Friday, April 27, 2012

No NYC Marathon again, PYP 50k this Saturday



New York City Marathon
Well what can I tell you. Once again I put my name in the lottery for the NYC marathon and sadly my losing at the lottery streak continues. By my count this is the 12th straight time my name has not been picked in various race lotteries. Clearly the Lotto Gods just do not like me at all. I have yet to meet a lottery that I can't get picked in.

The Good
 I am now a 3 time loser at NYC so I am in next year if I decide to go. If you were to ask me today if I still want to go I would be telling you Hell No. I know that is just the bitterness I am currently feeling about the whole process so I expect I will not think the same way about it later.

The Bad
Kim is in and after deferring last year she is running it this year. I am happy for her but dread the thought of going to the NYC Marathon and watching it from the sidelines. It has got to be the runners version of being water boarded, a slow torture that will seem to last forever. GRRRR

First I couldn't do Chicago with her a couple of summers ago now NYC. Maybe I am being punished for making her crew me in all those 100 milers. If she manages to crew me to a successful finish at Leadville this year I promise not to scowl the entire weekend in NYC.


PYP 50K
Tomorrow we will be heading up to Barrie to run Pick Your Poison which is the first OUSER race of the season. This is the third time I have done this race and it has been a great fun every year. I had thought about not running but I just like this race way to much to skip it.  I will be doing 50k as a training run to get ready for Sulphur  Springs while Kim is running 25k. I also figure 50k of trail on a very hilly course is perfect to run during my taper for the Toronto Marathon the following weekend. Okay that was a joke, kind of. Hey at least its a better taper then last year when I ran PYP and then 50 miles at Bear Mountain the next weekend as my "taper" for Toronto.

Originally when I signed up for Toronto I had planned to race it but a change in the OUSER race schedule caused me to change my mind. Now I will run it as a training with some race pace. My big focus for the spring is Sulphur so I am trying to remember that every time I think about doing something stupid. I have to be honest, it's only kind of working.

Oh, my hamstring / quad issue is still ongoing. That is all I am going to say about that.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Around The Bay, March Totals, A Glitch In My Training


I can't really call this a race report for Around The Bay. I was not racing at all so in the spirit of the training run I will keep this short but figure I should say something.

Once again this year we travelled in the Longboat bus down to the race. The weather was really great this year, perfect for running. Kim was racing, I was running it as a slightly quicker long run. I spent 3.5 hours on the trails running the day before so no way I was racing it.

I started way back in the field and ended having a great time. The plan was to run 5 minute kms and just enjoy the run. The first few kms were super slow as I was waayyyyyy back in the pack but by the 4km mark I got a little running room and settled into pace for the rest of the race.

I spent the next 20km constantly passing large groups of people. One of the cool things about starting way back in the field is that I must have seen and talked to more then 20 runners that I knew out on the course not including Longboat runners. I saw runners from my RR clinics, ultra runners that I knew, runners that I had met at other races or around High Park even a couple of former students. I ran along with this person and that person chatting a bit before moving along.

After my last blog entry and some of the over the top reaction (more about this in my next post) I wondered if some angry runner might find me and freak out but all went smoothly. In fact I saw and talked to many people that really liked the post.

I was able to get a solid run in but the last 10km were tough as the fatigue from my long run the day before started to catch up with my legs. Still a great experience and I crossed the finish line in 2:34 and change. Not close to my PB but that was kind of the point.

Kim ran great setting a new PB by more then 7 minutes.


March Training Totals
Runs - 30
Quality runs - 8
Long runs -6
B2B long runs - 3 times
Distance - 299.53 miles or 481.7km
Weight workouts - 16

A glitch in my Leadville training
So in the last couple of weeks I have hit a glitch in my training. I want to call it a small hiccup but really its become more of a giant beer burp. After running the Chilli Half Marathon I came away from the race with a sore left hamstring.

No problem, I did what I always do and just kept right on training. I follow the if it doesn't get worse then its fine to run on rule of training. This was fine for the first two weeks as I upped my mileage into the 90 mile range. It was actually slowly but surely getting better. Then two weeks ago I did my first long 3 hour plus run on the trails at Sulphur. I followed this with a medium hard 30k effort the next day at Around the Bay. This awesome combo of running resulted in a very sore hamstring and by the following Thursday I was forced to rest it for 2 days.
Another set of back to back long runs on trail the next weekend and again by mid week more trouble. I could run but not hard. No quality running for me which meant scrapping my first track workout of the season. Instead I took the group that I coach to the track and kept it slow. It is very hard to keep it slow on the track especially when you really want to let lose.

I am trying to pretend that I learned something last year. With that in mind I shut my running down totally since then. Its 5 days and counting but I should be good to go in another day or two. I could have run again after 2 days rest I am going to do my best break the re-aggravating the injury cycle if I can.

Now is the time to deal with it. I am in decent shape already so a week of down time will not hurt too bad. I want to be ready to go as May sees me running a few 50k races as training before the 100 miler at Sulphur. I figure its better to keep this to a loud beer burp then let it become a huge fart with the potential to leave a big mess in my pants.

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