Restful Sunday morning

Well … plans have changed this morning. Getting up early was not easy and I didn’t fight it too hard. The extra sleep I’m sure did me good. Mind you it wasn’t exactly a lot of extra sleep but every bit helps. The nice part was that we went to bed at a decent time last night. I know we lead an exciting life.

Now I’ll run after yoga and my habitual Sunday afternoon coffee at Bridgehead. We always go to the one in Westboro. Getting the scheduled workout in on the scheduled day is another of my priorities for this cycle. Last cycle I moved things around a bit to fit my schedule. But I want to keep a rest day after a harder day (long run).

This week starts back to the zone 3 runs on Tuesday and Thursday. I’m looking forward to them for some strange reason. I always feel good after those workouts. There hard but not too long.

Continuing to think about nutrition. I’ve been reading and thinking about the book, “Nutrient timing” the last few weeks. It’s been a thought provoking book. Questions like how to keep in an anabolic state as long as possible after the workout, getting the right snacks and at the right time. Always something to think about.

We’ll leave Cobourg later this morning to get back in time for the yoga class.

End of recovery weeks

Missed the rain but not the humidity today. The last couple of days have been very humid. Yesterday was my day off so I was okay but today I had to time it to miss the big rain storm going through here. For tonight and tomorrow morning I’m in Cobourg at my Mom’s. The whole family is down.

Today I ran for an hour along the lake at an easy pace. This was the end of two weeks of recovery from the marathon in Edmonton. It’s been surprisingly quite pleasant. I haven’t any of the normal aches and pains that I get after a marathon. I’ve made a real strong effort to get all of the recovery runs in plus I’ve really tried to get to bed at a reasonable time each night. It's paid off for sure.

I’ve decided that I need to take the sleep part more seriously for this cycle leading up to Philadelphia in November. My goal is no regular TV during the week and to head up to bed around 9 each night. Now this doesn’t mean that I’m going to sleep at 9 but at least I’m reading and generally starting to wind down.

Tomorrow is 2 hours at a moderate zone 1 pace. Should be okay and will be fun to do here in Cobourg. Always nice to run in a different place. Basically this will get me from one end of town to the other and north to south as well. You really get to see the town this way.

Tomorrow afternoon we'll drive back to Ottawa. I’ve got a “yoga for runner’s” class at 3.

I’ve started to work on getting my weight down this week. The last two days have been fairly stable. It’s definitely harder on days off to cut back on the calorie intake. Every day now ‘til Friday I run which will make it a lot easier to control my total intake. Keeping my fingers crossed that this will go quickly.

Philadelphia here we come ….

Both Saturday and Sunday’s run were really nice.
Saturday was just an hour here in town in zone 1.
Sunday we were away @ Bennett Lake near Combermere. This area is very hilly and similar to running in the Gats. Combermere is near Foymount which is highest populated centre in the province @ 500m above sea level. My run was basically up or down but I kept the pace easy. The first part was a bit tough as we ate a lot at supper on the Saturday night at the cottage.
Today is back to Peak to begin strength and conditioning training for the next cycle in preparation for the Philadelphia marathon in November. Afterwards I’ll do an easy run down along the canal tonight.
We finally got our accommodations booked for Philadelphia and our train travel to get there. We’re taking the train via Montreal and NY. It should be fun. We get to have a dinner time layover in NY before heading onto Phili. I was amazed that we needed to book this early for accommodations but I guess it’s a popular race.

My thoughts on Edmonton

Key Thoughts:
1. Weight higher than it should be to run easily at that pace over the longer distance. Less margin of error.
2. Hills early in the race put me into distress very early. Hills really didn’t ease up until closer to 18-20 k.
3. Combination of race weight and hills on the course meant that I was burning calories at a much higher rate.
4. I suspect that when we re-test my zones shortly that we’ll find that my zone 1 was not yet back to where it was earlier this year. Zone 3 and 4 are just fine as evidence of the races I did in July.

Key factors for next cycle (just my opinion of course but I’ll put it out there nonetheless)
1. Weight loss to minimize calorie burn.
2. Get zone 1 back to where it should be.
3. Better sleep

Key successes from the race:
1. I was able to come back strongly in the last 12k of the race.
2. Legs felt good prior to the race.
3. Last couple of weeks of preparation really went well.

Edmonton Marathon: break down by 5k increments

Here's the break down for each 5k
_____________________________
Dist Time Pace

5 23:08 4:37
- drank some Gatorade at first water stop
- long uphill for last km
- finish heed bottle just before the start
hence didn't need to take it with me on the first part of the run.

10 23:35 4:42
- uphill for first 1/2 km and then down
- Horlek park felt uphill all the way
- wasn’t moving well through most of this section

15 24:45 4:56
- uphill after Horlek park for a good ¾ k

20 24:03 4:48
- some continued rolling hills
- stopped to refill water bottle

25 24:42 4:56
- a little off pace in this section but not from lack of effort

30 28:41 5:44
- stopped to re-hydrate and eat a bar
- Also stopped to refill water bottle with what turned out to not be water
- Finished with pee break plus ravine monster hill (3/4 of a k plus steep)

35 27:31 5:30
- refilled water bottle
- stopped to drink bottle to top up my hydration
- pushed the pace as much as possible here as well after topping up

40 25:28 5:05
- recovered nicely in this section. The actual pace was not on pace but felt fast.
- pushed the pace as much as possible through this section

42.74 11:55 4:20
- worked all the way to the finish
- passed some folks who took off from me at 30k
- Average pace for the last 4k got down to around 4:35. Really strong finish.
Final time: 3:33:46

Edmonton Marathon Results -- preliminary

overall time: 3:33:46 on Garmin
21.1k time: approx. 1:40:50
overall place: 80th
weather was ideal

Turned out to be a tough course for me today. Most of the hills were in the first 1/2. After these hills I never got back to a good groove for getting my target 3:20 time. It was not from lack of trying.

As Kevin @ peak always tells me, as long as you leave it on the course its a good race. That was the case today.

I'm happiest with the last 12km today. It was my strongest finish in a race of this distance. My last 4km averaged approx 4:30 - 4:35 min/k pace which was great. I even caught a guy just before the the finish who had taken off from me at 30k.

Comments on Edmonton Marathon prep

Weight
o Up 7 pounds from Mississauga marathon in May
o Both my lead up races to this event were run at this weight
o With all the hot weather its been a real struggle to get the weight back down.
o Most of the weight was gained right after the last race.
Training in Hot weather
o This has been tough but useful.
o On at least two occasions my recovery from hard workouts took longer than expected.
Rest and recovery
o I think this was the toughest part to succeed at in this cycle.
· Work was very stressful for about 6 weeks.
· My sleep was affected a number of times due to running hard in the hot weather
o On average I did not get 8 hours a night of sleep. The number was probably closer to 6 and 1/2 to 7.
· On at least two weekends, I did catch up on a lot of this sleep.
· In the week leading up to the race, my rest was generally good.
Overall training
o Achieved most of the key gains in the first 5 weeks of this cycle
o Running in the hot weather made it difficult to determine if more gains were achieved in July or simply maintained.
Prepatory races in July
o Both races went really
o 2nd race was my best result ever as determined by plugging into the McMillan Race Calculator.

Plans for next Cycle
o Get minimum 8 hours of sleep during the week and more on the weekend if possible. This will mean starting to head up to bed by 9 each night. This will be a gradual process for sure. Obviously it will be key to plans for training for the next cycle.
o Weight
· Get below 180. Edmonton race weight 187.6 lbs.
o Continue to not watch much TV during the week. This helps in getting to bed at a decent time.
o Consider adding a short recovery morning run on Monday or Wednesday.


I may add more to this but for now it’s a good start to my thoughts on the last 11 weeks.

13 hours to race time

Tomorrow morning @ 7:00 AM I’ll be doing the ING Edmonton marathon. Yes I’m a long way from home. The plan to come here is looking more and more like a good decision. It is 10 degrees colder here than Ottawa right now and not terribly humid. Tomorrow it should be about 10 degrees C at the start.
Here’s the plan for tomorrow:
- Get up between 3 and 3:30 and eat.
- Top up on the food around 5:30-5:45
- Leave for the race @ 5:45 – 6:00
- Check bag for after
- Warm up lightly between 6 and 6:30 including some yoga stretching
- Stay warm and loose between 6:30 and 6:40.
- Move to the start area and just keep warm
- Race starts @ 7
Today was all about topping up my carb stores and staying off my feet. I had a light run this morning to loosen up the legs. They felt good today. I managed to get a good 2 hours nap this afternoon. Yea.
The biggest factor tomorrow will be my nutrition. At least this time I know that if I get behind I’ll stop and top up. No trying to push through without more hydration and carbs. My drink mix will have both carb and protein in the mix. Everything I’ve learned this year says that this is the ideal combination.
Tonight I’ll just watch a movie and take it easy. From this point on I don’t want to eat too much, just keep everything topped up.