Campus to Campus Half

This years Campus to Campus Half Marathon wasn't really a campus to campus, the University is no longer a sponsor It seems, so the race started at the college and ended at the college. The course was mostly flat except for a 3 km stretch heading from Clement to Cerise Rd to Mountain Rd. I was quite thankful it was a flat course as hills do not make my strained anterior tibularis muscle feel very special at all.

Coming into the race I had two goals. First, I wanted to beat 1:40 and second, I wanted to at least break my personal best of a half marathon time of 1:44:58. I know I can beat 1:40, and have done so on training runs several in the last three months, but beating that time today was going to be totally dependant on how my legs felt.

The course was flat for the first 5 km. I felt good and I did it in 23:18. Something I find neat about this race is that they have a relay race for the half also. So every 4 km or so all of a sudden there's a batch of runner with fresh legs to pace against. It pushes you a bit harder.



The next 4 km were still flat, followed by the beginning of the only uphill portion of the course. I think it was around the 8 km mark of the race I started running with someone. I feel kind of bad because I didn't even catch his name. His goal was to finish around the same time as my goal so we ran together. It's always nice to be pushing back and forth with someone else. At the 9 km mark the steep part of the hill started. Did this 5 km section in 24:18

There was 1.5 km of more hill, which took us to the first corner of the road on Knox Mountain. And then downhill followed by more flats. This flat section is probably the nicest section of the course taking us through the boardwalk on Okanagan Lake and Waterfront Park. Did this 5 km section in 24:33. The 5 km splits were starting to slow down, but that's ok. My leg started to hurt at the end of the climb around the 11 km mark, and around the 15 km mark I realized unless I was able to put in a nice kick at the end I wasn't going to break 1:40

The next 5 km were along lakeshore road and then back on Richter. Did this section in 25:17. I lost my running buddy at the 19 km mark. At a corner near one of the parks on Lakeshore there was a group of girls holding signs for the runners. One of the signs said "marathoners go further" I laughed and shook my head. Someone else told her the sign wasn't very nice. I thought it was awesome.

Did the last km in 4:30. The guy I was running with for most of the race finished in 1:41, and I finished in 1:42:30. Both of us beat our personal bests! I beat mine by 2 minutes and 20 seconds. And I beat last years time in the same race by 30 minutes! (The year leading up to that was not a good year for running). It would seem the 1 minute for every pound rule applied.

Overall, it was a good race. Always fun, I hope next year the University gets back on board.



1:42:30 HECK YEAH!

Nazzer

Duhr...

Running without a plan should be the plan. In life in general when you force rigid rules of who, what, where, when, why and how on to things you take the fun out of everything. The same can be said about running; when you complicate it you stray from the reasons that should be the driving force for why you run. Call it what you want; peace, harmony, an ordered soul, Zen, just for fun. Running itself should be the goal and the destination. Training plans do nothing but add clutter and distractions from the real joy of running. If you are not yet ready to run a certain distance you should not go sign up for a race of that distance, instead you should enjoy running until you happen to get physically capable of running that distance and then register for it.

Perhaps this is a very fine distinction, but a race should not be looked at as an opportunity to see if you can in fact do what you’ve been training for. But instead should be regarded as nothing more than a confirmation, a replication perhaps, of what you already knew you were capable of.

I was watching a documentary on youtube (actually I didn’t make it through more than fifteen minutes but apparently it’s quite good) called “The Spirit of the Marathon” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BRSw-B4-2E the movie says that it follows several runners of different abilities as they prepare and then run the Chicago marathon.
One person that they were following was an older man. Here is a quote from him “People ask me why I run marathons, I run it for the t-shirt . . . it’s my subtle way of saying I did something that most people can’t do”. This is wrong on so many levels. Running, sport, or any other activity is not something that should be done so that you can brag to other people. There is a reason the saying ‘humility is a virtue’ has stuck around. I pity the person that has run the amount of miles needed to prepare their body to the point that they are capable of running a marathon for no reason other than being a braggart. I can’t imagine how unhappy those runs must have been. Also, I really don’t like the notion that running a marathon is something that most people can’t do. Anybody can do it, it’s just that some people choose to other things with their time than running.

There are some better moments of the documentary though. There is a runner that has a particularly inspiring quote near the beginning about what finishing a marathon means. He says “when you cross that finish line, no matter how slow, no matter how fast, it will change your life forever”. Truer words have never been spoken. Being able to do run 42 kilometres is pretty amazing. Perhaps the reason that particular man was able to say something so nice was because he never won the prize of prizes in marathons, Boston, he only got second place. He never got the big bragging rights.

If people want to do a marathon that’s great and I respect the effort that they put in to complete it, however I just don’t understand why people would possibly want to start such a massive training program if the goal is achievement and not enjoyment.
Is it capitalism that taints our world so much that people turn to marathon running in an attempt to gain their piece of the pie? Capitalism, through its concept of the ‘American dream’, puts such a focus on being one of the “haves” in society and makes people feel worse if they fail to the point that they become one of the “have not’s”; and the gap between the rich and the poor in society keeps growing so we get more people becoming the “have not’s” which leads to people trying to find outlets to make them feel better about not getting to the top of the money pile. They failed at getting notoriety through money, which society tells them is the most important, so they turn to something else which seems to be running more often for people. Yes, it is super duper that they are running and exercising, but it is a meaningless pursuit if they are doing it for inharmonious reasons. Run for yourself; not to show off. Run because you enjoy it; not because you aren’t good enough at what you really wanted so you need something to lord over your friends with. Sure it’s a great accomplishment; but all you did was something that every single person in the world could do if they could be bothered to put in the training. Our bodies were designed to run.

Life should be about doing things you enjoy, not about receiving accolades. If your life is such that you need to turn stack up a pile of t-shirts to prove yourself then you need to rethink your value system. Maybe try some drugs to reacquaint yourself with your Zen or something.

“Something is done best when you do it with the reckless abandon of a child that hasn’t yet learned society’s limits of how it’s supposed to be done”

Keep on running

Nazzer

Breaking Personal Best's!

I am running in the Campus to Campus Half Marathon on March 28. That's 13 days away, and on February 28 I strained a muscle in my lower leg. Other than a horribly painful 4km run/4 km walk I didn't run for 12 days. Then I fixed my bike and I'm easing my way back into exercising in the hopes that I will be fully healed by the time the race comes around. I told a friend, who knew about my injury, that I intended to break my personal best for the half marathon distance. His reaction seemed to be rather incredulous, telling me I was nuts. To which my reaction was;

"I would rather live a life pushing myself to the limits with reckless abandon than to sit around cautiously waiting for my body to heal".

On March 28th I will break my personal best for a half marathon of 1:44:58. I set this personal best three and a half years ago in the first race that I entered. When I ran this race I never trained with a fancy GPS wristwatch like I do now, I just ran. I didn't worry about how fast I was pacing when I trained, I just tried to keep up with my mother's dog who ran a hell of a lot faster than I did. During the race where I set my personal best I was running for myself, I didn`t think about anything negative during the race, I had no stupid thoughts in my head. And boy did I ever run faster than I should have been capable in the last 5 k of that race. I will do it all again in two weeks.



This was me in that race. Drenched with sweat the way I should be at the end of a race. I wore those same shorts while running today. And quite disturbingly I the shoes I was wearing in that picture haven`t yet hit the garbage bin. Perhaps I will take them to the store and buy an identical pair for good luck.

It is truly amazing how one`s body and physical abilities are affected by lack of happiness and stress. Very soon after that race I allowed my life to be led down a path that I shouldn`t have gone down. I was unhappy, making life decisions based on trying to please other people and ignoring my own wants, and I was getting fat. The last two years Campus to Campus half marathons have been times of 2:23:24 in 2008 and 2:12:59 in 2009. Only a year and a half after I ran a half marathon in under 1:45 I took 38 minutes longer to do it. One minute extra for every pound I added to my body through unhappiness.



This was me at the end of the 2008 Campus to Campus. You can see the fat around my belly. The shorts that I wore in 2006, and that I wear now... they didn`t fit me then I had got too big, I wore stretchy waist band shorts. You can see the look of disappointment on my face. The registration form for that race had a section asking for your expected finish time. I put down 2 hours, I figured even though I wasn`t in that good shape surely I couldn`t do that much worse than I had before. When I was crossing the finish line the announcer called out my name, and he said `just a little bit off of his goal time of 2 hours` ouch.

Since the 2009 Campus to Campus I have done a lot of running and biking. And I enjoy it again. I have run a sub 4 hour marathon, and the last race I ran in I ran at a sub 5:00 min per km pace. In total since the 2009 race last year I have run 1315 km and biked 1110 km. I feel great, I feel ready, and I am going to beat 1:45 in the half marathon, hopefully even 1:40.

Reckless abandon in pursuit of physical pleasures is super duper!

Keep on running... or biking.

Nazzer

February Summary

I decided I'm going to start tracking my running totals and such on a monthly basis. This is a bit after the fact for February. And my Garmin was malfunctioning the first half of February so I only have times for the last half of the month.

Longest Run: 46.10 km, Kelowna to Drought Hill near Peachland and back along the highway. 4:38:05

Longest Bike: 34 km, Lakeshore Road just past Bertram Park and back.

Hardest Run: 34 km run from The Greenway up to the start of Little White Forest Service Road. So many hills, pretty sure this was the final straw that messed up my calf muscles on my left leg.

Fastest Runs:
5 km: Feb 17 (24:27)
10 km: Feb 24 (50:30)
21.1 km: Feb 21 (2:02:28)
42.2 km: Feb 21 (4:13:57)

Run Totals: 271.44 km (15 runs) Average: 18.10 km
Bike Totals: 72.74 km (3 trips) Average: 24.25 km

Being injured is no good.

I have only run once so far in March. My last Saturday run of February I ran 34 km, much of which was uphill. The nest day I did a 12 km run where I really start to feel pain. The next day I woke up and I was limping. Shooting pain up the front of my left leg. Every time I walk up the stairs I can barely put pressure on my left leg. People have even commented to me how it looks like I am limping when I walk.

It took me a few days to figure out what was wrong with my leg (all the while I've been icing it while I'm at home). At first I thought it was the iliotibial band bothering me, but I've had that before and there was no pain above my knee, in fact the only time it feels like my knee is in pain is when I step.

So I think this is the problem.



This is the muscle that you use when you push off with your feet while running. After doing some research it would seem the list of possible ways to over exert this muscle includes:
-running too many hills (definitely did that)
-increasing weeky mileage too fast (possibly, I went from 150 km in December to 200 km in February to 275 km in February)
-pronating (I am a pronator)
-the more a pronator runs the more they are likely to get bothered by this as the pronating causes an extra usage of this muscle.
-not wearing motion control shoes (I was wearing older worn out shoes that I shouldn't have because they were more comfortable for shorter runs, rather than sucking it up and wearing shoes that are more comfortable on long runs).

In 16 days I'm running in the Campus to Campus Half Marathon. I hope my leg feels better by then.

I finally fixed my bike, took it for a spin around the block to make sure everything was working fine and it was. Even better was the fact that the lower impact exercise didn't bother my leg. So I think I will be safe to bike a little bit to keep my fitness level while my leg gets better.

Lesson learned: don't be a dumbass and wear the right shoes.

"No one ever drowned in sweat" - anonymous.

Keep on running... or biking.

Nazzer.