changing it all up for race week - the checklist

with just a few days to go before the 2014 mississauga marathon, i'm running through my checklist of things to bring/do:

• gatorade, beet juice and clif bars:  i've actually decided to tackle carbo-loading a bit differently this week compared to previous marathons.  i'd read that while most distance runners have a sense of the advantages of carboloading, most do not do it enough - so this time around i'm going to try a three-day carboload after having come off of a two-day carbodepletion mini-cycle.  honestly i feel as fit as i have ever been in my life, and am ready to start the fueling process for this race.
  
  
  
• Skechers GOMeb Speed 2:  none of my previous marathons have been run in a racing flat - and in fact, the only time that i've raced any distance in a racing flat was my last 10k event in which i also wore the GOMeb Speed 2.   a review on these is still to come, but at this point i can say that the fit is better than i had expected, and the pop on these shoes (courtesy of the Dupont Hytrel™ stability shank/plate) makes the propulsive phase of the running gait cycle seem that much more dynamic.  besides being a Skechers Performance Division ambassador, i would have had no questions about using these for the race this weekend - especially after Meb's iconic win at boston last month.
  
  
  
• garmin 305:  i contemplated running this marathon naked (get your minds out of the gutter people!) but i have essentially been doing that this week with my tapering schedule.  normally i would have included a couple of speed intervals and hill repeats in this final taper week, but after some reflection and paying attention to how my body is feeling i decided instead to forego intensity and pick up a few additional miles.  this is different from any of my previous training plans, but i do feel very good about it.


• blue-and-yellow rainbow loom bracelet:  one of my daughters made this for me last december - she'd asked me what colours i might like to have for a bracelet, and i requested blue and yellow (boston marathon colours) so that i could wear it during this upcoming marathon as a reminder that i'm just trying to hit my qualifying time.  in both of the last two marathons that i ran i felt that i had all the conditioning pieces that i needed to hit my BQ time - but in both instances i feel that i went out much too fast and bonked.  this time i feel even more confident than before (having run more miles in this training cycle than any previous, as well as pushing out race-pace runs geared toward a faster-than-BQ finish) and will be planning to run a very controlled race through 35km.  the bracelet is to remind me that i need to stay with the 3:15 pacer until we cross through the proverbial - and in the mississauga race it's a visual - wall.
  
  picture courtesy http://marleneontherun.blogspot.ca/2011/05/mississauga-marathon-bq-race-report.html

at this point i feel more than ready - the 'madness' of the taper really hasn't struck in the same way as in previous pre-race periods ... it's more of a sense of expectation of success.  

see you at the finish line!

changing it all up for race week - the checklist

the beaches jazzfest 20k tune up run - race report

i'll call this a race report even though it's marketed as a 'tune-up run' for the scotiabank toronto waterfront marathon.  the beaches jazz run comes in a variety of distances - 20k, 10k and 5k, and i registered for the 20k as a tempo run/test-the-waters distance to see just how ready i am to hit a BQ come september in erie, pennsylvania.

pre-race
i tried to treat this like any other race, although it falls smack-dab in the middle of a normal-ish training week.  from stocking up on the appropriate gels, to drinking everyone's favourite refreshment all week - beet juice - to hitting the hay at 8:30pm on saturday night to ensure a decent 4:20am wake up, i tried to leave no pre-race stone unturned.

the one thing that may well have tripped me up in terms of my race-week preparation is that my coach had prescribed a mini-taper approach to the runs leading up to sunday.  my thursday tempo run i actually ran faster than required, and i may have overcooked my system a bit even though it didn't feel like too much.  more on this a bit later ...

race day
the plan was to trek down to my buddy stan's place and park in his driveway, as it's about 1km from his house to the start line.  we met up at around 6:30am (after he'd downed his sausage mcmuffin) and proceeded to the 'expo' tent.  it wasn't really much of an expo since it wasn't a race (no chip timing), but that also meant that the kit pick-up was no-muss no-fuss.

after depositing the goodies that we received are part of the kit back at his place, we got ready to put in an easy 2k warm-up.  i say "got ready" because it took my garmin 305 about three or four minutes to find the satellites.

yes, in the middle of the park it asked me if i was indoors.

by the time that we'd returned to the start area from the warm-up, it was practically countdown time.  we located our pacer - as this run is a tune-up for a full marathon, we found that they provided pacers who targeted 3:10, 3:15, 3:20, etc.  the 3:10 pacer walked into view and we flagged him down ... only to find out that he didn't know up until he arrived that he was pacing, so he didn't even have a watch with him.  it was going to be up to us to let him know whether or not we were on target.

in the 'chute', the 3:10 pacer was at the front of the line, so stan and i actually got to take the starting pose that you see many elites in as they are poised at the leading edge of the pack.  probably the only time i'll ever get to be in a situation like that.

the race
we started off into a decent headwind on a cloudless morning.  our pacer took us out at what he thought to be the right pace (having paced numerous other marathons apparently), but our handy-dandy GPS-enabled wrist computers told us that we started out just a bit on the quick side.  typical of early-race adrenaline.

it was at about 5k that we settled into a decent pace - 4:24ish/km.  peter the pacer (aka peter rabbit) was clear of stan and i by about three metres and expanding his gap.  at 10k i'd hit my PB for that distance (43:41) but was also starting to feel the stride shorten up.  stan was still moving like clockwork - it was both amazing and distressing ... but hey, this guy's gone sub-3:00 for the marathon and is training for sub-2:50.  

at 15k the fabled 'elastic' between stan and i broke, and i was on my own to finish up.  this was the point at which i began to seriously wonder if pushing out 8k at 4:17/km pace on thursday had been a good idea.  i tried to muster up more energy but it just wasn't translating to increased speed.  kilometre by kilometre i was slowing, and one or two people passed me by.

at 19k something really odd happened - i'd never felt anything like it before.  i can only describe it as a spasming of my diaphragm ... it wasn't like a side-stitch, but like my entire core was tightening and i could only take in maybe a 1/3 of a breath of air.  i liken it to hyperventilating, and it felt like all systems were shutting down, and i was in (audible) yelping mode.  my pace dropped to something like 5:12/km, but it did allow me to breathe a bit better and when i felt like i'd regained the use of my lungs and abdomen i picked up the pace to finish at a 4:23/km pace.  i crossed the line 1:31:03 (for 20.18k) - and i gotta say that it's now a strange feeling to finish a run wearing a bib and not receiving a medal.  i need to become more of a purist.

post-race
stan and i lingered just a little bit at the recovery tables littered with juice boxes, bananas, fudge-striped cookies as well as the required gatorade and water cups.  we wrapped up with a 2k cool-down run, after which i noticed that there were some sore spots on the bottom of my left foot, the result of some hot spots from wearing the skora phase as a distance race shoe.  i'm pretty sure that while they're one of my favourite interval/tempo run shoes, they're going to fall out of contention as my race day shoes come sept. 15.

then i got the privilege of hanging out (in my sweaty gear b/c i didn't bring a change of clothes) at chez ong.  after getting schooled on the race course i got schooled in the way of beyblades and was treated to a delicious vegetarian (i know ... me, vegetarian???) meal of curry udon noodles, soy-protein pseudo-veal and stir-fried veggies.

all in all, a day well spent in the beaches.  and i didn't even take in any of the jazz fest. 

the beaches jazzfest 20k tune up run - race report

wired for speed!

this week marks a couple of firsts with regard to training:  

• it's my first week working with my coach's prescribed schedule
• it's my first series of runs using the garmin forerunner 305.

i'm really taking to this whole coaching thing - it has a ton to do with my coach and his attitude and encouragement, and in some small way is all about simply having a coach who's accessible.  just two days ago i was able to get together with my coach to run track intervals - and while knowing the plan was critical, what was of even more benefit and value to me was having him there to encourage me with "you're bang on" and "one more lap".  honestly, i felt like i was running for more than just myself. 

as for the garmin 305, so far the review is mixed - in part because i'm still getting the hang of this watch.  i'm not 100% sure that i'm settled on my data field settings (you have at least three screens that you can configure with multiple data readouts - from pace to distance to heartrate and beyond), even after having read several other users' preferred arrangements.  also, the pace alert (a feature that i've been anxious to use) may or may not be working well - i'll need a few more tempo runs under my belt with the 305 before i can say for sure.  and finally the garmin GPS threw me off when running my track intervals this week, beeping the 1km alert when i hadn't quite fully completed the 2-1/2 laps (there's a great article here that compares the performance of various GPS timepieces in varying run conditions).  so it wanted to fool me into letting up before i should have, and wound up telling me that i was booking it faster than i actually was.

however, all that being said, it helped me to have a solid, consistent tempo run yesterday - and i love crunching all the data that it spits out.  the readout size is great, and i haven't found the size of the unit to be obtrusive (although it reminds me of the casio wristwatch calculators from back in the day).

so it's still a great add to my training regime, and i'm sure that i'll get to tweaking it to just how it can be of the most help to me.

wired for speed!

and miles (less) to go before i sleep ...

now i feel like i'm really getting serious about marathon training.

i managed to get my hot little hands on a garmin 305 from a friend of mine who has apparently semi-retired from running due to injury.  as much as i hate to think that he's given up on it, i'm happy to put this piece of technology to good use:

the inaugural run with my new GPS-enabled watch was this morning, and it was very helpful to be working with the data and beeps that it was sending my way.  now that i have a bit of a baseline in terms of how it measures my performance, we'll have to see how other training runs compare to today's workout.

i let my coach know (to his pleasure) that i'm now the proud owner of this piece of running technology, and he provided me with the first week's training plan that i can now program into it.  i recall that from our first conversation that he'd said that he managed to run his sub-3 hour marathon on a training regimen that topped out at 95 kilometres in a week, so i didn't expect week one to be a backbreaker ... but yesterday he let me know that his training plan for getting him to boston had a max mileage of 75 km in a week.

the training cycle that i just came off of was 75 km before breakfast.

ok, not really ... but it did top out at 114 km in one week.

i know that i did not train as smart as i could have over the last five months - which is why i decided to align myself with my coach.  and we established that i would have to trust him in this relationship - which i do.

i'm just wondering how shifting down gears by some 40 km will work out for me.

have you had any experience in fluctuating mileage over training cycles?  and not just in terms of adding more, but reducing?  i'd love to hear about it (if only to allay my own unspoken fears)!

and miles (less) to go before i sleep ...