Thanks Christmas, Bank of M&D and Gearheads for the fancy pants transition pro that I'm riding this season. Its a very welcome change from the soft ride. Stiffer, more aero, more comfortable and all that good stuff.
I also have an adamo road saddle on it which took a while to get used to, but now that its on there, I really love it. The idea is that it allows better blood flow and keeps you on your sit bones, rather than your perineum (gooch). It took three of four rides to get used to and I think that its just as much a mental switch as anything else. You have to sit on it as thought its a skinny saddle (for some reason this concept reminds me of Homer Simpson absorbing speedos between his buttocks like at 0:32), even though its like 4 times as wide as most road saddles. At first there was some pressure from its girth, but that just kind of went away. Once I got used to it, I found the saddle could take a lot more of my weight that I was used to. I'm pretty sure I'm putting out more watts than before because of how it takes my weight. So thats working out really well.
I also got a new fit with the new saddle from Damien at Gearheads and thats been working out really well. I'm a little more aggressive on the bike than before, so I ended up moving my aerobars forward a little to take a bit of stress off my shoulders. I was able to get a change to ride into head winds today too which felt a lot easier than a few weeks ago, probably due to training, better aerodynamics and the new saddle. I also have a spacer under my left foot because my left tibia is shorter than its counterpart and thats helped me to generate power across the bottom of pedal stroke on that side.
All in all, I'm pumped about my bike and fit. No pain anywhere today (4x30min tempo intervals) and with some excellent post workout nutrition, hopefully no pain tomorrow either!
Welland half iron is now on the visible horizon (June 26th) and I'm really excited about that. If all goes well, it'll go something like this: :29+:01+2:24+:01+1:30=4:30. That would put me in the top 10 from last year and be a substantial personal best.
Saturday 28 May 2011
Friday 27 May 2011
During and Post Exercise Nutrition - the Role of Insulin
About five months ago, my brother gave me this book called Nutrient Timing by John Ivy and Robert Portman and I've finally got around to opening it. I'm not even 30 pages in, but I've already learned something pretty cool. Basically, insulin is your best friend and then some.
Insulin is stimulated by an increase in blood sugar. Its primary role is to tell your body to store that sugar. Normally, that storage would occur as fat, but during and directly after exercise, things are a little different.
During this time period, the muscles are especially sensitive to insulin. If you take in a whole bunch of carbohydrates during and after exercise, your muscles will suck it all up and store it as glycogen. Sound good? Well theres more.
Insulin also affects the way your muscles handle protein. High levels of insulin (which you'll recall are brought about by taking in carbohydrates) increase the rate of protein uptake by the muscle from the blood. Insulin also increases the rate of protein synthesis and decreases the rate of protein degradation. That means you'll not only bring more protein in, but you'll loose less protein (a process that, unfortunately for athletes, naturally occurs following exercise). Insulin also decreases the release of cortisol whose role is to free up glycogen, fat and amino acids. Cortisol is released during exercise to give you energy, but once you're done exercise, it will only slow recovery. Insulins inhibition of cortisol is probably the reason that protein degradation decreases.
Insulin does one more awesome thing: it increases blood flow to your muscles. Not only that, but it targets muscle that have been damaged, bringing nutrients and eliminating wastes.
Here is the take home message: make sure that you take in carbohydrates during and after exercise. This will allow your body absorb protein better, break down energy stores less and generally speed recovery. Have your protein following exercise with a healthy serving of carbohydrates and have your giant plate of pasta as soon after exercise as possible (45-90 minutes).
Insulin is stimulated by an increase in blood sugar. Its primary role is to tell your body to store that sugar. Normally, that storage would occur as fat, but during and directly after exercise, things are a little different.
During this time period, the muscles are especially sensitive to insulin. If you take in a whole bunch of carbohydrates during and after exercise, your muscles will suck it all up and store it as glycogen. Sound good? Well theres more.
Insulin also affects the way your muscles handle protein. High levels of insulin (which you'll recall are brought about by taking in carbohydrates) increase the rate of protein uptake by the muscle from the blood. Insulin also increases the rate of protein synthesis and decreases the rate of protein degradation. That means you'll not only bring more protein in, but you'll loose less protein (a process that, unfortunately for athletes, naturally occurs following exercise). Insulin also decreases the release of cortisol whose role is to free up glycogen, fat and amino acids. Cortisol is released during exercise to give you energy, but once you're done exercise, it will only slow recovery. Insulins inhibition of cortisol is probably the reason that protein degradation decreases.
Insulin does one more awesome thing: it increases blood flow to your muscles. Not only that, but it targets muscle that have been damaged, bringing nutrients and eliminating wastes.
Here is the take home message: make sure that you take in carbohydrates during and after exercise. This will allow your body absorb protein better, break down energy stores less and generally speed recovery. Have your protein following exercise with a healthy serving of carbohydrates and have your giant plate of pasta as soon after exercise as possible (45-90 minutes).
Wednesday 25 May 2011
Recovery 101
Q: How do I get faster?
A: Train more (more intensity, more volume, etc.)
6. Other. Two more techniques which I'm quite fond of are recovery workouts and hot/cold application.
Recovery workouts are great to do 4-24 hours following a tough workout and up to several days following races. You try to go pretty much as easy as you possibly can for these and the purpose is to just get a bit more blood flowing through the muscles. Think of it as an extra cool down.
Alternating hot and cold can be done in a number of ways, but my favourite is with one of those cloth bags full or beans or oatmeal and an ice pack (other ways would be with a shower or two baths). Ideally, you should have the cold pack on for around 1-3 minutes and the hot pack on for 3-5 minutes and repeat 3-5 times (more if its really bad, but if its that bad, use more than one hot/cold session). I swear by the hot/cold--it has got me out of some really bad muscle damage.
A: Train more (more intensity, more volume, etc.)
Q: How do I train more without hurting myself?
A: Recovery better.
There really is no such thing as over training, only under-recovering. An athlete's ability to handle high training loads is really a function of how effectively that athlete is recovering. I'm going to try to explain most of the commonly used recovery techniques. I'll start with the obvious:
1. Sleep. Athletes need a tonne of sleep. Sleep as much as you possibly can and then have a nap later on. I've heard of equations like 7 or 8 hours plus the amount of time you trained that day. That would mean if you did 4 hours of training, you should sleep 11 or 12 hours at night. Thats a little bit of a lofty goal, but I still try to get 8.5-10.5 hours of sleep in a night. Sleep is when our bodies are most efficient at recovering, so get as much as possible.
1. Sleep. Athletes need a tonne of sleep. Sleep as much as you possibly can and then have a nap later on. I've heard of equations like 7 or 8 hours plus the amount of time you trained that day. That would mean if you did 4 hours of training, you should sleep 11 or 12 hours at night. Thats a little bit of a lofty goal, but I still try to get 8.5-10.5 hours of sleep in a night. Sleep is when our bodies are most efficient at recovering, so get as much as possible.
2. Fuel. Nutrition is right up there with sleep in terms of importance. Your body has many, many, many reactions necessary for energy production and tissue (re)growth. Eat a balanced diet and keep toxins out. I'm not even going to try to explain how to do this because there are literally volumes of information on the subject. Out of experience though, if I'm at 95% productivity on days where I eat well, I'm usually at like 60-75% productivity on days where I neglect my diet (like yesterday when I got back from a trip and had no food in the house). Make a habit of eating a perfect diet.
3. Take time off. It is normal to be tired in training. In fact, it is a really useful training technique. That being said EVERY good training plan has periods of rest (usually around a week) built into it (the standard would be once per week and every third week). Taking this time off allows your body to absorb (read, rebuild from) all the hard training sessions you've put in over the last few days/weeks.
4. Recovery from each session. After a training session I focus on two main things: putting fuel back into my body and reducing inflammation.
Fueling can get pretty complicated, but basically I have a calorie rich snack with a bunch of protein (often in the form of powder) and a whole bunch of carbs (from many sources). Your body most readily accepts food in the 20-30 minute window following exercise. Not only that, but if you don't fuel up during this time, you'll be using stored energy instead, which can be really hard on your body. You should have a minimum of 1g of carbohydrate per kg of body weight and about 1/5 g of protein per kg of body weight to facilitate muscle glycogen replacement.
Reducing inflammation is the other thing I focus on, because it is responsible for a lot of joint and muscle pain that might be left over from training. I like to use ice, compression, antioxidants and anti-inflammatories primarily. Ice and compression function in similar ways where they increase the pressure in your veins to push inflammation (ice uses your body's response to cold--vasoconstriction--, and compression is pretty self explanatory), blood and any byproducts of exercise out of your muscles (and joints too). These techniques are "necessary", because your veins don't normally have much/any pressure in them, so after exercise, the natural response is to have pooling of blood occur in your muscles (especially legs). A good warm down also fits into this category.
Antioxidants are found in coloured fruits and vegetables, wine, chocolate and plenty of other sources. They neutralize free radicals which are highly reactive molecules released during exercise. Left to their own devices, free radicals go around reacting with your tissues and can cause a fair bit of damage (muscle and joint pain).
The two main anti-inflammatories I use are advil/ibuprofen and omega-3 fatty acids (mostly from fish, olive oil and other oils and fish oil tablets). I've read that omega-3 fatty acids are much safer to use on a regular basis, so I don't take advil/ibuprofen unless its been a really rough day. Advil may also have a dehydrating effect, so its not a good idea to use during competition/training.
5. Preventative measures. I use stretching and strength as ways to prevent injuries (which result from under-recovery) from occurring. I try to do a little bit of prevention every day, generally relating to injuries I've had in the past. For example, I've had a lot of calf problems, so I stretch those a few times daily and I've had a few instances of ITBS, so I roll my IT bands once a week or more. The bottom line here is that you should expect that past injuries will return, so you should never stop doing your physio exercises.
6. Other. Two more techniques which I'm quite fond of are recovery workouts and hot/cold application.
Recovery workouts are great to do 4-24 hours following a tough workout and up to several days following races. You try to go pretty much as easy as you possibly can for these and the purpose is to just get a bit more blood flowing through the muscles. Think of it as an extra cool down.
Alternating hot and cold can be done in a number of ways, but my favourite is with one of those cloth bags full or beans or oatmeal and an ice pack (other ways would be with a shower or two baths). Ideally, you should have the cold pack on for around 1-3 minutes and the hot pack on for 3-5 minutes and repeat 3-5 times (more if its really bad, but if its that bad, use more than one hot/cold session). I swear by the hot/cold--it has got me out of some really bad muscle damage.
Thats a pretty non-detailed explanation of recovery, but it covers a large range of subjects. Feel free to ask any questions you like.
-T
Sunday 8 May 2011
Shaking up the long run
As anybody who keeps up to date with my blog knows, I had a pretty good show a week ago at the Waterloo Half Marathon (results). In this article, I'll explain exactly how that came to pass.
The reason I feel like I can explain exactly how is that I didn't really train that much, but I made it all count. My run training came in two parts: short transition runs and weekly long runs.
Short transition runs aren't going to do a whole heck of a lot of my fitness. The one thing they may have helped with is finishing strong--not necessarily fast, but finishing with good economy on tired legs. Other than that though, transition runs probably won't account for much other run specific gains (they'll be more helpful once the tri season starts).
That leaves the long runs. My long runs have all between 18 and 22km, but like I said, very high quality. The idea was that I'd insert one minute intervals, do them at an ascending pace or have a tempo finish for each long run during the build period in order to have bigger gains for fewer sessions and lower milage.
The purpose of the one minute intervals were to make sure I could produce a faster turnover and drop down to race pace of slightly faster towards the middle and end of the run. I used a fairly long rest period (more than a minute) and did 4-6 in total. The intervals were good because I was recruiting previously unused muscle fibers and being forced to recover from heart rate spikes.
The ascending pace long run had a focus on negative splitting, finishing strong and maintaining economy. This was another technique I used increase the number of muscle fibers recruited during the workout. I kept the workout under control by watching my pace on my Garmin and keeping my heart rate down. Pace usually started at 5:00-5:15 min/km and usually I ran the final 1-3 km at 4:00-4:05 min/km.
Finally, the tempo finish long runs were ran at a slower pace until the last 3-5 km, when the pace dropped to around race pace or slightly lower. I generally tried to hit 3:58 or 3:59 km's, but sometimes hills got in the way of that. I thank the tempo finish and ascending pace long runs for feeling fresh until the last couple of km's last week.
I wouldn't suggest doing either the tempo finish and ascending pace long run more often than every other week for recovery purposes. They have other drawbacks as well in that it becomes tougher to do quality sessions later in the week and still recover properly. You also can't increase your distance that much when you do these because they're pretty tough already.
So there you have it: a fantastic training technique, but tough to use in a busy training schedule. If you do plan to use these workouts, make sure you recover like its your job afterwards.
The reason I feel like I can explain exactly how is that I didn't really train that much, but I made it all count. My run training came in two parts: short transition runs and weekly long runs.
Short transition runs aren't going to do a whole heck of a lot of my fitness. The one thing they may have helped with is finishing strong--not necessarily fast, but finishing with good economy on tired legs. Other than that though, transition runs probably won't account for much other run specific gains (they'll be more helpful once the tri season starts).
That leaves the long runs. My long runs have all between 18 and 22km, but like I said, very high quality. The idea was that I'd insert one minute intervals, do them at an ascending pace or have a tempo finish for each long run during the build period in order to have bigger gains for fewer sessions and lower milage.
The purpose of the one minute intervals were to make sure I could produce a faster turnover and drop down to race pace of slightly faster towards the middle and end of the run. I used a fairly long rest period (more than a minute) and did 4-6 in total. The intervals were good because I was recruiting previously unused muscle fibers and being forced to recover from heart rate spikes.
The ascending pace long run had a focus on negative splitting, finishing strong and maintaining economy. This was another technique I used increase the number of muscle fibers recruited during the workout. I kept the workout under control by watching my pace on my Garmin and keeping my heart rate down. Pace usually started at 5:00-5:15 min/km and usually I ran the final 1-3 km at 4:00-4:05 min/km.
Finally, the tempo finish long runs were ran at a slower pace until the last 3-5 km, when the pace dropped to around race pace or slightly lower. I generally tried to hit 3:58 or 3:59 km's, but sometimes hills got in the way of that. I thank the tempo finish and ascending pace long runs for feeling fresh until the last couple of km's last week.
I wouldn't suggest doing either the tempo finish and ascending pace long run more often than every other week for recovery purposes. They have other drawbacks as well in that it becomes tougher to do quality sessions later in the week and still recover properly. You also can't increase your distance that much when you do these because they're pretty tough already.
So there you have it: a fantastic training technique, but tough to use in a busy training schedule. If you do plan to use these workouts, make sure you recover like its your job afterwards.
Tuesday 3 May 2011
Strength from the knee down
DISCLAIMER: The following is largely a rant about cushioned shoes ruining a generation. I still do a fair bit of my training in this type of shoe, especially my long runs. I get away with it by being very mindful of the habits the shoes I run in can cause.
Below the knee? Are there even that many muscles down there? Yes. Lots. And they are really important for running health and balance. If you find yourself with foot, calf, knee, or even hip problems, you may be able to solve them by strengthening the base which you land on with each stride.
A quick anatomy lesson:
There are three compartments to the lower leg, or as we kinesiology kids call it, the leg (the thigh doesn't count as the leg for some reason...). These compartments are the posterior (rear) compartment which is primarily made up of the two calf muscles (they point your toe), the lateral (outside) compartment which has the muscles that move your foot laterally (outwards) and the anterior compartment which has the muscles that pull your foot up and medially (inwards).
The foot also has a tonne of muscles and ligaments which are important to your leg stability. Since the foot flattens out every time you take a step, these muscles and ligaments are important shock absorbers as well. Some of the muscles originate within the foot and other start on the leg.
Long story short, this is a really complicated area and that means there are lots of ways it can get injured. It also means there are lots of ways to strengthen the area.
A case for minimalistic shoes
Back in the days of yore, running barefoot or in your Birkenstocks were the only two options. In those days, people had strong feet and calves. They didn't get injured because every where they went, they were training these areas.
These days we wear our Asics everywhere we go. The shoes are named after clouds. CLOUDS. Thats how much cushion they have. They have arches that are packed with support so that your foot doesn't flatten out like it should and atrophy ensues. Its not over yet, woah no. Look at your running shoes and you'll see why they aren't cool to wear outside of your training group. They flair out at the bottom in this big fat wide base. They're designed so that you don't have to balance from side to side because you get this huge base of support.
They take it one step farther though. You add all this heel cushioning in and suddenly you have no need for your body's own natural shock absorber--your calves. When people ran barefoot everywhere, they landed on their forefoot and used their calves (and the flattening of the foot itself) to absorb the impact. Don't believe me? Look at a Kenyan. They still run barefoot and guess where they land. We don't have to forefoot run anymore because we have these big fancy (heavy) shoes, so we land on our heels out of laziness. Its less efficient, but its easier, because its pretty much walking. I for one, won't be a part of it.
My point: we don't use any muscles from the knee down anymore and its the shoe company's fault. They've started to realize this now though, and now you see minimalist running shoes on the market. They should really just be called normal shoes and let the big clunky trainers be called maximalist running shoes.
The problem is that nobody is used to running in minimalist shoes, so they're all going to get injured if they don't watch out. This is where the strength part comes in. Not just strength of muscles though, strength of ligaments and bones is included here.
So in one sentence, here is my message: To stay injury free, be in the best shape of your life from the knee down. You'll prevent overuse injuries because your natural impact absorbers will take care of all that. You'll prevent knee injuries because your improved balance will prevent any rotational and sheer forces. Finally, you'll fatigue slower because your running technique will never break down.
Great, Tim, now make this useful for me. Okay, here are some exercises.
1. minimalist running - don't go too far: build from 1 km up to 5 km
-run barefoot on a beach, grass, or a good, new track
-run in minimalist shoes, flats or some old tennis shoes with no support left in them
-do sprints, bounding, jumping, plyometrics and sideways running (theres a name for it, but its beyond me today)
2. calf strength
-do lots of calf raises
-do them on one leg to help your balance and strengthen the anterior and lateral muscles of your leg
-do them with a bent knee to target your solius (one of the calf muscles--it is extremely important to a forefoot landing). This will also help your medial (inner) quadriceps which play an important roll in keeping your knee cap in line
-do them barefoot to strengthen your feet
3. do single leg work
-balance on one leg
-squats and dead lifts on one leg -- make sure your knee stays above your toes rather than falling inwards
-use a balance pad or bosu ball on one leg
-do these barefoot too
*******MAY 25*********
So I thought I'd add this as an afterthought. Basically, be very, very, very careful with barefoot running.
I just read an article on triathlete.com about barefoot running injuries. THEY HAPPEN. More frequently lately. So make darn sure you're not even close to damaging your body from it. Here's the article:
http://triathlon.competitor.com/2011/05/training/the-barefoot-running-injury-epidemic_29710
Below the knee? Are there even that many muscles down there? Yes. Lots. And they are really important for running health and balance. If you find yourself with foot, calf, knee, or even hip problems, you may be able to solve them by strengthening the base which you land on with each stride.
A quick anatomy lesson:
There are three compartments to the lower leg, or as we kinesiology kids call it, the leg (the thigh doesn't count as the leg for some reason...). These compartments are the posterior (rear) compartment which is primarily made up of the two calf muscles (they point your toe), the lateral (outside) compartment which has the muscles that move your foot laterally (outwards) and the anterior compartment which has the muscles that pull your foot up and medially (inwards).
The foot also has a tonne of muscles and ligaments which are important to your leg stability. Since the foot flattens out every time you take a step, these muscles and ligaments are important shock absorbers as well. Some of the muscles originate within the foot and other start on the leg.
Long story short, this is a really complicated area and that means there are lots of ways it can get injured. It also means there are lots of ways to strengthen the area.
A case for minimalistic shoes
Back in the days of yore, running barefoot or in your Birkenstocks were the only two options. In those days, people had strong feet and calves. They didn't get injured because every where they went, they were training these areas.
These days we wear our Asics everywhere we go. The shoes are named after clouds. CLOUDS. Thats how much cushion they have. They have arches that are packed with support so that your foot doesn't flatten out like it should and atrophy ensues. Its not over yet, woah no. Look at your running shoes and you'll see why they aren't cool to wear outside of your training group. They flair out at the bottom in this big fat wide base. They're designed so that you don't have to balance from side to side because you get this huge base of support.
They take it one step farther though. You add all this heel cushioning in and suddenly you have no need for your body's own natural shock absorber--your calves. When people ran barefoot everywhere, they landed on their forefoot and used their calves (and the flattening of the foot itself) to absorb the impact. Don't believe me? Look at a Kenyan. They still run barefoot and guess where they land. We don't have to forefoot run anymore because we have these big fancy (heavy) shoes, so we land on our heels out of laziness. Its less efficient, but its easier, because its pretty much walking. I for one, won't be a part of it.
My point: we don't use any muscles from the knee down anymore and its the shoe company's fault. They've started to realize this now though, and now you see minimalist running shoes on the market. They should really just be called normal shoes and let the big clunky trainers be called maximalist running shoes.
The problem is that nobody is used to running in minimalist shoes, so they're all going to get injured if they don't watch out. This is where the strength part comes in. Not just strength of muscles though, strength of ligaments and bones is included here.
So in one sentence, here is my message: To stay injury free, be in the best shape of your life from the knee down. You'll prevent overuse injuries because your natural impact absorbers will take care of all that. You'll prevent knee injuries because your improved balance will prevent any rotational and sheer forces. Finally, you'll fatigue slower because your running technique will never break down.
Great, Tim, now make this useful for me. Okay, here are some exercises.
1. minimalist running - don't go too far: build from 1 km up to 5 km
-run barefoot on a beach, grass, or a good, new track
-run in minimalist shoes, flats or some old tennis shoes with no support left in them
-do sprints, bounding, jumping, plyometrics and sideways running (theres a name for it, but its beyond me today)
2. calf strength
-do lots of calf raises
-do them on one leg to help your balance and strengthen the anterior and lateral muscles of your leg
-do them with a bent knee to target your solius (one of the calf muscles--it is extremely important to a forefoot landing). This will also help your medial (inner) quadriceps which play an important roll in keeping your knee cap in line
-do them barefoot to strengthen your feet
3. do single leg work
-balance on one leg
-squats and dead lifts on one leg -- make sure your knee stays above your toes rather than falling inwards
-use a balance pad or bosu ball on one leg
-do these barefoot too
*******MAY 25*********
So I thought I'd add this as an afterthought. Basically, be very, very, very careful with barefoot running.
I just read an article on triathlete.com about barefoot running injuries. THEY HAPPEN. More frequently lately. So make darn sure you're not even close to damaging your body from it. Here's the article:
http://triathlon.competitor.com/2011/05/training/the-barefoot-running-injury-epidemic_29710
Sunday 1 May 2011
Race Report - Waterloo Half Marathon
Not much about today's race went according to plan. First of all, I got sick on Monday--so sick that at one point, I forgot where I was. Since then, I've been getting steadily better, but not doing any training. The ultimate taper you might say.
I woke up this morning at the crack of 4 AM to the lullaby of of one of my roommates rearranging his room above me. After failing to fall back asleep, I decided to read the archives of triathlete magazine for a few hours until it would be appropriate to eat breakfast. The early wakeup certainly meant that I had a tonne of time, so I ended up getting to the race site just after 7 for an 8:30 start.
My warm up consisted of a quick jog, lots of dynamic stretching and ejecting a few litres of mucus at high velocities from my body that had built up over the past week and were finally loosened up. I downed a gel and headed to the start line.
Start lines at medium sized races like the Waterloo Half are interesting places. Knowing I did not want to set the pace and break the wind, I tried not to be at the very front, but it turns out all the other fast runners didn't want to do that either. Everybody seemed too shy to put their toes on the line, so I manned up and lead the race out of the gates.
My lead lasted about 500 meters. My watch told me I was running 3:30's and I knew that was too fast, despite how easy it felt with the right dosage of adrenaline. I ended up backing of so much that it was almost painful to a nice 3:50 min/km pace. Jeff Beech (I think) took the lead and disappeared for the win in 1:17 or so, leaving me and another guy my age to duke it out. After a few kilometers we were joined by Mike Archibald, middle aged guy in blue and guy in black who later disappears off the face of the planet (maybe he DNF'd?).
The five of us ran as group for six or seven kilometers, trading pulls at the front down a rolling, windy road. They started to push the pace gradually from 4:00 min/km down to 3:55 and finally 3:50's. A coughing fit forced me to make the decision to back off and run my own race, having planned on staying between 4:00 and 4:05 for the majority of the day.
As they pulled away from me, my initial reaction was "oh crap, I'm being dropped. I'm having a bad day. Might as well pack it in." Then I looked at my average pace and saw that I'd been averaging 3:55 over the first 10 km. That put things in perspective and I forced myself to be content with having run slightly faster than planned. I ran the next 5 or 6 kilometers alone, barely able to see the group ahead of me, churning out 4:05's and 4:10's and waiting for something to happen up the road in my favour.
In a valley between two hills around kilometer 15 or 16, I saw Mike Archibald laying on the side of the road, stretching and it was clear he'd ran into trouble. At this point I thought I was taking over 5th place, but due to unknown reasons, I was actually in 4th. At the same time, guy in blue also came into sight and my watch told me he was around 55 seconds ahead of me. My new goal was to widdle that away which took less time than expected, because he walked an aid station.
The course has a quick out and back to finish off kilometer 16. I like out and backs because you get to stare down your competition, see how close you are to them and gage how they look. Guy my age missed the turn around (it was pretty poorly marked), so he was now only around 15 or 20 seconds up on me. Guy in blue was maybe another 10 seconds ahead of guy my age. They both looked like they were in pretty rough shape--slouching forward and landing heavily on their feet.
It was around this point where I realized my feet were hurting a lot. It turns out I got blisters just behind my big and 2nd toes in the quarter to loony range.
I dropped my pace to around 4:00-4:05 min/km at kilometer 17 and closed the gap on both of them on a nice long uphill (probably climbing at more like 4:15 or so). Guy my age got dropped on the hill and guy in blue sat on my shoulder.
I tested him with a couple of surges and it became clear that he wasn't getting dropped and that I was in no position to run 3:50s for 4 km, so I decided to back off a bit and collect myself. He was huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, so I figured between that and my youth, I'd be able to out sprint him to the line.
I ran in the middle of the sidewalk (we weren't racing on the road by this point, due to traffic) so that he wouldn't be able to pass me unless he really, really wanted to. We came to the last 500 meters together, where the policewoman at the intersection told us to stay on the sidewalk until we were at the entrance to Bechtel Park where the finish was.
I made sure I was in front and in the inside lane for all of the corners and just before the finish line came into sight, I gritted my teeth an went for it. Then I came around the corner and saw how far from the line I was.
My burst of speed faded momentarily and I immediately thought of a race earlier this season where I had gone too early and been out sprinted. Not wanting to repeat this, and not knowing where guy in blue was, I pushed through yet another wall of pain and made another go at the line.
I won the sprint and took 2nd place overall and first in my age group in approximately 1:26.
It turns out that it was a good thing I put two sprints in because there guy my age had hung on and another guy had came from behind to finish within 15 seconds or so of me. Congrats to guy in blue for a solid 3rd place and Jeff Beech for spanking us all. I'll link the results when the get posted on sportstats.
PS Thanks to my grand parents Robbie and Bev for the sweet GPS watch. It has been an incredibly useful training and racing tool.
http://chiptimeresults.com/resultsreader.php?y=2011&r=waterloomarathonH.htm
PS Thanks to my grand parents Robbie and Bev for the sweet GPS watch. It has been an incredibly useful training and racing tool.
http://chiptimeresults.com/resultsreader.php?y=2011&r=waterloomarathonH.htm
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