26.2 is your bitch

Yesterday, I rode from White Rock down to Bellingham, WA with a couple friends. Bored of some of the local rides, two friends were heading down to Chuckanut Drive / Larabee State Park to recon a 50k trail run so we took the opportunity to do a point-to-point ride across the border. It was a great ride - lots of long stretches with wide shoulders. The last section, just south of Fairhaven, is particularly scenic as it meanders up Chuckanut Drive with gorgeous panoramic vistas over Bellingham Bay. Though rain threatened for most of the ride, sun eventually prevailed as we pulled into the parking lot for a quick change and short 5k run brick.

What struck me as I was driving home and reflecting on a very pleasant morning of training is how fun it is just to train. There is no time pressure, you take things at your own pace and just enjoy.

Fast forward to this morning, day of the 39th Vancouver marathon. I woke up at 5:30am so I could drop a friend off at the start line and sneak in an 18k run in time to watch the marathoners pass through Kits. The run was great. It was a misty but calm morning, and I drew energy from the marathon course volunteers setting up....I must say that it was also mighty fine to run down Point Grey Road and into Stanley Park absent any traffic at all!

My jaunty little run was a walk in the park and complete juxtaposition with what I would witness for the next few hours. Bogey (my sidekick marathon super-fan) and I perched ourselves at the corner of Point Grey Road and Waterloo - this is part of the out and back section for the marathoners, approx. 31.5k on the way out and 34.5k on the return. Yes, this is the "wall". That dreaded point in a marathon when the smile starts crumbling, the legs start to ache and you wish you were anywhere but running a marathon.

This is the exact same distance where, two weeks earlier, I started unraveling at Boston. At 20 miles, your body starts a rebellion. At 21.5 miles / 34.5k, it is just an all and out assault. I could see this in the faces of the passing runners - the concentration, the pain, the exhaustion, the grit and the sheer will. And I totally understood.

Bearing this in mind, if you want to be a marathon super-fan and not a super-jerk there are certain things you never, ever, EVER say to a marathoner at 34.5k without risking life and limb:

"You are almost there" 8k is not a lot, but it is an eternity in a marathon. You are NOT almost there at 34.5k. Almost there is, like, 3 steps. Anything longer than 200m is not almost there. Trust me on this.

"Looking good" Seriously, have you ever seen anyone looking good at 34.5k? And they know it. No point in buttering anyone up.

"Run faster" My favorite. If I heard someone say this to me at 34.5k, I would have half a mind to step off the course and throw my gatorade in their face.

And yet, there we were at 34.5k on the marathon course listening to the spectators say these things.

So my sign took a different tact completely:

All in good fun, of course. But this tends to be how I feel at this point in a marathon (aka...you are mine, bitch!) so I took a chance and threw it on a sign....and loved the reactions. From high-fives to cat calls to one guy who actually stopped and had his photo taken with me and the sign. One sixty-ish woman ran past and said "damned right". It was absolutely priceless. The intended effect was to make runners smile, dig a little and forget for a minute where they were....and I think it worked :)

So congrats to all that came, saw and conquered the 26.2 today. There were great times posted out there today and the hard training paid off. Congrats to the new BQ's and some smoking fast PRs...you know who you are. Kudos to you all for hanging in there and toughing it out. 26.2 is indeed a bitch....but today she was YOUR bitch!

To train or not to train

"You're running on guts. On fumes. Your muscles twitch. You throw up. You're delirious. But you keep running because there's no way out of this hell you're in, because there's no way you're not crossing the finish line. It's a misery that non-runners don't understand."-Martine Costello

I struggled today with a personal conundrum over balancing the search for sustained happiness in a crazy world that doesn't always see eye-to-eye with me and the confluence of my personal goals with the (sometimes wildly different) expectations of others.

One of the things that coaches and experienced athletes warn you about undertaking a serious athletic endeavor, whether it is a marathon or full distance triathlon or otherwise, is the impact that it is going to have on your life. To succeed, it is somewhat imperative to fully commit yourself to your goal – live it, breathe it and love it. If you can do that, stay sane and keep healthy then half the battle is won. Perseverance and commitment are not enough though – the support of those around you is absolutely critical. So when the people around you don’t understand why you are doing it, it makes things a little challenging.

I know that doing Ironman Canada will be one of the most excruciatingly difficult things I have ever done, and with four months of training left am not even that confident that I will be able to finish. Yet, I plug away one day at a time, fighting hard to balance work, training and life….and trying to stay happy doing it. Every week is a careful balancing act between the demands of work, training and those around me and admittedly, you start to become a little obsessive and weird. You start doing things you never thought you would do.

I am not a morning person, yet have started getting up at 4:45 am a few days a week just so I can fit in my workouts, time with my dog and still get to work on time. On rainy cold winter evenings, I still lace up and run even though I would prefer to stay inside. I have learned how to swim despite mostly hating every second of it. And the list goes on and on…..

So why do I do it?

Here is the answer only an endurance athlete will understand: it is difficult to train, but it is even more difficult to not be able to train.

I can’t sing worth a damn, I am not a literary or scientific genius and I am not going to win any races, yet I can run and bike and feel great joy from it. I recognize the limitations of my skills and will always be a recreational athlete, yet I am driven by the yearning to feel the wind at my back and experience those fabulous days when you feel like you could go on forever.

You do, however, learn to take the good with the bad. Your body doesn’t always want to cooperate – you get tired, you feel pain and sometimes it takes a whole lot of mental will to keep going. I realize this is not everyone’s cup of tea and that the prevailing view is probably that leisure time should be always fun and never painful. I could spend my Saturday mornings sleeping in or at the spa, Friday evenings out at a club or shopping. These are great activities, probably relaxing, and definitely not painful….yet in my mind not particularly rewarding in the long run. Doesn’t the bet on the table ultimately define the wealth of the victory?

Endurance racing is all about what you have in you. It’s about going until you see what you really have in your core, digging deep and pulling something more out when you begin to think there is just nothing left. It is horribly painful at times and any marathon runner will tell you that it never really gets easier (if it is getting easy then you are not working hard enough!). You never finish a race without experiencing a multitude of highs and lows or without struggling a bit and, for me, without at least once or twice thinking about quitting. But you don’t quit. You never quit.

There is a certain sense of accomplishment, and maybe even a little euphoria, that comes from the discipline, hard work and focus of training. I understand why it is not for everyone, and yet, I hope that this explains a little why it is for me.

114th Boston marathon: race report

On Monday, April 19 I ran the 114th Boston marathon. It was my 14th marathon and 4th Boston marathon (having run in 2006, 2008 and 2009).

Compared to other years, I was pretty "serious" during the days before the race. No excessive time on my feet, eating clean, lots of sleep. I had planned to spend a week in Boston so there would be plenty of time for enjoyment after the race. As it turned out weather-wise, it was not difficult to spend Saturday and Sunday inside....it was rainy, windy, cold and pretty much downright miserable outside most of the weekend. I fretted that I had brought the wrong race kit and kept a close eye on the weather forecast fearing that I would be forced to go out to buy some cold weather racing gear!

Monday morning turned out to be quite glorious, however. Clear, sunny and not too cold - it was arguably the warmest two hours I have spent in the athlete's village in Hopkinton. We caught the bus just after 6am to try to beat the crowds a bit, and sure enough, after boarding the bus could see the line-ups snaking back into the Boston Common. We arrived in the athletes village in good time to secure a nice sunny spot under the tent, grab a coffee, eat a bagel with PB and banana and relax a bit. It was really quite pleasant.

Just after 9am, the loudspeakers beckoned us to pack up, gear up and make our way towards the starting corrals. It was much busier and crowded than I remember in prior years, but was able to get to the starting area in enough time to get into the corrals by 9:45....15 minutes before gun time. This year I was in corral #10 - although it was predominately male runners, I found a few female runners roughly my age to chat to. It was nice to make small talk and take the edge off the tense minutes before the start gun.

My start time offset was about 8 minutes and it felt like an eternity to reach the start line. After an initial screaming halt, the crowd of runners around me went off with saddles blazing. The pace off the line was very, very fast. First km beeped - 4:16. Yikes. I plugged into my iPod and found a techno song with 94rpm pacing and focused on only two things....not getting smashed by the crowd and keeping my cadence high. Although the pace was hard, I knew that I had to keep my cadence high in order to save my quads down the opening descent.

The first 10k of the Boston marathon course is predominately downhill and it is quite a scene. A mass of runners reaches out in front of you as far as the eye can see....an organic mess of pounding, sweat and dri-fit. The screaming crowds are frenetic and trap you from both sides into the horde of runners. Particularly on the steeper downhill sections, it is quite amazing to be in the midst of this mass of humanity. There is nowhere to move, and if you can find a gap to run in you seize it. Speeding up does nothing. There are 10,000 runners in front of you. Slowing down means a rush of runners past you. It's like driving on a freeway at rush hour - you kind of find the pace that your section of traffic is moving and shuffle along with it.

In the windier sections, the crowds were particularly useful - I would just duck in behind a group to block the wind and coast behind. The bigger problem, however, was the beating sun - the weatherman that had predicted clouds was way off. Worse, I had trusted the forecast and foregone my cap in favor of sunglasses, so had nothing on my head to shield the heat.

Attached to my wrist was an elevation-adjusted pace band for a 3:20 finish...this would be my guide for the next 42km. The planned first half was 1:38, with a back half of 1:42. I knew from past experience that the first 10k of the race was fast and tried to keep it reigned in....but it didn't work. First 5k passed - 21:50. Yikes. 10k - 44:20. More yikes. Yet my legs were happily on their way and not really listening.

I was really waiting for the ball to drop around 15k as it had in prior years, yet surprisingly felt great. 9 miles passed effortlessly, then 10. I watched my heart rate carefully and made sure I held back on the uphill sections. The few times I saw a creep above 180bpm, I dropped back until I settled at 176-178bpm. Through Wellesley (20k) into the scream tunnel, I started to feel a bit uncomfortable from the noise and heat and yet decided it was in my best interest not to take off my arm warmers...the back half of the course is notoriously windy and cold. At each water station, I took two small sips of gatorade and a sip of water, and around 18k or so started dumping the remaining water over my head.

At 23k I decided I should probably take a pit stop. This would be my undoing. The section of potties that I chose were full (argh!) and the runners occupying them were the slowest porta pottie users ever. Frustrated, I knew I was better off just to wait than to restart and stop again...about two minutes passed before I was done and on my way. What I did not realize at the time was that I had forgot to turn the auto-pause off on my Garmin and my time had lapsed during this 120 second pottie stop. I was only checking time on 5k intervals so didn't realize my watch had stopped. At 25k I checked down and was about a minute faster than my 25k split on the pace band so happily went on my way (not realizing of course that I was one minute slow because of my mistake).

I won't lie. 25k through 30k was tough work. The course drops fairly sharply around 16 miles and while you would think that the downhill would be a happy thing, my quads were just not interested in coming out to play anymore. I was sore. I knew this was trouble....there were 10 miles left with the Newton hills looming between me and the finish. I backed off. Luckily, my pace band had planned for this drop off in pace so through 30k I was bang on...or so I thought.

The hilly section, consisting of 4 sections of up and down, stretches from 17 through 21 miles. The last hill in the series is "Heartbreak"....mostly because it is a sneaky little bugger of a hill that hits you in the back of the knees when you aren't looking and breaks your heart. Although there are some nice stretches of recovery between the inclines, there is just something about this particular section of hills - whether it be their placement on the course or my physical condition after 33k- that makes them just a total b*tch. All things considered, I was really pleased with my performance through the Newton hills - kept my pace, kept my cadence and didn't walk any of the hills. There were many, many runners walking the sections of hills.

At the top of Heartbreak, at Boston College, I rewarded myself with a few walking steps at the water station to down some Gatorade and dumped more water on my head. Bad idea. Downhill or not, my legs were just not interested in moving any further. 34k. I rationalized to myself that there were only 8k to go and I could do this. It was only 8k!

Time check at 35k - 2:44 on my watch. Happy times. A 35k PB. I could do this.

Somewhere around 37k the cramps started. My left side seized. Right quad was like a rock.

Just one more step. Then another. I counted steps. Sang along to my iPod. Did anything I could to take my mind off the pain. Self-doubt flowed freely. I hated running. I hated the heat. I hated the screaming crowds. I hated Gatorade. I hated the music on my iPod.

Rational voice appeared again fleetingly. You are 38k into a PB. There are no PBs at 38k. Only 42.2. You have worked so hard to get here, don't give it up with 4k left! Get your a** moving, Richele, and suck it up!

When the Citgo sign appeared beside me announcing 1 mile to go, I could not imagine running another step. It was the worst, most painful marathon finish ever. Plodding right on Hereford. Uphill. Left on Boylston. The oh-so-famous finish line in sight....please oh please legs just get me to the finish. I listened to the crowd and tried to revel in it, but I was just done.

A medical emergency about 100ft from the finish line forced all the finishers onto the left side of the line, and honestly, just barely had the energy to get around the medics. That poor sod, passed out 100ft from the finish. I don't really remember crossing the line and definitely did not smile for the cameras, yet was inwardly happy when I looked down and saw 3:22 on my Garmin. (Of course, the porta-potty stop-pause time had actually added 2 minutes to my time so I would find out later that my finish time was actually 3:24:17, which I was pretty disappointed with.)

Would I have pushed harder had I known I was four minutes off pace? I don't know. I'm not sure I could have.

The 30 minutes after finishing were oh so painful, perhaps even moreso than the last 30 minutes of the race. I experienced severe ab and leg cramps and very narrowly managed to escape being sent to the medical tent. I sat in the women's change tent completely defeated - my abs were so cramped I couldn't bend over to untie my shoes, my legs would not allow me to stand. It was awful. I have no idea how long it took me to change. Looking back on it now it was probably quite comical to watch me sit and try to get dressed with the dexterity of a two-year old. :)

Reflecting on my race and my three previous Boston marathons, I am left perplexed and in awe of those who have conquered this hallowed course. She demands respect. As a runner, I am much stronger than my previous three outings and yet there is so much room for improvement. I still make (sometimes silly) mistakes. Old problems disappear and are replaced by new ones. I guess that's why running is a life-long sport. We might "win" with a PB...whether it be by seconds or minutes....yet there is always a margin of improvement.

Stats:
Net time 3:24:17 (2009 - 3:29:59)
Overall 5523/22540 (2009 - 7288/22843)
Female 770/9468 (2009 - 1203/9298)
Open F 18-39 602/4651 (2009 - 966/5021)

Beantown in 10 days!

Spring has sprung....the days are getting longer, the daffodils are bursting out of the soil and glorious cherry blossoms are starting to fall like confetti on the sidewalks. Oh, and onto my formerly clean car :)

Another sure sign of spring is the Boston marathon, now less than two weeks away. The taper is truly here, along with the aches and creaks and little bits of nagging training guilt that come along with it. Did I work hard enough? Maybe I should have strength trained. Done more tempo runs? More speed work? Surely that last long run could have been longer. And I could have eaten better....and on and on....

Doesn't matter. Not much can be done now except rest and recover for race day.

The 114th running of the Boston Marathon on April 19th, 2010 will be my fourth 26.2 mile journey from Hopkinton to Boston. I'd like to believe that I am a bit wiser to the hallowed race course, with its crowded start, sharp opening descent, sneaky hills and vivacious spectators. In 2006, my goal was just to enjoy the experience, relish it, and not expect too much. In 2008, I fought stomach problems from 10k onwards and just hung in to finish at 3:36-something....my first BQ at Boston but all in all, not a great marathon for me. And in 2009, I attempted to use what I had learned in my previous two outings to benefit me, ended up running a solid race against a headwind and finished in the slimmest of margins under 3:30....3:29:59. Can't forget that time!

The thing about being an admitted type-A marathon runner, however, is that we are never just happy with a good performance. Seriously. What other kind of person would just keep coming back for more? My mental notes on what I could have done better are extensive and with any luck, one or two of those mental notes will help me this year. I have a race plan (and Plan B too), and yet so much is dependent on the next 10 days, with every day closer to the race being more crucial than the day before.

At the same time, all seriousness aside, I am totally looking forward to a week in Boston! It is such a great city to visit, and we are lucky enough to have a little pied a terre booked in Beacon Hill to live like local Bostonians...um...minus the accent. I can't wait to putter down Charles Street, savor wonderful pre-race Italian fare in the North End and relax on a park bench in the Boston Common. Spring is here!

Taper time

Yesterday, I did my last 20 mile training run before Boston. Reaching the end of a training cycle before a taper is a pinnacle – at this point, if you haven’t done the training or put in the effort, it is simply too late. The focus for the next three weeks changes to recovery, nutrition and removing stress….much more passive than training and it is sometimes hard to wrap your head around doing less. For this reason, I always like to have a strong last long run to boost my mental game going into the taper.

The route I chose was an out-and-back from my house in Kits to Dundarave Pier in West Vancouver. This route is a “greatest hits” album of what Vancouver has to offer a runner…a quick tour of Cornwall past Kits beach, jaunt over Burrard Bridge, sweeping views over English Bay, throw in some Stanley Park trails, over the Lions Gate and then a nice long stretch in the middle past Ambleside out to the Pier. It is not an “easy” run, with Prospect Point looming in the first third of the run, but I find it really soothing.

Since my first marathon in 2005, one of the things I have learned is to embrace the long runs in training. It is so hard to explain to a non-runner the joy that I find in the solitude of a 32 km run….but there is just something so peaceful about concentrating on nothing but the next step and reveling in the gorgeous backdrop that the North Shore mountains and English Bay provide.

Admittedly, running can be a slog sometimes, when you are tired, when the wind is howling or the rain is driving in your face….but not yesterday. Passing English Bay beach, the water was barely rippling. The temperature was perfect – not hot, not cold. The sunshine even popped out from behind the clouds a few times. I marveled at the scenery, thought about how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful city and reflected on how fortunate I am to be able to run.

Novice runners and non-runners will inevitably tell you that they "can't run" or don't enjoy it because it hurts. Yes, yes it does hurt. But you gradually learn how to embrace the pain a little….and learn to trust in yourself to push a little harder. You learn to differentiate between the good hurt and the bad hurt and you learn when to say no, and when to keep pushing. You can choose….every section of every run can be made into a challenge or you can slow down and coast through. Yet, persevering through adversity always results in a little revelation about yourself. You can do it.

I hauled my tired legs up Bridal trail even though my legs and lungs were screaming at me and taunting me to stop….each step telling myself, No, Mr. Hurt…you will not prevail today....I am going to embrace the challenge in front of me and work through it. And soon, the laboured breath, self-doubt and pain peeled away as I crested the hill…. a short pick-up over the arch of the bridge and I found myself joyously stretching out my legs and pacing down the long, gentle incline of the Lions Gate while marveling at the gorgeous backdrop. Waving and saying good morning to the other runners…with a smile on my face. Heading down the stairs and back to sea level, I sped up to race pace for the out-and-back to Dundarave Pier. Five years ago I would not have done this because I didn’t believe I could do it. 10k of race-effort sandwiched in the middle of a 32k run…are you crazy!? Cannot simply does not exist. I can.

Finally, 32k later and 2:40 after I set off, the feeling of bliss….returning back to Point Grey Road knowing that I accomplished what I set out to do. Legs tired and a bit winded from a last kilometer sprint, I was completely done, yet in an exhilarated and happy way because I know I put the effort in and succeeded. Five years ago, I struggled to finish my first marathon at a pace slower than what I run my training runs at today. Even better, I have no blisters and I can walk today without any pain. It’s a quiet little revelation for me, especially on my last long run before Boston. It will not win a race or change the world….but I know I put in my best effort, and that counts for something.

Mercer Island Half-Marathon

I ran the Mercer Island, WA half-marathon this weekend as a tune-up for the quickly approaching Boston Marathon in 4 weeks. Tune up indeed!

I was forewarned that the course was hilly and the competition stiff, and had set my expectations accordingly. Completely opposite from the pancake flat, lulling half in Phoenix in January, there was no single stretch of flat that simply allowed me to settle into a pace - instead, a continuous series of quick, undulating ups and downs as we circumnavigated Mercer Island. Good thing the island happens to have a circumference of 13 miles :)

The winding course also meant that it was necessary to run tangents and watch footing as the camber of the road changed constantly. Cut inside down through the turn, back outside up around the bend, over and over.

My race strategy was to see how I felt on race day and run accordingly. If I was feeling off, the plan was to run at marathon goal pace (4:45/km); "on" was anything faster than that. My heart rate skyrocketed from the get go, holding around 179, higher on the hills. Although I have not been tested for a couple years and my zones have probably changed, I tend to view 180 as a zone 3 "redline"...so was trying not to get too freaked out by the read out on the HRM. From the perspective of perceived exertion, I felt like I was around 80-85%. I took my first gel at 30 minutes because there was no electrolyte drink on the course and was feeling a little thirsty. At 10k, my watch said 44:00 and I decided to keep at 'er.

From 8k through 16k, the course wound upward, followed by a sharp downhill section at 18km. At this point I felt freaking fantastic and knew I was in PB territory. If I could hold a 4:30/km pace, I would be under 1:35....which was baffling because the course was so much harder than Arizona.

If there is one lesson I have learned from running marathons, however, it is that feeling "freaking fantastic" is fleeting at best. And sure enough..."freaking fantastic" lasted about 200 metres. Wham! At precisely 18.14k, some nasty race planner decided to insert a mother of a hill that rose 40 metres in elevation over the next 600 meters. I sucked wind and tried to focus on anything and everything to distract me from the hill and my spiking heart rate. 185bpm. Yikes.

At 19k we were rewarded with a sharp downhill. Aaah. I kept my turnover high and sped up. Back down to 176bpm. And then another uphill, followed abruptly by ANOTHER uphill to the finish line. Seriously....a three hill uphill finish. Gaaaasp. Ack. Despite knowing that the finish line was only a few hundred metres away, I seriously contemplated walking up the last hill. 1:34 on my watch. Big hill in front of me. So long PB.

As far as finishes go, I left everything out on the course on this day and could not have run another step. My watch was telling me 1:35-something and honestly, I didn't care. I was extremely proud of the effort and yet humbled by the hills. It was a good reminder that you can run a perfect 9/10ths of a race and watch it go in the toilet on the final 1/10th.

The running gods must have felt sorry for me on this day, however, because they managed to rewind the clock....or perhaps I was just moving quicker up that last hill than I felt? Final time: 1:35:01 and a skinny little 7 second PB.

Stats:
Official finish time 1:35:01
Pace: 4:28/km
Overall 179 / 2137
Female 24/1060
Category 5/ 193

Hello, windshield....

Sometimes you are the windshield, sometimes you are the bug. Yesterday was decidedly a "bug" sorta day.

After coming off my highest volume weekend of training to date, I admittedly overdid Monday a little with a 2500m swim at noon and the Mike McIvor-designed "hilly" stage 12 of the Peak winter racing series (aka 25.4k of indoor racing hell....gasp!). This did not prepare me well for what Tuesday had in store.

At 4:45am, my alarm rudely reminded me that this was the first day of my swim sessions at UBC with the Pacific Dolphins. Gone was the warmth and comfort of my tri-swim class at the downtown YWCA, replaced with the brash reality of a gruelling workout in the outdoor long-course pool at UBC. Let's just put it this way....I got my a** handed to me in the slowest lane!

The combination of an early morning start and a cumulative 3 days effect of pretty heavy workouts left me completely exhausted all day, yet I meekly managed to lace up my trainers for the 45 minute steady state run prescribed by my schedule. Gone was the spring in my step from the weekend, replaced with lead-filled legs and utter fatigue. My glacial pace of 5:20 on the first km felt like the 40k marker of a marathon....oh how quickly your body can remind you exactly who is boss. It was an absolutely gorgeous evening - sun setting over English Bay, calm water at Kits beach - but I wasn't revelling in the scenery. Every step was a push. I willed myself to run 3k, then 4, then 5, so absolutely relieved when I reached my turnaround point.

Eating humble pie seems to be a good thing once in a while...keeps me focused and reminds me that I have limits. I'd rather realize that now than on race day.

So no windshield today. All bug. But tomorrow will be better!