Rotterdam Marathon - this feels odd

This really does feel odd.  I'm running a marathon on Sunday; my first marathon.  Despite the fact I've run the distance 6 times already; 1x Ironman & 5x Ultra Marathons.

I'm told this isn't unusual for people who have done Ironman triathlons, not to have run a standalone marathon, nor ever to run one.  But it's probably not all that normal for people who have run an Ultra marathon.

26 miles is a weird distance, to me.  Too short to be a nice run.  Too short to be something I can run easy.  Too short to use my usual method of pacing and dealing with the moods and thoughts that I experience when running.  I'll have to run it hard and that's a long time to run hard for.

Let's see what happens.

This just made me laugh...

I stumbled across a race report from last year... UK Ironman 70.3.  And saw the run stats.  They made me giggle a bit.  Check the average and moving paces.

UK Ironman 70.3, 21km run, last year...

London Ultra, 51km run, this year...

OK, there's less than twice the elevation gain in over twice the distance, and yes the 70.3 had the small matter of a 1.9km swim and a 90km bike ride first, but golly-gosh that's a small difference in pace between the two.  And I was holding it back in the Ultra, to conserve carbohydrate stores/stay under the knee-point in the fuel burn graph.  I -think- I might just be a bit faster this year.

Still here. Still low-carbing.

In case the last couple of posts confused y'all; I'm still working on the low carb stuff.  Despite a couple of days over Christmas/New Year when I went as high as 65g a day and Christmas Day itself with 120g(!) I've been at it hard, so to speak.

The interesting part still is that I'm exercising as much and as hard as before the diet change and I'm not seeing any ill effects.  Particularly working on my running at the moment, my speed:effort is improving and my top speed increasing.

This weekend, I'll be taking a look at that low-carb cheesecake recipe and adapting it to being a coffee cake.  The good thing from my point of view is that rather than substituting a whole lot of fake sugar for real sugar, I'm using very small quantities of fake sugars (Stevia and Splenda, and no more than 7g total in an 8 portion cake) and relying on the natural flavours and combinations of flavours in the ingredients to provide really good texture and taste - e.g. cinnamon and nuts give a naturally sweet flavoured combination, double cream is naturally quite sweet so doesn't need any sugary additive etc.

Shocked!

I'm allowed to run now, so I did parkrun this morning.  On an absolutely beautiful and perfect (in my opinion - sunny, bright and about 10ºC) day for running, the intention was to take it gently and trot 'round at a sensible, measured pace.  That didn't quite happen.

Photo taken last week at Wimbledon Common parkrun
by Clive Scammell (representative of today's weather)

MrTOTKat was off at a parkrun a hundred miles away (train for 110 miles, cycle for 1.5 hours, run parkrun for 5km, cycle for 1.5 hours, 110 miles on the train - nutter!), so I walked up to the common for parkrun, trotting a little bit every now and then to warm things up.  As I broke into a jog every now and then, I noticed my heart rate went shooting up pretty quickly, but dropped back again really quickly too.  Of course I expected my fitness to have dropped off quite a bit with 4 weeks of only 1 or 2 longish walks but nothing else to speak of, so I wasn't surprised that I was pushing a higher heart rate for less pace.  Also, it's pretty cold today so it is easier (for me at least) to work at a higher heart rate with less than the usual discomfort for that level of effort.

Ian Higgins

When I got to the common, I had a chat with a couple of people and found out that it was Ian Higgins' 250th run today, so that was a nice co-incidence to be there to celebrate that.  He's the run director for Wimbledon Common parkrun and is incredibly dedicated - in 2007, he directed and ran every single event that year, even the last one of the year when he was ill and put in his all-time personal worst time.  And one parkrun he turned up and announced he'd got married the day before!  I think it's in no small part down to him how successful Wimbledon Common parkrun has got and is now peaking at 380 runners!  It's a really sociable parkrun (as they all are)

Ian Higgins

Ambling down to the start, which is quite narrow, I tried to work out where in the field I should stand at the start in order to protect my shoulder a bit.  I decided that despite not being the quickest runner around, I'd go near the front and off to the left with the aim of having nobody to my left, minimising jostling on that side of me.  I didn't quite manage that, and I'm not sure the kids and parents took in the message Ian gave them in the race briefing of smaller children (i.e. less than teenagers) should start near the back so they don't get mown down as I was surrounded by really small kids.  Because of this, I ended up starting out quicker than intended and then held it.

I felt OK running, if a little ungainly.  At the moment when walking and running I need to consciously move my left arm back and forth as it naturally wants to sit, bent at the elbow, hand in front of my solar plexus.  I was also a bit concerned about tripping and falling or being jostled and my shoulder knocked.  Deciding to attempt a negative split, the chill temperature helped keep my effort level up with minimum discomfort and I didn't look at my watch at all so I had no idea what my heart rate was.  At the mid-point of the course I was pretty sure that I'd hear 13 mins something, and I did indeed (13:20ish as I crossed the mid-point).  On track for a high 26minute overall time if I held that average pace.  Lap two and I kept the pace roughly the same until there was 2km to go, then I turned up the gas as much as I could without going all-out.  All the people who went out too hard at the start were being passed and that always makes me feel better, no matter how bad a run I'm having.

Sociable parkrun - chatting around the water fountain

Having nothing left for a sprint finish, I knew that I'd been maintaining quite high effort all the way 'round and for once I remembered to stop my watch once I was over the finish line.  As it was a very busy parkrun, the finish chute got quite congested and we needed to double-up the queue for tokens (a couple of people got a tiny bit stressy about it, but nothing too bad) but there were 4 token scanners so almost no queueing at all to get the tokens and bar codes read.  Once I'd had my token read, I bothered to look at my watch to see what time I'd managed - 26:24 by my timing.  For the level of effort I'd put in, I'd've expected something in the low 24 minutes range, if I hadn't been doing nothing for the last 4 weeks.  2 minutes slower was a real shock.  What was an even bigger shock was the heart rate data - HRavg 94%, HRmax 99% !

On the way home, I decided to do a bit of an experiment; jogging home maintaining 81% HRmax and see what pace that turned out at.  07:40.  That's 2 minutes/km slower than I would get for 81% HR max 4 weeks ago.  A loss of 35% speed.  I'm absolutely stunned.

My recovery rate hasn't dropped off that much.  A less than scientific check tells me that I recover at >40bpm drop in <1 min after stopping exercise still, so that's not bad at all.

Anyway.  I feel *great* despite the stats on speed.  I know I'll get the speed back and it should take no longer to get it back than it did to lose it.  parkrun today makes me feel like this:-

Running makes you happy, no matter how slow or quick you are!

(All the photos in this articles are taken by me, when I was volunteering on photography duty at parkrun, apart from the one that Clive Scammell took - credited above.)

Game on

First tri of the season on Monday! GAH!

It's been a long time coming and I've actually been training since December.  Consistently.  Unlike any of the races I've done before.  However, due to social obligations I didn't have any long sessions at all last weekend and due to wanting a rest day this week, there's none this weekend either - just a bimble down to the sprint bike leg, a spin around it, a swim and then a bimble home again.  That will have caused a bit of dropoff in endurance, but hopefully not in the power/speed that I've been doing a bit of training on.

I'm really quite excited.  I'm hopeful of an appreciable improvement on the bike leg.  I've been doing some structured training around power and endurance on the bike which has made one heck of a difference to my hill climbing and my distance capability.  But if there's a course change on Monday due to the stupid roadworks that have been on the Thames Turbo course for months, there's no comparison with previous races.  And that'll be annoying.  I crave benchmarks and comparisons to tell me how and if I'm improving.  I'm hopeful of a strong swim that's less draining than before for the same speed.  And I have no idea about the run, but there are three factors at play there; lots of long slow running, a change in running style to stop heel striking, and a bunch of speed/power work.  So it's hard to tell whether I'll be slower or faster there.

There is a 5km "time trial" for me tomorrow morning (a parkrun - probably Roundshaw) which should give me some idea of run speeds for Monday - my first all-out 5km in a very long time as I've been doing either 15km+ runs or really short intervals sessions for the last couple of months.  So we'll see about that in the morning.

First speedwork session

 I took a wrong turn again!  GAH!  I keep doing that at Wimbledon Park station and go almost straight on instead of jinking right then left to up Melrose Avenue and end up in the right place (I stopped the Garmin when I had realised I was definitely on the wrong side of the Park, so that's why it looks like I stopped at the golf club - I did carry on and went into the track from the West instead of the East).  I really need to stop doing that.  So I ended up with 5.5km warm up instead of 3km (well, it was supposed to be 1km, but it's 3km to the track, so.) and up and down Wimbledon Hill a couple of times.  Must remember to go past the station, not to the side of it!

Anyway, I got to the athletics track eventually and it was deserted, nobody there to take any money from me or even anyone else to share the track with.  No open toilets either, which was annoying as I needed a wee.  The track was deserted for almost all of my session apart from the second half where a lady and her small son ran around a few times too on the inner lane.  The surface was quite nice, very grippy and slightly less harsh than pavement/road running, but I think there's not been a lot of running been going on there over the last few weeks as there was a lot of debris on the track - twigs, leaves, moss etc.

So my first ever running speed session.  I don't know what to expect.  I think I didn't go hard enough.  I'm not sure if I could have... just nothing to go on really other than feeling a bit rough in the 400m sets.  8x400m with 200m recovery jogs in between.  And as I don't ever do this session again in my schedule, I'm not sure I'll ever know.

I'm pleased with the consistency of the 400m sets though, if not the overall average speed, but then that wasn't going to be high with the recovery jogging in there.

Mmm16laps...

Commuting by bike in London

So one of the things that you have to contend with in London, as a commuter on the roads, is the high number of traffic lights compared with the distance travelled. My route in to the office is 15km and mostly on one main road.  In that 15km there are 75, yes, seventy-five, sets of traffic lights.  Some are in clusters of two, three or even four within a few metres of each other.  e.g. a cross roads with lights, followed by a set of pedestrian lights and then maybe a T-junction all within 100m section of road.

So, on my pretty typical ride home, 24 sets of those 75 were at a red signal when I got to them, resulting in almost exactly 9 minutes of being completely at a stop vs 39 minutes on the move (including speeding up away from lights and slowing down to them) in a 48 minute total journey time.  Now, that was a slow trip home for a combination of reasons; tiredness, weak legs, gusty wind and some reasonable traffic.  But that's an awful lot of actual stopped time, plus a lot of related slowing down and speeding up.  I can see why some people jump red lights.  If I could save at the very least 9 minutes off my journey, that'd make a huge difference (and that's not even taking into account the loss of speed to get to a stop and the ramping back up to speed again).

But.  The law, and common sense in very many cases, says stopping at red lights is what you do.

For comparison, the ride up to Hertfordshire the other week took 03:20 to cover 76km vs. 00:47 to cover 15km.  So, if I'd hit the same average speed for the long ride as for my commute, it would have taken 03:58 to get up to Herts.  Or, if I'd managed the same average speed for my commute as I did on the long ride, I'd take 39 minutes to get home.  (looking at my ride in, I've managed that in 38 minutes once, including 6 or so minutes stopped at lights... the ride home is never that quick)

Achey knee and a bit delicate

Feeling a tiny bit delicate after Mr TOTKat's birthday celebrations last night.  A couple more beers than I'm used to so rubbish quality sleep and quite tired today.  Gentle day today, day off work and I should be right as rain tomorrow.

Yesterday.  The race!

5am start was a bit harder than last time.  No idea why but it just felt ickier.  Thus followed a catalogue of small errors that could have made lots of dents in my race performance...

First off, last time I had fruity malt loaf with peanut butter for breakfast which worked really well; this time I had yogurt with fruit compote, muesli and chopped banana.  I had real trouble eating it and it didn't feel nice in my stomach at all.  Error number two was, er, number twos related.  I suddenly needed to go with less than 10 minutes to go before the start of the race and we were in the first wave of swimmers so I didn't have long.  Queue of 7 people for 2 loos!  Argh!  Got all flustered trying to get my tri-suit back on again so it took ages (the zip is up the back and goes through the "ladies support" section elastication so it's really hard to do up) and I ended up trotting back to where Mr TOTKat was waiting for the start of the race with only about 30s to spare before ditching our warm clothes for the swim.

The swim felt vile again; I think I just don't fare well swimming from cold and first thing in the morning.  I got overtaken once which was really downheartening especially given that I had to wait at the side of the pool for a good 20s for the overtaker to actually do the overtake and then she didn't whizz off ahead of me, so I just ended up with a bit of a draft for the last 4 lengths.

A little trot to transition and my bike where Mr TOTKat was almost ready to go off (he was race #16 and I was #17 so we were very close together) and I made errors number #3 and #4; I put my running/cycling top with my race numbers pinned to it on backwards so had to tear it off again, lost two pins from the front number by doing that, and jam it back on the right way around after finding one of the pins that had pinged off and pinning both back in place.  I lost a good minute or so there.  *sigh*  Then I put on my helmet and did it up, decided not to bother with socks, jammed my trainers on and grabbed my cycling gloves to put on whilst running out to the cycle start.  Mistake #5 there.  Of course you can't put gloves on whilst wheeling a bike and trying to run a bit!  So I ended up with them wedged under my palms against the handlebars which meant that gear changes and braking were impeded and tricky.

I then spent the next few minutes of the cycling deciding to try to stuff them down my top (mistake #6).  Hah.  My tri-suit goes quite high and I'm not stable enough on the bike to take hands off the bars (so yes, I can't signal at the moment).  So the next few minutes were spent mostly thinking about what to do with my damned gloves rather than concentrating on cycling quickly.  I eventually decided to lose them.  Left hand, easy, just lift it up a bit and let the glove drop.  Right hand... well, less easy as I didn't want the glove to drop into my chain or wheel and foul it up so I had to get my hand down to the middle of the handlebars whilst not losing the glove, get the other hand close on the bars, pass the glove to my left hand, move my right one back to where it should be, similarly the left and then drop the glove somewhere safe.  Faff!  Wasted thinking and effort and speed!  Still, once they were gone I could actually concentrate on cycling.

The rest of the cycle was pretty sore-butt-making as the roads aren't in great condition and this new bike is a lot stiffer and less forgiving.  And the last 6km it got quite windy, which dropped my average speed from 28km/h down to 23km/h.  So, overall a very disappointing cycle.  But the run...

...started as usual with legs made of puffed lead, or so it feels.  It took a few minutes for them to loosen up and feel normal(ish).  As I rounded a corner where you can see the start of the run join up with the circuits, I saw Mr TOTKat heading for the half-way mark of the run.  Disheartening as all hell as it meant he was 15 minutes ahead of me and I was expecting to be only 10 minutes behind.  Still, the kids helping out the marshalls were really encouraging and spurred me on a bit and I even managed a sprint finish right at the end :o)  Watch time 01:34:21 so with up to 7 minutes to cut off that time for the non-racing portion I was well in for hitting or even beating my target time of 01:30 for the race.

Official results: 01:28:32 beating my last race time by exactly 6 minutes and 30 seconds!  I did improve on the swim+transition by 1 minute and 13 seconds, despite the faffery with the backwards top and re-pinning my number.  I improved on the bike time by less than I'd hoped (2 minutes 26 seconds) but the really pleasing part was the run+transition improvement of 2 minutes 51 seconds!  Very very pleased with that improvement indeed; a whole 9% :oD  Overall 7% improvement in the race time and exactly 1000kcals burned.

Keep on moving; don't stop!

Today is cardio day!  Little swim in the lunch break and a little run after school.  I'll aim for a fast 408m in the pool and a fast 5km on the road later.  There's not really time to do endurance runs/swims etc. before the next triathlon and they're pretty much the only disciplines I can make a difference to my overall time with at the moment.  But more on that to come :o)

Will report in on swim and run later...(and think about an evening snack to top up the kcals before bed)

...swim was pretty good; tumble-turns take a whole second of length times it seems and I'm doing rubbish ones at the moment, so it might improve :o)  And the run, apart from getting rained on at the start felt really strong!  Not massively quick (5.2km at 10.7kph) but I felt great (comparatively) and not totally dead at about 4km.  I could definitely have gone faster, which is very encouraging.  Maybe I should have gone further, but I ran out of route and I was thirsty!  I'm pretty sure that getting back to the gym is helping me on the strength side to make running a bit "easier".

I've evolved part of my recipe for Eggs Florentine; basically quadrupled the amount of spinach, doubled the eggs, doubled the butter and added seasoning.  What a difference!  It's soooo nice like this!  We had it tonight with baked tilapia and boiled new potatoes:-

B - greek yogurt with 1 scoop MP Max, blueberries, Maca root and Grape Nuts
S -Starbucks skinny latte
S - EAT Natural, cranberries, apricot and yogurt bar
L - salad; lettuce, cherry tomatoes, sweet pepper, celery, capers Food Doctor herb boost and chicken breast
*swim*
S - 1 scoop MP Max in skimmed milk
S - carrot and Waitrose houmous and pistachios
*run*
S - 1 scoop MP Max in semi-skimmed milk
D - baked tilapia fillet with new potatoes and egg florentine
S - Tim's Dairy yogurt (toffee)

Exercise - 30 minutes swim, 30 minutes run

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	2336 2359]
Protein (g)	202.3 (35.1%)
Carbohydrate (g)	205.7 (33.5%)
Fat (g)	80.3 (31.4%)
Fruit & Veg	9.3

Oops (in a good way)

I miscalculated the distance on my last run and it was actually 4.93km not 4.64km so I actually was running at 10.5kph rather than 9.9kph. Much better! :o)

Bring on the takeway! (mmmbeeertastessogoodafternothavingitforages)

First run of the year

With not very many weeks to go to the first triathlon of the year, it was about time I hauled ass outside and did some running. So, suited up in semi-cold weather gear; long running tights, t-shirt, hoodie, hat and gloves, I headed out on a familiar just-over-5km route; thinking "this is going to be horrible". As I crested the first little hill (over the railway line), I looked at my HRM and it was flashing "180". That's BPM. And I tend to keep it 170-178 running, or rather I was doing when I was running at least once a week. I felt fine though. Odd. Hey ho. So I kept on trucking at the same pace and checking on my heart rate every km or so. I felt totally and completely fine and it was staying at or just above 180 all the way. Usually I feel a bit rough if it stays up there and if it stays over 182 for more than a couple of minutes I feel pretty sick. But not this time. Nope. Fine. Well, I'm not arguing, so. Pace was 9:14/mile, or speed of 10.45km/h which is slightly faster than I was doing in the 10K race last year. Yes, quite pleased indeed.

Nommy chocolate orange shake post-run and a hot bath.

Lunch today - pea and ham soup (made with a tin of mushy peas and chopped ham :o)) with rye bread:-



Snack - beef jerky and an apple ('cause they're so nice I can't resist them!):-



Dinner- chicken in spicy black bean sauce (more commonly known as BEEP) with noodles:-



Exercise - 5.35km run (HRmax 185, HRavg 179)

B - toasted wholemeal seeded bagel with Marmite
S - banana
*run*
S - 1 scoop chocolate orange whey in semi-skimmed milk
L - pea and ham soup with rye bread
S - beef jerky and an apple
D - chicken in spicy black bean sauce with noodles

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	1797 2151]
Protein (g)	153.5 (35.6%)
Carbohydrate (g)	213.6 (46.4%)
Fat (g)	34.4 (17.9%)
Fruit & Veg	7.5

Totals this week:-
Exercise Count: 6
Exercise time: 03:55
Exercise kcals: 2,392

Totals since 15th June 2009:-
Exercise Count: 184
Exercise time: 103 h
Exercise kcals: 57,259