Next training cycle

One last training cycle with my coach, since I want to make one more attempt at hitting a sub-3 marathon time, once again at the Chicago Marathon.

Both he and I have our work cut out for us. Obviously, I have the difficult task of hitting all my marks throughout the cycle. But my coach has the difficult task of planning my training regimen. While most of it will be the standard difficulty, he's definitely got an interesting task ahead of him towards the end of the cycle, when I should be hitting my peak and tapering.

Why should it be so difficult? Well, first off, I will be running in the Sydney Marathon, 3 weeks ahead of Chicago. While that itself isn't so bad (since my goal time currently is only under 3:35 - I'll need to figure out just how far under I want to try in my Guinness World Record attempt), I expect I won't be doing much running in the preceding two weeks, given the marathon is near the tail end of a vacation Down Under. And then it will be multiple days before I do much active again. I don't know that I will have anything like a normal taper before Chicago.

Another success pacing

Earlier today, I paced the 1:45 "group" for the Marine Corps Historic Half. "Group" because it's so crowded at the start, anyone who was standing around me before we set off needed to weave through the crowd to keep up with my weaving. It was the only way that I was going to be sufficiently on pace early to have enough of the pad of time for Hospital Hill. I hate not having a core group from the very start. But at least it was a plenty long stick that the sign was on so I was able to hold it high throughout.

Video of start (I'm a blur at :53)

The day started out at about 60F, and since the start was pushed up an hour compared to normal, we crossed the start line only a few minutes after sunrise. So the sun didn't get overly high, nor the temps rise much, throughout the race. That said, after passing the first two water stops, I had to start dousing myself to keep my core temperature down.

There were three men who wound up running with me for the majority of the race, and slowly pulled away from me before we got to Hospital Hill.

The pacers' group leader and I good-naturedly argued several times during the expo and this morning before heading to the starting corrals about how difficult Hospital Hill is. I leaned more towards it's "brutal" reputation, where she thinks it's a breeze. One of the other pacers, after the finish, mentioned to me that he understands the two interpretations: I wind up running the hill (though a fair bit slower than the rest of the race's pace) whereas our group leader walks it, and then picks back up for the finishing <1 mile.

Most of the race was supposed to be at 7:45 pace. The two hills in the early part of the race (late in mile 2 and late in mile 3) were supposed to be 8:00 pace, and Hospital Hill was where I planned to give back the banked time before finishing fast.

Mile 1 was slow because it was so crowded and I had to weave to get close to pace. I need to keep that in mind for next year if I pace again. The jump of HR in miles 8 and 9 was unexpected, and I'm not sure Garmin was accurate there, as I really wasn't feeling much different. However, by the time I got to Hospital Hill in miles 11 and 12, the HR seems reasonably accurate. 

I definitely like being a pacer. I just need to better figure out how to not only collect the group at the start, but also make sure that it stays together when it's a cramped, crowded start, especially when the runners aren't well-organized by pace.

Hopefully the people who used me as a rabbit made their 1:45 goal, even if I was unaware of them during the race. Despite Garmin time above, my official result was 1:44:48. (12th M50-54 (out of 181), 184th Male (out of 1,672), and 214th overall (out of 2,917))

Perks? What perks?

In yesterday's post, I alluded to perks for running the Sydney Marathon in September. What would those be, beyond the standard ones of a race shirt and a finisher's medal?

Well, Sydney has launched a Candidacy Club, as an inducement to get enough people to run the marathon to help its candidacy as the 7th major. The two biggest perks (IMO):

1) Guaranteed Entry into the Sydney Marathon (valid for 3 years) once it becomes the next Major. (Not free entry, but guaranteed -- regardless of what their method is for people registering.)

2) Opportunity to secure a guaranteed entry to selected 2024 AWMM marathons. No specifics provided yet, but it would be FABULOUS if this enabled me to get into at least Tokyo and London, and even Berlin. If I can be guaranteed entry into Tokyo and London, and I have a qualifying time for Boston and Chicago and will likely have one for New York, I would glad run all of those and make sure to get into Berlin so that I could have a calendar-year six star medal. VERY hard to manage that, not many people get the opportunity.

But there are a few other benefits, too:

--Free 16 week training program by leading Aussie marathoner (can provide it to my coach to see whether it might be worth incorporating to some extent)

--Free 1-year subscription to ASICS RunKeeper. (Never heard of it before, but might be interesting)

--Separate free 6 week training program. Kinda bizarre to provide two different training programs. Apparently this is a $900 value. Huh.

There will be even more perks to be provide in the coming weeks and months. Wonder what those will be. Time will tell! Regardless, greatly looking forward to getting Down Under. I signed up without foreknowledge of this Candidacy Club, so it's "gravy." Nice.

Application submitted

Last week I was leaning towards submitting a GWR application for fastest marathon dressed in a soccer kit. In the end, that's precisely what I applied for a few days ago. Why? Very practical reasons: 

1) Given my travel plans for nearly 2 weeks in advance of the marathon, I have to have the outfit with me the whole time. Anything that required a structure that would have surrounded me would have been untenable. 

2) Running in a full Quidditch kit, as cool as it may seem, requires using BOTH hands for the outfit: one to hold the broom (or PVC pipe) between your legs for the entire time, and one to hold a slightly deflated volleyball or soccer ball (I suppose it's a quaffle). This means that I would have to stop any time I want to eat one of my shot bloks or take a drink. I'll be stopping enough if I have to do the documentation myself. 

3) The outfit should be pretty straightforward. I may need to wear knee and or shin guards, but that shouldn't be so bad (we'll see with training runs), and only one hand is occupied (since it looks like I would need to carry a soccer ball the whole time). Once Guinness approves the application, I'll find out what the actual specific are, rather than merely infer it from a blog post from the current record holder.

4) The time is TOTALLY attainable, even when padding my actual running time by several minutes to account for getting a photo taken of me at every mile marker (which appears to be one of the required documentation rules).

Now all I have to do is wait up to 12 weeks to get the approval to proceed and the specific guidelines. I'm hoping it's just a jersey of a professional soccer/football team, shorts, and a soccer ball, with no requirement for shin or knee guards (possible chafing risk!) and no requirement to run in cleats (not something I would want to do on the road for 26.2 miles).

And even if it turns out that the requirements are such that I don't want to do the record, I'll still enjoy the run. There will be some great sights to be seen! And some of the "perks" will be great.

Eat more, sleep more, lose weight?

Lately, I've noticed my weight gradually climbing and hovering about 15 pounds higher than I would like it to be. That's a lot of extra baggage to be hauling around on a marathon. I finally took up an offer from my gym re: a nutrition consultation.

By and large, I'm doing mostly the correct things. Looking at my general diet, I eat pretty healthily. But a couple of tweaks stood out as items that might need changing. First, I need to up my carbs (add rice, pasta, bread) so that I'm more reliably at 45-50% calories from carbs, and up the amount of protein I'm eating during the day (so that I'm more reliably close to 30-35% protein). I also don't eat enough veggies, since some of the things I (stereotypically) think of as veggies really are fruits: tomatoes and peppers. Adding in rice will help, as will bring carrots back in. Slowly but surely, I'll figure out what else might be reasonable. And from what he said, it sounds like I just might not be eating enough overall (though I'm not TOO far below where I should be).

Possibly a more major factor in my incremental weight gain is stress. On a scale of 1-10, I said that during the workday I'd place myself at about a 7. I barrel through the stress throughout the day, pretty much running on adrenaline the whole time. (And it's a sedentary computer-based job, for crying out loud!) Plus my workdays often drift past 9 hours (not counting my 45+ minute commute each way), leaving me very little in the way of time when I finally get home to decompress.

Come Monday, I need to talk with my boss about how I can manage to get out much closer to the 8-hour mark, since the stress is certainly taking its toll on me. With the extra 1-2 (or more) hours back, I will be able to take on some additional relaxing techniques at home and, ideally, work things out so that I can actually get to sleep early enough that will allow for 7+ hours per night, instead of the 5-6 that I currently get on worknights.

We'll see what progress I can make in hopefully short order.

One record hope dashed - what next?

Earlier this week, I went into my Guinness account to submit a question related to my submitted (and accepted) attempt in Sydney, only to see that the now-current record time to beat is about 2:55. Nope! Not gonna happen. Sigh, cancel the application. 

While I've done sub-3 once (by 5, eventually turned into 4 seconds), being able to get back to that shape AND drop yet 5 minutes more is not something that I think is realistic. I want to have some semblance of a buffer between what my capacity is and what is required. And given the fact that Sydney no longer has the relationship with Guinness like Toronto, London, and Berlin do, I will have to do my own documentation. Odds are that will wind up being me having spectators take a photo of me at each mile marker. So that will add an extra 2-3 minutes onto my total running time, at least.

So, what should I do for the record?

Astronomical Body: 3:30:36

Star: 3:30:09

Alien: 3:23:05

Monarch: 3:38:13

Mummy 3:17:37

Mythical Creature: 3:26:38

Piece of Medical Equipment: 3:23:53

Full Quidditch Kit: 4:02:31 (requires running with a broom or PVC pipe held between your legs the whole time, plus a ball in the other hand)

Soccer Kit: 3:28:34

Mascot: 3:17:57 (I don't think that running dressed as the Marathon Maniac logo would qualify, unfortunately)

So far, I'm leaning towards running in a soccer kit, since that is the most reasonable outfit to pull together -- and it's a thoroughly attainable time.

Starting a new healthy habit -- very hard

With the new exercises that I have been given to deal with my ankle mobility and also the thoracic spine, I feel the pressure of time on me. I have very limited time to tack anything onto my workout in the morning before I set out for work, so I've wound up shifting my schedule at the back of the day to get to sleep a little earlier (which I should have done long ago anyway) allowing me to wake up 15 minutes earlier than I had been. 15 minutes is helpful, though not truly as much as is needed.

So, additional parts of this need to be done sometime after I get home -- basically the foam rolling that I most definitely don't have time for in the morning. Some of those rolls I'm used to and have done before, but plenty of others I've not done previously. I've got to figure out if I can do that rolling while I'm downstairs watching TV like I use the Normatec, or if I need to concentrate a bit more and have a softer surface (carpeting upstairs as opposed to the hardwood floor downstairs).

They say that it takes 30 days (or is it 60 days) to actually create a habit? Oy. This is going to be a hard one. But I know I need to do it. Time to get crackin'!