Tyson - your Dad is right but I really want to get through one marathon properly before extending my goals…my coach agrees with Tyson’s Dad but also with me about just trying to nail one

Tyson - your Dad is right but I really want to get through one marathon properly before extending my goals…my coach agrees with Tyson’s Dad but also with me about just trying to nail one

My Dad is always right, and he’s won a Moose Mug..😜

My Dad loved his glory days and is confident that Steve will have a glory day. 

If at first you don’t succeed then try, try again. 👍

Had to break down and do my run on the TM today.  Negative 10 without the windchill  Was actually surprised at how it was OK once I got into the faster portion of the run.  Very annoying that the TM at the gym shut the workout off and I had to reset to finish the last couple of miles.  Apparently even machines know that an hour 20 on the treadmill is somehow against the Geneva convention.....

In my glory days I ran a  50k on the gym TM and a couple of TM marathons.

Don't be stupid like me.

My final marathon will be a head to head race with Cal at CIM.

 

After that I’ll be focusing full time on my true love…which is golf which I’m quite good at. 

 

The idea of participating in an ultra 50/100 miles/48 hour thing a bit faster than walking pace is quite frankly for retards. 🤷‍♂️

I'll never play an old man game like golf. NEVER.

Race report: Clevedon Country Half Marathon, 5 Feb 2023

It's nice to see a new race on the calendar.  Even if I hate summer HMs, a new race in my old neighbourhood in the Clevedon countryside (with road closures!) is too much to pass up.  Been a tough few years for races around here, and it's brave for someone to take the punt on a new event rather than just trying to build their existing events back up.

Even with an early 7am start, the temp was around 20C (68F), 95% humidity, and heated up as the race went on - although the humidity would've dropped off a little at the same time as the race was shortly after sunrise.  Given the heat, my tendency to wilt in said heat, and my relative lack of training (only really started to feel I was properly in the training groove the last 3-4 weeks after having probable Covid in Dec), I aimed to go out pretty conservatively (3:40-3:45/km) and just go from there.

You never know who will show up but I end up in the lead group with 3 others.  I towed them around the course for the first 11k or so, including Dan Coates (very good marathoner who I run with occasionally), Chris Trent (quick and a rival from way back) and Lisa Cross (current NZ Womens Marathon champ and XC Champ... off to Bathurst in 2 weeks for World XC Champs).  That wasn't intentional... I was just doing my thing and found a good groove.  Not much sign of last week's floods apart from some debris around the Tourist Road bridge which floods periodically in winter anyways - and a VERY soft grass start / finish chute which I have no doubt will be mud by the time we finish.  The course was definitely more rolling than expected and didn't really resemble the elevation graph on the website (the total elevation gain of 150m / 500 ft from my watch is in line with Auckland HM which is regarded as being relatively hilly), but there were some nice long flat stretches to hit a rhythm too.  I wasn't too worried about what the others were doing as I was in a good rhythm after beating off a slight stitch around the 6k mark.  They fell off the pace a little after the halfway mark.

A few km later we hit a gravel section I didn't expect but sometimes race directors are horrible liars.  I figured the "12% on fine gravel" was the start and finish of the race which totals roughly 2.5km in the showgrounds (i.e. 12%).  However apparently "88% on sealed roads" included a further 2.5km on unsealed road with very coarse gravel.  If the elevation graph was misleading, this was an outright lie! I backed off the pace because it was shady, my sunglasses had fogged up a bit and high stack shoes on chunky gravel seemed like a recipe for an ankle injury.  I could hear someone come powering up behind me and it was Dan, who passed me at that point.  I upped the effort level just a touch and he slowed down a little and I caught him again just as we got off the gravel and back on the road (glad that's over!).  I figured we had 20-30 secs on Lisa and Chris from the u-turn at the bottom of the gravel section.

Fortunately at this point I know there are no more hidden tricks as it's back the way we came to the finish line.  It sounds like Dan has dropped off the pace a bit, but as we turn on to Tourist Road (HEY THERE'S MY OLD HOUSE!), we hit the 10km runners on their way out.  They are generous with their cheers, I get some and I can tell someone not too far behind me gets some too.  They aren't close enough for me to glimpse their shadow in the morning sun (how to look behind you a bit without looking behind you!)... but they're not that far behind, maybe 20-30 seconds.  I dare not look back to see who it is, I figure Dan has fired his bullets already but Lisa is as tough as they come and Chris always had a good turn of pace.

It is getting VERY hot too but I figure it's gonna be hard work all the way home.  I really wanted to back off around the 17-18k mark but I know there's just one more hill and someone is trying to chase me down.  Under my breath, I variously curse the mystery runner behind me, my own competitive streak, and the lying race director, and dig it in anyway. Back over the Tourist Road bridge and up the final hill... very tough going to keep the rhythm up that one, I felt pretty dodgy and a touch lightheaded at the top but it's flat all the way home now.  I'm pushing the pace but I really hope I don't have to find another gear because I'm just about cooked.

Turning back into the showgrounds I know there's around 400m to go and a sneak a look over my shoulder through the twists in the trees... I can't see anyone so I must have at least 10-15 seconds, maybe more.  A finish line sprint would be an absolute liability here with all the mud (also I do not like my chances of winning that against a national champ XC runner!).  I really wanted to enjoy running down the finish chute but I was more worried about not losing my footing with all the mud - although it's still a great feeling to cross the line in first place.  Never take those days for granted.

Turns out the second place runner was Lisa Cross who was only 10 seconds behind me so it was pretty damn close too!  She has about 20 seconds on Chris, with Dan a further 20 seconds back.  One of the closest finishes in the lead group I've seen in quite a long time.

Hilariously the MC asks me if it helped knowing the local roads out here, I had to 'fess up and say that back when I lived out here, I was much more likely to be getting home in fairly average shape after a big night out at this time on a Sunday morning.

Official time was 1:17:50, so I hit my goal.  Not especially quick but I kept the pace consistent despite the course being tougher than expected, and the race director being a liar.  The last 3km was the quickest 3km stretch of the race for me, given the hot conditions I'm particularly happy with how I paced it.  Tentative goal for Waterfront HM in 2 months (which is dead flat, and hopefully a lot cooler) is 1:13:59.

Side-note, I saw a very young looking kid out there, turns out he was 16 years old and ran 1:19 (which apparently included a stop to throw up).  I'm sure he'll be kicking my butt soon enough.

South Florida right now is overcast and gloomy, matching it up more with the rest of the country. Except it’s 70F and humid. Was overall another warmer week of running, though the “wind chill” did help it feel a bit cooler. 

My week was good. It was kind of the first week of the taper, which meant about 10 miles less of running and more time for other things. My RHR is also finally back to normal. No big things to comment on except for the Tuesday workout, which was the first time I’d done a “Michigan” workout of this caliber. I’ve done intervals with tempo recoveries before, but this week was the hardest I ever pushed for the tempo recovery. The other new thing my coach had me do was a 10k race effort instead of a 15-miler (which is what I’ve always done in the past at 2 weeks out). It was interesting. I forgot en route what the goal was, whether 10k race effort or half-marathon race effort, but I pushed it the whole way, even entering tunnel vision at one point, which is something I never do during a training run. I saw it as an opportunity to practice my mental game during the last 10k of the marathon. My heart rate was way high… like in the 190s, Assuming it’s not a faulty reading, don’t know if it means something about my fitness or if that will be an issue down the road. Either way, it’s bizarre tapering for an “A,” race, but not knowing until race weekend whether I’ll actually attempt the PR. It will depend on weather, which is being widely unpredictable this winter.  

Weekly for period: From: 01/30/2023 To 02/05/2023

Total distance:  43.6 mi running; 25.8 mi cycling 

Re: LotR, Marvel, and DC, I’m always amazed at people who don’t gain anything from these movies. It’s almost like you’re part robot ;-) I’m sure I’m biased coming at these stories with a theoretical background in myth-making and storytelling (and sure, the Marvel cookie-cutter storylines can get old very quickly), but I’m of the persuasion that there’s positive things to say about each of them—and I am a movie snob (for example, Zebano, I hated Glass Onion) (Btw, Mark, glad you added that the Christopher Nolan Batman sequence [especially 1 + 2] is superior to most of what Marvel has put out). That being said, Joker is not what I’d call a super-hero movie or action flick, and gets its own special recommendation.  

Re: sleep and Fishy, I am envious of your sleep! Holy cow! I aim for 7-8 and usually get 6. Lately I’ve been skipping 6am group runs to get more sleep on the weekends, but still, those weekends are over so quickly…I often set my alarm even on Sundays. I also wear a Fitbit at night to track HR stats and sleep, but the hours are never accurate (even if the fall-asleep/wake-up times are). According to my Fitbit, I’m awake for at least an hour every night. So Andy, unless your son really is up at 3:30 watching TV, those stats can probably be ignored. 

Fishy, that’s cool re: not checking the watch. I actually tried that yesterday during my 10k and it worked surprisingly well. Sure, I went too fast at the beginning, but as someone who also gets messed up by GPS inconsistencies during a race, running by feel versus being focussed on watch feedback is a good skill to have. 

Zebano, hard pass on the sardine mid-run fuel choice. Anchovies, maybe ;-) 

mmerkle, this is ages late now, but if you placed 2nd, then I really wouldn’t beat myself up about the time! especially since it wasn’t an A race either. 

And re: alcohol… maybe age plays a role. And some people metabolize alcohol differently than others. But it’s probably also the kind of alcohol. I think beer, especially if part of the regular diet (and if wheat beer, ha!) has more going for it than hard liquor. 

CK, hope you’re feeling better this week! Cool to see your spring running plans solidify. 

Krash, that was a steep incline in that mid-week trail run you did! And of course, I wouldn’t eat sushi before a race if I didn’t like it. Sounds like a good plan re: 24 race in June with a 12-hour training run to prepare. Sounds like you’re setting yourself up for success better than doing that 48hr-200 mile attempt (though that’s an amazing goal and can’t wait to follow you attempting that in the future! Sounds like you’re going to need, and could start building a great crew for that). 

Re: the mile: It’s been a LONG time since I raced it. I remember it from track, and it was during that time that I realized I was more long-distance (endurance) than speed runner. And mmerkle, yeah the strategy you described (first lap fast, second lap settle, third lap increase effort, which usually means this lap will be about the same as the second, then last lap whatever is left), was the strategy passed along to me during that time as well. The mile is a race where you have to hammer it out from the start and as others have said, train yourself not to rein in that second-to-last mile. It could be cool to race a mile again, JMac! And a race seems more conducive to a PR effort than a time-trial. The push needed to hold that PR effort is something I haven’t been able to draw out on my own. 

Re: Flavio and WCrunner, Flavio, did you explain that “WC” in Europe stands for water closet, aka toilet? I’ll admit that had popped into my head on occasion as well :-) sorry for the unfortunate association! 

Also re Flavio and super shoes: also haven’t run in anything more super than the ASICS Nimbus. I have an old pair of Mizuno spikes that probably are carbon-dated to pre-millennium, but still seem to work fine when I remember to bring them.  

Great pre-10k fueling!! Curious about how the race turned out. 

Congrats on the fast 100m, Tyson. 

Congrats on the unofficial 10k PR, Andy!

Congrats on the strong HM showing in what sounds like warm and tricky-footing conditions, Mark. While you were cursing that mystery runner behind you, they were probably cursing you (though probably not competing with you for placing, so maybe less so)… and you got the better end of that deal. 

Words I’m going to add to my anti-negative thoughts toolbox: A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.

(edited to fix to the chart)