Four days to Buffalo, and things are looking… hot.

May 25, 2016May 25, 2016 / tmcfar1 / 2 Comments

It seems like all my bitching about the weather has come back to bite me a little bit.

ME: God this cold weather sucks! Screw this cold blah blah blah bling blam blah. (I’m paraphrasing myself.)

WEATHER GODS: Oh yeah, buddy? Here’s your cold weather. How do you like record highs for Memorial Day Weekend in Buffalo? Hah? Dick.

ME: Ah, shit.

It’s supposed to be 90 in Buffalo on Saturday, plus the humidity, so the heat index will be like 2000 degrees. Luckily I’m not running Saturday, but even Sunday morning it’s gonna start at 70 with high humidity and get warmer. Got an email from the organizers today urging hydration and, quote, “[preparing] mentally by understanding that this may not be a PR day”.

I think I’m in the 39% group. At least I hope so.

Ah the vagaries of Great Lakes weather. Yes I know, I know, OK. I’m done bitching about it. Sorry.

I am running the half, and at least will be off the course before 8:30 AM, so that’s a plus. And, also, Buffalo Marathon has its own beer! Brewed by Flying Bison Brewery, and called Mile 27. (It will be mile 14 for me, but hey, that’s OK. Guess I’ll just have to have two of them).

A marathon with its own beer. I love you, Buffalo.

In other news, I found out something else I shouldn’t do before a big race. Took B to the batting cages a couple of days ago and we got one of those magic tokens that spit never ending pitches out at you. My rib cage is killing me. Note to self – don’t do athletic stuff you don’t normally do prior to a half.

Anyway, still gunning for that PR, but I don’t know what will happen. Might have to wait till my half in the fall. Or, maybe I’ll show the weather gods who’s boss. At least until next time.

Whoa. Check out the race I DIDN’T run.

May 9, 2016May 9, 2016 / tmcfar1 / Leave a comment

I need to shut up now about Southern Ontario weather. Because I just came across this from Syracuse. And I was seriously considering running this race again because it was so good last year – main reason I didn’t was we couldn’t fit it into our schedules. Lookee:

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This is what the Syracuse Half looked like this year. Holy crap on a cracker.

If you ran this one, you have my complete and everlasting respect, for what it’s worth. Seriously. Y’all are old time tough.

Garmins, Gear and Groundwork – 3 weeks to Buffalo

May 8, 2016May 8, 2016 / tmcfar1 / Leave a comment

Prepping for a 12 miler today. I’ve fortunately been pretty healthy over the last 6 weeks. Today I have a little bit of a tweak in my left shin, so hopefully that won’t blow up into more of a problem. Figure I’ll just tape it up and get a wrap on it.

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I am a little concerned that I haven’t been putting enough work in though. I tend not to do quite the kind of mileage that you find in the half-marathon training plans. I mentioned in a previous post that I ran my fastest half last year on 20 mile weeks, but of course as runners we are all concerned with getting that PR, and so I have to wonder if maybe I’m doing myself a disservice by undertraining. Lately I’ve been sticking mostly to a schedule of 2-3 road runs, 2 shorter treadmill runs, a couple of XT sessions on the bike, and a couple of core strength workouts each week. I’ve slowly worked up my mileage to just shy of 30 per week running and 12-15 miles of cycling. This is a little less than the 35 miles of running suggested by Higdon, as an example, but they are quality miles I think. My shorter road runs are generally done at a pretty fast tempo, about 90% of full on. So a typical week has looked like this:

Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 4 miles treadmill (run at 8:00/mile), XT cycling 6 miles, core strength x 20-30 mins
Wednesday: 6-7 miles tempo (generally run at about a 7:30/mile pace)
Thursday: XT cycling 6 miles + core strength x 20-30 mins
Friday: Rest or speedwork x 4 miles (depending on length of Sunday’s run)
Saturday: 4 miles treadmill (run at 8:00/mile)
Sunday: 8 or 12 miles (alternating weeks, run at 9:00-9:15/mile)

There have been some ah, deviations, from this.

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When I say deviations, I mostly mean that I’ve been a bit lazy with the XT some weeks. And the core strength. And sometimes the running (but not as much).

Anyway, times in the shorter races have been good. Buffalo is flat, so that’s a big plus for me. I plan to do one more 12 miler about 10 days before the event, and hit 30 miles for the week prior to it, then taper. We’ll see if I manage a PR or not.

I have been considering breaking down and buying a Garmin before the race. I just don’t know if I need it. I can pretty much go out with Strava on a smart phone and without looking hit almost exactly a 9:00/mile pace by feel on my long runs. The problem, I think, will be that adrenaline hit at the start of a long race that screws up one’s ability to do that. For a PR I’m going to need to maintain about a 7:20 pace. In the first half of the Toronto Waterfront, I was under that at about 7:10. The plan, I think, is going to be to stick with the 1:40 pacer for about the first 3-4 miles or so and then crank it up and try to run negative splits. In other words, no blowing past the pacer after a mile like I did last time.

Curious to see what the weather will be like, although I’ve run in all kinds of weather this year with no problems, so there’s that.

And finally, I gotta give a shout out to Asics – I switched from Saucony to Asics GT 2000s earlier this year and I don’t know if I was picking the wrong Sauconys (a pair of Guide 7s and a pair of Hurricanes) but the difference has been unbelievable, at least for me.

Can’t wait to get to the Queen City and hit the road.

2016 Race #2: Cambridge Mill 8K, Cambridge, ON

May 3, 2016May 18, 2016 / tmcfar1 / Leave a comment

Date: May 1, 2016
Gun Time: 33:42
Chip Time: 33:39
Placing Overall: 14th out of 124
Placing in Age Group: 2nd out of 13 (M40-49)
Theme Song: “Changes“, David Bowie

Well. Back to the scene of Fat Dad’s near breakdown, and subsequent reinvention as a runner, thankfully. I speak of course of that day about three years ago (God, has it been three years already?) where this same race nearly killed me. That was the first running of the Cambridge Mill Race, and in the intervening three years, the course has changed not a whit, so I was really interested to see how I could do now that I’m, you know, in a lot better shape than I was. My course record was set in the second annual running, and while faster than the 41:55 I clocked the first time, it was still 40:09, and given I’ve since run the distance under 36 minutes I expected to be a good deal faster than that.

This race was going to offer me the opportunity to be on the other side of the registration table, since it’s put on by my club the Cambridge Harriers and I agreed to volunteer with set up and bag check.We were to gather at Highland Public School by the start line at the ungodly hour of 7AM (note: I am not a morning runner or, for that matter, a morning person) and the day didn’t start particularly well when I went out to my car to find the right rear tire nearly flat at 6:30. Fortunately my kids were in bed and didn’t hear the inventive string of cuss words I snarled as I got the jack out and put my spare on. At 6:30 in the morning. Did I mention it was raining? Yeah. It was raining too. Whatever. Up yours, universe.

Things did get better quickly, as at the set up we had a donation of great coffee from the Grand Cafe. And, also, donuts. Lots and lots of donuts. Like, about 17 boxes of them. In Canada, donuts are a staple food, especially if they are maple glazed, which is like Canada on Canada. There were many many maple glazed donuts. So, yeah. That helped my mood a lot.

Bring on the runners!

So, the first part of the day was spent getting bibs for competitors, checking bags, and standing in the rather cold misty rain that was coming down. The race was relatively small, with about 120 participants in the 8K, another 10 teams of 2 doing a 2x4K relay, and 70 or so kids doing the 1K Chipmunk Chase. Everything went as smoothly as could be expected, except when, right before the kids race, the starting gate, um, fell down.

The oh so proud starting gate. Minutes before it collapsed.

I was a fair distance away at the time and was envisioning the children sobbing forlornly, deprived of their race by the flaccid pile of canvas blocking the line. (At least, they were sobbing in my imagination. In reality I’m pretty sure they just stood there looking bemused). Eventually the timing guys got the generator going again (it had died unexpectedly) and the gate was restored to its former inflated glory, allowing the kids to show their athletic prowess after all, though I think the starter pistol scared the bejesus out of a few of them. My kids weren’t in this one, as Brendan has kind of outgrown the kids races (and had baseball practice later in the day anyway) and Dana didn’t want to run without her brother.

“Let’s just trample the thing.”

Eventually I was able to extricate myself from volunteering so that I could warm up for the 8K. The advantage to my having wrestled with this course before was, naturally, that I knew it very well and was clear on what to expect. The first several hundred yards was a relatively steep downhill section to the banks of the Grand River, along which we would run for the next 2.5K or so. I was in the lead pack of runners and moving along well. The conditions at racetime were perfect, as it turned out – the rain stopped, there was very little wind, and the temperature was in the low 40s. My goal, based on my recent 5K times, was to go under 34 minutes. I felt like this was realistic though the course was a pretty technical one with a lot of hills. I roared through the halfway mark and the turn away from the river into a series of uphill grades. This is where things got tougher and I definitely slowed a bit, but still felt really strong and I wasn’t giving up ground to any of the other runners. The last obstacle was the steep uphill at 6.5K, which I detailed in my previous post about this race and which has become rather infamous among local runners of this event. In the back of my mind I remembered how hard it had been to get up the thing the first couple of times I ran, and used that as motivation. And you know what? I dominated that motherfucker this time. Seriously.

Swinging into the uphill grade to the finish gate I felt better than I’ve ever felt finishing a race, striding down the stretch. The only blemish was I let Jason Hankins, another Harrier, pass me at the end (he was in full sprint at the time and had I known a $50 GC to a nice restaurant was at stake for winning our age category, I’d have tried to sprint too, or at least tripped him as surreptitiously as possible). Lori and the kids showed up to cheer at the finish, and I was really happy with my time, which was a PR by a substantial margin on a pretty tough course.

So, this race was nice, and I guess a bit of an hors d’oeuvre before the main course of the Buffalo Half Marathon, which is coming up at the end of the month. Cambridge Mill Race doesn’t like to give out T-shirts every year so I got this weird head-wrap thing with my race kit. Little sore the day after but I have a feeling all the work is going to pay off when I get to Buffalo. Can’t wait.

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The Polar Vortex, and its General Suckitude

April 9, 2016April 9, 2016 / tmcfar1 / 1 Comment

I shouldn’t be complaining again about the weather. After all, I was fortunate enough to be in the southern sunshine for almost the entire month from mid-February to mid-March, plus we had a record for warmth in December and the rest of March after returning wasn’t terrible either.

It’s just, when you get to April, it’s supposed to be all daffodils and bunny rabbits and chirping birds and such. Not this:

Yeah, this is what it looked like where I live. Last weekend. IN GODDAMN APRIL.

So, the weatherman tells me it’s because of the polar vortex. You know things are bad when you see a weatherman and you have an irrational and nearly uncontrollable urge to punch him in the mouth. Or I suppose punch the TV since I rarely run into weathermen in person. Lucky for them, I guess.

I mean, seriously, WTF?

I have developed a pathological hatred of the color blue.

This actually started with an ice storm on Easter weekend. Ice storms aren’t very conducive to outdoor running, or driving, or, you know, pretty much anything not indoors. And this one was hideous enough that even the trees looked sad and defeated:

We are the trees of Ontario. See us despair.

This vortex has been vortexing (vorticing? or whatever it is vortices do, besides make shit cold) over us for awhile now and it seems it’s not going to piss off back north for another few days. So, I looked at the prospective weather for my race in London on Sunday, and, well, -5C with -10C windchill (that’s 23 with 14 windchill if you speak Fahrenheit). The normal temperature for this year is 8C (mid forties).

And I’m wussing out. Screw it. I haven’t made any secret of the fact that I hate running in the cold. I’m going to pick up a race in the summer instead; the Angus Glen 5 miler, I think, run on the cart paths of the golf course that hosts the Canadian Open, which is kind of neat. And it will be a sane temperature in July when it’s held. So, the next race will be my local, the Cambridge Mill 8K, on the first of May. God help the weatherman if any vortices try to intervene…

2016 Race #1: Laurier Loop 5K, Waterloo, ON

March 23, 2016 / tmcfar1 / Leave a comment

Date: March 20, 2016
Gun Time: 20:37
Chip Time: 20:36
Placing Overall: 13th out of 182
Placing in Age Group: 2nd out of 8 (M40-44)
Placing Overall in Masters: 3rd out of 27
McFastlanes: 48:49, 1st of 5 parent child teams
Theme Song: Troy and Abed Spanish Rap from Community

The first day of spring arrived the day of the Laurier Loop, and it was, well, pretty cold.

It could have been much worse. I reminded myself of last year’s Syracuse half where it was freezing and we got 3 inches of snow the night before the race. We have no snow in Southern Ontario right now, and conditions lately have been surprisingly good. I had actually been getting outside. In my own neighborhood. In March. This is unusual, but I got some good work in for a couple of weeks before the race.

The Laurier Loop is in its 9th iteration, and it’s put on by the Alumni Association of Wilfred Laurier University. WLU is sort of my school’s rival institution in Waterloo, but it’s by and large a friendly rivalry, and I have access to their excellent Film Studies library through the Tri-University Group agreement, so who am I to complain? Plus an opportunity to beat some of their students like a drum in a 5K was certainly relished.

On the drive over to campus, my son Brendan entertained us with his rendition of the Troy and Abed Spanish rap from Community, which I for some reason decided to teach him in Costa Rica despite the fact that its nonsensical nature didn’t exactly result in him learning much usable Spanish. When I say entertained, I really mean he repeated it over, and over, as only a 9 year old could. (He particularly likes the line about the goat’s mustache being Cameron Diaz). We sorted out where to park and headed into the Science Building where crowds of runners were starting to gather. The kids made a beeline for the Laurier Golden Hawks mascot, because what kid doesn’t love a guy in a big fuzzy hawk suit?

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B and his new feathered friend.

Also, FACE PAINTING!!!

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Hell yeah. Dolphins and rainbows represent, y’all.

B and I did a quick warm up by doing a trot down Bricker Street near the start line. It was a sunny morning with very little wind, and other than the high 20s temperature the conditions were quite ideal for a race. I was a bit confused at first, because the course didn’t seem like it was laid out the way I had been led to expect by RunWaterloo’s website, and there were all these cones everywhere in places that didn’t make sense to me at first. It turned out the course layout had changed somewhat in order to obtain approval. As suggested by the race name, it was a 2.5K loop, but there was kind of a weird elongated s-curve with a couple of turnarounds that would send us up and down Bricker basically 3 times before re-entering the loop.

I wasn’t planning on getting a PR here anyway given my general out-of-shapeness, but it was clear this course was going to be a bit challenging given all the 180 degree turns we would have to do. B was a bit worried he wouldn’t be able to figure it out, but I tried my best to explain it to him, and told him he would be doing 2 loops and just to follow everyone else if he wasn’t sure where to go. I could tell he wanted to do his best because we were entered as a parent/child team (McFastlanes ride, er, run again!) and I assured him he’d be fine.

There were 2.5 and 10K runs starting at the same time, and the starting corral filled up as the Golden Hawk mascot got the runners pumped up. I wished B luck and soon the horn went and we were off. I maneuvered around the few slower runners who always seem to be right on the start line for some reason, and set a fast pace into the turn up Albert Street to University Avenue. The stretch along University was a slight downhill and I felt like I was gliding along well. I was pretty sure I was going too fast, however, and had really blistered out of the gate, so I tried to hold back a bit and conserve some energy, knowing the second loop would be harder. After a brief, slightly steeper uphill on King Street we turned into the odd S-section. Coming down the middle portion of the S it was strange to see the finish gate right there but not be able to head toward it, as we had to go past to the end of the street and make another 180 degree turn. What was a bit heartening was seeing all the people I was ahead of go past me on the left – one of these was B and I was able to give him a high-five as he went past. As I completed the S into the start gate I looked at the clock and saw that I had completed the first 2.5K in 10 minutes flat.

So much for a negative split.

The second loop was, as expected, harder, and I was really sucking wind as I turned the corner to do the downhill University stretch for the second time. This section was a godsend as it allowed me to keep pace and catch my breath a little bit. Heading into the S for the second and last time it was maddening having the starting gate so close but having to run past it twice (I really wanted to cut across but yeah, DQ. Plus, tough it out, right?) By this time, Dana and Lori were there cheering me on, and the legs found some strength for a last sprint that took me across the line in 20:37, which I’ll admit was a bit better than I expected (I would have been happy with anything under about 21:30 under the circumstances).

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Pizza time!

I went to get some water and then hollered at B when he came into view, exhorting him to the finish. He spent most of the S-bend pumping his arms in the air like he was winning the Boston Marathon (not really good running form, but the exuberance of youth and all that). He crossed the line in 28:12 and we went to grab some pizza and a bagel.

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I feel like the Rocky theme should be playing here.

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All hail the victors. In the parent/child category, anyway.

Given my time, I wasn’t that surprised to see I placed in my age group, but when I went to get my medal my name wasn’t there under M40-44. It turned out they had a top three for overall Masters and I was third, so that was pretty damn cool and certainly unexpected. And B finished second in the under-12 category, which he was tickled about. But the best part of all was that the McFastlanes won the parent/child (I pretty near had to peel B off the ceiling when I told him that).

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Not bad, kid.

So, a pretty great start to the year. B has got the running bug I think. There will likely be a few more McFastlanes appearances in the future. Now if I could just get Troy and Abed out of my head…

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Back to training, and the (delayed) beginning of the 2016 season.

March 20, 2016March 20, 2016 / tmcfar1 / Leave a comment

It took me a hell of a lot longer than expected to get healthy after coming down with a respiratory infection in January. Fortunately for me, I was able to do some running down in the warmth of Florida and managed to avoid having to do any training in the February chill of the Great Lakes region. The “Extreme!” 5K I was supposed to do in the Orlando area? Yeah. Didn’t happen. Leaving aside the appeal of sitting poolside with a beer, I didn’t feel based on the runs I did that I was anywhere near being able to compete effectively. Every time I came back from a run I spent 5 minutes doubled over, coughing. To make matters worse, the sinus infection that plagued me in January seemed to be rallying.

Ahh. Now, I was supposed to do something, wasn’t I? Something athletic? Forget it, just pass me another beer.

It took a few days, but by the time I was back in Ontario I felt like I was on the mend. Lucky me, I got to turn around later that week and head to Costa Rica on a family vacation. Bouncing around the backblocks of the country in a little rented 4 x 4 was tons of fun, but what really struck me was the number of Costa Ricans who are either runners or cyclers – we saw them everywhere, laboring up and down the many hills in the country. I did my best to join them over 17 days. Running in Central America poses some interesting challenges; the heat on the coast is like a blast furnace, the humidity can be overwhelming, the roads are pretty bad in parts of the country and you have to constantly be watching out for large vehicles that don’t really yield to those on foot, and especially in Guanacaste province in the dry season the dust thrown up by those vehicles can really be choking. Also, there are a lot of hills (which are great for training, but also which, as I mentioned before, I tend to be crappy on).

We saw these guys everywhere in Costa Rica, especially on weekends along the coastal highway. Lots of runners, too.

Nevertheless, I got some good work in, and am now prepping for the Buffalo Half. Tomorrow is the Laurier Loop in Waterloo, ON, first event of the season. And since I’ll be traveling to Chicago and San Francisco for conferences, I added a couple of events in those places to the schedule. Should be fun.

A sporadic January. Plus more plans.

January 31, 2016February 2, 2016 / tmcfar1 / 1 Comment

January, ecchhhh.

Running in January is hard for me for a few reasons. I teach 3rd and 4th year undergrad students as part of my university duties, and the only time of year both classes are in the building is in January and February due to the weird co-op schedule. This just means for the first few weeks of the year I am in the shit work wise, if you’ll pardon the expression. It’s hard to find running time when one is working 60+ hour weeks.

Then, there’s the obvious – the weather sucks. No getting around it. So an inordinate amount of time is spent on the hamster wheel, which is a bit disheartening. I do try to bundle up and get out there when I can, but if the footing is crappy (which it usually is) I tend to stay indoors. The dark doesn’t help either. Though Cambridge is kind of pretty in the winter.

Nice to look at. Not so nice to run in.

My kids are great at sharing. One of the things they share is horrible mutant rhinoviruses from hell. So I’ve also been sick for a big chunk of the month, including a brutal sinus infection that I’m just getting over. I haven’t run in over a week, having seemingly spent most of my time boiling water for sinus irrigation (wouldn’t want the amoebae eating my brain, after all.)

Yeah. Gross.

On the bright side, the toughest part of the year is almost over, and I’ve got my running schedule more or less set. I’m gonna stick with the 12 races per year target I set last year and tentatively things look like this:

Orlando Xtreme 5K, Apopka FL. I know, I know. 5K races aren’t “Xtreme”. There is a half marathon also being run as part of the day which I suppose is slightly more “Xtreme”. I had originally planned to run a race in the Everglades, but the cost of the race plus a 6 hour round trip drive plus the cost of a motel worked out to close to 450 CAD. So, some other time. Damn Canadian Peso. I doubt I’ll be too fast in this one given my lack of January activity, but we’ll call it a tuneup.

Laurier Loop 5K, Waterloo, ON. They moved this race from the fall, and I’m not too sure what the weather will hold for a late March race in Southern Ontario, but who cares. Plan on doing this one as a team with B (the McFastlanes return to strike terror into the field, in other words).

Run for Retina Research OE Canada INC 10k, London, ON. Never run a race in London, but it’s only an hour away. This one looks like it might be pretty good.

Cambridge Mill Race 8K, Cambridge, ON. My local, as previously described.

Buffalo Half Marathon, Buffalo, NY. Buffalo gets a bad rap from some quarters, but I really like it there. There’s way more cool stuff to do and see than it’s given credit for, and Buffalo people are great. I’m definitely looking forward to this one.

Peach Bud 10K, Stoney Creek, ON. The main reason for running this one is it’s midweek and fits into my schedule.

KW Run for POGO 5K, Kitchener, ON. I was delighted that they made this race part of the Run Waterloo series, because it’s such a great cause. Doubt I’ll finish in the top 5 again this year though as the level of competition is bound to go up considerably.

B & O Yorkville 5K, Toronto, ON. This time I’ll pay closer attention to the sizing of my race kit.

Harvest Half Marathon, Wellesley, ON. Nice quiet half marathon on country roads north of the city for my second long event of the year.

Oktoberfast Run 10K, Kitchener, ON. For those of you who don’t know, our city has the second biggest Oktoberfest celebration in the world after Munich, due to the huge numbers of German immigrants who settled here. This race has been run for years, is supposed to be very fast, and should be fun (though my suggestion would be beer stations instead of water on the course).

Road2Hope Hamilton Marathon, Hamilton, ON. The big enchilada. At this point, I’ve decided I’m going for it. It’s fast – the #1 BQ marathon in Canada (not that I’m expecting to BQ).

YMCA Jingle Bell 5K, Cambridge, ON. Might as well finish with a local.

This will probably change, but for now, onward and upward. Now, let’s get some more warm weather – it’s 43F here today (7C) so I might actually be able to get out there for a change…

My plans for 2016, or, wherefore art thou, marathon?

December 9, 2015December 9, 2015 / tmcfar1 / 2 Comments

Well, it’s December here, and I gotta say that we’ve been pretty lucky with running weather as the temperatures for the most part have been several degrees above the norm. I went out and did a 44 minute 10K tempo run today in lovely 40 degree weather with calm winds and it felt great. This isn’t going to last forever, though, and it got me thinking about my race schedule for next year. I’ve got a few things figured out, but I also have a few questions. It’s getting somewhat difficult to work the weekend races in with my wife working 20 weekends a year and no one to watch the kids. Here’s what I know for sure.

My next race is going to be in Florida in February, and it’s going to be in the Florida Everglades. Despite the fact that my dad’s going to be in Central Florida when I visit him, he expressed interest in making the 3 hour trip down to Fakahatchee Strand State Park so that I could do the 25K race that is part of the Everglades Ultras series in late February. This looks super cool, though I may be dodging some gators along the way, and we’ll see if El Nino decides to drench us with rain.
I need a March race, and it’s not gonna be in Costa Rica. We’re heading down to Central America in early March, and I was really hoping to do the 10K race that was part of the Arenal Ultramarathon Series. Unfortunately, we are heading back that weekend and it’s just not going to work. There’s not a lot of choice when it comes to March races in Ontario. In fact, there’s none. Not sure what I’m gonna do about that yet.
I’m going to do another three half-marathon-ish races in 2016. Right now I’ve got the Everglades 25K and the Buffalo Half as targets. I have to pick one out for the fall so that will require some thought. I’d love to travel to one, but have you seen the Canadian Peso’s exchange rate recently? Geesh.
I’m definitely going to do the Kitchener Kids for Cancer Run again. Not only is it a good cause, but it’s now part of the Run Waterloo series, which I was really thrilled to see. They have a 10K this year as well.
There will be another 12 competitive races in the plans for 2016. Don’t know how it’s going to break down yet, but it’s happening.

Here’s what I don’t know for sure (running schedule wise, I mean – there’s lots I don’t know about everything):

Will there be a marathon in 2016? Man, I don’t know. Maybe. I’m gonna see how things go with the spring races. I think if it does happen, it will almost certainly be the last scheduled race in my area, Hamilton Road2Hope.
Would the mystery race please sign in? There’s some talk about a trail race this spring here in Cambridge which sounds pretty killer. Have to see if it will work in my schedule, and indeed if it’s actually going to happen.
Can I finally break the 20 minute barrier in the 5K? Hope so. I just started a new training regimen that’s a lot more formal. We’ll see if it works.
Is this plan to do a series of races in the US National Parks viable? More on this later, but I really like the idea. Plus the family are all keen hikers. It may not be viable, because, Canadian Peso.

Anyway, I’m excited. Hope everyone has a great 2016.

A few things I learned in my failed marathon training attempt.

November 29, 2015November 29, 2015 / tmcfar1 / 1 Comment

There’s a lot of stuff they don’t tell you as a neophyte would-be marathon runner.

I think I was a bit overconfident in trying to feel my way through the process. Somehow, I was under the impression that I could find an online plan, blindly follow it, and everything would work out. That clearly didn’t turn out to be the case at all. Things would probably have gone better if I had just tried to seek out some advice from friends of mine, and there are a few, who are veteran marathoners. Pride cometh before a fall, as they say.

So, for this post, I thought I’d look back and try to come up with some clear lessons learned, in order to help myself and maybe anyone else who reads this.

Here we go:

1. Marathon plans involving rigid running schedules and a specific number of miles don’t work for me.

break 4 or bust runners world

I felt like absolute shit after I ran my first 40-mile week, and I got hurt shortly after that. In addition to the problems with actually fitting all of the mileage into my schedule, I never felt like there was enough time for me to recover in between runs. The other thing I noticed was that it TOTALLY sucked all the enjoyment out of running for me. It really made me wonder about the concept of “junk miles”. A lot of the training I was doing was probably low quality miles where I was just slogging through and I don’t think it was helping me.

2. I was doing my training runs way too goddamn fast.

speedometer-going-too-fast-11058210

The run I got hurt on was an 18 miler that I tried to do at an 8:15/mile pace because I struggle with running slow enough on long runs. This was a theme in training.

3. Going from being basically a couch potato to being a sub 4:00 marathoner in 6 months is probably not going to work for most people (it didn’t for me).

Not me. But you get the idea.

I mean, holy crap. I read that sentence above again and I can’t believe I was so naive. I was really buoyed by some encouraging early results when I made the commitment to do a dozen races this year, but I was ignoring the clear fact that a marathon is so far removed from even the 1:40 half marathon I ran in February that it might as well be another sport. Building a base on which I could work toward the marathon should have been the priority, and it wasn’t. As a result, the overuse injuries killed me. The good news is, I have that base now.

4. I probably don’t need to run all that much to be successful, as long as I put in quality work.

Yeah. This is how I felt sometimes.

I’m not saying I can do a marathon on 20 mile weeks. But consider this: I ran three half marathons this year. My fastest time came when I was “undertrained” and running… uh… 20 mile weeks. To be fair, I did throw runs of 8, 10, and 12 miles in there. The key was I did all my mileage at or near half marathon pace and added speedwork every couple of weeks. Yes, I did feel the lack of work in the second half of the race in Toronto and given my 10K split I should have been faster. But feeling great physically going in really helped.

5. I’m wayyyyyy faster at the shorter distances.

Again not me. This is from the film “The Fast Runner”, which, apparently, is about a fast runner. I don’t run naked over ice floes. Usually.

My half marathon PR equates to a 21:17 5K, apparently. My real 5K time is almost down to 20:00 flat. I will continue to do a mix of distances, but my podium finishes in the 5K races have me thinking about leaning a little more toward these as opposed to the longer ones.

6. Half marathons are great, people are still impressed when you say you run them, and you can still, like, do stuff with the rest of the day after you finish one.

Yeah, we know. You a bad bad man.

I gotta say the marathoners I saw in Cleveland did not look like they were doing well after finishing. Not that I am disparaging the marathon. I still want to run one. But, if your goal is to seem like a badass, you can probably get away with the shorter distance as long as your friends aren’t ultramarathoners or something.

7. On balance, I really prefer running in Florida in the winter.

Hey, what do you know. I can reuse the photo.

Because, you know, genital nip and stuff. I also ran in San Francisco when I was there which was pleasant weather wise but, wow. Hills.

8. Don’t say you’re going to run a marathon for charity when it’s your first time.

charity scams

Yeesh. This was dumb. It’s pretty tough to admit to a bunch of people that have given you money that you can’t physically do the race. They were understanding. But still, don’t do it.

9. I’m still doing the damn marathon. But next time I’m gonna do it right.

It might not be next year, or the year after. But it is going to happen. Mark it down.

Running the great lakes

Running in the Great Lakes Region. And Elsewhere.

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