Remember how I said back in my first post when predicting the future course of this blog - “Doubtless too, there'll be a few gaps, perhaps some despondency, hopefully some steady progress…”? Well, folks, we’ve well and truly arrived at the first ‘despondency’ stage of this journey.
A torn left hamstring means I’m out of the Gold Coast half marathon.
It happened well into the taper with my last scheduled interval session at 5K+ pace. It was meant to be 1K at 9km/h; followed by six repetitions of 400M at 13.5km/h and 300M at 4.6km/h; finishing with a 500M jog at 8.5km/h. A total of 5.7K, all on a 1% incline. But at precisely 330M into the first 13.5km/h repetition, and without any sign of trouble, I felt a strong twinge in the left hamstring. It was similar to the one I’d felt in my right hamstring a few weeks back that I mentioned in my medical update post. But unlike then, this did not run itself out and I quickly shut down the treadmill for fear of being flung off the back as my hobble became more pronounced.
A quick visit to the physio, confirmed by an ultrasound, established a hamstring tear that needs about 4-6 weeks rehab to get right. I was also warned that any shortcuts would significantly elevate the risk of a recurrence down the track. And having lived through the frustration of repeated calf muscle tears in my previous running life, it’s a warning I need to heed.
I won’t even attempt to describe the hollowness I’m feeling right now.
I suppose this sort of thing comes with the territory, and I’ve been lucky not to have had any real injuries so far in this campaign. And I know there’s a fair chance I’ll look back on this time as one of those formative experiences that will propel me to even better performances going forward. But at the moment, that’s cold comfort.
So, with my Gold Coast flights and accommodation all booked and paid for, I’ll head up there all the same. I guess there are plenty of worse places in the world to spend a weekend moping around and feeling sorry for oneself ...
Tuesday, 30 June 2015
Monday, 29 June 2015
The next stop
It’s time. The Gold Coast half marathon - the second stop on this quest - is now just a few days away, so here’s my pre-race post.
This is probably my favourite race, maybe fractionally ahead of Sydney’s City-to-Surf, and certainly my favourite half marathon of the three courses I’ve run (the others being Sydney and Auckland). The Gold Coast course is quite flat, it’s always a good crowd, and the weather (at least for the very early starting half marathon) is invariably kind. And no matter how buggered you might be feeling at the time, it’s very hard not to love the views out over the water on that long stretch back to the start/finish line as the sun starts to rise. Magic!
If you can overlook their somewhat breathless hyperbole, the race website gives a reasonable description of the course:
The ASICS Half Marathon is one of Australia’s premier running events, providing both an avenue for those making the step up in distance and a stage for frequent half marathoners to strut their stuff on a world-standard course.
Starting at the race precinct in Southport, the course hugs the picturesque Broadwater, providing views of the Wavebreak, Ephraim and South Stradbroke Islands. Enjoy the sights as you run to Paradise Point along the flat, fast terrain.
Give yourself a small reward as you run through 10.5km and around the northern turn. Enjoy the thrill of heading for home as you once again take in the water views and the buzz of being half way there.
Cross the Loders Creek Bridge and you’ll know it’s only one kilometre until the end. Soak up the atmosphere created by your fellow runners and the on-course supporters as you reach the Gold Coast’s famous finish chute, the line and personal glory.
In addition, the race organisation is always excellent, and there are plenty of decent hotels nearby with a lunch buffet on which to binge after the race. This year, I’ve booked into the Grand Chancellor Hotel for the nights before and after. It seems to offer quite an enticing seafood buffet which starts daily at 5:30pm, albeit there’s no sign of lunch. I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold on that long with the race finishing around 8:00am, but we’ll see how it goes.
In any event, I’ll certainly be giving every encouragement to the marathoners, and keeping a particular eye on the 3:40 group as it goes past.
I’ll also be cheering Steve Moneghetti, who’s acting as the 3-hour group pacer. Kudos to the organisers for getting the great man involved in that way. It will certainly be one for the scrapbook for those 3+ hour runners who manage to follow him around.
This year, I’ll be flying up to the Gold Coast from Sydney on Saturday morning and expect to arrive well in time to check in to the hotel and then head to the Expo and bib collection at the Convention Centre. After that, it will be a very quiet Saturday evening to be ready for the 6:00am race start on Sunday. The organisers recommend that runners get to the starting precinct by 5:00am. With the hotel about 4K from the start line, I’ll probably leave before 4:30am to catch one of the buses, or perhaps the new tram, that will ferry people there. I have a morbid fear of arriving late for race starts and hence invariably end up getting there with far too much time to spare.
I’ve also made the all-important selection of the daggy jumper that I’ll be wearing to the start line and then tossing once the race gets underway. I’ve actually been wearing it much more frequently than usual over the past week or so, just to wring that last bit of wear out of it.
It’s always a slightly poignant moment having to say farewell to a faithful piece of clothing in that way. But it has to be done, and I suppose it’s a good way of refreshing the wardrobe. Thinking about it, I’ve probably got another two or three tops that I can dispense with at other races later this year, but after that, the remaining ones are mostly hoodies and such from various universities I’ve studied at over the years and I’d really like to hang on to them. It looks like I might need to visit to a charity clothing shop - to buy a jumper that will be immediately donated to a charity clothing shop!
I can’t remember exactly how I came to run my first Gold Coast half in July 2005. I do know that, by that time, I’d made the fateful decision to run my first marathon (in Sydney in September 2005), and my younger brother and his family lived in southern Queensland, reasonably close to the Gold Coast. So I probably just heard about it as one of those ‘must-do’ events and decided to incorporate it into the program. My time that first year was 2:00:13.
By the next year, 2006, I felt good enough to latch on to the 1:50 pacers and managed to stick with them for the duration before finishing ahead of them - but in a time of 1:50:07! It still rankles.
After several years’ hibernation, I lined up again last year and finished in 2:00:21. My plan was to stick with the 2 hour pacers until the final quarter of the race and then charge ahead to the finish. Sadly, as with Sydney in May, I couldn’t find them at the starting grid and had no idea how my pace was going during the race.
Those following this odyssey closely so far will also recognise a disturbing (actually, extremely bloody annoying!) pattern here of my being unable to beat key time barriers, with now four half marathons at times of 2:00:13, 2:00:21, 2:00:26 and 1:50:07. Sadly, I don’t have any with times of 1:59:xx. I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, but I’m getting a bit sick of it!
My training program for this - my 11th lifetime half marathon - has comprised the last six weeks of Hal Higdon’s 12-week advanced half marathon program. Basically, it’s been a mirror of the final six weeks of training for the Sydney half. In that same period before Sydney, I blew up quite badly in three reasonably significant training sessions and missed another entirely. This time around, I’ve got through those equivalent sessions, and most of the others, pretty much unscathed. While I missed one 5K session and had a minor stumble with a fast 6.5K session, I did convert one of the 5K Sunday sessions to an outdoor run around the 7K Bay Run, albeit I would have liked to have done a few more.
All up, I expect to have run 260.8K’s in the six full training weeks since Sydney, as follows - 47.92, 46.06, 35.52, 60.04, 52.40 and 18.90. In the period before Sydney, the corresponding weekly totals were - 39.77, 50.71, 22.40, 55.49, 47.91 and 18.90 (total - 235.2K).
I’m not really sure what to make of this general improvement compared to pre-Sydney. It’s probably a combination of a few changes - more miles in the legs, using gels immediately before each of the longer and harder runs (thanks Steph!), compression shorts, a weekly weights training session (good job, Corey), and sprinting toward the end of some of the shorter runs to get a feel for the extra speed and crank up the heart rate. There hasn’t been much of an improvement in weight or general nutrition, but I’m working on that.
In the last few days, I’ve also managed to pick up a bit of a sniffle in this near-arctic Sydney winter. It’s been getting down to almost 10 degrees (Celsius) overnight recently and not much more than 17 or 18 during the day, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before I succumbed to something like that. Aside from forcing me to miss my scheduled Sunday outdoor run around the Bay, it hasn’t had any adverse effect and should be gone by the weekend.
Which leaves my plan for this race.
It’s instructive to look back at my Gold Coast times after having run Sydney 6-7 weeks previously. In 2005, I ran Sydney in 2:04:33 and backed up with a 2:00:13 at the Gold Coast. The next year, I ran Sydney in 1:54:16 and then the Gold Coast in 1:50:07. A 4+ minute improvement on both occasions. Which probably reflects the relative difficulty of the two courses, given I would have been in roughly the same sort of shape each time.
This year, I reckon the Sydney course was a good minute or two tougher than the course I ran on in 2005 and 2006, so on that basis alone, I’m probably looking at a 1:54-1:55 finish this time, based on my 2:00:26 in Sydney.
Once I factor in some very productive, confidence-building, training over the past six weeks, I find myself edging more and more towards the courageous option and starting with the 1:50 pacers to see what happens. I also know that if I’m going to get this BQ (a sub-3:40), I’ll effectively need to run back-to-back 1:50 half marathons. So if I think I have a fair shot at one now, why not go out with the pacers and try and hang on?
The website names the 1:50 pacers as Andrew Stolz and Mark Stella (don’t know them), and says they’ll be wearing red balloons and starting “in the middle of Zone B”, which is the place where those looking to finish between 1:45 and 2 hours are supposed to start. Given last year’s disappointment of not being able to find the 2 hour pacers, and the disproportionately large number of walkers who seem to line up well ahead of where they really should (I recall wasting plenty of time and energy last year dodging walkers and very slow joggers in the first kilometre or two of the event), I’m minded to start at the front of Zone B or even in Zone A, which is for those looking for a sub-1:45 time, to make absolutely certain of latching on to the 1:50 bus.
So 1:49:59 is the plan.
Which all sounds very logical and straightforward, but of course you can’t see the several drafts of these last few paragraphs I’ve written over the past few days reflecting my vacillation over this.
But now it’s done.
See you after the race!
This is probably my favourite race, maybe fractionally ahead of Sydney’s City-to-Surf, and certainly my favourite half marathon of the three courses I’ve run (the others being Sydney and Auckland). The Gold Coast course is quite flat, it’s always a good crowd, and the weather (at least for the very early starting half marathon) is invariably kind. And no matter how buggered you might be feeling at the time, it’s very hard not to love the views out over the water on that long stretch back to the start/finish line as the sun starts to rise. Magic!
If you can overlook their somewhat breathless hyperbole, the race website gives a reasonable description of the course:
The ASICS Half Marathon is one of Australia’s premier running events, providing both an avenue for those making the step up in distance and a stage for frequent half marathoners to strut their stuff on a world-standard course.
Starting at the race precinct in Southport, the course hugs the picturesque Broadwater, providing views of the Wavebreak, Ephraim and South Stradbroke Islands. Enjoy the sights as you run to Paradise Point along the flat, fast terrain.
Give yourself a small reward as you run through 10.5km and around the northern turn. Enjoy the thrill of heading for home as you once again take in the water views and the buzz of being half way there.
Cross the Loders Creek Bridge and you’ll know it’s only one kilometre until the end. Soak up the atmosphere created by your fellow runners and the on-course supporters as you reach the Gold Coast’s famous finish chute, the line and personal glory.
In addition, the race organisation is always excellent, and there are plenty of decent hotels nearby with a lunch buffet on which to binge after the race. This year, I’ve booked into the Grand Chancellor Hotel for the nights before and after. It seems to offer quite an enticing seafood buffet which starts daily at 5:30pm, albeit there’s no sign of lunch. I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold on that long with the race finishing around 8:00am, but we’ll see how it goes.
In any event, I’ll certainly be giving every encouragement to the marathoners, and keeping a particular eye on the 3:40 group as it goes past.
I’ll also be cheering Steve Moneghetti, who’s acting as the 3-hour group pacer. Kudos to the organisers for getting the great man involved in that way. It will certainly be one for the scrapbook for those 3+ hour runners who manage to follow him around.
This year, I’ll be flying up to the Gold Coast from Sydney on Saturday morning and expect to arrive well in time to check in to the hotel and then head to the Expo and bib collection at the Convention Centre. After that, it will be a very quiet Saturday evening to be ready for the 6:00am race start on Sunday. The organisers recommend that runners get to the starting precinct by 5:00am. With the hotel about 4K from the start line, I’ll probably leave before 4:30am to catch one of the buses, or perhaps the new tram, that will ferry people there. I have a morbid fear of arriving late for race starts and hence invariably end up getting there with far too much time to spare.
I’ve also made the all-important selection of the daggy jumper that I’ll be wearing to the start line and then tossing once the race gets underway. I’ve actually been wearing it much more frequently than usual over the past week or so, just to wring that last bit of wear out of it.
It’s always a slightly poignant moment having to say farewell to a faithful piece of clothing in that way. But it has to be done, and I suppose it’s a good way of refreshing the wardrobe. Thinking about it, I’ve probably got another two or three tops that I can dispense with at other races later this year, but after that, the remaining ones are mostly hoodies and such from various universities I’ve studied at over the years and I’d really like to hang on to them. It looks like I might need to visit to a charity clothing shop - to buy a jumper that will be immediately donated to a charity clothing shop!
I can’t remember exactly how I came to run my first Gold Coast half in July 2005. I do know that, by that time, I’d made the fateful decision to run my first marathon (in Sydney in September 2005), and my younger brother and his family lived in southern Queensland, reasonably close to the Gold Coast. So I probably just heard about it as one of those ‘must-do’ events and decided to incorporate it into the program. My time that first year was 2:00:13.
By the next year, 2006, I felt good enough to latch on to the 1:50 pacers and managed to stick with them for the duration before finishing ahead of them - but in a time of 1:50:07! It still rankles.
After several years’ hibernation, I lined up again last year and finished in 2:00:21. My plan was to stick with the 2 hour pacers until the final quarter of the race and then charge ahead to the finish. Sadly, as with Sydney in May, I couldn’t find them at the starting grid and had no idea how my pace was going during the race.
Those following this odyssey closely so far will also recognise a disturbing (actually, extremely bloody annoying!) pattern here of my being unable to beat key time barriers, with now four half marathons at times of 2:00:13, 2:00:21, 2:00:26 and 1:50:07. Sadly, I don’t have any with times of 1:59:xx. I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, but I’m getting a bit sick of it!
My training program for this - my 11th lifetime half marathon - has comprised the last six weeks of Hal Higdon’s 12-week advanced half marathon program. Basically, it’s been a mirror of the final six weeks of training for the Sydney half. In that same period before Sydney, I blew up quite badly in three reasonably significant training sessions and missed another entirely. This time around, I’ve got through those equivalent sessions, and most of the others, pretty much unscathed. While I missed one 5K session and had a minor stumble with a fast 6.5K session, I did convert one of the 5K Sunday sessions to an outdoor run around the 7K Bay Run, albeit I would have liked to have done a few more.
All up, I expect to have run 260.8K’s in the six full training weeks since Sydney, as follows - 47.92, 46.06, 35.52, 60.04, 52.40 and 18.90. In the period before Sydney, the corresponding weekly totals were - 39.77, 50.71, 22.40, 55.49, 47.91 and 18.90 (total - 235.2K).
I’m not really sure what to make of this general improvement compared to pre-Sydney. It’s probably a combination of a few changes - more miles in the legs, using gels immediately before each of the longer and harder runs (thanks Steph!), compression shorts, a weekly weights training session (good job, Corey), and sprinting toward the end of some of the shorter runs to get a feel for the extra speed and crank up the heart rate. There hasn’t been much of an improvement in weight or general nutrition, but I’m working on that.
In the last few days, I’ve also managed to pick up a bit of a sniffle in this near-arctic Sydney winter. It’s been getting down to almost 10 degrees (Celsius) overnight recently and not much more than 17 or 18 during the day, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before I succumbed to something like that. Aside from forcing me to miss my scheduled Sunday outdoor run around the Bay, it hasn’t had any adverse effect and should be gone by the weekend.
Which leaves my plan for this race.
It’s instructive to look back at my Gold Coast times after having run Sydney 6-7 weeks previously. In 2005, I ran Sydney in 2:04:33 and backed up with a 2:00:13 at the Gold Coast. The next year, I ran Sydney in 1:54:16 and then the Gold Coast in 1:50:07. A 4+ minute improvement on both occasions. Which probably reflects the relative difficulty of the two courses, given I would have been in roughly the same sort of shape each time.
This year, I reckon the Sydney course was a good minute or two tougher than the course I ran on in 2005 and 2006, so on that basis alone, I’m probably looking at a 1:54-1:55 finish this time, based on my 2:00:26 in Sydney.
Once I factor in some very productive, confidence-building, training over the past six weeks, I find myself edging more and more towards the courageous option and starting with the 1:50 pacers to see what happens. I also know that if I’m going to get this BQ (a sub-3:40), I’ll effectively need to run back-to-back 1:50 half marathons. So if I think I have a fair shot at one now, why not go out with the pacers and try and hang on?
The website names the 1:50 pacers as Andrew Stolz and Mark Stella (don’t know them), and says they’ll be wearing red balloons and starting “in the middle of Zone B”, which is the place where those looking to finish between 1:45 and 2 hours are supposed to start. Given last year’s disappointment of not being able to find the 2 hour pacers, and the disproportionately large number of walkers who seem to line up well ahead of where they really should (I recall wasting plenty of time and energy last year dodging walkers and very slow joggers in the first kilometre or two of the event), I’m minded to start at the front of Zone B or even in Zone A, which is for those looking for a sub-1:45 time, to make absolutely certain of latching on to the 1:50 bus.
So 1:49:59 is the plan.
Which all sounds very logical and straightforward, but of course you can’t see the several drafts of these last few paragraphs I’ve written over the past few days reflecting my vacillation over this.
But now it’s done.
See you after the race!
Monday, 22 June 2015
Medical update 1
I thought I should devote at least a small part of this blog to a periodic update on how my body is holding together through all this. Of course, given I’m unlikely to ever write a post under this heading which simply says, “Nothing to report”, it’s a fair bet that whenever you see this heading, either something’s gone wrong, or - desirably - something that had been a problem is no longer.
This time around, it’s a bit of both.
Apart from getting my weight right, my major physical concern at the moment, and for some months really, has been the left Achilles. It started getting sore quite suddenly late in 2014 for no apparent reason. While it didn’t affect my running, it caused me to start hobbling around for several minutes whenever I stood up after having been sitting down for any length of time. This continued for a few months with the intensity of the pain slowly increasing and the hobble getting more pronounced. The first five minutes or so of any running session were also invariably quite painful, which I simply endured until it became just a mild, bearable, throbbing.
I finally went to see a physio about it in March
It felt like it was improving up to the Sydney half marathon, but went downhill again just after that race - probably because of the pounding it got there.
I’ve now been seeing the physio every couple of weeks. He prescribed some simple exercises that I'm ashamed to say I’ve been somewhat less than diligent in performing. He also suggested I see their podiatrist, who subsequently fitted me with some replacement orthotics just the other day. Aside from a few days of quite painful blistering, which even managed to drown out the pain from the Achilles, they seem in order.
Having heard my story, the podiatrist also suggested that I have some shock wave therapy at the clinic. More correctly known as “Radial Shock Wave Therapy” (RSWT), it is described on one medical website as “the application of a high-energy acoustic pulse transmitted into the tissue of the affected area of the body. Each RSWT treatment works to increase the metabolic activity around the site of pain or discomfort. This stimulates the body’s natural healing process, thus reducing pain and promoting the reabsorption of irriative calcium deposits in tendons.”
It’s also one of the most excruciatingly painful things I’ve ever experienced! And I’ve got a second session tomorrow morning to look forward to …
Otherwise, I did have a fairly tense moment during a recent, solid, 8.1K run at just over half-marathon pace (11.5km/h) where I felt my right hamstring play up for a few strides. It’s the first time I’ve encountered any issues there - apart from general hamstring and quad soreness during and after the Sydney run - and so I was more than a little worried about a sudden major tear rendering me unable to move the leg and end up hurtling off the back of the treadmill. I also have an indelible memory of the frustrations associated with a few left calf muscle tears in my previous running life. Anyway, that hamstring twinge has not reappeared, but I remain apprehensive about it.
And finally, a past malady that seems to have come good.
As it happened, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer back in April 2014. The thyroid is a gland in the front of the neck that regulates one’s metabolism and does a few other pretty vital things. I’d noticed a reasonable sized growth on the left side of the neck for a few years before I finally got around to checking it out. That primarily involved a biopsy, where an uncomfortably thick needle is inserted into various parts of the neck to extract tissue samples. Not a lot of fun, but you gotta do what you gotta do, I suppose. Evidently, one of the extracted samples was cancerous. There’s no indication about what caused it. I’m in none of the potential risk groups. It seems it was just one of those things.
At the time, I was in the middle of training for the Gold Coast half marathon, my first serious race after many years out. So, after some careful thought, I decided to postpone the surgery that was recommended to remove the entire thyroid. Instead, I went under the knife in July 2014, a couple of weeks after the race, and had some radioactive iodine treatment the next month to mop up any residual cancer.
Happily, the ultrasound results earlier this month indicate that I seem to have had a lucky escape with no sign of any lingering trouble-spots. But I’ll be staying in touch with the specialist for a few years yet just to make sure.
This time around, it’s a bit of both.
Apart from getting my weight right, my major physical concern at the moment, and for some months really, has been the left Achilles. It started getting sore quite suddenly late in 2014 for no apparent reason. While it didn’t affect my running, it caused me to start hobbling around for several minutes whenever I stood up after having been sitting down for any length of time. This continued for a few months with the intensity of the pain slowly increasing and the hobble getting more pronounced. The first five minutes or so of any running session were also invariably quite painful, which I simply endured until it became just a mild, bearable, throbbing.
I finally went to see a physio about it in March
It felt like it was improving up to the Sydney half marathon, but went downhill again just after that race - probably because of the pounding it got there.
I’ve now been seeing the physio every couple of weeks. He prescribed some simple exercises that I'm ashamed to say I’ve been somewhat less than diligent in performing. He also suggested I see their podiatrist, who subsequently fitted me with some replacement orthotics just the other day. Aside from a few days of quite painful blistering, which even managed to drown out the pain from the Achilles, they seem in order.
Having heard my story, the podiatrist also suggested that I have some shock wave therapy at the clinic. More correctly known as “Radial Shock Wave Therapy” (RSWT), it is described on one medical website as “the application of a high-energy acoustic pulse transmitted into the tissue of the affected area of the body. Each RSWT treatment works to increase the metabolic activity around the site of pain or discomfort. This stimulates the body’s natural healing process, thus reducing pain and promoting the reabsorption of irriative calcium deposits in tendons.”
It’s also one of the most excruciatingly painful things I’ve ever experienced! And I’ve got a second session tomorrow morning to look forward to …
Otherwise, I did have a fairly tense moment during a recent, solid, 8.1K run at just over half-marathon pace (11.5km/h) where I felt my right hamstring play up for a few strides. It’s the first time I’ve encountered any issues there - apart from general hamstring and quad soreness during and after the Sydney run - and so I was more than a little worried about a sudden major tear rendering me unable to move the leg and end up hurtling off the back of the treadmill. I also have an indelible memory of the frustrations associated with a few left calf muscle tears in my previous running life. Anyway, that hamstring twinge has not reappeared, but I remain apprehensive about it.
And finally, a past malady that seems to have come good.
As it happened, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer back in April 2014. The thyroid is a gland in the front of the neck that regulates one’s metabolism and does a few other pretty vital things. I’d noticed a reasonable sized growth on the left side of the neck for a few years before I finally got around to checking it out. That primarily involved a biopsy, where an uncomfortably thick needle is inserted into various parts of the neck to extract tissue samples. Not a lot of fun, but you gotta do what you gotta do, I suppose. Evidently, one of the extracted samples was cancerous. There’s no indication about what caused it. I’m in none of the potential risk groups. It seems it was just one of those things.
At the time, I was in the middle of training for the Gold Coast half marathon, my first serious race after many years out. So, after some careful thought, I decided to postpone the surgery that was recommended to remove the entire thyroid. Instead, I went under the knife in July 2014, a couple of weeks after the race, and had some radioactive iodine treatment the next month to mop up any residual cancer.
Happily, the ultrasound results earlier this month indicate that I seem to have had a lucky escape with no sign of any lingering trouble-spots. But I’ll be staying in touch with the specialist for a few years yet just to make sure.
Monday, 15 June 2015
Some useful progress
Completed a scheduled 10K time trial on Saturday 13 June. My 10K times have been progressively improving over the past year or so from 54:24 (on 24 May 2014), to 53:02 (21 February 2015), to 52:12 (4 April 2015), and to 51:30 (26 April 2015). So my target this time around was sub-51 minutes.
And, happily, I managed to achieve that, with what turned out to be a reasonably comfortable 50:35.
I’d calculated (from a very handy website) that the pace required to achieve that time was 11.76km/h, so I started at 11.6km/h for the first 20 minutes, then bumped it up to 11.7km/h for the next 10, and 11.8km/h for the 10 after that. I was still feeling quite strong and decided to increase the speed by 0.1km/h each minute from the 40 minute mark, to the point where I’d made up the small time deficit and then charged home, peaking at 16km/h for the final 200m.
I must admit I was a little worried going in to the run. My nutrition strategy during the previous week or so had been badly compromised by some pressing deadlines for a couple of university papers. I seem to have this terrible habit of eating a heap of junk when I'm in that sort of predicament, and as a consequence, my weight had been creeping up a little. So the relative ease of the run was a big, but welcome, surprise. Nevertheless, I think I'll put it down to a lucky escape rather than seeing it as some sort of precedent I should be maintaining.
This result means that the next 10K goal becomes a sub-50 at the time trial scheduled for 5 September. It’s still a long way from my all-time best 10K of 46:47 on 2 December 2006, achieved in the aftermath of the October 2006 Chicago marathon, but we’ll get there.
I’ve also made some progress, albeit limited, on the outdoor running front since my last post. To be precise, it was one Sunday morning Bay Run a couple of weeks back. I’d originally intended for it to be quite easy (around 45-50 minutes for the 7K distance) following a hard run on the day before, but the crisp morning, the crowds of fellow joggers, and the relative novelty of it all combined to get the better of me. I ended up pushing reasonably hard, running 37:18.
I missed last Sunday through a university deadline and next Sunday I’m out of town (on a brief visit to Canberra). But it really was fun - I’ll be back.
That said, one slightly off-putting side-effect the run did highlight for me is that I always seem to need to, ahem, expectorate quite a bit when I’m running outside. No matter how long I’ve been on a treadmill - and I was clocking up several 3+ hour runs back in the day - I’ve never felt the least inclined to do this. But for reasons I’ve never really been able to fathom, I needed to clear my throat virtually every kilometre or more often, running around the Bay. In races too. And of course, it also leads to some tricky etiquette questions, which I’ve always tried to be especially alive to when in polite running company.
Anyhoo, if the treadmill devotees out there have also been wondering about this, someone has been bold enough to raise precisely these issues with a guru on the Runners World website:
And, happily, I managed to achieve that, with what turned out to be a reasonably comfortable 50:35.
I’d calculated (from a very handy website) that the pace required to achieve that time was 11.76km/h, so I started at 11.6km/h for the first 20 minutes, then bumped it up to 11.7km/h for the next 10, and 11.8km/h for the 10 after that. I was still feeling quite strong and decided to increase the speed by 0.1km/h each minute from the 40 minute mark, to the point where I’d made up the small time deficit and then charged home, peaking at 16km/h for the final 200m.
I must admit I was a little worried going in to the run. My nutrition strategy during the previous week or so had been badly compromised by some pressing deadlines for a couple of university papers. I seem to have this terrible habit of eating a heap of junk when I'm in that sort of predicament, and as a consequence, my weight had been creeping up a little. So the relative ease of the run was a big, but welcome, surprise. Nevertheless, I think I'll put it down to a lucky escape rather than seeing it as some sort of precedent I should be maintaining.
This result means that the next 10K goal becomes a sub-50 at the time trial scheduled for 5 September. It’s still a long way from my all-time best 10K of 46:47 on 2 December 2006, achieved in the aftermath of the October 2006 Chicago marathon, but we’ll get there.
I’ve also made some progress, albeit limited, on the outdoor running front since my last post. To be precise, it was one Sunday morning Bay Run a couple of weeks back. I’d originally intended for it to be quite easy (around 45-50 minutes for the 7K distance) following a hard run on the day before, but the crisp morning, the crowds of fellow joggers, and the relative novelty of it all combined to get the better of me. I ended up pushing reasonably hard, running 37:18.
I missed last Sunday through a university deadline and next Sunday I’m out of town (on a brief visit to Canberra). But it really was fun - I’ll be back.
That said, one slightly off-putting side-effect the run did highlight for me is that I always seem to need to, ahem, expectorate quite a bit when I’m running outside. No matter how long I’ve been on a treadmill - and I was clocking up several 3+ hour runs back in the day - I’ve never felt the least inclined to do this. But for reasons I’ve never really been able to fathom, I needed to clear my throat virtually every kilometre or more often, running around the Bay. In races too. And of course, it also leads to some tricky etiquette questions, which I’ve always tried to be especially alive to when in polite running company.
Anyhoo, if the treadmill devotees out there have also been wondering about this, someone has been bold enough to raise precisely these issues with a guru on the Runners World website:
I just started running and I am training for a 10-K. I just ran my first 5-mile run outdoors and felt like I had to spit the entire time. Is that normal? It didn’t happen on the treadmill. And should I spit? (I did but was careful were I did it.)Otherwise, training since the Sydney half has been generally positive, with 20K in the recovery week after Sydney (basically, four easy 5K’s), followed by 47.92K, 46.06K and then 35.52K last week, which ended with the 10K time trial. This week, I expect to break 60K for the first time in many years, before the final two weeks tapering to the Gold Coast on Sunday 5 July.
I think what you're experiencing is the difference between running outside versus running indoors in a controlled climate. Running outdoors means exposure to the elements, like heat, humidity, and even air pollutants and allergens. The heat and humidity cause more sweating and water loss than running indoors. Thick saliva may be a sign of slight dehydration. It sounds like you need to increase your water intake throughout the week so you go into your outdoor runs well-hydrated. Pollutants or irritants in the air may also cause you to produce more saliva. If it continues to bother you, you may want to consider seeing your physician. Spit etiquette is a whole other topic! It is not uncommon to spit while running, but you do need to be careful when and where you spit so you don't hit other runners. When running in a pack, look around, then move to the outside of the group and spit away from runners. And, take into account the wind and runners that may be behind you, too. You may have to refine your technique of spitting if your saliva is thicker than usual; be prepared to wipe it off your face!
Monday, 1 June 2015
Back into it
Some steady, consistent, running post-Sydney in the lead up to the Gold Coast half marathon - the next stop on this quest.
Having emerged from Sydney largely unscathed (physically at least), and with a few easy 5K’s in the week after the race, I’m back into solid training and repeating the final six weeks of Hal Higdon’s advanced half marathon program. I blew up on a couple of those sessions in the weeks before Sydney, so it will be interesting to see if the corrections and precautions I’m making this time around will improve the outcome.
So far, it’s so good, albeit with a minor hiccup on a 6.5K run last Friday which was designed to be run at slightly faster than half-marathon pace. I started to conk out at 4.5K and had to slow down for a bit, but managed to regain some composure and finished strongly enough. I was therefore a little nervous with the scheduled one hour, forty-five minute run the next day, with the last 25 minutes or so to be run at half marathon pace. But I absolutely nailed it and added a sprint finish for good measure, clocking up 17.73K in the process.
I’ve also decided to add a weights session every Wednesday now, assisted by a trainer at my local gym. It’s been quite punishing and not something I’ve been all that keen to pursue previously. But I think it might have some beneficial impact with the weight and building some core strength, so we’ll stick at it and see what happens. And I’ve taken to sprinting for 400-500 metres at the end of the scheduled 5K runs to get the heart rate rapidly cranking up on what is otherwise a reasonably straightforward jog. It feels good to be conditioning myself to that sort of speed.
But, most radically, I’ve now decided to do one session a week outdoors.
I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I do all my training on a treadmill at the gym (Camperdown Fitness in Sydney’s inner west - feel free to drop by and say hi! if you’re ever in the neighbourhood at the crack of dawn most days). I suppose I quite like the precision that running on a treadmill offers and the ease with which individual sessions can be incrementally amped up over time. I also like the ‘give’ in the running surface and the inoculation it tends to provide against wear and tear and injuries generally, and of not having to worry about the logistics of carting around water, keys and other essentials.
Strangely enough, it’s also quite a social environment, even though I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to any of the other runners/joggers/walkers in my entire time there, and only very rarely acknowledged their existence. But I do like the camaraderie associated with sharing a somewhat arduous endeavour at an odd hour with my fellow humans and of occasionally peeping over and checking out how fast they’re running and on what sort of incline (and momentarily feeling either awestruck or just ever so slightly superior).
And I love the passing parade too. The regulars who look the part, who seem to have been doing this all their lives, and who exude grace, confidence and purpose in their running. And then there’s the oncer’s. Those people of all shapes, sizes and ages who seem to pop in once, get quickly flushed-faced with the effort, and never seem to return. Perhaps they come back at other times, or maybe I’m just hopeless with remembering them. I do hope they keep at it. The changing of the seasons is equally fascinating. There’s an obviously inverse relationship between the early morning temperature, or the amount of rain, and the number of vacant treadmills.
But relying exclusively on the treadmill does come at a price. For example, I really felt the burn in my quads and hamstrings during and after the Sydney run. It was as if they were wondering what on earth this running business was all about. And it also meant that Sydney was the first time I’d actually run downhill since the City to Surf in August 2014 - a full nine months previously! Maybe that had something to do with the leg soreness.
My outdoor circuit will be the famed (locally at least) Bay Run in Sydney’s inner west. It loops around the shores of picturesque Iron Cove Bay, which is a sort of tributary to the slightly more picturesque Sydney Harbour. It’s just on seven kilometres long and, from past experience, tends to get a little crowded on Sundays when I plan to run it, but it’s very enjoyable and, I hope, will add some value to my training.
No doubt we’ll find out soon enough.
Having emerged from Sydney largely unscathed (physically at least), and with a few easy 5K’s in the week after the race, I’m back into solid training and repeating the final six weeks of Hal Higdon’s advanced half marathon program. I blew up on a couple of those sessions in the weeks before Sydney, so it will be interesting to see if the corrections and precautions I’m making this time around will improve the outcome.
So far, it’s so good, albeit with a minor hiccup on a 6.5K run last Friday which was designed to be run at slightly faster than half-marathon pace. I started to conk out at 4.5K and had to slow down for a bit, but managed to regain some composure and finished strongly enough. I was therefore a little nervous with the scheduled one hour, forty-five minute run the next day, with the last 25 minutes or so to be run at half marathon pace. But I absolutely nailed it and added a sprint finish for good measure, clocking up 17.73K in the process.
I’ve also decided to add a weights session every Wednesday now, assisted by a trainer at my local gym. It’s been quite punishing and not something I’ve been all that keen to pursue previously. But I think it might have some beneficial impact with the weight and building some core strength, so we’ll stick at it and see what happens. And I’ve taken to sprinting for 400-500 metres at the end of the scheduled 5K runs to get the heart rate rapidly cranking up on what is otherwise a reasonably straightforward jog. It feels good to be conditioning myself to that sort of speed.
But, most radically, I’ve now decided to do one session a week outdoors.
I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I do all my training on a treadmill at the gym (Camperdown Fitness in Sydney’s inner west - feel free to drop by and say hi! if you’re ever in the neighbourhood at the crack of dawn most days). I suppose I quite like the precision that running on a treadmill offers and the ease with which individual sessions can be incrementally amped up over time. I also like the ‘give’ in the running surface and the inoculation it tends to provide against wear and tear and injuries generally, and of not having to worry about the logistics of carting around water, keys and other essentials.
Strangely enough, it’s also quite a social environment, even though I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to any of the other runners/joggers/walkers in my entire time there, and only very rarely acknowledged their existence. But I do like the camaraderie associated with sharing a somewhat arduous endeavour at an odd hour with my fellow humans and of occasionally peeping over and checking out how fast they’re running and on what sort of incline (and momentarily feeling either awestruck or just ever so slightly superior).
And I love the passing parade too. The regulars who look the part, who seem to have been doing this all their lives, and who exude grace, confidence and purpose in their running. And then there’s the oncer’s. Those people of all shapes, sizes and ages who seem to pop in once, get quickly flushed-faced with the effort, and never seem to return. Perhaps they come back at other times, or maybe I’m just hopeless with remembering them. I do hope they keep at it. The changing of the seasons is equally fascinating. There’s an obviously inverse relationship between the early morning temperature, or the amount of rain, and the number of vacant treadmills.
But relying exclusively on the treadmill does come at a price. For example, I really felt the burn in my quads and hamstrings during and after the Sydney run. It was as if they were wondering what on earth this running business was all about. And it also meant that Sydney was the first time I’d actually run downhill since the City to Surf in August 2014 - a full nine months previously! Maybe that had something to do with the leg soreness.
My outdoor circuit will be the famed (locally at least) Bay Run in Sydney’s inner west. It loops around the shores of picturesque Iron Cove Bay, which is a sort of tributary to the slightly more picturesque Sydney Harbour. It’s just on seven kilometres long and, from past experience, tends to get a little crowded on Sundays when I plan to run it, but it’s very enjoyable and, I hope, will add some value to my training.
No doubt we’ll find out soon enough.
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