Slurp the ‘Nog… and don’t burp on the Jog

Rules:
You must drink 2 liters of full fat egg nog. The calorie count for the carton must exceed 2500 calories. Light egg nog therefore will not be permitted. The full carton must be brought unopened and un-tampered with to the start of the race. It must then be completely consumed, you may pour your egg nog into glasses or cups if you prefer but you must provide your own cups. Drinking from the carton is also permitted. Straws are not permitted.

When you complete your carton of egg nog you must exit the house, put on your shoes (no shoes inside) and run around the entire block that our house is on. The length of the run is approximately 720 meters. Running on the sidewalk or the road is permitted. Running will be completed in a counter-clockwise fashion, this permits maximal visibility during the finishing straightaway. It also provides an empty alleyway only one lot down the road for individuals who wish to remove themselves from formal competition after the first 10 steps of the run.

The winner will be selected as follows:
The first person to consume all egg-nog and run around the block with all of the egg nog in their stomach wins.

In the (extremely unlikely) event that no-one can complete the run with all of the egg-nog in their stomach, there will not be a winner, but the person who leaves the house first may be considered to have beat all of his/her competition.

Lore:

• The first running of the ‘Nog Jog occurred following a mandarin orange swallowing contest. The result of the race proved that Reuben had indeed swallowed multiple segments of the orange without chewing.
• The second running of the ‘Nog Jog resulted in egg-nog being ejected from a nose within the first five seconds.
• Despite failing to complete the ‘Nog Jog in it’s proper format, all competitors of all previous years have continued on to pay their dues by encircling the block with a partial stomach of ‘Nog. If there is any etiquette in this tradition it is to respect the race, and making your way to the finish line is an honorable form of paying respect.

This year’s race occurred on the evening of December 23. 16 individuals arrived with their egg-nog in hand and competed in the race. The kitchen was more than full, as more spectators arrived than competitors. Racing began at 10:37pm. The first complete 2 liters was consumed 63 seconds later and the first egg-nog was ejected from a stomach less than a minute after that. The race was completed by only 4 individuals of the 16 competing.

Results:

1. Josh*
2. Reuben
3. Jacob**

*Fastest chug (1:03) and fastest run (3:03) of the evening.
**Jacob was making his ‘Nog Jog debut, as was 4th place Trenton. Andrew was awarded an honorable mention for fastest unofficial finisher, completing with less than two liters contained in his stomach.

The footage follows:

Tri club collectively designed training plans for the 2010 season this evening. While mine has generally been designed, it is not complete. I have a good idea regarding foci for the different seasons and for periodization through until the end of April I’m sticking with the triathlon club’s regime. This is completely a matter of convenience, as it allows me to push it when my friends are pushing it and take it easy when they’re taking it easy. I also don’t have to pretend to coach one kind of workout while I do a different one myself, which is just a silly idea. In any case, as I have moved into my first base weeks of the year and am slowly working on continuing to develop the training plan to beat all others. Being that season of the year, the whole world seems to be discussing this stuff, lots of it is crap. It’s hard to sift the free insight from the for-sale products, but I did run across a good suggestion from Joe Friel. It follows.

Stolen Sourced from Joe Friel’s website:

Success in sport is just like success in any other aspect of your life. One of the requirements is careful planning. Deciding where you want to go in the future begins with knowing where you have been in the past. Recognizing trends and evaluating what you’ve been doing are both important steps on the path to racing better next year. This process can be accomplished in several ways. Talking with your coach or a trusted training partner is probably the best way. But lacking such people in your sporting life you can still accomplish the same end by answering some key questions. Here are some I often use. Your answers can lead in many different directions. Ultimately, the reason for such an exercise is to give you more focus when it comes to training and racing. It may even help you to decide why it is you devote so much of your life to training.

Here are five questions to answer at the end of your race season and before starting to prepare for the coming season:

1. What was the high point of your season? Why does this stand out for you? Was it what you thought it would be at the start of the season?

Quite clearly the highseason of the season was the month of June. While it culminated with me winning the Chinook Half triathlon near the end fo the month I trained excellently in the previous weeks and felt like I was very successful at many workouts. I was swimming faster than I thought I was able to be swimming at many workouts. My run pace was quick, despite not having a huge run volume in the previous couple months, and I was logging very impressive bike rides without getting as fatigued as I possibly should have been. I was racing well at the Tuesday night mountain bike races (threshold efforts), won a time-trial and managed a solid 200kms on my bike towing a trailer into a headwind at the end of a solid 4 day training block. I entered what I thought was a test-taper, but tapered well, hitting workout intensity accurately and cutting weight. On race morning I felt like I had eliminated fatigue but hadn’t recouped freshness, indicating I hadn’t over rested. I spent time during race week getting mentally prepared for race day and I then nailed the race, overcame the race day obstacles of a killer headwind, cramps and hot temperatures on the run. Ultimately I surpassed expectations and put together a race to be proud of.

This period of my season was supposed to be my buildup towards race fitness. I hoped to peak at the end of July, having added cycling prowess first and running speed second during the period of coming to maximal fitness for Calgary 70.3. It doesn’t surprise me at all that I was fast on the bike at this point in the season because I had hoped to be reaching my cycling peak earlier in the year but in retrospect I was impressed at how fast I was able to run at Chinook Half. At the time I thought I was primed to be adding some serious run speed to my fitness portfolio in the next six weeks and hoped to cut my half marathon time by ~8 minutes for the next race.

2. What was your greatest disappointment? Why did this happen? Is there anything you could have done to have avoided it?

The disappointing aspect of the season was my inability to get any faster at running during the month of July. I felt like I had designed a program for myself that was aimed at working on my limiters. I completed exactly the workouts I wanted to complete for three consecutive weeks of my run program. In retrospect I had misidentified what was holding me back from running faster. I was convinced that it was durability in my muscles that I needed to improve after suffering cramps at Chinook Half. I felt like what I needed to run fast was the ability to run tough. Knowing that my goal of running ~1:32 for the half marathon at the end of the 70.3 did not actually amount to running fast I was certain that I would be alright without doing much fast running. The issue was that running 1:32 although not fast, was faster than I had run a standalone half-marathon (Maybe I could have, maybe I couldn’t have, I hadn’t tried). In retrospect I was focusing on extending my ability to run longer along my current speed potential curve than I was at improving my speed potential curve.

Quick note -A speed potential curve is the curve you get if you try predict other distance race performances from a single distance race performance (or a couple performances) and plot them on a graph: Depending on your method you’ll likely get a curve – try it. If your curve is a straight line it means your prediction method is bogus, it should curve. If your body listened to what you drew on paper, the best strategy would be to get awful fast at 400 yard sprints you’ll be able to draw a better curve, and you’d in theory be a great marathoner. That theory would be a bad theory. In general though, your ability to run fast at 5kms should translate to run fast at 21.1 kms with the caveat that you run with sufficient weekly volume. Extending the longest distance you can run on your speed potential curve requires doing tougher long runs and long volume. Shifting your speed potential curve towards faster running requires doing those shorter and faster runs. A balanced approach to training sees you do some of each, but at any one point in time it may be most appropriate to focus on one or the other.

Whether or not I could have improved my run speed during July with a different run training focus might not be the only question. I spent July rather tired in comparison to May and June, I felt on occasion that I was trying to stick it out until August and then I’d get a break. That feeling I don’t believe was a symptom of my choice of training focus, it was more likely a symptom of where I was in my season as a whole. I think it’s pretty clear looking back that I had come to a rather sharp peak in my season at this point in time. Cutting weight going into Chinook half was a dumb idea, it likely extended my recovery from the race as well as made July tougher on me than it should have. I was trying to do some of my hardest training when I was already in my best shape. This is something Chris McCormack has talked about on and off, but I haven’t actually read much on the topic from people in exercise physiology. Not because I haven’t tried. I imagine these sorts of things would be terribly difficult to study, there are a million variables and unfortunately (for the researchers) one of the largest is probably motivation. Chris McCormack is also a big guy and his comments went like this, paraphrased of course because I have no idea where to begin looking for a direct quote: I often came into Roth [Late Aug] very light, and then tried to do my kona training while in excellent shape. That didn’t work because I had nothing left to improve as I built towards Kona. I learned that if I went into Roth feeling a bit flabby and out of shape I could still race well, maybe I’d have a hard time running sub 2:50, but it meant that when I started my Kona block I had a little bit extra to give. I’d come into Kona feeling fast and light and that’s what counts. endquote

Cutting 7 lbs during my taper into that race was also not the reason I stagnated in improvement at that point in my season. It’s quite possible that I was just extending my season for too long. Late February and early March had seen some of my biggest weeks ever in terms of dedicated training as I put together a key block of building towards the Yakima River Canyon Marathon. I had taken the shortest break possible after my marathon before getting back to training, everyone’s talk of how much time it takes to recover from a marathon had seemed like a challenge to me: how fast can I recover and get back to putting in big weeks? What that meant was, that I had tied the early season run focus directly into my summer triathlon focus. Taking minimal break probably made me run faster at my mid-season race but cost me the ability to keep building fitness into my end of season race.

3. Looking back, do you think you trained as wisely and as hard as you could have trained?

Without re-hashing the wise-ness of all my decisions relating to my disappointment in ability to continue running improvement through July I’ll comment on training “Hard” through the different months. I felt like I trained extremely hard during March. I was putting together a tough run program while at the same time coaching a tough bike program which I participated in with the triathlon club. March’s goal was to build muscular endurance on the bike and it meant for some hard sessions, combined with running longer than I had ever run before and with more volume than I had ever run before this made for a tough month. My swim frequency suffered as a result. March needed to be a hard month, and thus it was, I wouldn’t say it was too hard though. April was a fun month, I was reaping the benefits of a tough March (fitness wise) and was hitting key workouts hard and reveling the ability to finally get outside in good weather. At the time I didn’t feel like I was close to any limits of my ability to train but I was probably training too hard, not taking as long a break after the marathon as I maybe should have makes this month count as a net “too hard“. I backed off a bit in May from the aggressiveness of training in April knowing that I didn’t need to get too fast too soon. This probably saved me totally crashing in July, probably perfect execution this month. June I hit hard, no questions asked and July I probably tried too hard again! During July especially I was accumulating too much fatigue during the week for me to recover during easy sessions. I was replacing days completely off with easy swims or easy bike rides when I probably should have taken complete rests. Then I raced Calgary 70.3 and the triathlon season came to a close, of the 5 previous months I had netted too hard twice but never too easy, is there any secret I didn’t feel like I could perform my best?

Early August was a complete break and that was great, I didn’t want to train and I hardly did for two weeks. I then followed that up with a super challenging bike trip at the end of the month (Too hard – but that was exactly the idea) and tried to ease into Cyclocross season. I was successful at easing into Cyclocross season as I improved significantly through the course of the season fitness-wise, not just skill wise. It probably took a while for me to reap the benefits of that big bike trip but once I did my TT strength was definitely there. It took until the Blow Street Cross race before I put together my best race of the ‘cross season. Had I not gone down with piggy-flu I might have peaked for provincials, who knows. I’m confident I structured the intensity of training properly following my break in August.

4. What is the one thing you most need to work on for next season in order to perform better?

The race by which 2010 will be measured is Ironman Canada. That’s a fact that I can’t avoid, so while I’d like to take a good run at a few road races, maybe upgrade to Cat3, hammer hard at two half ironman races I have planned, set some PRs at the spring cross country race series and an early season half marathon, stick with the racing-pack at the Tuesday night social mountain bike races, and maybe place top 50 at the national TT championship, it is necessary to make the metrics for 2010 performance relate to Ironman Canada.

Of secondary importance on that day, I need to do quite a bit of work swimming to make that swim reasonably comfortable. To me, that requires technique improvement and swimming endurance. That is only going to be solved by bumping up my swim volume and continuing to accept feedback in the pool. This is currently why my shoulders ache from swimgame, it’s going to be a comfy 2.4 miles on race morning.

Primary importance on race day however, is my ability to run home with a good marathon. It needs to improve significantly from where I’m at right now. Based on my experience this summer I felt that once I was into the triathlon season my speed was capped. I could bump up endurance and my ability to run off the bike, and even my ability to run hills under control improved this summer, but my speed did not. I need to bring myself to a new level of running speed during the off season so that once the triathlon season gets going in full force next spring (when weekends start to be taken up by long bike rides and weekly volume gets stupid large) I don’t find myself trapped at running one pace and stagnate through the season. I need to have the capacity (base fitness, coordination, power, efficiency, pacing skills) for a far faster marathon than I have at the moment if I have hopes of running ~7:3X miles along Skaha. That will come with doing threshold run work in the off season allowing me to build into longer endurance runs when it counts next summer. For those 15-20 milers to wind up being fast, I need to start out with faster short runs in the early season.

5. What would you most like to accomplish next season? Is it a good stretch and yet within your reach if you do things right?

I will run the entire marathon at Ironman Canada August 29, 2010.

I raced Winterstart this evening and it went pretty well considering the lame amount of running I’ve been doing during cyclocross season and then with swine flu and all. The race marks the end of the road racing season for southern Alberta and it seemed like a good chunk of the Calgary running community was out in Banff this evening to run. There weren’t a whole ton of really fast people out if you ask me, and I know that because I was listed on the first page of results out of 1200 runners (give or take). I placed 7th in the 40-49 age group which I have to admit is a personal best for the age group. I would have been 4th amongst the 20-29 crew if I had registered under my own name and age (My Dad acquired a racing bib from an injured colleague/friend on my behalf)

The route leaves the edge of the town of Banff and heads north/east along Banff Avenue towards Minnewanka and is pretty flat for 1.5 miles, it then turns up Tunnel Mountain road for 1 mile which is all climbing, some serious and some not, before turning around and retracing the route back to the start. The hill in the middle makes for an interesting course and an almost guaranteed negative split for everyone (~30 sec for myself). The temperatures were cool but not cold at the start and all was dry but the snow started to fall just as I was ascending the hill which made for a spectacularly beautiful run through the dark fresh mountain air. I ran 33:24 for the 5 miles (4:09 km pace) which my Garmin recorded as 8.2kms. It’s an out-and-back course so I presume they got the turn-around exact and the Garmin is wrong by 150 meters in this case, that’s typical if you ask me, it’s never as long as the Garmin says. The race is followed up by an all-you-can-drink party in the parkade of the host-hotel sponsored by Big Rock. What a deal!

My triathlon season has come to an end for 2009, and the final race was fun but the result has a mixed bag of emotions associated with it. Following my last triathlon in June I put a big focus on improving my run speed, endurance, and confidence. My swimming had been going well and I was pretty sure that I had selected bike workouts for this final prep period that would maintain my speed and power but would still allow me to focus on the run. I did exactly what I had prescribed for myself in training. Finishing those three hard weeks of training I began a 12 day taper towards this race full of confidence that I had brought my running to a new level and I was ready to take a reasonably safe shot at what I would consider an impressive run split for myself, somewhere below 1:35.

The race weekend arrived, 9 members of the University of Alberta Triathlon Club would be racing and 9 more friends from Edmonton would be alongside the road on race day to add their cheers to the mix. Race morning began for myself at 3:45 when I woke up before my alarm set for 4:00 am. Simmon and myself chowed down on breakfast in the early morning darkness and then made our way over to the casino parking lot and hopped aboard a school bus for a ride out of Calgary to the race start at Ghost Reservoir. Off the bus we came bleary eyed but excited and I prepped my bike for the race with drinks, food and air in the tyres. I stashed the other gear in appropriate places and skipped the 800 person lineup for the toilets and watered a tree instead.

All that was done before the sunrise came over the horizon, and a beautiful sunrise it certainly was. The professionals got going at 10 minutes before 7am to the cheers of a lot less other athletes than you might have guessed, they were all standing in line for the toilets. Every 10 minutes another set of age groups would set off into the lake. I waited around on the grass trying to stay off my feet and not get too excited for the next hour before hopping into my wetsuit and giving up on staying calm, some more spectator friends arrived at the lake and helped with getting into wetsuits but did not help with keeping the adrenaline down. Finally it was time to go, an hour and a half after the pros had begun I hit the water and bobbed around waiting for the start. Things started rather smoothly and I along with about 100 others in my wave start made our way onto the swim course and the stunningly blue waters of Ghost lake.

Despite all the hype about how cold the glacial fed lake was going to be it was rather warm and the course took us down a sheltered arm of the lake away from the waves (for the most part) and under a bridge jam packed with spectators. I felt like I was swimming exceptionally well for the first 1.5 kilometers at which point things started to feel like a motor boat was driving circles around me. As we had moved to less sheltered water the waves had picked up and would remain as such for the remainder of the swim. I may have swum further than necessary due to tough sighting for the finish line but in the end it wasn’t totally outrageous, I started sighting off the wrong sailboat for maybe 50 yard but it was generally in the right direction. Out of the water Pat shouted “Stefan is 5 minutes ahead”. I was still confident that I’d had a good swim and Stefan must have had a great one, still feeling good I headed for my bike with a smile on my face. The numbers I’d receive later suggested my swim wasn’t stellar but everyone’s times were a bit longer than I might have guessed so either the waves made a difference or the course was a bit long, or some of each.

A fair transition for 1700 athletes requires more running than a fair transition for 200 athletes, it also means that it’s a good chance to make up time on the competition if you move quickly. I did well but got caught running on the carpet behind a rather large lady, it gave me a chance to give Pat a thumbs up as I went by.

Onto the bike the gentle wind that had begun to bring up those waves was about 3/4 of a tailwind and I moved quickly, passing dozens and dozens of athletes. The first 11 kms was pancake flat and I cruised along at 58 kms per hour in my highest gear. Next year I’ll need a cassette with an 11 tooth ring for racing! We turned left and began a long gentle climb and what felt like I was passing dozens of athletes turned into passing busloads. I saw Simmon in the distance and gradually reeled him in, we had a brief chat and I moved on. Before reaching the top of this long gradual climb there were two steep rollers to add to the mix. 26 kms were done and it was time for and aid station. I took on a bottle of powerade, a bottle of water which I drank half of and dropped and a banana. Out of the aid station I was passed by my first person as I ate my banana. I stayed near him and as soon as we turned south again (and downhill) I took advantage of my mass and took back the pass. The downhill was exceptionally fast on great pavement and I kept things totally controlled effort wise while pulling in many more people. The handling skills of the average triathlete in the aerobars at 50kph is not very impressive and on more than one occasion I was a bit scared by the weaving and wobbling of someone I was passing; luckily there were no incidents. Another person I passed (Pete Dean – would go on to win my AG) re-passed me on the downhill but he looked to be expending a lot of effort for a downhill section so I let him go. Off of Horse Creek Road I made my way through some narrow sections of shoulder on the way through Cochrane and onto ‘The Hill’. The grade out of Cochrane heading south is nothing spectacular but it is the biggest hill on the course. It doesn’t end, it just moves onto a false-flat after a short drop so I was careful to not overdo it and need to slow down on the long gradual climb that followed. Nonetheless I wound up passing another bus load of people on the ascent planted in my aerobars while people spun their easiest gears with some false assumption that this hill was steep and difficult just because it was the biggest one. Off of the main climb I put in a solid effort along the false flat and reeled Pete Dean back in and took over what I would later discover was the lead of my race.

I reached the second summit of the course and made a hard left at 60 kph through a traffic jam onto the springbank airport road. I recognized Mom, Dad and Karen all cheering there and set off over two short and steep rollers before a bombing downhill to the second aid station.

Whoever put the aid station at the bottom of the hill made a mistake, I came upon it doing 65 kph and had to really hit the brakes because I wanted a water bottle. After letting off the brakes I coasted as I regained speed and squeezed through a tight hole next to one other athlete and the centerline. I then realized they had bananas but I didn’t want to scrub off any more speed so I just shouted ‘BANANA’ and reached out my hand at 50 kph and grabbed what was held out. I managed to get a two halves and got down in the aero position and tried to keep my speed up as I flew down the rest of the hill and ate.

The rest of the bike course was nothing special, my focus was to stay aerodynamic and keep the effort level up. The route was generally flat with only minor rises and descents and I tried to stay comfortable and was successful at that. Compared to Stefan I rode the first 55 kms 2 minutes faster than him and the last 55 kms 2 minutes slower so I likely did fade back a bit during this section of the ride ‘effort wise’ even though my speed was still very high. Previous races I have chosen to go easier on the first half and harder on the second, presuming that this leads to a more evenly paced and efficient ride. This course however seemed like it would be dangerous to try that strategy because missing effort on the first long gradual uphill would really detrimentally affect my overall time. I opted to try and distribute effort evenly, I don’t know what Stefan’s strategy was.

Entering transition I hopped off my bike and scooted down the aisle to see only two or three other bikes racked at places with higher numbers than mine (I was almost the lowest number in my wave start). I didn’t look closely but knew Stefan was one of them and I presumed one was probably from my AG so I was running in second place (I was actually first). I was happy with that and set off through Glenmore Park capitalizing on the very gradual downhill. The first kilometer was done in 4:15 and I felt a million times better than the beginning of my run at the Chinook Half race where I had suffered from serious cramping in my vastus medialis on both legs. I watched Lisa Bentley run by going the other direction in her last kilometer and gave a big cheer. The great feeling lasted one more kilometer (4:15 again) and then the gradual uphill began and I remembered that this was going to be hard work. This realization reminded me to get some salt in and I cruised up the gradual incline posting two more kilometers at 4:25 each. I was really working and could feel that I was getting hot here and at the next aid station I decided to slow to a quick walk to give me more time to drink and pour water down my racing top. I would walk every aid station after that. Down Weaslehead hill I went and set off across the bottom. I was still unpassed since the swim start at this point but the crowd of SMTs was thinning out. There were basically only quick people left out ahead of me and it felt like I had rather abruptly reached the ‘front’ of the race. I don’t know exactly what the reason was that this occurred here but regular checks with my watch ensured me that I had not yet split any kilometer slower than 4:30 by the time I had hit 9 kms including one with a quick pee and the ascent of the hill on the south side of weaslehead. The trees were now gone and it was getting hot. I now faced two short out and back sections before re-entering the trees and retracing my steps back to the start. Stefan came by in the other direction and I gave him a cheer at the top of my lungs with both hands in the air “Go Schreiber!”. Stefan might have smiled a bit but he looked like he meant business and all I got was a low five. Bridget followed closely at this point and gave a little cheer and a big smile. My entertainment was soon over though as I faced a gradual climb and was baking hot. I could tell I was slowing down but my effort level was not fading, it was hovering around threshold considering I wasn’t yet halfway. The turnaround came and was followed by an aid station serving hot water and hot powerade… mmm mmm.

The run back down the gradual incline I let myself push a little harder trying to stay on pace. I saw Dad on the side of the path and Bridget came by again in the other direction, Stefan was long gone ahead. The next turnaround was followed by some lukewarm water to drink and hot powerade. I did get a cold sponge with water in it but I wasn’t about to squeeze a sponge that had been soaking in a garbage can into my mouth. Onto the head and down my shirt instead.

I continued along and was passed by the first guy who I wouldn’t later re-pass. He was 40 and had started well ahead of me but it meant I was slowing and I knew it. Soon there was another pass, another aid station and a downhill that finally hurt the quads but I was still running. My legs felt fine, I was getting the feeling that my fitness was actually what was limiting me from keeping the pace not my muscles. I started wondering if that was possible, and as I wondered I started to be able to feel my pulse in my temples because I was thinking about it. My heart was absolutely flying. I think this is when I realized I was not doing so well. I came down into the weaslehead and had 6 kilometers to go, the flat running let me zone out a bit and I had someone right in front of me to chase down. I got to the 5 km to go mark and checked my watch. I needed to run 4:10 kilometers and I could still make it in for a 1:35 half marathon (21.5 minutes remained!). That was going to be hard, but I knew I had biked 2:20 and at this point I still presumed I had had a fast swim which I thought was about 33 minutes. All added up I thought I was still in striking range for a 4:30 race time (I wasn’t actually in striking range, my swim had been 37 minutes and I had underestimated the time for T1 even though I had a fast one relative to the field). My run pace thus far I calculated was somewhere between 4:35 and 4:40 but If I really really dug deep I could make it. I was at the bottom of weaslehead hill and I decided I was going to give it a shot. I ran my next kilometer including weaslehead hill in 4:20, my fastest kilometer in the last 10. I got to the top, poured three cups of water on myself, drank two and got running again. Mom was at the side of the path and cheering, I felt miserable.

The next two kilometers were downhill but I started having little shivers in my legs and arms. I was absolutely boiling hot after running up the hill as fast as I did and basically switched from trying to run that 4:10 pace to trying to keep running. My legs felt fine but I was done. I got to the last aid station and poured warm water on myself, drank two cups of hot powerade and tried to get moving again. It wasn’t much of a run but at least it felt like a run and not a jog. Turns out I would average more than 6:30 per kilometer for the last 4 kilometers after my attack on the hill on my way to the finish. I don’t regret doing it because it probably didn’t slow me down all that much. I was going to come out into full sunshine anyways and waswell on my way to heatstroke before the hill anyways. It was my opportunity to put everything on the line for this season and I didn’t hold back and because of that I’m happy.

The kilometer 20 marker came and went and then I was passed by Pete. I recognized his tri suit from our little exchange coming down Horse Creek Road on the bike. He was in my age group but I couldn’t race him to the finish, I was trying to just keep running. Soon enough another guy came through, UCLA on his tri-top, and age category 18-24 on his calf. I couldn’t follow him either.

The run down the finish chute probably would have been exciting if I was a bit more coherent. I saw Pat and gave him a thumbs up, I heard Mom but couldn’t see her and then as I rounded the bend I saw 6:14:XX on the clock, I was close to going under some increment of 5 minutes but I didn’t know which one. I got a bit of a boost and ensured I made it and then suddenly I was done and sitting on a chair and Stefan was offering me a banana and a water. I poured the water on my head and a lady came over and put ice on my neck. They asked me how I felt and I was honest and said not very good so they took me into the medical tent. They got me to lay down on a bed but I was too heavy and ripped a hole in it and was laying on the asphalt. The lady took my blood pressure (106/60 FYI) and another one was putting ice down my shirt and trying to dry me off with a towel because I felt so cold (heatstroke – now I know the symptoms!). They gave me one of those foil blankets and after a while I started to feel better.

Having put together the training to have a fast run and then have that taken away by the unfavorable conditions on race day with the heat was a disappointment. One of the reasons I love the sport is that it is largely a contest against your own personal limitations and not as much a race against everyone else. Whether that put me at 47th place overall or 347 place overall I wasn’t all that concerned, but I had confidence in my running abilities. I even had confidence in my running abilities in warm temperatures, I had done lots of work in the mid to high twenties but when the thermometer was over 30 the story was different. The extra energy that I need to burn to move my larger body makes it just that little bit less able to stay cool when on the run. What this means for training for Penticton next August requires some research.

All told I wound up third place in my AG by 1:15, both of the guys passed me after 20 kms in the run. Originally there was only one slot designated for our AG to qualify for the world championships and it went to 2nd place after Pete declined it. Following reallocation another slot was given to our AG and I declined, it would roll down all the way to 8th place. Stefan finished second in his AG and qualified for Clearwater. Bridget placed third in her AG and after a slot reallocation also qualified for Clearwater. Dave Roberts also declined a slot to the World Championships.

The other results from the club included Simmon sticking it out on a tough run with bleeding feet after putting together a very solid swim-bike combo. Laura Whitehead finished her first ever Half-Iron distance with a consistent showing in all three disciplines, probably only her, Bridget and Stefan can say that of their race. Pete cruised in with a smile on his face after a tough run following his excellent bike ride. Tara put together a similar race to her GWN north result on a significantly hotter and hillier run course. Dave Roberts had a good swim, fast bike ride and painful run… but after all the talk of the dodgey IT band was happy to be able to run at all and probably was happy to finish the run in under 2 hours just so he didn’t have to be out there any longer than that. Bridget, racing her second triathlon ever and first half iron was a mark of consistency and set herself up with a probably safer and less testosterone charged bike leg to have a good showing on the run course. Jan also completed his first ever half with a good swim, bike and determined run. Stefan was the huge success story of the day though for the UofA Tri club, nearly swimming as fast as Simmon and then posting the fastest bike split at more than 40 kph and blistering run at slightly more than 4:30 per kilometer pace. Holding things together like that in the heat bodes well for success at IM Canada in four weeks and with any luck he’ll recover well and be able to put in some speed focused sessions before lighting things up at the world championships in Clearwater in November.

Histograms of my performance relative to the AG field: SWIM | BIKE | RUN

Full gallery of the day is here.

During the build towards Chinook Half in June I consciously made a decision not to go for broke during the buildup with training. I could meet my target volumes etc and hit key workouts without having to really go to any limits of what I was capable of doing. I got close a few times, holding on to the lead at the Pigeon Lake road race was a serious effort, one of my 20 km runs following a full day volunteering out in the sun finished with somewhat sore hip flexors and the final 60 kms of my century ride with Ben and Stefan south of Calgary the day after the 30km Time Trial all brought me close to reaching the limit of how much I was capable of doing. During the buildup for the Calgary 70.3 race I made the decision to let myself go a little harder, be ambitious with my paces (especially on the run, big guys running fast can be hard on knees so lighting it up on the run is rare.) and hopefully reap the benefits. Staying conservative in training prior to the Chinook Half was necessary for two reasons; first, I didn’t want to peak too early in the summer, and second, I could not risk getting injured as time off would be far more detrimental to the early buildup than it would be to take it too easy.

Going all the way to one’s limits usually makes for an interesting story, and they usually let you learn a few things about yourself while you’re at it. The past two weekends I certainly did take things to the limits of my ability. I had and still have no guarantees that this is going to pay off significantly better than staying slightly below my maximal limit but I feel like I’ve got one opportunity to try it this season and can really try to take advantage of it. The ability to do a maximal capacity workout during training is not terribly more difficult that getting calculatedly close to the limit, in fact it might even be easier. Knowing how far and how fast I can run or bike and then getting awfully close to that ceiling requires a rather calculated approach. Deciding to run into the ceiling can be done in one of two ways when the training goal is an endurance event. The first has probably less training benefit, go out at a half-hour intensity and try to hold on for two hours. That will run you very rapidly into notifying yourself that you reached your limit. The second is the method that I wanted to try and do and is a bit more philosophical, especially when I’m building these workouts into a weekly structure. The idea is to set yourself up to lower the ceiling of what you should be able to do by stacking in workouts so that you arrive at the key workout in an already somewhat fatigued state. Then try to perform that two hour workout at a two hour intensity as if you were not tired. What would have brought me close to that upper ceiling now puts me past what I’m actually able to do and I have to deal with the consequences of it, hopefully safely and hopefully not totally catastrophically.

This second concept could be based on reaching that ceiling by one of two limiters. The first is based on a plan of putting muscle fatigue into your legs to enhance your ability to reach a muscular endurance challenge without straining your cardio or nutrition to the same extent. This ‘fresh body, tired legs’ should enhance the mental ability to suffer through the tired and sore legs. It should be important while doing this sort of workout to make sure that when things start to get really sore, which the training plan was designing to happen, that it is muscle soreness and not joint pain that you’re pushing through. The second version of reaching the maximal capacity ceiling is a trickier one to do. The idea would be to try to erode some of your (cardio) fitness without at the same time running into a muscular strength/endurance limiter at least to some extent. This means that the key workout for this little game has got to be a rather intense one, that you should be pushing your fitness limit and ultimately wind up in a situation where you cannot maintain your heart rate. Mental fortitude in my experience seems tied to the state of non-muscular training stress so it makes sense (to me at least) that this is going to be among the hardest workouts to motivate yourself through. Having a calculated reasoning that motivation may be low seems to be good enough for myself to make up for that motivation, it’s mostly a matter of saying ’sure I don’t really want to right now but that’s the point’. Getting through that last workout becomes a philosophical challenge. ‘I don’t want to do this right now, but I need to finish this training block’. It takes some serious work to get there before you start the key workout so by then it’s just a matter of following through, and it feels good afterwards.

I have three such ‘ceiling workouts’ planned on three consecutive weeks during my final peak. Due to the fact that they’re scheduled during my final training block I have got to make sure that this stuff isn’t done at speeds that are just tired and slow. These workouts should be done fast as right now is when I have built the base for the last 8 months so that now I can add speed. Two of them are done and one remains, I also managed to get in a bonus unintentional brush with my (cardiac) fitness maximum while trying to prepare for the first muscular endurance ceiling workout. Running is clearly weaker for me than cycling and I am pretty sure that my (cardio) fitness is in better form than my muscular endurance so I wanted to get two muscular endurance maximal efforts and one fitness maximal effort, all on the run.

• The first workout was to be a muscular endurance focused run on a Sunday following a long and quick ride on the Saturday. I wanted to do the run without running into a fitness barrier to continue and hoped to crack 25 kms before my legs really called it quits and I slowed down. Saturday I headed out with Stefan from the Triathlon club with 200+ kms planned and we started out fast. We had a bit of a tailwind and Stefan really wanted to make the most of it. I notified him that I knew I couldn’t go that fast for 200kms and didn’t want to run into trouble on the way into town. That is something I know I can’t do, it’s like trying to reach the ceiling by the aiming way past it, a method I do not believe has proper training benefits. I had planned the route to be mostly flat on the way out and include some hills between 100 and 160 kms on the way back. We flew through the first 94 kms averaging 40.8 kph including my request to slow down. The return into the headwind was of course difficult, I had overcooked it on the way out and the hills and headwind on the return trip were too much. I told Stefan to go off ahead and I would take a break but he didn’t know really where we were so I forced myself to continue after a 3 minute eating break at 150 kms. Once back on familiar roads after another half hour I could convince him to go on ahead and I stopped. I really stopped, sat in the ditch and put my head on my knees and closed my eyes. Half an hour later I had recouped enough to get going again. An unintentional encounter with reaching the fitness maximum. Suffice to say the next day I had put enough muscle fatigue into my legs that it wasn’t terribly difficult to run myself into an muscle endurance limited ceiling. I did it split between two runs to ensure I wasn’t going to be at a fitness maximum during the run workouts. The first I ran about 10 kms and did it fast to ensure that I was maxing out the legs, approximately race pace or maybe a bit quicker (best case scenario race pace I guess). The second run I did after a solid rest and another 2 meals. That one was relatively slow but I did manage to keep on trucking through the sore legs. Keeping the pace up demanded a ton of focus and was really the eye opener of the workout. When you’re focused on something it’s not all that difficult to complete it despite the difficulty in actually doing it.

• The fitness limiter workout would prove to be more eventful. I was hoping to load together a bunch of high intensity work without blitzing myself on duration and then complete a long run at the end of it, ideally I’d run out of fitness during the final run of the block. I knew how to run out of fitness thanks to Stefan’s outrageous pace on the bike the previous week, but I wanted to do it on the run and knew that I had to do most of the lead-up workouts on the bike so as to prevent injury. I back-end loaded my week to put 4 days of intensity together: Wednesday 1.5 hours on the bike including 1 hour at threshold, with a 10km brick run. Thursday I followed my swim with a 10 mile run at race pace. Friday I did two one hour rides building to threshold intensity at the end of each (split up with an open water swim of 1/2 hour). Saturday I still needed to fit in my long ride so opted to do a significantly harder effort on the return than on the way out. 100 miles: check! Sunday I did a mountain bike race of 1:20 duration with a good 1/2 hour warmup. I decided all the power spikes from a MTB race would actually probably help me with this fitness push concept so did race after a decent amount of deliberation. Sunday evening I set out to try my hand at what I knew was going to be a tough run, I wanted 20 kms if I could. Turns out it was a very tough run.

  I set out hoping to run a tad slower than my planned HIM run pace because I knew I would fail too soon if I tried to hold race pace. The first 8 kms took some effort, but I was content with the pace I was managing. My breathing started to get out of control when I headed up a long gradual hill during the sixth mile but I was able to recover or so I thought on the downhill. Once I hit the flats though, I found myself in trouble. In my head I was starting to question my ability to make it home. I started to ache in my stomach. I started to pick up the effort level but I could not raise my heartrate and I could not speed up back to my original pace. Things started to nosedive as I really started to slow down and I was working harder and harder despite my falling heartrate. Two miles from home I got some water from a fountain and it started to slosh around in my stomach, I could really tell I was in survival mode and my breathing was going about the rate I would expect for a 170 BPM effort but looking at my HRM I was only going about 125. About a mile from home I decided I was done, the final hill up to my house defeated me and I walked it in to the finish. For the first time since early during my marathon training (Jan) I was able to reach a fitness limiter on the run. It took 4 days of solid efforts to get me there and I’m pretty confident that it can’t happen during any one day race if I prep for it properly. Here’s the pace/HR/RPE plots for the run.

  

• This coming weekend I’ll be riding 220 kms on Saturday and 220 kms on Sunday, there is a monstrous amount of climbing to do on the bike which should help generate muscle fatigue. I have an almost guarantee that I’ll be doing it fast by the nature of the two guys who I’m going with (Stefan again! and Ben Adam (2:16 half ironman bike split two weeks ago)). Monday is my final workout prior to the taper and fully expect that it will be a muscular limited cruise through the river valley. Depending on my capabilities following the two strenuous days on the bike I plan to try and keep it flat and fast to keep strain off my breathing as climbing is more of a fitness stressor than a flat cruising speed.

One of the highlights of the post race dinner was the Race Director admitting that he named his race the Chinook 119.1 mostly to make fun of the World Triathlon Corporation. You have to be pretty brave to name the entire event that you plan something that you think is a joke. He has to hope that people either understand his sense of humour or is thick skinned enough to not care that people think it’s a silly name who don’t understand the jab at the world’s leading long course triathlon corporation.

I mention that because I think it gives a good idea of what kind of people run the race… they are there to put on a very high quality event and have a fun time doing so. That’s what it’s all about to them and it really sets the tone for a fun day for the rest of the athletes, myself included. Today was one of my funnest days of racing ever. I don’t think I’ve really had a race day that in general I didn’t find fun but pretty much all of today was a good time except for a tiny stretch of the run course… but I’ll get there soon enough.

I like to start out my race reports with a brief description of the taper. My last blog entry included a description of my final days of high volume. From there on out I dropped back primarily the training volume but kept the intensity up. I realized that there was a possibility that during my taper for the Yakima River Valley Marathon that my intensity actually went up during the taper instead of maintaining it as that was a full 20 day taper. My training stress wouldn’t actually be dropping off very much if I cut volume and boosted intensity and the recovery wouldn’t occur. I did my best not to ramp up the intensity too much… okay onto the description. Wednesday I did my typical interval session on the bike and then brick run of about a half hour. Thursday I went hard in the pool and Friday I did an easy 50 minute open water swim with some friends from the club. Saturday I did a sustained ~threshold on the bike for 30 minutes into a brick run of 50 minutes. I did this during the heat of the day and did the ride on my rollers on the patio in the backyard in 32 weather with no wind or breeze. I wanted to prove to myself that I could function in the heat to give myself some confidence if it turned out to be hot on race day. I didn’t fall apart in the heat nor did I thrive but felt okay about racing in hot weather if that turned out to be the situation. Sunday was off except for some pretty crazy dancing at a wedding reception. Monday I did an abridged version of my pre-swim run and then swam for an hour. I did my last run on Tuesday composed of 10 short hill repeats which I capped at about my running threshold effort. Wednesday I was coaching the bike workout and did a rolling hill simulation to get my mind in game for the rolling hills of the chinook half course and skipped my brick run. Thursday I took it silly easy in the pool and Friday was also off. I tried to make sure I didn’t go anaerobic anywhere during my last week and was successful with that although I did push the intensity up close to threhold in all three sports’ final workout not including the lazy swim on Thursday. I got to Friday evening feeling physically alright, no muscles were still tired from training but I wasn’t feeling super fresh and charged up like I have been during some tapers (I have other times cut even more volume than this)

On to race day. I didn’t try to do breakfast a full two hours before the race because my stomach would be growling so finished my meal at 6:30 for an 8:00 am start and ate a banana while setting up transition. This was my first time decking out the new bike for a long course race so had the spare tubular and CO₂ behind the seat, gatorade on my new cage on the aerobars a la Steve Larsen and a couple gels and 2 packages of shot blocks behind the steer tube. It took a long time to prep everything compared to any other horsing around training or other little races, kind of a surprise. I don’t want to imagine sorting out special needs bags and all that jazz for IM on top of this.

I was a bit rushed with putting on the wetsuit (decided to put in on at the 5 minute warning for the start!) but because I am fast at that compared to some of the others from Triathlon club *cough* Lesley & Becky *cough* I got it done in time and joined the masses on the sand. I didn’t really warm up so to speak but loosened up my shoulders. My first 200 yards swimming is always my easiest and fastest so why not include that in the race right?

We got to the countdown and soon enough we were off, I looked around for some feet that were kicking well to follow but the first pair I got on weren’t going in a very straight line so I left them and ended up going alone most of the way to the first buoy which is weird because this is the portion of the race where the pack is at it’s thickest. I picked up some feet as we turned directly into the sun after 400m and was happy to follow them as I couldn’t really see anything sighting anyways. He seemed to be going straight so I trusted him. I know it was a guy because he wasn’t kicking… most guys don’t kick in triathlon swimming that I know of anyways. I still felt like it was a bit of a drafting feeling but going around the next buoy I lost him. Sighting was alright again and I finished the first km solo. Out of the water my watch said 17:40 which was pretty good, on track for approximately the goal time of 35 minutes. If I got some good feet to follow I might still make it… but I couldn’t find the feet once back into the water after the on-beach turnaround.

Off I went alone again, someone picked up my feet at the buoy. I could tell because he was climbing up my calves all the way to hitting me in the backs of the knees. I pulled away with my arms and gave him a warning splash with my feet, I think he took the hint and left me alone. I tried to keep it steady and smooth as I was heading back into the sunrise and probably didn’t do it as straight as I could have but got there eventually. The final stretch to the finish seemed to go by really quickly and off I went up the beach. I wasn’t particularly speedy through transition and did an odd hopping along strategy down the carpet along the side of the row so I didn’t have to run on the pavement but did have to jump over all of the shoes splayed out on the carpet. Helmet on, race belt on, go! I’m sure I passed a dozen people through transition which is great and put me in a good mood for the start of the bike. I did mount with the shoes on the pedals which included a bit of a weave but there was a whole road to use and I’m convinced this is faster as long as you don’t screw it up. People say the only reason to do it is because the pros do it, I say the pros do it because it’s faster and I haven’t screwed it up yet.

I got going on the road and was up to 40 kph before I really realized it, I hit my highest average speed after about a kilometer, 44 kph! The gradual downhill probably helped but soon enough we merged onto Highway 22X and the quick bit was over and the hard work began. I could tell the story as I experienced it or as actually happened here. I had my aero helmet on and because it howls in my ears in any wind condition I wasn’t convinced that we had much of a headwind, the grass wasn’t moving all that much when I looked in the ditch. In reality we had a pretty serious headwind on the way out which starts out basically with a 20 km slightly rolling climb heading west. The kind that makes you wonder if you’re working hard enough or not when the average speed is falling. After that the hills are more distinct you’re either riding along mostly flat or going up or going down. Less of this gradual stuff which in my opinion is harder to do. I can ride along at a bit more than 20 miles per hour on the gradual climbs which is fast enough to warrant staying on the aerobars for the climb… but it’s tempting to stand up and hammer. I’m getting to the end of the gradual climb and the drafting police motorbike comes up beside me and pulls in ahead to watch the group of three riders who are up ahead of me. I watch them trade positions a bit as I slowly gain on them. Climbing our first steep hill I catch them and just as we’re cresting the hill I decide to make my move and push past them. I try to move by with enough speed that they don’t start pacing off of me which is obviously what they’re doing which has aroused the suspicions of the drafting police.

I roll through the place where the first aid station is supposed to be but there is nothing there other than a car with a few people sitting in it. I wonder what is going on and quickly decide that with my extra water bottle and the gatorade that I’m not quite done yet I can make it to the turnaround no problem just hoping that there is indeed an aid station there. Dad comes past in the car and I’m starting to realize that there is a truck driving half on the shoulder half on the road just a ways ahead of me. Dad stops in a driveway to take a picture and I ask “what’s this truck doing?”. The aero helmet prevents hearing an answer but I eventually figure it out. This is the lead vehicle. I’m leading the race!

I come bombing down the big hill with the truck just ahead of me, I get quite a bit of dust in my face and have to spit some dirt out. Here I come to a roadside pullout and there is a Budget rental truck in the ditch. There’s a guy with gatorade, great. I have my own personal aid station and he passes me a bottle as I have just finished my first. Off I go, wondering what exactly is going on until I am almost at the turnaround. The Budget rental truck passes me again within a kilometer of the turnaround and I watch as they leap out and the same guy who handed me the gatorade 15 kms back hands me another. Quite deluxe service! He also nicely tucks a banana in my back pocket for me and I make the turn and head back. It’s a bit downhill but only barely, it’s here that I realize how hard of a headwind we’ve been battling on the way out because I’m quite quickly cruising along at 55 along the flats. The gap to second place is longer than I would have guessed but I feel like I’m sticking to my race strategy so I don’t get too concerned about going to hard. I was to try and take it easy on the way out and give myself the liberty to pick it up a few notches for the ride back into town on the condition that a) my nutrition was on schedule (need to get in 1200 calories by the end of the bike) and b) that I was able to do so without compromising any aerodynamic position later on. (not allowed to get an achy back by pushing too hard). My nutrition was ahead of schedule by 100 calories already so I really cruised here, trying to capitalize on the tailwind as much as possible. I don’t want to go too fast that the Budget rental truck doesn’t catch up to me again to set up the course aid stations ahead of me as we drive but I’m lucky that I have the big hill to climb which takes a while and the truck does get ahead. Unfortunately I do the next three kilometers coming down from the hill and onto the flats at 65-70 kph and the truck never gets out of sight. He pulls off the road and as they’re setting up the table I come through. They have a gatorade to hand to me and I take it and keep cruising. The foil cap under the cap hadn’t been removed so as I cruise along at 60kph I’m undoing the screw top and peeling the foil off with my teeth and screwing it back on so I can get a drink. I’m having a really fun time now and get it in my head that I’m chasing this truck. Faris Al-Sultan in an interview after Kona a few years ago commented about chasing the video helicopter all the way to Hawi, I had my own little version here except this was a truck.

The long course merges here with traffic from the Olympic distance triathlon and I think I entered their field about 4/5 of the way back through the pack. That meant that absolutely no-one else was doing more than 50 kph and so I was hauling along and passing loads of people which became a bit nerve wracking at times because one person going 36 kph down the hill passing someone going 35.9 kph down the hill quite rapidly forces me to go 3 people wide down the shoulder. This is back on the long gradual descent into the city that I had described and at no point does my speed drop below 45 kph here. The police are doing an excellent job with traffic and I’m very rapidly into the community again and heading for T2. I finish the bike in 2:31 and change which is pretty good, about the fastest I anticipated I could go, 10 minutes faster than I though I would go, and fast enough by about a minute to set a new bike course record. I’m also 100 calories over my 1200 calorie goal which I’m happy with.

My T2 isn’t super fast but I try to limit the time as much as possible because I know it’s counted as part of my bike leg time. I’m wearing socks which is never a fast choice but for a half marathon it’s a necessary choice for me. I’m off for the run. The first 200m go splendidly and I’m happy and thinking that this will go well. Then I very rapidly start to feel cramps coming on in my quads (Vastus Medalis for those of you who are interested – that’s an aero-position cycling specific muscle also if you are interested in that too). I’m wondering if this is going to mean a very painful run or a very painful walk, I’m actually kind of hoping to negotiate with the muscle for a third alternative of a pain free walk versus a painful run. Hopefully things can correct themselves I think. I get out my e-load and take 4 little pills, that’s half the batch. If it’s going to help it will take a while I tell myself, motivation to keep running for the time being. I try to focus on my breathing instead of my legs. I’m actually breathing corresponding to an appropriate effort and that’s encouraging even though I feel like I’m going super slow. I remind myself of the race plan, I’ve allotted the entire first 5 kilometers to focus on getting my running legs together. This isn’t what I had anticipated meaning by that statement but that’s what it means now. I’ve done a pretty good job of distracting myself for the first 10 minutes until I head down the hill into the park and the muscles start to feel like they’re going to leave the verge of cramping and enter the realms of serious cramping up. Okay, I tell myself, this isn’t 5 kilometers yet it’ll come around before 5 kms is done and I do pause for a 5 second stretch of my right hamstring (actually it’s higher up, maybe bicep femoris?). I get some gatorade in me and keep going. Kilometer marker three is arrived at just under 15 minutes and I’m actually pretty surprised. I have to pee and this is the only washroom on the course except for maybe being able to find one back in transition so I take the opportunity. The little standing still break actually does me some good and by the time I’m back out on the path I’m feeling better. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to cramp up in a ball and start crawling. I don’t worry about selecting an appropriate pace until the 5 km marker, I’m just running as I feel comfortable to do so. Kilometer 5 comes at 23 minutes and I’m obviously starting to move efficiently at last.

The gameplan is to try and take it easy for the second half of this first loop, open it up on the first half of the second loop and then try to hold on as well as I can for the last 5 kilometers. I do back off the pace a bit at the 5 km marker but all is well and I try to run as smoothly and evenly as possible, the sudden movements are more likely to cause trouble than the steady and repeatable ones.

I’m off to the out and back stretch here and will get my first look at what my gap is like back to second place. I hit the turnaround and awaken the people who are sitting there to check my name off the list. “Wow, I guess our job starts now” is the sentiment of their statement even though those aren’t quite the right words. I’m congratulated and off on my way back. I keep watching for white numbers (red numbers are the Olympic distance athletes) and none seem to be arriving. I’m just about to complete the 1 km out and back section when Kyle comes by (I would learn his name later). He’s surprised to see how far off I am and I’m even more surprised to see how far ahead I am, this is weird. It’s hard to gauge the speed of someone going the other direction but I’m not convinced he’s going to catch me but I’m also not convinced that he won’t. I don’t really have any way of knowing anything about the gap so just keep trucking. Up the heartbreak hill and I don’t want to try any stunts so grab my water and gatorade at the bottom and walk up the steep pitch. Once on the gradual pitch I start running again, it feels pretty good and I head on back to transition to start lap 2. Transition is supposed to be an aid station but no-one expects whoever is in first place so there is nothing there for me. I don’t even really know where to look for water so I just keep going.

I am wary of the cramping coming back when I go through the same section of path (not because it’s bad path, it’s just because it’s been 50 minutes since my last dose of electrolytes) and I decide to take three more caplets. Off I go down into the park and I realize that it’s starting to heat up, it’s actually hot, certainly not the 19 degrees that was forecast. I slow down at the next aid station and pick up gatorade and water from the table so that none gets spilled. I need to get as much in me as I can. The last bit of water gets poured inside the front of my tri-top which can now evaporate kind of like a second skin to sweat from. The chill helps and it’s about here I realize that this is where I’m supposed to be speeding up. The missing water had me distracted but now I’m in the shade for 2 kms and I pick it up a few notches. I do at least 3 kms at around a 4:20 pace which for me is at the end of feeling like I’m running fast. It’s a good feeling and the cramps in the muscles have decided to depart for good. I get a cheer from Dad and head off to do the out and back, getting a chance to see my split back to the next guy again, is he gaining or fading, is there a new guy hunting me down or not?

It seems like the kilometer goes by pretty quickly to the turnaround and I get two volunteers to cycle with me in to the finish from here. It takes quite a while to see Kyle again who is indeed still in second place. He’s about 100 meters further up the path than last time so maybe 200 meters gained… but I’ve got more than a kilometer on him and am feeling alright. Gatorade and water at the last aid station and I’m walking up the steep section of the hill. No last minute cramping allowed. Off I go up to the finish, it’s fun to have some people along the way cheering and the announcer gets peoples attention. When you’re the winner people actually pay attention to the announcer and turn around and watch. It’s kinda weird, that never happened for 19th place.

I’m pretty happy to stop running and I don’t fall over which is some sort of success. I just want to lay down right away but there’s nowhere to lay so I have to keep walking which is probably good for me. My total time was 4:46:11 which is pretty good. The bike course and swim course are longer than the official half ironman distance so based on the paces completed today my comparable time for other half ironman races would be 33:58 / 2:21:17 / 1:38:59 = 4:34:14. That’s reasonably quick considering the relative difficulty of this bike course to some of the other ones out there like GWN or the Calgary 70.3 race I’ll be doing in August. Hopefully I’ll be able to ride close to 2:20 which I guess I showed today isn’t completely outrageous and then if my training progresses in direction I’m going to try to bend it I could run closer to 1:34:XX (ie sub 1:35). Who knows about the swim, 1700 people might be a washing machine that I don’t deal well with or maybe it’ll just be far easier to stay on people’s feet and I’ll wind up swimming a bit faster. I’ll hopefully also figure out this cramping stuff and not deal with it in a race again. I haven’t had it in training to the same degree so maybe it’ll be tough to figure out in detail, who knows exactly, giving this a trial run was the purpose of racing prior to tbe big show in August.

Oh, and the stat streak that I’m proud to continue. No one who has ever swam slower than me has finished ahead of me in any triathlon to date.

Complete Gallery of the day thanks to Reuben Krabbe is available here

I topped off my final bike volume week before heading into the Chinook Half Ironman race on June 20 this week. The focus of this build was consistency in all three sports, doing my longest runs on days after my longest rides to ensure I had somewhat fatigued legs and trying to keep the volume high, in theory building from 16 -> 18 hours over the three weeks prior. I didn’t want a full two weeks of taper and with my race on a Saturday my “weekly” goals got dislodged from the calendar week wanting to still schedule in rest days or off days appropriately. I felt pretty good with my final three endurance efforts placed back to back just before the taper began. I am planning a big bike weekend 2 weeks prior to the Calgary 70.3 race in August and wanted to simulate that to the best of my ability during this buildup.

The first was a 165 km bike ride the day following the race on the ring road. Ben, Lindsay, Stefan, Pat and myself headed out of the south end of Calgary along the Chinook Half course towards Bragg creek. We enjoyed the sunny weather while we could but knew there was a possibility of rain later in the afternoon so we were prepared. We ended up riding right into a snowstorm as we ascended the pass just past Elbow Falls and reached the top in a full bore blizzard. The descent was fun even though the roads were a bit slick and my fingers were absolutely freezing and we quickly broke out of the snowstorm back into nice weather. We recharged with a bit of food and coffee in Bragg Creek before splitting ways for the ride back to Calgary. Ben, Stefan and I were to head via the Millarville route into town to tack on a bit more distance and hopefully a couple more climbs. We ran into two riders from the H&R Block cycling team and they joined up with us and the speed of our trio leaped by a significant margin. They were taking turns up front and I was redlining in the back jut trying to stay in the draft as we cruised the rolling hills and curvy road. I couldn’t really stick with them on the steep little climbs where someone would inevitably attack the group but was able to stay in contact while giving it a serious effort along the rest of the way. Eventually winding our way over the the Road to Nepal we wound our way back into town. I was pretty beat from the effort but Stefan and Ben had plenty of energy to race a half dozen times during the final few kilometers.

Monday night I opted to skip the pool and do my long run that the trip to Calgary had delayed. I managed 24 kilometers in 2 hours which I was pleased with considering I tried to find the hilliest route through the river valley that I could on trails that were run-able.

Tuesday I took a vacation day and towed a bob trailer behind my retrofitted cyclocross bike. I’m planning a bike trip to Penticton at the end of August to watch Ironman and we will be towing all of our camping gear along for the week. 1100 kilometers in 7 days is planned so I wanted to ensure that I could do a solid 200 kilometers with the trailer loaded down with camping gear. I probably towed 40 lbs along with me for the day and will probably be closer to 50 once I’ve got an extra day or two worth of food loaded in there. We followed 16A out of town before switching over to the Yellowhead and then rode the beginning of the Alaska Highway towards Lac St. Anne. A quick lunch break in Darwell and then I spit ways with Glenn my riding partner and headed south to Wabamun. I elected to ride into town on the Garden Valley Road instead of 16A meaning it was a bit more rolling and would have less traffic (going my direction at least). All in all I was out of the house for 9 hours and spent probably a shade less than 8 hours on the bike. The grand total mileage was a tad over 200 (204) which was fantastic and I additionally had the winds in my favour for a good training day, tailwind on the way out and headwind on the way home.

Nothing with the trailer was a complete disaster which was the reason for the trial run. Glenn’s trailer though was a bit of a problem… he needs less weight if he hopes to get up the hills through the mountains, that shouldn’t be too difficult though, loose the hatchet and lawnchair and he’d be down more than 10 lbs already. I’m going to have a look to see if I can put a slightly smaller chainring on the front. I rode basically everything in my big chainring but a few of the climbs did require getting down to my lowest gear to remain seated. I have a feeling though that the steepest long sections of major highway aren’t going to be nearly as steep as the steepest sections of minor roads around Edmonton. I would have no problem managing central Alberta’s worst grades for 10 kms at a time and even a bit steeper for few hundred meter sections but couldn’t handle an 8% grade with this gearing plus the trailer. I might have to do a bit of checking in on the road grades before finalizing the decision.

The plan has already been made to take a small BBQ along for a triathlon club group ride with the trailer. I’ll definitely write about that if/when we do it.

The UofA Triathlon Club’s annual Spring Thaw triathlon came and went this past weekend. The club puts on the race as an effort to expose people to the sport of triathlon and get people out to try the multi-sport experience. Our club even received a few thousand dollars to subsidize race entry fees for UofA students towards this end… making this the cheapest triathlon in the province for UofA students. It was even cheaper for members of the Triathlon club who all raced for free once again this year. It also happens to be a great opportunity to RACE!

Lots of the club’s big guns spent their morning volunteering so it wasn’t quite the showdown of Triathlon club skills that it could have been but non the less members of the club had an excellent showing… taking the top four spots for men and top two spots for women at the Sprint distance.

My race day started with a 4:30 am wakeup and first breakfast prior to arriving at the race site prior to 5am to help set up the transition area and some of the course. Heavy lifting before 6am! I then had to try and figure out for the first time in my racing career how to do a pre-race meal and then do another one all before my swim heat hit the water soon after 10:00 am. It was a bit tricky and I don’t think I did it exactly right. I ate a full breakfast (got rid of the overnight hunger) at 4:30 and then proceeded to try and also eat a normal meal at around 8:30 am like I would have done anyways. I wasn’t hungry enough to really eat but kind of ate anyways and drifted a bit close to the race in terms of time prior to racing that I was still eating. Ooops.

I cited a swim time of 13:30 and hopped in a lane with some likeminded people and one dude who was insistent on swimming 13:00 flat. He was very concerned about being able to pass up during the swim and so we all agreed to hit people on the feet when we wanted to get past and then to wait up and let those people past. That’s standard fare for faster swimmers getting by, no big deal. Into the water we go, I’m the first one out and cruise along at about pace for a 13:30 swim. Our friend the 13:00 swimmer has made up his 20 second deficit in swim start by the time I’m at 75 meters (Hmmm… sounds like he’s trying to swim about an 11 minute time?) and goes ahead. We’re all enjoying the draft for the next couple hundred meters and then some more passing starts to occur. Some people need to go by me and I go by a few people. It’s probably the case that no-one is strong enough to lead the line at the speed we’re swimming but everyone in the draft line would like to pick up the pace just a tad. As some people pass one another and wait up at the end one swimmer gets crammed into the little space where there previously was no swimmer before and now has no option but to hit people on the feet, now not trying to elicit the “wait up and let me pass you” response. Frustration and confusion ensues. We get to 600 meters and I want to pick it up for the last three laps. No-one else must be counting I think to myself and cruise out of the line down the middle of the lane… No one will believe a foot tap anymore. I pass three people down the middle and the heartrate is picked up a bit. It’s a tight squeeze and there had been some shoulder bumping but I pass the 13 minute dude during my last fifty and climb out at exactly 13:30 minutes. I suppose it’s a form of success?

Into T1, I’ve got a shammy towel and try to soak up some of the water in my shorts and from my thighs so they’re less likely to be chilly on the ride and cruise into the transition zone. Helmet on, number on, go!. My transition cannot be any faster as I run down towards the mount line and hop aboard the P2. I’m running my HED3 up front and aero-helmet and get some cheers and jeers from the tri-club members who are volunteering. You’re not allowed to be slow if you’ve got the gear to go fast.

I crank out the first lap including the emily murphy hill with an average speed of 40.5 km per hour. As I settle in to ride the next lap I’ve got a knot in my upper stomach, I try to ignore it and keep pushing… the second time up the hill isn’t quite as fast and I deal with a bit more traffic. By the time I’m up top my average speed has dropped to 39.8 kph… I get aero off the top of the hill and keep cruising, I chug down about a third of a bottle of gatorade. I brought 2/3 of a small bottle thinking I might drink twice but elect to just stick with drinking once. The nose of my seat starts to rotate down a little bit from level, argh! that’s not supposed to happen. There’s nothing I can do though, I’ve been riding hard out on the tip of it trying to be as aerodynamic and powerful as possible, now my seat is effectively a tad too low. I continue through the third lap and just as I summit Ben Adam is arriving off the next swim heat. He’s quick and I’m determined to stay with him for the lap. I have no problem doing so until I climb the hill the last time and don’t want to go anaerobic. I did for the first three laps but stay seated and make an effort to stay aero on the last lap so I’m not in the midst of recovery when I arrive in transition. It’s a good choice and cruise back into transition. I take the dismount a bit too quick as I leap barefoot from the bike and the pavement kind of hurts my feet. Oh well. Into T2 I come, rack the bike and helmet off. I’ve elected to wear socks even for 5km because I haven’t trained without. They probably add two seconds per foot, I’m relatively successful I decide as I stand upright again and Andy is yelling at me to show my number as I leave T2. The race belt is on inside out and the side displayed is just white! The draft marshals apparently couldn’t have given me a penalty even if they wanted. (Not that there was anyone nearly fast enough for me to draft).

The first 100 meters is quick but the subsequent 500 meters are slow. I’m frustrated as I feel like I just can’t pick up the speed. It takes probably the whole first kilometer before I feel like I’m actually pushing the pace on the run and am breathing hard. I crank out the first half and come to the turnaround. I’m far ahead of everyone else from my heat so until now the only people I’ve seen on the run course are barely moving people from the previous heat. Once on the return I feel like I can let it fly and feel pretty good. I’m running about as fast as I think I can run but not getting tired out. I’ve only got a kilometer and a half left I think to myself when I go past Cory and Simmon volunteering and they shoot my photo. I can’t run fast enough through the final stretch it seems even though the pace isn’t terribly fast. A few hundred meters to go and I switch from run to sprint and finish a bit wobbly on my legs. Once the heartrate drops back from the sprint finish I feel pretty good, I probably could run another 5 km and not be too much slower I think to myself. That’s frustrating, I couldn’t have run any faster. Serves me right I suppose, marathon training doesn’t translate to top end 5km speed.

There’s not too much time for me to to wait after finishing until Ben cruises in off his bike is out onto the run. Next off the bike is Lindsay and she’s got a pretty good gap on both Stefan and Pat who come in off the bike together. Pat flies through transition and Stefan has to tie his shoes, he’s just racing for fun today, he won his category at a bike road race the day before and has nothing to prove. Pat is off to hunt down Lindsay and record the fastest run split of the day.

Total results for myself include almost a 40 kph bike split and reasonable run at 20.5 minutes for 4.8 km. My swim time is a whole minute faster than last year when I believe I was told I was finished swimming after only 700m. In total that translates to the equivalent of about 2 minutes improvement on the swim (reality only 1 minute faster) and I cut a minute on the run as well as a bit more than 4 minutes off my bike time. I’ll attribute 5 seconds of that to the helmet, 5 seconds to the race wheel, 5 second to the new bike aerodynamics, 5 second to the new bike’s weight and 10 seconds to my better aerodynamic bike body position. That leaves me 3:30 seconds of raw ‘effort’ improvement on the bike from last year. All in all the improvement of my swim as what was my limiting factor didn’t make as much difference as the improvement to my bike top end speed which was refinement of my strength. That’s not terribly encouraging to make me keep working on the swim… but that’s where the deficit to the competition still lies. The beginner lane at triathlon club pool swims has been eliminated and I will be taking that bull by the horns next winter. Swim improvements from here on out for the 2009 season are likely to be minimal. I’m content to swim about a 35 minute half ironman pace (equivalent to this swim speed) as I feel like anything more is going to tax my ability to run a fast 21.1 km.

The annual showdown with the Spring Thaw Triathlon will come to an end in 2010 as I’ll be race director for this event which precludes me from competing unfortunately. It should still be a rocking race and I’ll likely pick up one other short course race next season just for fun to test out the speed, probably more likely to be Olympic distance than sprint though, a one hour effort is relatively rather unsatisfying once you’re tapered for it.

I ran the Calgary Police Half marathon in 1:36:23 on Sunday April 26. It was one of my least favorite races of all time but it did result in a personal best on the distance so in retrospect I am happy to have run it. I perhaps also learned a few things while running it, maybe it’s more likely that thinking about why it felt so lousy afterward was how I learned a few things. None the less I’m pretty confident I didn’t run as fast as I could have on the day due to some poor pacing choices and I probably didn’t run as fast as I could have that week due to some poor tapering choices. The results however are good so let’s start there. I was actually quite quick, averaging 4:35 per kilometer is more than acceptable considering all the factors. I also have to consider that I ran 26.2 miles only three weeks prior and that my training focus on the run has been endurance with the focus on pushing past the two hour mark. While it seems a bit silly to suggest that the half marathon is not really an endurance event the honest truth is that it’s bordering on not being one. I have pretty good reasons to believe that my body’s glycogen stores when topped off properly run themselves out in about 100 to 110 minutes when riding a bike through triathlon club practice if not supplemented with a few extra calories. While running is different than the stationary bike and considering I did consume 100 calories of shot-bloks on the run in addition to two cups of Gatorade I had absolutely no need to run off anything more than glycogen and sugar-burning aerobic work during the race. If the muscular endurance is there to get me through about 34 kms with no ill effects and my glycogen storage is good enough to go the distance then realistically 21.1 kms shouldn’t be considered an endurance challenge, it’s an aerobic one meaning unfortunately that my speed should basically be a measure of how much my huge body could breathe and how much I was willing to hurt to stick it out. (Taking in a bit of food was probably an unnecessary safety net but as I’m used to taking 100 calories every 5 miles on runs lasting longer than 60 minutes I opted not to play with something that works, it certainly wasn’t going to slow me down anyways.)

That’s all said basically to suggest that I did run a fast race, that I have developed the endurance to crank out a 21 km run at hard effort without feeling the need to really dig deep to keep it rolling once past the ten mile mark. I found myself actually looking forward to getting some intermediate miles down between 10 miles and 12 miles, in retrospect those are normally finishing miles. I wasn’t struggling to be able to maintain the pace I ran towards the finish, I just couldn’t pick it up. The endurance was there but the speed wasn’t.

Perhaps describing why the speed wasn’t there starts with a little description of the taper, or lack thereof before I discuss the race-day strategy. Following the marathon three weeks prior I found I was capable of hard aerobic work on the bike within a few days but my ability to do any real effort while running had totally disappeared. I rode hard at triathlon club practice and wimped out on the runs, even having to quit an intervals set halfway through, I couldn’t manage it and walked slowly home from the river valley. After a week and a half I was out on my feet again and was successful for the first time at a Wednesday Night Cross country race. My legs held up for 17 minutes as I ran slightly above my aerobic limit the entire time. I felt great and likely as a result of this positive feedback to the restoration of my running I took the training hard right through the weekend and into the next week. I racked up my biggest 7 day stretch yet in 2009 with varied sport focus including two excellent 10 km run efforts at moderate pace. I cruised right along into the next Wednesday’s race, this time running a bit closer to my aerobic capacity for the duration. The taper would begin Friday for Sunday’s race by taking two days off. Not really a taper at all you might say, and you’d be right. It would have likely been sufficient to rest up if I had not just completed a serious training effort spanning 13 days without a break. Friday and Saturday were spent in recovery mode from the training load of the last weeks and not acquiring the extra bits of rest required for a good race performance.

The mental preparation for this race was also lacking, I hadn’t actually decided what my goal pace was supposed to be, I tossed around the idea of trying to run 7 minute miles and aiming for a 92 minute time. Perhaps it was my fast performances at Wednesday night races that suggested this in my head. I knew however that I was far more likely to be successful at running an even pace the whole race and probably would reasonably shoot for 7:15 miles if aiming for an even paced race. I started the race not having decided upon the plan, hopping the fence into the starting chute without really gauging whether or not I was self seeding appropriately. We cruised out of the start and I nailed two 6:45 miles in a row, I was feeling pretty good, refreshed and plenty happy that it wasn’t snowing or raining as had been forecast. This was a terrible pacing strategy and I would pay for it, I slowed appropriately to approximately the pace I should have been running the whole race by the time I went through 5 miles but was perhaps a minute ahead of all the people who were running this pace consistently through the race. That meant there was a slow and steady stream of people passing me as I went down the hill into the weaselhead, I had an incorrect picture in my mind that it was a steep downhill and short jaunt over to the uphill on the other side. The flat across the bottom was an entire mile long and I got frustrated a bit confused by why things seemed to be going the way they were and saddened that there were people getting past me. I was well within my limits running through this stretch and should have upped the pace and stuck on the tail of any one of the other runners but instead I was hesitant to choose one, worrying about the consequences of passing control of the pace over to another stranger. Up the hill I went, the cycling muscles came into play and I passed a few people on the ascent. The race gets a bit tedious here through to the ten mile point and I was still running well within my limits not terribly pleased by my pace but accepting the fact that I was sufficiently quick to still have the 1:40 under wraps. For a few miles this became the plan, keep it under 1:40? That was outrageous and when I actually calculated how slow I could go and was then starting to go I realized I had to pick up the pace. Having chosen a specific planned pace would have been valuable here but that wasn’t the case and I opted to make a last ditch effort with about 4 kms out to salvage what I was realizing was a poor race plan by picking the nearest tall guy and deciding to run his pace as he went by. It worked for 300 yards before we went up and over the overpass and I needed to pass him on the uphill. Down the other side and I was out on my way through to the final 3 kms, the disaster zone was finished and I finally picked up my pace to a moderately hard effort hovering right around my aerobic threshold and went for it. The ends of races are always interesting some people fade badly and others pick it up, as I was picking it up some of those ahead of me were also speeding up and my plans to knock them off one by one got a bit complicated or I was getting to the border of being out of it. I came through the 21 km mark with one other man who started a sprint to the finish and I started to go with him but as soon as I realized he had me beat I backed off. No point in loosing a sprint to the finish I thought to myself and just ran it in across the line.

Summary of results: here.

It has been a few days since the race and I decided that it’s probably a good time to write down a few reflections of the marathon last weekend before the details are out of my head.

Thursday morning I gave a presentation at school and after lunch got on a plane down to Abbotsford BC where my brother Silas picked me up from the airport. I stayed with him and his three roommates in a rather full two bedroom townhouse that they are squishing into in favour of cheap rent and the ability to buy ski tickets. The next morning we made the 4.5 hour drive south from Abbotsford to Seattle and then 100 miles east to Ellensburg Washington via the I-90. The snow up top was still DEEP but as we descended we entered the desert and the temperatures crept up. We would sleep the night in Ellensburg and the next morning I’d run down 42 kilometers through the Yakima River Canyon towards Selah Washington. After checking into the hotel I found online that upon first appearance gave thoughts of funky smells and creeky beds, but turned out to be excellent annoyance free and cheap accommodation, we drove the course. The route is winding and generally downhill and for miles 3-26 passes through a canyon that’s just barely wider than the road, a river famed for its catch and release fly fishing, and a train track. We guesstimated the mile markers as we drove and I picked out a few mental notes along the way, there’s a pacman painted on a cliff at the half marathon point and made a mental note that the downhill after the first hill is steep and the second hill has a false summit. All things I mostly knew and there were to be mile markers along the way anyways, so I wasn’t obsessive about it and we enjoyed the views. Four and a half hours of driving adds up to a pretty good amount of time to sit in a car, especially when I’m focused on super hydrating my body, enough said.

We arrived and looked for the Selah Civic center along the west side of main street for the pasta dinner and decided to park the car, get out and look for it a bit better as the google maps pointer suggested we were pretty close. Once standing on the curb it was abundantly obvious where it was, across the street that we’d driven past twice already. Google is good but it’s not perfect!

As we chowed down on spaghetti and looked through the race package documents Silas and I came to the realization that there were more than a few crazy marathoners present at this particular race. Perhaps it had the highest concentration of what might be considered crazies at any race in the USA this year. The Marathon Maniac club was having its annual reunion race at this marathon. A club composed of people who run marathons like they’re going out of style. Some travel to run every weekend, some race on back to back days. Some are finishing up an all 50 states marathon challenge and some have already completed it. One was to run his 100^th marathon tomorrow and another was on 428 or something like that. A bit of an intimidating crew! Silas groaned every time a new stat was mentioned, and then they made the marathon first timers stand up, there were 7 of us… Out of 441 people.

Following dinner we headed back to the hotel, unpacked all of my junk and set things ready for the next morning then hit the sack. Up an hour and a half before the race start I chowed down on bread, jam and bananas for breakfast and some Gatorade. Silas warned me not to keep drinking or I’d spend the whole run stopping in the ditch, I assured him that wasn’t an issue as I put away a bit of milk and more Gatorade. Off to the race start we went decked out in Triathlon Club colours. It would be warm enough to start out in a wind breaker and T-Shirt and so the hoodie was stripped off even before I began. Walking 500 yards to the start was enough warm-up for me and one last watering of the bushes, a star spangled banner and we were off.

The first mile was slow, I was happy to take it easy off the start and ran it about 1 minute slower than my planned pace. The group was starting to thin out as we wove around through some farmland before making it to the canyon. Mile two was a fast one, taking the first mile easy meant people running my pace were already a bit further up the road. It would prove to be my fastest of the day and I soon settled down and nailed the third mile in exactly 7:37. It felt good, this was the planned pace for the race and I had no qualms about running that pace. I’d been tapering my volume way down and hadn’t done much of anything significant all week long, two steady runs, two hard hours on the bike and an easy half hour in the pool. What had been a pace that felt fast during my biggest volume weeks earlier in the buildup felt completely manageable. That’s a good sign I thought to myself.

I was now tucked in with people running approximately my pace and was no longer moving my way through the field. I had to keep an eye on the clock as well as focus on my position relative to multiple runners because I wasn’t about to gauge my pace off of just one person. These are people all planning to run faster than 3:30 and I was almost guaranteed that a few of them had done that more than ten times, maybe fifty. I was in the mix with quite a few of the marathon maniacs. Up one quick rise and suddenly we came around the corner and we in the canyon. I needed to start eating already and I felt as though I had just started but the numbers don’t lie, I’d gone 5 miles and that meant I had to put down 100 calories, that’s the game plan and I’ve got to stick to it.

Things cruised along nicely as we faced no more grades through the next 8 miles. The sun started to warm things up and I wanted to lose my gloves and toque. They couldn’t be abandoned just anywhere, I needed to wait for an aid station with a garbage can. I’ll just keep wearing them I thought to myself, but it was starting to heat up and with a solid 5 kms of waiting for the next aid station I started to get warm. Looking down my windbreaker’s arms were soaked with sweat. I took the gloves off and decided to carry them as starting to drip sweat was in no gameplan of mine. Finally an opportunity came, I lost the gloves and toque and kept on cruising feeling quite nice in the sunshine. Ten miles down, nearly halfway there, I started to chat with another runner, he was wearing an IMAZ visor so we discussed the heat and wind in Tempe, he’d raced in 2005. Faris Al-Sultan had won in hot and windy conditions before going on to slaughter the competition at Kona that fall. Suddenly we could see a clock on the road up ahead. 13.1 miles down in 1:39:40. That’s a half marathon PR and I hadn’t really worked yet, that’s good though I thought. Keep it steady for another ten kms to the hill and then I can get going if I still feel good.

Another mile done and my fellow triathlete went missing, who knows where to, forwards or backwards I don’t know. Around the corner we come, aid station and a big hill. This was the short one, about 4 minutes of effort and we were up top, a few guys had a sound board out with huge speakers echoing some rock and roll off the canyon walls as we climbed towards them. Over the crest and down, down, down, this descent was steep and I tried to keep it even and smooth, light on my feet I thought to myself. The canyon widened out a bit for a stretch and I ran alongside a marathon maniac for a while. I was keeping the steady pace from before and glanced at my heart rate, 174, I’m at the top end of acceptable. I cannot let this rise anymore or I’ll be in trouble, the plan is to keep it between 162 and 172. I don’t need to slow it down yet but I have to be careful not to speed it up. Should I keep running beside this maniac or not? It’s not a good idea if it will push me, it is a good idea if my mind starts to wander a bit, it’s easier to keep it steady beside someone else. I decide to stay with her and we get to some shade. My heartrate drops back to the middle of the range and I feel alright about that. We’re back in the sun soon enough and I take off the windbreaker. It gets stuffed down the back pocket of my jersey. 20 miles down, I thought the hill was supposed to start here. It’s probably just around the corner. Nope, maybe the next corner. I start to wonder what’s going on when it’s not around the that one… it’s getting close to the 21 mile marker when it finally comes into view. I slow to a walk through the aid station as I have done once already and take a powerade and water, mix the two and chug them down, then another two cups. I’ve been drinking two cups every 3 miles but my mouth is dry and don’t want to wind up crashing into dehydration in the last 5 miles. The hill is a gentle grade but it certainly takes a long time to climb and it’s starting to feel hot. It’s getting up to 20 degrees and I’ve still got tights on. One little patch of shade three quarters of the way up and I walk for 20 steps. Out of the shade, I might as well run. One last patch of shade as I crest the hill, I resort to another 20 steps of walking.

I’m at the top of the hill now, keep everything under control until you’re at the top of the hill I had been telling myself as I felt like I could have picked up the pace for much of the morning. Once again the heartrate is 175, slightly high but I’m getting close now as I’ve eclipsed the three hour mark. It’s now time to pick up the pace but now I can’t. The slight cambers in the road as we’ve run have been mostly long sweeping right turns and sharp left turns, my left leg had been slightly higher than my right for the majority of the time and I can feel it in the sides of my thighs. I’ve been able to feel it since km 25 but now it hurts. It’s surface pain, not deep, so I’m not really worried about it, it just hurts. It’s a gentle downhill but I can’t take advantage of it, the fronts of my quads don’t want to run down a hill. I haven’t been running down hills all winter, it’s icy in Edmonton and running downhill is a sure bet to wipe out. The pain slowly notches up and up until I decide I’ve got to take another quick walk break, it’s more than 20 steps this time but soon enough I’m back at it. I’ve got to count when I start walking I tell myself, that way I’ll never walk for too long. I run until it’s too painful and take another walk break. One more time, running is just TFH (hard) I can’t run even though my head says this is not the fastest plan and then I’m back walking for a stretch. I near the 25 mile aid station and take one last look at my watch. 3:20 is gone but 3:30 is all but guaranteed if I can at least run most of the way. I stop and walk through and pound back 3 cups. Don’t pull a Paula and loose the nutrition plan on the home stretch I remind myself. It’s a good thing someone famous once made this mistake because I’ll never forget myself. Back running. It’s downhill again but I’m close now so I’m not stopping to walk, with about a half mile to go it flattens out and I’m feeling better about the situation, the pain in my quads is stable, not getting worse as I run. One old guy comes past me and consciously make the decision not to think about racing him. I’m on the border of holding it together so I’ll just hold it together.

I see Silas in his red jacket, give him a thumbs up and come off the side of the road into the finish area. My name is announced, and I don’t really know where the line is but I have to stop or I’ll run someone over so I stop. Someone comes from behind me to pull the tab off my race bib, obviously I ran a bit too far. The race director spots the little shiny foot on my race number and give me a hug, I’m a newbie. I’m offered an aluminum blanket and a bottle of water. I chug the bottle and grab another bottle of juice. I finish it also on the spot. Another bottle and I make the slow walk to find a chair. I bend my knees to sit down and pause. All the people around me laugh, “you’re not getting back up once you get down” they tell me. I sit down and am feeling pretty chilly so I tuck the edges of the blanket in around me. Another one is blowing around on the ground and I wrap it around my legs. I down a few bananas. Another bottle of juice, a can of antioxidant baloney that someone is sponsoring the run with. It tastes awful but it’s liquid, cookies, yoghurt, some gummi bears. We chat a bit and Silas tells me that I’m number 46. That’s weird I thought, there were a lot of people ahead of me at the end, but it meant that I was actually at the front end of when things started to get busy. Look here for an illustration of that.

Getting out of the chair was a lousy process as was the walk down the road to the car. Race organizers had showers available with towels, soap and shampoo in the local Jr. High school and once I had given the quads a bit of a massage under the hot water they felt a lot better. We sought out an unsecured wireless network in the community to send a few emails and then ate lunch, I was already ready for it. 4:00 arrived quickly and we ate dinner for the awards ceremony but hopped in the car to begin the drive home before anything happened. Sleep? No way, we stayed up late drinking cheap American beer at a campfire on the banks of the Fraser river in Abbotsford once we were home.