Travels and tribulations

Spent most of the week in Houston for work. Came back on Thursday night, shoveled all day yesterday. Today I'm packing because I'm leaving for the UK this afternoon.


I still managed to get some running done. In Houston I found a route on Mapmyrun.com pretty close to my hotel, so I was a ble to run a quality run on Wednesday morning. I got home at 6 on thursday and went to the gym for a quick treadmill session and yesterday, between shoveling sessions and work, I was back on the treadmill for my second quality workout. No way you can do any kind of speed in this snow.

I might go out for some "junk" miles in the snow. It's nice today, but the roads and sidewalks are a mess. Still, this would almost qualify as low impact. Maybe.

In the UK, I should be able to run a few times. I found a route on Mapmyrun.com that I might try. The weather forecasts is improving slowly over there. I'll let you know.

My iPod is chock-full of back episodes of my favorite podcasts. I should be able to catch up on the plane.

Robbie Burns 8k Race

Last night I had a hard time going to bed. I tried to rent an On-Demand movie but they didn't have "Chariots of Fire". Luckily, "Armageddon" was playing on a commercial-free station and I only saw it 20 times, so I watched it again! My new favorite line in the movie: "HE'S GOT SPACE DEMENTIA!!!". Just great entertainement.

For those who haven't read my previous posts (which is everyone), my target time for this run was 38:40, which is a pace of 4:50/km, or 7:30/mile. This is the fastest pace I've run in a race, a 5k on December 30th. And I had run hard. I figured that if I can sustain it for 8k, I could live with that result.

This morning, I got up at 6 am to drive to Burlington, Ontario, which is about a 50 minutes drive from my house in Toronto. My bag was packed and my running clothes were downstairs so I wouldn't wake up my wife and kids. I had an envelope of instant oatmeal and a black coffee for breakfast, got dressed, jumped in the car, hooked up my iPod (containing 2 episodes each of Planet3rry and 'Dump Runners Club').

We had some light snow last night but the roads were clear, as was the course. I got there pretty early and drove the course to scope out the hills. It was pretty darn flat. I picked up my kit at 7:45 and got dressed.

I met Marty, from 42at42.blogspot.com. We had exchanged messages on buckeyeoutdoors and decided to meet. Everting is weird. Everting (to evert), a term I picked up in a William Gibson novel, happens when cyberspace projects in real life. Marty and I chit-chated a while and then he went on to meet a friend of his.

The weather was just about perfect, 0C and no wind. I decided to only wear 3 shirts without the outside shell. Looks cooler! I had my recorder, which I turned on for my French podcast (lelievreetlatortue.blogspot.com).

The race started and what more can I say? I gave it everything I had. I went a bit faster than the pace I had picked, but just by a bit, and I felt like I could handle it. My splits for the first 3k were about 4:45 and then we started going slightly down hill and the remaining splits are between 4:33 and 4:40. I was just friggin' flying! On my way, I blew my 5k PR out of the water by 25 seconds with a 23:30. I got a side stitch in the last 500m but I still managed to summon some kind of a kick at the end and pass a few people suffering worse than me.

Final time: 37:46, a full 14 seconds better than my ultimate best case scenario. What a race.

I was 191th out of 608 finishers. I was 154th male out of 333. And I was 30th out of 48 in my age group (40-44). That's a harsh age group. I think I'm going to have to win by longevity.

Now this new time means that my VDOT is up two notches, from 40 to 42. My quality workouts will go from painful to excrutiating. For example my Threshold pace will go from 5:06 to 4:56/km.

Brain Training

Bought that book that RunnerMatt (Dump Runners Club) recommended: Brain Training for Runners. The foreword was from Tim Noakes (Lore of Running) so I just couldn't resist.

I'm not quite done yet. Basically, this is about training within the context of the Central Governor Model instead of the more common Cadiovascular/Anaerobic Model. I first heard about the Central Governor Model in Tim Noakes book and my understanding is that basically it postulates that fatigue is a feeling induced by the brain to prevent organ damage or failure as opposed to a lack of fuel.

The book is interesting. The training program is based on Jack Daniels' training program, which I'm currently following. The VDOT table is basically the same but the various paces have been modified a bit to fit the "Director" model. Although the programs are similar, there are differences that, as a novice runner, I'm not comfortable with.

The first difference is that the Threshold pace running is pretty much replaced with Race pace running. I'm a bit uncomfortable because Daniels is so specific about not running at race pace during training. If it was benificial, you'd think he would have noticed.

The second difference is that the VDOT adjustments (called "TPL" in Brain Training") are kind of done by feel. Again, that's something Daniels is against. VDOTs should be upped as the result of a race time or after 6 weeks of structured training.

One of the reason I picked Daniels' program was the self-limiting aspect of it. There's a "sling-shot" effect where training improves race time, which improves the VDOT, which increases training, which improves race time, ...
The logic of this system appeals to the computer geek in me. It also prevents me from increasing training too fast or too slow.

The Brain Training program, on the other hand, leaves more freedom to the runner, which might be all good, but in my case I don't think I have the experience to use it. In a couple of years, I think I will find the program much more attractive.

This won't prevent me from using some of the techniques in the book. I believe he make a good point about improving one's stride technique and I will definitely do that, as well as some of the other exercises and use proprioceptive cues (don't ask, just buy the book).

Definitely worth the price. The section on Flow (aka "the Zone") alone makes it worth it.

My two cents.

Flow

This morning in the car, I listened to RunnerMatt on Dump Runners Club and he discussed Flow a.k.a. "the Zone". I really enjoy his show. He has a lot of running experience and he's not shy about sharing it.

I ordered a book he mentioned "Brain Training For Runners". One of the co-authors was Tim Noakes who also wrote "The Lore of Running". I couldn't resist.

An interesting comment he made about flow is that it can be experienced in many activities, not just sports, as long as they follow certain criterias such as structure, intensity, goal, etc... I'm certainly going to try to set the stage for a Flow moment on Sunday.

Last week before Robbie Burns 8K

It's always the same. The week before a race, any race, I keep thinking about "The Plan". How hard should I try? Up to now, I've been pretty conservative and I've always done better than planned.

I like the 2/3 plan where you follow a fairly conservative pace for the first 2/3 of the race and then decide how much to "unleashe". The thing is, once your actually racing, conservative is a relative term but I'm going to have to learn to stick to a race plan. In my December 5k, my so-called "Ultimate goal" was 24:59 and I finished in 23:44, a full minute faster than planned. I still ran fairly smart, with a faster second half. One could say I raced better than I planned.

Learning from my mistakes, I will now risk public humiliation and aim for a pace that I'm not entirely comfortable with. Live a little, as they say!

My plan for the week is to slow down a bit. I will skip my Friday quality run and just run a few easy kms with a couple of strides instead. Same on Saturday possibly on the threadmill.

Sunday. Ah, Sunday. I will go out at a blistering 4:50/km and maintain it to 5k, where I will decide what to do. If I feel ok, I will try to push down to 4:45. The last k, I will try to "sprint" under 4:40.

This best case scenario would give me a time of 38:20, give or take. An even 4:50 would give me 38:40. The thing is, I don't know that I can sustain 4:50 for that long. But it's time.

Garmin 305 Crash!

I nearly had a baby duck! I decided to upgrade my Garmin Forerunner 305's firmware to improve satellite acquisition and the updater crashed my computer in the middle of the update. I hadn't seen the "blue screen of death" in a long time. I was flippin'.

My Garmin was left in a funky state.

I rebooted and tried again and thank God! the update worked the second time. I'm now at V2.90.

Being the biggest sucker ever, I decided to refresh my Training Center. Well I seem to have lost a few workouts. I know that I lost at least last Wednesday's (Jan 9th). I'm not going to go through everything since I also download to SportTracks, which I prefer.

The worst of it is: in the back of my mind, I thought that maybe I was just going to HAVE to get a 405!

Spinning as cross training

After seeing that a lot of people were spinning on their day off, I felt I had to emulate so I went to my club for a spinning class tonight. I've never done it before and I hate being the newbee. The instructor showed me the ropes quickly with a minimum of fuss. Now I'm in the know.

Jeeez. That was hard. For the same heart rate, I would say that my perceived effort was almost double. Now I understand what they say about "specificity of training". I guess it was a good workout. I'll probably do it again but I would prefer to do it at lunch so I might have to shift my runs to match the spinning schedule since there's no lunchtime spinning on Thursday, which is currently my day off.

After the class, I just had to have a beer (well... two) at the bar, so I don't think there will be a caloric net gain on this workout. Still, a positive outcome.