion about this with many people, but not everyone...). Like any effective virus it mutated over time to become more infectious and less dangerous but I'm not sure the media narrative evolved in the same way.
I felt pretty horrible after the 2nd shot, and the booster for like 24-36 hours. My wife was totally bedridden for a couple days after each. That's never happened to me after any other vaccination. It's not necessarily a reason to not get vaccinated, but it is a bit concerning. Like Steve said, given the degree to which the virus has moderated, it does make you question whether further vaccinations are worth it. Very different from something like measles, for example, where the vaccine is safer, and the risk of serious illness is much higher. Even just the standard flu vaccine passes the test for me, as the side effects are generally just a dead arm for a day or so!
I wasn't planning on it, but if that's the tradition on this thread I can try to start doing it. Does that mean digging through each race report to find the time? If so, it would help if people could put the time at the very start or very end of the report, or even post it separately. 21 pages in already, I'm not sure when I'll have time to go back through all those, but I can try to remember doing it going forward, or if people want to post times YTD in new replies it would make it easier for me.