2019 week forty five

Book Read
None

Kilometres Ran
week forty five – 70.1

2019 to date: 2,321 KM

I didn’t read any books this week but I read some other stuff. First was a Vice article called I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb and Airbnb really doesn’t seem to care. Whether or not you use Airbnb it’s an interesting article, and if you do use it there are some useful tips to watch out for when looking for a place to sleep. Most of the rest of the stuff I read was also about sleep after my physiotherapist suggested I try paying some attention to the Orthostatic HR Test. I’m not very good at it because when my wake alarm goes off at 5:10 a.m. checking my heart rate is the last thing on my mind. Anyway, the test goes like this:

HR1 = HR on waking (or resting completely for 15 minutes)
HR2 = Stand-up, pause for 15 sec then take HR again
HR2 – HR1 = X
If X is >15-20 beats per minute difference, you’re likely not fully recovered from the training of the day prior and should take it easy.

It’s not an exact science especially since I only just barely trust the optical heart rate monitor on the back of my Garmin Forerunner 235. But at 5:11 Thursday morning, after getting smashed on the track at the Mile2Marathon workout the night before (the Kipchoge Special: (2,000 / 400 / 1,000 / 200) x3) and then not getting to sleep until well after 11 p.m. it pretty firmly suggested I take an easy day.

Along with the heart rate math, my physiotherapist sent a couple article on sleep. The first, a pretty easy read titled Sleep, Recovery and Human Performance, which is pretty high level. The biggest take away being that I need to find a way to convince my employer that I need to take a 15-30 minute nap between 2 and 4 p.m. And I am seriously considering giving up my lunch break for some quiet time in the afternoons. The other is the opposite of high level – IOC consensus statement on relative energy
deficiency in sport (RED-S): 2018 update from the British Journal of Sports Medicine. I was pretty tired (no surprise) when I started reading it on my phone so suffice it to say I’m going to need to revisit it.

Tiiii-yerd.

Then because the world seems to want to hammer this sleep idea home, and the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon is real, Alex Hutchinson’s Sweat Science column in Outside this week was 5 Laws of Sleep for Athletes, which among other things reaffirmed that I need to nap more. In the article there’s a link to a sleep questionnaire from the Centre for Sleep and Human Performance. I completed it and scored 7, “which indicates that you have mild clinical sleep difficulty.”

So with four weeks to go until the California International Marathon I have one really hard week and then one pretty hard week and then a sorta hard week-ish and then a taper and I am laser focused on the task at hand but I will also be trying really hard to spend at least 56 hours per week for the next four weeks horizontal.

2019 week forty four

Book Read
42. Jakob von Gunten – Robert Walser

Kilometres Ran
week forty four – 53.3

2019 to date: 2,251 KM

You had me at Kafka was a fan and I’m glad that I picked up this somewhat obscure classic from Swiss writer Robert Walser. The title character is a broke runaway from a well-to-do family who enrols in a school for servants called The Institute. The book is quirky and strange and reads a lot like a diary because it is Jakob’s diary. I liked it but I think that its charm might have worn off if it had gone on for much longer.

Last weekend I did something that I’ve never done before besides run three races one right after the other; for the first time I paced a race. When I decided to attempt the Fall Classic hat trick (before it became the Hat Trick) my plan was to run a pretty easy half marathon to start. Now I know what I’m like, so I thought it might be fun to pace and thereby force myself to stick to an easy pace and actually give myself a chance to finish all three. So I sent an email to RunVan offering to pace 1:45 Fall Classic Half Marathon.

  • Before the start photos by and with Debra Kato

At first I was declined, but then a few days later they asked to have a phone conversation, which I think was an interview of sorts. Once I’d fooled them into believing that I’m not some hack I was in! I was paired up with another first-time pacer. No bunny ears and we would be sharing the pacing sign, but luckily we did each get our t-shirt with PACER emblazoned on the back. We met about an hour before the gun and decided to alternate holding the sign each 5 km and he would start. The gun went and we were off and I did my best to stick to about 4:55 pace but I think I was a bit quick. My partner with the sign, was quicker. I kept him in sight but hung back trying to stick to the pace. I set my watch to read cumulative average and it was saying that I was still a bit quick. Early on someone asked me what time I was pacing and I said 1:45 and not to worry about the guy way up ahead with the sign. We crossed 5 km and then 6 km and then 7 km and I was still a ways back so we didn’t swap sign duties and I really started to second guess myself and the accuracy of my watch and the stress that set in that I was potentially letting a bunch of people down was not very much fun. I had a few hangers-on and they seemed content with what I was doing compared to their watches and we slowly gained on the crowd around my pacing partner. I came up beside him at at 9.5 km and offered to take the sign for the rest of the race.

Um, why is there no one around us? Photo by Kimberly Bennett

I really wanted to be close to pace so I was very curious and a bit anxious to see the clock at the 10 km mat. I called out to the group that the clock was coming up and to be on pace we wanted to be 49:40 – now granted that’s gun time and we were a few second behind the start, but that’s what I was aiming for. I came up to the mat and checked the clock when I crossed and it read 49:30 and I’ll tell you that was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had midway through a race. The second and half was a bit of a blur. A couple times I got a bit ahead of pace and my partner reeled me in.

Oh that’s a better crowd. Photo posted by RunVan

We really started doing math in our heads over the last couple kilometres. We both knew we were going to come in a bit early and had a bit of friendly debate about by just how much. The last kilometre I was shouting at everyone around me to give it everything they had left and not let us pass them. With a couple hundred metres to go I was pretty sure that those still with us were in a good spot, and we slowed up a bit and just kept telling people to RUN! Still it was a bit of a relief to round that last corner with only about 50 metres left to go and see the clock counting up 1:44. I crossed the finish line at 1:44:38 gun time and I’m pretty satisfied with that aim. I really wanted to be 1:44:59 and I might have been able to stretch it out if the finish chute was a bit longer, but 22 seconds is still pretty good and I know there were a few people happy crossing the finish line. Thanks for RunVan for letting me give pacing a try. I look forward to doing it again sometime.

With Stephanie at the finish. Photo by Debra Kato