Tag: BMO Marathon

2019 week fourteen

Book Read
14. There There – Tommy Orange

Kilometres Ran
week fourteen – 51.1

2019 to date: 651 KM

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel among a host of other accolades and appearing on just about every best-of-2018 list that I came across I figured that I should probably read it because Hail to the Thief is my favourite / the best Radiohead album (don’t @ me) and then I read a bit and learned that the title is actually a reference to Gertrude Stein but by then I was already invested in the novel so I kept going. (A character does listen to the Radiohead song along the way as well, so, good taste.) There There starts out as a series of separate but interconnected short stories that come together over the course of the novel and culminate in the planned robbery of a powwow. This book doesn’t need me to heap any more praise onto it. It takes a bit to get going but it’s worth sticking around through the end. I look forward to the author’s next work.

Coming down the finish chute. Video frame from Stephanie ♥

Today was test day four weeks out from the BMO Marathon and the test I chose was the 42nd (fitting…) running of the Sunshine Coast April Fool’s Day half marathon from Gibsons to Davis Bay just south of Sechelt. I’d not run this race before, but saw a few people I follow on Strava post their results last year and I thought I’d give it a go. The course is a net downhill but they really make you work for it. This is the hilliest course I’ve run and a couple of the downhill sections were just as hard as some of the uphills. The race started at 9:17 a.m. with a bit of a hill off the bat then into a long downhill. I got off to a great start and got into a rhythm that felt really comfortable, rolling with the hills up and down, consciously trying to keep my heart rate steady. I hit halfway at 45:39 and was one second ahead of my goal pace of 4:20/km. The field had thinned out too; after some back-and-forth passing with a couple guys throughout the first half I checked my shoulder on a meandering corner at around 13.5 KM and there was no one in sight. The real challenge started at about 14 KM with the last big long hill that kept rolling up until about 17.5 KM, then it was all downhill to the finish. I got passed by an EVRC guy a bit before the peak, then almost caught him but couldn’t quite hang onto his pace. I finished 1:33:30 for a 4:25/km pace. It wasn’t the finish that I wanted, but I had a pretty strong finish, ending up with my third fastest half marathon time, on undoubtedly the toughest course I’ve run. I ended up 33rd overall for top 9% of the field, and 8th in my age group. It’s hard to not feel a wee bit disappointed with my result, but it’s a pretty great result for me, and as far as tests go I feel pretty good about where I’m at going into the marathon in May.

2019 week twelve

Book Read
12. Lullaby – Leïla Slimani

Kilometres Ran
week twelve – 62.6

2019 to date: 541 KM

Lullaby also know as The Perfect Nanny depending on whether the Sam Taylor translation of the original French novel Chanson Douce is from the UK or North America (respectively) tells the story of a well-to-do family who hire Louise—a seemingly perfect nanny to their two children. I’m not giving anything away revealing that she murders the children; it says so right on the book’s cover. I’m not sure what I expected exactly, but given that the death of the children is on the cover of the book I did not expect the death of the children to not happen until the end of the book. What started out as a book I was enjoying about as much as I enjoyed Motherhood gradually began to spiral downward into what could become the next Gaspar Noé film. The reader knows what’s going to happen but Slimani masterfully makes you work for it. I couldn’t look away until the end, and once I got there I wanted a bit more. I liked this book a lot.

Mile2Marathon Wednesday workout at the Point Grey track, Vancouver, March 20, 2019. Photo by Jody Bailey*

About seven weeks ago I made a pretty significant change that I’ve been alluding to on here for the past few posts and I think that maybe I’m sort of ready to write a bit about it. I’d recovered (mostly) from my knee issue from the fall and was really looking forward to taking a healthy second shot at the BMO Marathon in May, and then I overloaded and blew up my achilles. Frustrated is an understatement. Stephanie suggested I hire a coach, an idea that I’d been toying with for some time. I’d covertly explored a few options and had pretty much narrowed it down to a couple camps, one being Mile2Marathon. Still noncommittal, I completed the online questionnaire and hit submit.

Coach Kevin Coffey telling me what to do, and me taking it. Mile2Marathon at the Point Grey track, Vancouver, March 20, 2019. Photo by Jody Bailey*

I really don’t like being told what to do (or what not to do…). So that’s a problem. I received an email reply to my questionnaire from Dylan Wykes where he talked about next steps and getting me matched up with a coach. But I was still rather hesitant and skeptical. Dylan suggested a telephone call. Over the phone I explained that I was currently injured, that I was really tired of constantly getting injured, and that I was hoping that having some structure would help. I also explained that I feel like I have accomplished a lot on my own and I don’t think I’ve reached my full potential without any help. Asking for help is a pretty big deal for me, and I was still rather skeptical of the process. Dylan said he understood, and I believed him.

Kevin and me. Mile2Marathon at the Point Grey track, Vancouver, March 20, 2019. Photo by Jody Bailey*

I matched up with Kevin Coffey, whom I’d decided I wanted to work with after having put a lot of forethought. He started running “late” (not as late as me…), has a few full marathons completed, and has had his own share of injury setbacks so I figured that he has some insights grounded in personal experience. I’ve been following him on Strava for a while, and I recently remembered that he showed up briefly in a post on here a couple years ago, which in retrospect is rather entertaining. So far I feel like it’s going okay. It’s frustrating at times, mostly because he’s doing his job (i.e., telling me what to do) which means I’ve been running a lot less than I probably would on my own. But the time I am running feels more challenging, and I’ve been spending a lot less time in physio. I never imagined looking forward to running around a track once a week, so there’s that (I’m pretty sure in my questionnaire I answered nope to group workouts). I can’t say it has all been perfect (singlet? anyone? Bueller?), but I can say that the whole Mile2Marathon coaching team seems to really, genuinely care about their athletes. Six weeks until BMO Marathon and still lots of work to do, but I (cautiously) believe I made the right decision.

*I am very grateful to Jody Bailey for these photographs. You can check out the complete set from the Mile2Marathon track workout on March 20 here: gallery.jodybailey.ca/g/mile2marathon/oldblueinspring/
You can also find Jody on Instagram @3oh6 and @run.photography

2018 week fifty two

My year in running

My goal for 2017 was to run 2,600 KM. In the autumn I hurt my knee a couple hours before flying to Denmark to race the Copenhagen Half Marathon. An aggravated injury meant I didn’t meet my 2017 goal. I was still recovering at the beginning of 2018, so I set a more reasonable goal to run 2,018 KM. Then in August I hurt my other knee. Then in September, on a crap knee, I passed 2,018 KM. And then, in October, with a crap knee, I raced the Victoria Marathon and barely walked let alone ran again for a few weeks. In mid-December I was easing back into decent weekly milage and noticed that 2,600 KM for the year was within reach. So I went for it, and on December 29 I ran 11.8 KM around Oak Bay for 2,601 KM for the year.

Running races

I ran ten races in 2018, set a bunch of personal best (PB) times, and earned my first age-group podium finish.
First Half 21.1 KM – 1:43:04
West Van 10 KM – 44:06 (PB!)
BMO Half 21.1 KM – 1:34:52 (PB!)
Helsinki 21.1 KM – 1:39:09
Scotiabank 21.1 KM – 1:32:37 (PB!)
Kamloops 21.1 KM – 1:32:20 (PB! & Age group 1st!)
Eastside 10 KM – 41:23 (PB! + PB!)
North Van 10 KM – 43:46
Victoria 42.2 KM – 3:25:59 (PB!)
Moustache Miler 5 KM – 20:28 (PB?)
The Moustache Miler was two firsts for me: it was my first 5 KM race, and the first time I’ve raised money for charity. I expect more of both of those In spite of the Moustache Miler being my only 5 KM race to date, my fastest 5 KM time is 20:21 over the first 5 KM of this year’s Eastside 10 according to Sportstats.

Going places

I’ve drawn a circle around Stanley Park over 200 times and I still love that loop but this year I got to do a few new loops that were a lot of fun. These four are my favourite.

Final run in Helsinki. I thought this city was okay when I arrived and by the end of the week I didn’t want to leave. Some amazing running history there, too.
And then I fell in love with Tallinn. Didn’t hurt that the weather was unusually amazing the whole time we were there.
Stockholm is the first city I took my running stuff along on holiday, and I’ll never holiday without my running stuff again. I didn’t get a Sodermalm loop on that 2016 visit but I did this year.
Surrey?!? I KNOW! But this run was so much fun — down the hill then over a free ferry to Barnston Island. Plus I (currently) have the 3rd overall time looping Barnston Island (and it’s nowhere near my 10 KM PB). If I find myself marooned at the Surrey Sheraton again I’m definitely going for the crown.

Missing in action: the Helsinki City Half Marathon and the Victoria Marathon. I loved idea of racing Helsinki but the route just wasn’t my favourite. Victoria, in spite of setting a pretty huge personal best of over eight minutes, the race was a disappointment and I’m still bitter.

The numbers according to Strava:

Total Distance: 2,601.3 KM
Number of Runs: 226
Average KM/Run: 11.5 KM
Total Time Running: 212 Hours, 50 Minutes
Average Time Every Damn Day in 2018: 35 Minutes
At the beginning of the year I joined a group challenge to run the elevation of Mount Everest — 8,848 metres — and then forgot about it until I was crunching numbers the other night. I ran 38,419 metres of elevation in 2018, or the Everest summit 4.3 times.

Running’s free right?

When I first started running I bought a pair of adidas shoes at Costco for $40 or something, and Joe Fresh shorts and a top from the Superstore. I still wear adidas. JF not so much. I spend a lot more on running now. This year I decided to see how much.
Shoes: $1,434
Clothes: $970
Health: $619
Nutrition: $230
Race Entry: $724
Other: $665
TOTAL: $4,642
These dollars have caveats, of course. My shoe budget includes orthotics that I was not expecting, and I probably have shoes covered for 2019. I exhausted my extended health coverage and kept going to physiotherapy anyway. Race entry includes fees paid this year for races in 2019, but then excludes a few 2018 races paid for in 2017. Other includes a new Garmin watch, which had better not be an annual expense. The bloated Clothes expenditure is just embarrassing. I expect my 2019 total to be a lot less, but I’m a very recent convert to technical running socks.

Next week: New year — reading & running goals for 2019.