This tri stuff is FUN!!

Did the UBC Olympic distance tri today - 1,500m pool swim; 40k bike; 10k run. Well, make that a 10.7k run, but who is really counting? :)

After a week of the weather forecasters calling for rain, it turned out to be a glorious, perfect day for a race. Warm, not too windy and a little overcast to keep the sun off. I even enjoyed the little gusts of wind on the run since they were keeping me cool!

My pre-race regimen was a little lacking - realistically this race was intended to be a long training day rather than a key race - but due to the arrival of summer weather on Thursday I was feeling more like enjoying the preceding days and not a lot like taking anything too seriously. Saturday was spent doing a 120k ride with the PSTC group out to Boundary Bay, followed by a long walk (9k) out along the beaches with Bogey, then some patio time at the Galley at Jericho Sailing Club....which meant a burger, fries and ice cream. Good pre-race nutrition, right!? So, quite deservedly, I had an awful sleep last night and woke up with a headache!

Luckily, my heat time was 12:05 and left me plenty of time to leisurely collect my things and head to the transition area around 10:30am. This would be my first "pool" tri and only my third tri ever, so I wanted to go suss everything out in advance.

The twenty or so people assigned to heat 1f gathered on the pool deck just before noon, and I was happy to have a couple people from my tri group in my heat. It was nice to joke around and relax a little instead of stressing about the race - case in point, when asked if we had any questions, one of the guys pipes up....are there any sharks? It kept the mood light :)

Unlike the chaotic open water swims I had experienced before, the pool swim was quite civilized, with swimmers self-seeding and being released in 10 second intervals. Up and down the pool for 800m, get out of the pool and repeat another 700m, then a long run out of the pool and into T2. My swim went fairly well, seeing as I am a swim newbie and still rather uncomfortable in the water. I even managed to pass 5 people and was only passed once. Swim still needs work, but much better than before. Didn't wear a watch in the water to remove the pressure, so just hopped out and into T2 without concerning myself about time.

T1 went pretty well, apart from my bike mount which needs work. Still pretty scared of the "flying" mount and was pretty cautious. No garage sales needed. Once on the bike, I settled in and eased myself into the aerobars. This was only my 5th ride out on Ora and admittedly I am still a little (a lot) scared of her....but there is no time like the present to get used to it! A TT bike is perfect for the UBC course - 4 laps x 10k on SW Marine Drive - straight, mildly sloping and damned fast if you are motivated. I was a little shaken after being sideswiped with a gust of wind on the first turn, but managed to keep my laps relatively consistent. Nice and conservative, not pushing too hard. Ride time was about 1:10, avg speed of 33.4 km.


Coming into T2, I spun out my legs and started focusing on the run...which is really my strongest of all three disciplines and where I needed to do well. Drank the rest of my GU Brew, took a gel and thought about what I had to do. T2 was good, apart from my dismount (see above, needs work). The new elastic laces in my Brooks T6 racers were a snap to put on.

I tore out of T2 and managed to punch in a first kilometre 4:06. Nice, but not something I thought I would be able to hold. Dialed it down a little, kept my cadence high, slowed to around 4:20/km and just started coasting. It felt great to run. First 3k passed in no time and I was having a lot of fun, seeing people I knew, cheering on the other runners and enjoying the day. It wasn't until I hit 7k that I realized that I was actually holding my pace....which is really funny to me because last week at the Sun Run I was totally suffering at the same pace, here I was today just coasting along and enjoying life. The support on the course was great too - friends, other runners and volunteers were all so encouraging and positive!

When my watch beeped at 9k - 39:06, it signaled that it was time to give 'er....except that when 10k arrived, the finish line was nowhere in sight! Ugh! My GPS marked 10.7k when I reached the finish line - I was tired and a little disappointed. Had not planned to sprint for nearly 2k at the end. I also really wanted a 43 minute 10k (which I did have 43:28) and now my watch was showing a 46:35 10.71 km run. At least everyone had to run the same distance!


All in all, a very fun race and an encouraging start to the season. Final time was around 2:28, which I was very pleased with considering the extra 3 minutes or so for the run. Comparatively, my only other Olympic distance - the Vancouver triathlon last year - was 2:35. Yay! Training pays off!

As an added bonus, my time was good enough for 2nd overall and first in my age group. How fun is that?! Beginner's luck I think....and a thin women's field. :)

I really appreciate everyone that came to cheer (Hoz, Greg, Tav...you're awesome!). Thanks also to Calvin at Finish Line Coaching as well as the folks at Speed Theory (Doug, Jeremy, Nicole). You all rock!

Stats:

Finish time: 2:28:35
Overall 19/244
Female 2/??
Division 1/14
Swim (with T1) 29:13
Bike (with T2) 1:12:33
Run 46:50

Sunny run in Raincity

I've always found it amusing that Vancouver hosts the "Sun Run" of all things. Raincity, living up to its nickname, does not really offer up that many sunny spring days...typically we get more rain than rays chucked at us. Mind you, if organizers called it the "Slog your butt through 10k in the Rain", it probably wouldn't be the 2nd largest timed 10k road race in the world - I think only Bolder Boulder is bigger.

Speaking of which...Bolder Boulder is a great name for a race. It's really too bad that not much rhymes with Vancouver, apart from the obvious possibility of Manoeuvre Vancouver!? However, that does seem to be a fitting name if you were one of the 40,000 odd-participants crushed today into the start line on Georgia, doesn't it? :)

Notwithstanding my amusement at the ironic name, mother nature decided to fully cooperate and turned in a glorious, sunny day for Sun Run 2010. With fresh sunburns and tired legs from a 130k ride yesterday, I was not feeling terribly energetic as I herded myself into the starting corral with the masses. However, it was hard not to enjoy the carnival-like atmosphere and the fantastic sunshine. Race organizers could not have ordered up a more perfect day!

[Note to reader: I will preface the rest of this race report by stating upfront that I am a terrible 10k runner. "Wasted potential" would be a good description. The incremental pain and suffering that goes along with increasing my speed even for 3/4 of an hour is so awful....give me a half-marathon any day of the week. My rationale is that I simply lack that top gear that good 10k runners seem to possess at 9k when they start whizzing past me. I just have two speeds. Starting speed and everything after!]

The mass start was complete and utter chaos. Some observations about being packed like a sardine in the starting corral and for much of the first 2k of the race:

• There are definitely a few runners with hygiene issues. Is it too much to ask that you shower, say, sometime in the week leading up to the race?! If people are stepping away from you in the corral...you might think about why that is. Unless of course this is your strategy to get away from the start line chaos.


• The self-seeding system seems to have its flaws. Manoeuvre Vancouver indeed. I particularly love the walkers that start at the front, walk four abreast then seem aghast when the runners slam into the back of them. Oh, and the guy with the 6 year old child, walking. Good one. I put on the brakes pretty hard to get around your little girl...let's hope everyone else did too. Oh, and the pre-teens running 12 minute miles in crocs....

OK. Enough about that.

The best part of today, other than the sunshine, was that I completely stuck to my race plan. Seeing as I did not actually have a race plan, this was very easy to do and meant that things went very well indeed!

Fought the crowd most of the first 2k and just tried to keep as straight a line as possible. First 2k were just under 8:00, then dropped the pace to 4:15/km and kept moving along. The zeal of the crowd definitely diminished by the time we rounded into English Bay...those who should not have been in the starting corral were falling apart and by the time we reached Pacific, the crowd had thinned and I had lots of space to work with. It was nice to see some friendly faces cheering in this section!

It was warm, hot even, but I did notice a bit of a headwind as we started winding east. The nasty little uphill section up Hornby really sucked the wind out of me - my pace noticeably slowed here, heartrate shot up and a little nausea crept in. I held it together, somehow, knowing that the lovely downhill of the Burrard bridge was just in front of me, and picked it up on the way back down. I was halfway around 21 minutes, but knew the second half would be slower.

From 6k through 9k was maintenance - probably could have pushed a little harder, but just got into a comfort zone. I was pretty consistently passing people throughout the section on 6th Avenue and felt pretty decent. No need to bring back the nausea :)

Tried to pick it up at 9k over the Cambie, but as noted earlier, I just don't seem to possess that overdrive gear that so many other runners have. I felt like I was pushing, my legs and lungs were burning....yet runners were whizzing past me! The whizzing runners seemed to be predominately male - only one female runner passed me on Cambie so maybe this overdrive gear is a boy thing??

End result: a 27 second PR and a solid finish for some very tired bike legs. And to think that I need to put it all together in one day in just a week's time...yikes!

Oh, and if anyone wants to help me lobby for the name change...just let me know :)

The stats for Manoeuvre Vancouver 2010:

Finish time: 43:04

Overall: 746/39,855

Female: 93 /22,311 (broke the top 100 women! Yay for slow-ass me!)

Age group: 12 / 2,133

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.