From runner's wife to running wife - a local "Olympics"

A-Chang, my wife, took part in a local Chinese community event, an "Olympics" as it was billed. Just a bit of fun, and all well-natured. Having dropped her off for the "opening ceremony", I went to the nearby ymca for my usual saturday workout.

I got back halfway through the 5000 metres, with a lot of very tired looking runners doing the best they could. Other events included tug-of-war, beanbag throw, skipping/ jump rope and long jump.

The lunch interval entertainment included tai-chi and this amazing guy and his spinning top.

A-Chang's first event was the 800 metres. Stand by for a dramatic race report! She's in the blue top and white cap. We'd actually discussed tactics, and viewed in the same light as a longer distance race I advised keeping it fairly relaxed for the first lap, picking it up at the beginning of the last lap, and giving it everything for the last 120 metres.

There was also a 6-ish year old boy in the starting line-up, I don't remember what happened to him. A-Chang's hat flew off after the first bend. After she went by on lap 2, I ran on the outside of the track next to her. The leader was slowing a little, but assumed the race was hers when she glanced over her shoulder entering the final bend. At the last 3rd of the bend I hissed "attack". I said it too quietly, so repeated myself a few seconds later. My rocket-wife then flew, faster than I've ever seen her go. Just like an elite race with that last kick. Not like an elite-race was the double-take the erstwhile leader did on seeing the blue-bullet fly past. I believe I heard a few gasps from onlookers too.

A-Chang doesn't do much running as part of her fitness routine, though weights, rowing machine and pilates all add up to strong legs with a fair bit of speed. All "medalists" received toothbrushes for prizes. Far more useful.

While on a bio-break, I was reading on my phone that GB was winning the heptathlon, the mens long-jump and the 10,000 metres over in London. I was expecting to take A-Chang's place in a 4x100 relay as she'd felt a little light headed after her 800. I turned out that mixed wasn't possible as there were separate mens and womens races. She'd recovered enough by then, so took her place for the anchor leg. She was given a lead which she extended, barelling down the home straight her cap having flown off again.

I ended up being drafted into action after all, for the last leg. I got the baton in last place, 20 metres back, but still had a good old go at sprinting for the first time in eons.

I was then talked into lining up for the 1500 metres. Rather easily. Most of the others looked fairly fit to me. A quick start, then they all slowed down and I went to the front. Depite being a bit of fun, if it has a start and finish line, I can't help myself. One teenager did his best to stick with me, laps 1 and 2 below. 

By lap 3 I was way ahead, and noticed a few surprised looking spectators. Not really a fair contest given the fact that I run 50-80km a week. Still, I camped it up at the finishing tape. While there's still quite a bit of the real Olympics left, it's pretty doubtful that a Maple Leaf will find the top step of the podium in track and field, so this will have to do. Hope I'm proven wrong.

I must have made a good impression as I was given 2 toothbrushes at the end. Lots of smiles that day. Boiling hot though, and my cotton t-shirt only dried out when we got to a Chinese (what else?) restaurant an hour later.



Mud Hero!

And now for something completely different. It's times like this when I really enjoy being fit and healthy, doing a fun event and not even having to think about being worn-out. Then again, no-one was thinking about that anyway, regardless of the shape they were in. Still, all who turned up truly know what fun is, and really it isn't about stuffing your face or drinking loads. All events are fun to me, though I also take them seriously and get the best time I possibly can on the day. Today wasn't about time at all. To my delight, I managed to talk my wife A-Chang into doing this (blue top). We were joined by Joy (crimson top) and Matthew (white t-shirt, glasses), as deliciously bonkers as us, and the 5,000 or so others.

If we do this again, we should get a mad uniform to wear, an idea we got from the "dirty bitches" at the start line. "A Touch of the Muddy Runs" perhaps. Either that or "Muddy, Not Touching Cloth". "Brown Moments" is maybe the best I can think of.

The course was said to be roughly 6km long with 15 obstacles. It turned out that quite a few obstacles were grouped quite closely together, so there was a fair bit of trail running, especially at the very start. The bottle of G2 I`d brought with me was done pretty fast.

First obstacle was an over, under set-up.

Then came a climbing wall. I tried the "hard" part with a rope, reached too early for the ledge, then let go when I got a mild bit of rope burn. So I went up the easy part after A-Chang.

A quick crawl under a cargo net on soft grass, then a sprint to the river. A-Chang seemingly tried to wash off all mudsplashes, which would later prove futile.

A crawl over a cargo net.

Then a splash right through some deep watery mud. I just walked right through it, and my feet stayed perfectly dry. I was wearing my Salomons which I'd bought for winter, but only needed to use twice before this day, snow barely got deep enough and I usually stick to roads. This might even have been my first off-road run since school cross-country runs which were usually forced marches.

A climb over a really big cargo net. I paused at the top, trying to work out how to get my feet facing inwards for the journey down. A-Chang was really quick over this, climbing being a childhood skill learned from climbing out of her bedroom window to go exploring so she said. Never caught.

A fireman's pole, nice and slow to avoid friction burn. After this there was the uphill tyre run, "spiderweb" and then "deep woods" - up and down hill logs to jump over. Quite a long section of trail and a touch underwhelming. This is more running than A-Chang had ever done, so she said, so we walked for a bit. A couple of times she sped up, though I said I was fine with conserving energy.

On the home strech, I charged up the car ramp, and jumped down cautiously.

Next was a slide, which was rather hot on landing. Following A-Chang up, I went a little fast and ending up giving her, ahem, a helping hand.

Finally, the mud crawl. I thought we all looked a bit too clean. I'll confess to being a bit of a sissy and trying not to get too far in. I was also trying to not get mud near the camera and not be able to get all these screen-grabs you now see.

 

A brief roar, then finished. Matthew and Joy had been close behind a few others, so got comprehensively splashed. I've seen photos of others trying to do the backstroke.

The "Hero Shower" was actually a water truck. I laid the headcam down on one of its steps, whereupon it captured the most priceless footage of the day.

A-Chang, who enjoys hot-springs and high temperatures, knew she had to get the mud off. She also knew she would have to counter-intuitively get sprayed by ice-cold water from a fire hose. She is a very tough minded lady, though at this point she was squeeling and bouncing around. All were laughing, or trying not to make it look like they were. At one point I gave out a pantomime "quiet!" I heard that they ran out later, and were sending people to the river. We were in the first wave, without a doubt the way to go, as we missed the traffic too.

Adjusting the camera, below, are the only shots of me between finish and hose-down.

An unforgetable day, above all I was glad to have A-Chang right there with me. It makes a change from her merely being my race-day support.

Overall then, what is one to make of this event, and others like it? I find road racing a thrill, but it might seem too "serious" for many. This has some running, but also tests agility and thinking on one's feet. In a sense too, it permits grown-adults to challenge themselves to have fun and get muddy with almost child-like abandon. There is a time and a place for doing that, and this was it - a life-affirming experience that appeals to the best in one's nature. At least, that's what it meant to me.

So,  for more of the above, check out the video :)

Marathon lessons learned & next training plan

"Every race is basically an experiment," my chiropractor said during my treatment session a couple of days after the marathon. Talking about the race then was the start of my post-race analysis and planning for future training. 7 weeks on, and one week from starting my next training plan, I've come to a few conclusions. Anyone looking for an action packed, witty post, please avert your eyes now.

While I'm never going to complain about knocking 9 minutes off my PB, I had been aiming for 3:10 and didn't reach it, despite my other PBs suggesting I'm capable of 3:05 (MacMillan calculator). So what went wrong and what should I do differently in the lead up to the California International Marathon on December 2 (with the Harvest Half on September 29th)?

-I should take it easy in the week after a race. The day after the spring trio 10k in April, I went for an easy run and my right inner thigh (looking at a diagram either the pectineus or gracilis) tightened. It had actually felt a little tight after that race, and in my elation at breaking the 40 minute barrier I gota bit carried away. Speed work was then done on the bike which effectively compromised my training. 

-This leads me to speed work. Speed intervals are the training runs that make me most vulnerable to injury. These are the short, sub-5k pace intervals that I usually do on wednesdays. A 10k race can be troublesome as I do it at almost the same pace as a 5k. I'm going to mix in some hill work for extra strength at the start to build a little more strength and also as an alternative to speed runs with similar effect (i.e. less exposure to them and kinder on the legs).
After the Harvest Half, there are 8 weeks until the CIM. The second half I will do long tempos - marathon pace or slightly quicker for the whole run - instead of speed intervals. This should, I believe, help build more endurance and perhaps even reduce my tendancy to go too fast at the start of a race. 

- I lacked raw endurance training going into the marathon. My sunday long runs should be longer, and there should be more of them. The tempos mentioned just above should also help with this.
This is my training plan covering July 23 to December 2:

Other observations:

-I'm a "salty sweater". I always knew I sweated a lot, but the way I thundered to a halt several times in the marathon then found my legs again after a spectator gave me some salt suggests to me that during a full marathon I need evev more electrolytes than gatorade has. The way I grabbed all the gatorade I could at aid stations suggests I might have had a touch of hyponatremia (low electrolyte to fluid balance). For runs over 20k then, I plan to experiment with various supplements such as salt tablets. Time to hit the specialist running stores.

-Quad/ hamstring imbalance. A classic runner's problem so I've heard. The main engine room is the front of the leg, with the rear stabilizing them and also pushing the leg forward after toe-off. On my tuesday and thursday weight sessions I've added 5lbs to the hamstring curl, and now also do dumbbell squats. In addition, I've also decided to replace the saturday static weights with a free-weight routine I found in Impact Magazine. I've attached the 3 pages below. I've tried it once, and my arse was well and truly self-kicked. I'll need to build up the number of reps in each set. It should also help with core strength. I work on that a little extra too, joining my wife in a home work-out between 1 and 3 times a week.

A lot of plans I read don't even mention weight training - it's as if a lot of athletes don't do it. That's not really true, is it?
Anyhow, that's my plan for PBs in the half and full marathons this year. I'd love to hear some suggestions.

The Standing Mile

I made my way to the Foothills track this morning to check my watch footpod calibration. The ground staff put out those annoying barriers which block the first 2 lanes, making the turn in to each corner wide. After 5 laps, my watch said 100 metres over, so I told it I'd done 2,050. I still couldn't conculsively say the Stampede 5k was long or accurately measured, though I suspect it's still long. I'll leave my PB where it is, and perhaps I can aim for the "5k split" - 19:13 - next 5k race I do (most likely next year).

Having seen Roger Bannister on TV watching the Olympic flame, I thought I'd give myself a time trial over the standing mile as my training schedule for the rest of the year doesn't start for another 10 days.

The likes of me don't do track races - the shortest is 5k. There's a 3k fun run here and there in the autumn in Calgary I believe, so I might do one of those out of curiosity. Anyone else get curious about things like this? When I was 3, I dismantled a shop window shoe display because I was curious to see how it would collapse. Fast forward a few decades to an era where people wear less orange and purple, I wanted to see how I would make myself collapse doing a standing mile. Sort of. Anyhow, here began a self-timed time trial. I even found myself feeling a little pumped up, similar to the startline at a race.  

I was sharing the track with a few college athletes doing their warm-ups. A few odd looks from them, that and the barriers makes me prefer the Glenmore track where last week's Stampede race finished.

The first lap (of 4+ 9 metres - there's a line just before the start line that marks this) was done in just under 1:20, though I doubted I could substain this. I tried to concentrate on technique/ form, but pure speed-induced fatigue simply blurs the thinking. Endurance induced fatigue is different for me - with a little determination, it's possible to talk myself into doing it more or less right. As a last resort I'll even say "initiating manual override!" or something else perfectly reasonable.

My 1k split was 3:17.40, which I'll call a PB until I get round to doing a standing kilometre test. I'd like to think I dipped at the line, but it was more like a diagonal nod/ drunken Bollywood head tilt accompanied by a noise best spellt as "haruthooorh". My time was 5:45.78, just over 50% slower than the world record as my other PBs are.

So now I know. Next Sunday (22nd) my wife and I are going to do the Mud Hero obstacle race. Can't wait for that! It will also mark the end of my post-marathon period and start of training for the Harvest Half Marathon in September and California International Marathon (in Sacramento) in December. As one of my favourite lines goes, "running is awesome!"