Tag: Sweat Science

2020 week seven + eight

Stuff Read
The Believer #129 – Feb/Mar 2020

Kilometres Ran
week seven – 27.9
week eight – 68.4

2020 to date: 439 KM

I tend to impulsively buy myself Christmas presents around the holidays much to the chagrin of anyone and everyone who is trying to buy me a Christmas present or fill a stocking. This year was no exception when all of a sudden I decided to renew my subscription to The Believer, lapsed since 2007. Six issues delivered through my mail slot is $48 US dollars. But it’s worth it, I tell myself. Besides, although it’s now based in Las Vegas, they proudly announce that they’re printed right here in Canada. And then charge an additional $30 for shipping to Canada. US dollars. But I still tell myself that it’s worth it and then the first issue of my renewed subscription arrives through my mail slot and for the first time since, oh, probably, 2007, I read a periodical from cover to cover. And it’s great. I like the interviews with Rem Koolhaas and Jenny Slate, and especially love the article about palindromes titled “Palindromes, Palindromes, Motherfucker, What!” all which you can read online for free if you’re not willing to drop $78 USD for the in-real-life (or $18 +GST for this particular issue).

This photo from First Half by Taylor Maxwell is one of my favourites.

A couple days after racing First Half we flew away for a bit of a vacation to Mexico City. Eight days at 2,200 metres and my infantile stomach’s worst nightmare. So I got sick nearly immediately, then got better almost as quickly, then got sick again but exponentially worse. It was frustrating, not just because it was supposed to be a vacation but also because I was really interested in running at altitude and finding out what all the fuss was about. We arrived 7 a.m. on Wedesday and I ran Thursday morning and then Friday evening and then got violently ill and didn’t run again until Monday. Thursday’s run I got up bright an early to beat the heat and the absolutely insane traffic. I ran along Reforma, which is a major street in CDMX, to a large park that has quite the glow on Strava Heat Maps. A wrong turn from my planned route, I ended up following a couple other runners and found myself on a climb up to a castle at the top of a hill in the park that the locals like to run repeats up and down. The circuit up and down is about 1 km, with about 40 metres of elevation. It sucked. I really wanted to do it again.

Couple CDMX landmarks, the Angel of Independence (getting a facelift) and the Neo-Classical on the outside Art Deco on the inside Palacio de Bellas Artes.

On the Friday evening I set out in the dark and pouring rain to try to find what appeared to be a track about 2.5 KM to the east of where we were staying, and it was a disaster. I reached the edge of where I thought it should be, but found myself looking across six lanes of highway in the dark in the rain with no way across. Along the way I slipped and fell in a flooded street, covered on one side in muck, skinned knee, bashed elbow, absolutely miserable. I would spend the rest of the night back at our rented flat sitting on a toilet cradling a bucket in my lap. (I am currently 2.5 KG below peak marathon training weight. I do not endorse this diet plan.) It was the worst run of my running, and cannot imagine how it will ever be beaten. But it got better. Monday wasn’t great but I managed 7 KM before my stomach said, “No more.” Then Tuesday was better and I managed 11 KM and a few strides along Reforma that really gave me a taste for the elevation. Breathing is hard (and the air quality is atrocious) and I found myself out of breath pretty easily. I don’t have the best circulation anyway, but my hands were so cold and my arms went numb. It was an odd experience.

We flew home Wednesday afternoon, which mean one last run that morning, and I went for it pretty hard, repeating the route from day one but this time hitting the hill up to Chapultepec Castle five times for a 16 KM workout. Hill repeats at altitude; it was effing hard and a lot of fun. I had a great time in Mexico City and I really want to go back there again soon. I do feel a bit ripped off that I managed to get so sick and I wish that I could have done a lot more running while I was there. I got a wee taste of altitude training and I’m still curious about it. And then the day we flew home Alex Hutchinson publishes “The Skeptic’s Take on Altitude Training” in Outside and I take a deep breath and shrug.

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 eighteen

Book Read
20. Running is my Therapy – Scott Douglas

Kilometres Ran
week eighteen – 69.7

2019 to date: 904 KM

I am a day late with this post and it isn’t even a long weekend. But after bit of a jog yesterday morning, I took the rest of Sunday off. More on that in a bit. This is another book that came recommended by Alex Hutchinson’s Sweat Science column, had I heard of this book otherwise I probably would have read it anyway. I really enjoyed this book, not least because it gave validation to a lot of what I felt about running and why I started running in the first place. I didn’t connect with the section combining running with medication but I don’t judge those that need that to stay level either. While I have my struggles, and I grant that medication would certainly help, I’ve managed to manage without. I found the studies this book chronicle about the benefits drawn from running in nature very interesting, as over just the past year or so I’ve started to venture off the Stanley Park Seawall and into the park’s trails, as well as climbing the Grouse Grind a few times last summer. I’ve been vehemently anti- camping and hiking, but recently begin feeling drawn to getting away into nature. I especially like the short bit about flow, something I’ve experienced quite a few times running and actively seek, but never knew it was a thing. I liked this book a lot.

Special guest at the Mile2Marathon Wednesday workout: marathon legend (and soon-to-be BMO Marathon 2019 champ) Yuki Kawauchi.
Photo by Taylor Maxwell

Sunday was the culmination of three months of hard work all for a little over (the littler the better) three hours of running in the BMO Vancouver Marathon. I came into taper week feeling pretty good about where things were at, in that I felt confident that a new personal best was within reach and beyond that content to just see what would happen. I had an A and B goal but I wasn’t overly confident about either one. My plan was to go out and run 4:30s until half way and then see what I had left. It seemed like a good plan. When I started thinking about running a marathon a couple years ago I thought that running under 200 minutes would be a good goal. Before heading to the race expo on Friday I checked my bib number online. It was 199.

Smile! This is going to hurt.

I had a perfect race morning and arrived at the start in great headspace. Everything started out great. I found my rhythm right away and just rolled along dead on goal pace until we hit Camosun Hill at 9 KM, took my time making the climb and then got back in rhythm through UBC and let a bit loose coming down Marine Drive, hitting half way at 1:35:53 –just a hair under 4:33 pace. I knew when I hit the hill up to West 4th at 23KM that I wasn’t going to hold onto 4:30s any longer, but feeling confident that I’d set myself up. I managed two more splits under 4:30 –carried by the crowd along Cornwall by Kits Beach, and at 31KM coming down around the corner off Burrard Bridge and seeing Stephanie with her cheer sign that gave me a huge lift and carried me into the deafening Mile2Marathon crew lined up at the merge of Pacific and Beach Ave. Alan Yu, the 3:15 pacer had passed me a ways back, but I’d somehow managed to keep the gaggle in sight and I timed how far behind them I was by when we each reached the Second Beach pool. I was expecting to have fallen back quite a bit but got a mental lift when my watch said their lead was only just over a minute.

Finish line in sight. Photo by Stephanie C.

The next three kilometres were a blur. I remember Elvis at Third Beach but not much else before the 36KM marker and coming under the Lions Gate Bridge where I was passed by M2M teammate Matt Diederichs. We’d trade duties pushing each other over the final six kilometres (and ultimately finished three seconds apart). I was still managing a decent rhythm but my pace had slowed to over 5:00 and I was trying to save something for a strong finish. Then at the Stanley Park Totem Poles, David Papineau, the 3:20 pacer passed me, and that was a punch to the gut. I tried to match his pace but only managed maybe half a kilometre. I’d stopped looking at my watch a few kilometres back but peeked as I passed the 40KM marker. It read 3:08 and something, and I thought that if I had anything left I had ten minutes to give it everything. I could see the clock with a few hundred metres to go counting up and I emptied the tank crossing the line at 3:19:48.

At the finish with the cheer sign Stephanie made for me.

Fueling for this race, I ate pasta and baked fish Thursday and Friday, then snacked throughout Saturday and had a sandwich for early dinner. Sunday morning was coffee, a banana and greek yogurt with salted almonds. I sipped a bottle of Maurten 160 on the Skytrain ride to the start. I took water or Nuun at most of the aid stations –more often than I ever have before. And after this my 28th race, I finally figured out –dare I say mastered– the cup squeeze-and-sip. Maurten gels at 7KM, 13KM, 19KM, 26KM, 31.5KM and 37KM with zero gut issues. I feel like my fueling was dialed in.

I didn’t reach my A or B goals, but I am very happy with the result. I set a new personal best by over six minutes, and ended up top 8% in my category and top 6% overall. Between 35KM and the finish I passed (net) 19 people, (including Henrik Sedin). The other unspoken goal was to complete a marathon build and race healthy. Goal achieved. I think my plan to go out at A goal pace and see how long I could hold it was the right move. I’m not convinced that being conservative at the start would have given me more at the finish (I tried that in Victoria and, even with other factors considered, it didn’t turn out so well). For the record, A goal was a BQ. It would have been nice, but I’m not upset about it because Boston 2020 was never in my sights. The race I want is Boston 125. That’s in 2021. I will be 45. 3:19:46 is a 45-49 BQ. I’m still getting faster.