Tag: Marathon Training

2019 week sixteen

Book Read
16. Asymmetry – Lisa Halliday

Kilometres Ran
week sixteen – 58

2019 to date: 785 KM

Another book that made it onto my 2019 reading list because it kept showing up on various best-of-2018 lists and I decided to see what the fuss was about. And for the first third* the novel “Folly” is pretty great. The story follows the relationship between Alice, a 20-something editor, and much older writer Ezra Blazer in New York during beginning of the American invasion of Iraq (2003 edition). The second third* “Madness” is a seemingly completely disjointed story of Amar, an Iraqi-American who on a layover in London on his way to visit family in Kurdistan, gets the full Kafka treatment at the hands of Heathrow immigration officers. It’s a good albeit frustrating read, but bears only the most subtle connection to “Fully” such that I’m reading wondering if Asymmetry is a novella collection. And then comes the final third, which is a fraction the length of “Folly” and “Madness” (and explains my asterisk after “third”) and finds Ezra in a radio interview discussing the records he would take to a desert island. But, alas, no Alice. I liked this book in spite of not really liking Ezra very much, and I think I’ve figured out how the three stories fit together but I’m not sure and if I happen to be correct I’d rather not spoil it here.

Saturday I ran a 25 KM loop around Victoria for my last long run before the BMO Marathon that is at time of typing just 13 days away. It went okay. But just okay. I had a plan and coach had another and what I did instead was just go for a run by feel after a few kilometres to warm up and not pay attention to pace. So after about 6 KM I “ran faster” for another 8 KM, then a bit of a break before an out-and-back interval along the 1,500 metre Ogden Point Breakwater, then endurance pace home. Like I said, it went just okay. By the end of 25 KM I didn’t have a whole lot left to give, and the idea of running another 17 KM seemed daunting. I think that had sunk in much earlier, though, as I spent the much of the second half of the run coming to terms mentally with the notion that 42.2 KM on May 5 in Vancouver isn’t going to go very well, second guessing my coaching, my training load, my fitness, all of the doubts piled on and by the time I got to the end of it I was fine with it. Like being a bit numb.

Sunday morning I was scheduled to do a 30 minute recovery run but went for a 36 KM bicycle ride instead and it was really great. I managed to clear my head a bit and put a bit of perspective into the past 10 weeks on my feet, such that when I got home I immediately put my running shoes on and went out for a 5 KM loop with some hills and a bit of an uptempo along the sea side. I’ve set an A and B goal for this marathon, but I’ve been much less rigid with my goals going into this third time out. On Saturday, I felt like running a new personal best was out of reach. Now I’m doubting my doubts. With less than two weeks to go, and having done this twice before, I know it’s pretty much all mental now.

2019 week fifteen

Book Read
15. Goya, The Terrible Sublime – El Torres & Fran Galán

Kilometres Ran
week fifteen – 76.2

2019 to date: 727

I came across this book in the Lit Hub Daily newsletter and didn’t bother reading the Lit Hub article but ordered a copy of the book because I like Goya and I liked the idea of a graphic novel biography of an artist I like. I don’t read a lot of graphic novels but I don’t pooh-pooh them either since most have as much text as a typical poetry collection and the artwork can be spectacular. This book was okay. I thought Fran Galán did a beautiful job illustrating, but the story didn’t do much for me. El Torres’s story of Goya’s later years is inspired by the artist’s biography. Some of Goya’s most interesting work is the stuff he did as he descended further into mental illness. El Torres focuses on the descent, but not so much the art that resulted. I felt like that was a bit of a miss, considering the format is so image dependent.

I skipped the Vancouver Sun Run again this year and instead went for a leisurely jog along about 87 per cent of the BMO Marathon route. I rode the Skytrain to 41st street and basically ran the race course, minus the first bit and last bit and the out-and-back around 14KM. I’m going to over-analyze this run until the actual race (and probably beyond). I’ve had mixed feelings about it all day. I posted it to Strava as “demoralizing” and it definitely was over the last 8 or 9 KM as I completely gassed out in the flats around the Stanley Park Seawall. But there were some positives, too. I thought that the dreaded Camosun hill wasn’t as bad as the hype. Granted I wasn’t running race pace, but I thought a couple of the hills at last weekend’s April Fools Run half marathon on the Sunshine Coast were harder. The other positive was that my breathing and heart rate were both pretty casual over the whole 192 minutes, which I think it a great sign. Unfortunately, my legs do not have the same fitness as my heart and lungs. It’s hard not to second guess the process right now. I’m trying not to. But I’m concerned that my overall fitness just isn’t where it should be with just three weeks to go until the 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.