The Victoria Day Long Weekend

The Victoria Day Long Weekend

MEC 5 km Run

We started our long weekend with the last minute decision for me (Garima) to race in a 5 km run in Hamilton. This race is part of the running series organized by MEC which is incredibly fun, warm and friendly. The races are fairly small and well organized with very very affordable entry fees! So we took the train to Hamilton in the morning with our bikes barely making it on time. Unfortunately Sunny couldn’t race since we needed somebody to babysit our bikes, and he was nice enough to volunteer and let me shine :D

It was a short and sweet 5 km which included me almost getting lost. Luckily the guy running in front of me knew what he was doing so I just followed him blindly. The race got over soon enough with lots of cheering and me finishing in second place amongst the women runners.

We waited around for the award ceremony, filling ourselves on bananas and cliff bars to prepare for the ride back home. The ride back home was long but I was taking it easy so that legs can bear the duathlon on Monday.

Victoria Day Duathlon

After some rest on Sunday we prepared ourselves for the duathlon on Monday. Monday morning came fast and was like any other race morning – full of anxiety, time pressure and stretching. I had been dreading this race for a while since Sunny had warned me about the rolling hills. The drive to the start line made me realize he wasn’t lying about the rollers at all. In fact the run and bike had nothing else except for rolling hills – with no flat section!!!! Man I hate hills and hate them bad. 

The first run went well without any hiccups. The transition to the bike – not so much. This was my first time using an aero helmet (dork alert!) and boy did I mess it up. As I was running out of the transition area with my bike a volunteer kindly reminded me that wearing my helmet backwards wouldn’t be very efficient/aero!!! Lol….. I guess I had to make this mistake at some point in my life. So I fixed my helmet and ran to the bike mount. As I started pedaling I realized my mistake 2 – didn’t close my bike shoes strap properly which kept hitting the crank with every pedal. Oh well….. I ignored the annoying situation and kept pedaling.

Finally once the bike section was over, I started the second run and boy were my quads toast. I have never had such a hard time in a 4km…but this was painful. The heat was getting to me and I just wanted to stop and walk. I somehow survived the run and crossed the finish line running. What a great feeling…..I didn’t care about the slow bike ride and the slower run…I was just glad to finish with Sunny cheering for me!

Once Sunny and I got some “fuel” into ourselves, we walked to the results area. I was hoping I wouldn’t be last in my AG …but I got a pleasing surprise of placing 3^rd in my age group!! What!!!! This never happens to me.

Sunny placed a close 4^th in his AG which is really good considering his competition and the fact that he dropped his chain and fell off his bike just 5 mins into the bike ride (that's what you get for being your own bike mechanic! He bounced back with a solid 2nd run and re-passed a lot of people.

You can see me pleased with myself in the pic below:

So that was our crazy and tiring long weekend…how was yours? J     

Getting our mojo back, and Sporting Life 10k 2013

Happy Mother’s Day to our beloved mommies!

It’s been a week since the Goodlife Toronto Marathon/Half-Marathon’s been run and done.

Most of the first 3 days this week I just spent beating myself up over the stupid race, figuring out what mistakes were made,  how much time lost I can attribute due to each, and then filtering out those that were in my control and which weren’t!

After making up most of the ~8 lbs. I lost to dehydration and GI issues (yup, no typo there, 6% of my bodyweight!) at last Sunday’s race by Wednesday, my mojo seemed to be bouncing back slowly.

There was some sulking involved but got some good mental clarity from Garima and introspection, and finally began to feel better around Thursday.

I also made time to get a great massage from Tracey Elliot @ BodyTrace to work out the kinks in my shoulders and decompress my quads from the downhill eccentric loading.  Thanks Tracey! I’ve been paying more attention to recovery in the past few months and massages have definitely helped.

In the end, we both managed to crank out a few easy/tempo bike rides, short 15-30 min runs and 3 weights workouts by Friday. Compared to a regular training week, we both majorly cut down our running/biking this week. Doing a race like a half- or full-marathon at your limits only takes between 1.5-3’ish hours, respectively, but it can take up to 2-3 weeks to recover from them fully.

So being sore without working out was the theme of the week! However we did some socializing on Friday to celebrate our friend Cory’s birthday (yes we do manage to keep up appearances and have some sort of social life…okay maybe a very miniscule social life).

Sporting Life 10k Race Report

(27,000 people on Yonge Street is a sight to behold!)

Pre-race:

The morning air was chilly 2°C with strong winds making it feel like below freezing. Brrr, is this May, really?

Our friend from work, Andrew Ali, also signed up for the race and we took a cab early in the morning together to get to the start line.  

Damn TTC public transport buses failed us again. No surprises there.

Garima’s Race:

Time:                                    46:03 (46:04 Gun Time) * PERSONAL BEST!

AG ranking:                        64/2989 (F25-29)

Gender Ranking:              240/12821

Overall Ranking:             1326/21844

Another goal set prior to the race by Parichit. He challenged me with a 46 min 10 km, and I thought my previous 10k time (46:42) was a fluke! So I was given the goal to keep a 4m 36 sec pace and all I could think of was how the hell am I going to do the math while running!!! Lol. 

Race day started early in the morning (rise and shine @ 5:30 am), we all had a small bowl of oatmeal (race morning ritual) and stretched a little. Getting to the start line was a major project considering all the TTC buses were at full capacity and all cabs were taken. We finally managed to find a cab and reached the start line on time. Seeing 27K people in one spot for a race is something you can only see in Sporting Life 10k event! I have no idea how the race organizers manage this (an so well!).

Andrew, me an Parichit wished each other luck an went to our respective corals. 2 min prior to race start a (overenthusiastic) teenager standing in front of me kicked me on my knees while kicking back to stretch. Poor kid apologized, but did it again in 30 sec!!!! wtf!! Man it hurt, especially in the cold. Anyways... that distracted me from my pre-start countdown jitters.

And then from start to finish is a blur, with passing and being passed. It included running besides a guy wearing headphones breathing (more like panting) so hard that I thought he seriously needed to slow down and was making me nervous (He did slow down later). We ran on Yonge street from Eglington till Lakeshore. I was keeping the goal pace and was very glad about it. Seeing the finish line was a relief since I was beginning to tire at around 8 km. And there it was….the end to a great race and a personal best.

Parichit’s Race:

Time:                                    38:37 (38:45 Gun Time)

AG ranking:                        23/1850 (M25-29)

Overall Ranking:             128/21844

SLOWEST 10k RESULT EVER! I didn’t expect this race to be a showstopper personal best, and was just looking to match my 38:09 from 3 weeks ago at the Toronto Yonge Street 10k 2013.

Everything was going OK and seemed reasonable till 8-8.5 kms and I even looked to slightly beat that time by a few seconds, but in that last 1 mile stretch from the finish today, my quads just said:

 “No way, are you kidding me? Put us in a hot Epsom salt bath right now. You’re just stupid if you think we can keep this up for another 1 km and THEN sprint the last few hundred meters, too. We refuse. We’ve done it enough times in the past, but not today, there’s no way we’re giving in to your ego and mindless goal of beating 38 minutes. Live with it!”

…and in my response, I thought of the great Jens Voigt, like many other times, and quoted him: “SHUT UP LEGS!” and crawled to the finish line after doing the last mile in 4:00 min/km pace.

The score now is…

LEGS: 2               MIND: 0

For reference, and my own nerdiness, I produced a plot the last 5 times I’ve done this race on this course:

My fastest time was actually 38:04 last year, and I’m consistently slower this year. However, I am always able to finish/sprint the last kilometer in 3:40 min, passing at least 10 people and making up some time lost.

Also, 10k happens to be a general staple measure of fitness testing. Compared to previous years, my HR is on average 8 BPM lower this year (now you see why an average HR of 165-166 for 3 hours in last week’s marathon left me totally trashed?! :P)

Many factors led to this result apart from the complete quad-melting-jelloness that happened after 8.5 km:

• We all had a nasty cold headwind in the last 3 km. Just excuses.
• The course was longer than 10 km. Maybe 10.15 km as I mapped it. More excuses: the race organizers know how to do their job, while I can keep whining!
• Now for the real reasons. Most importantly. I’m still tired and recovering from the marathon. No brainer. (Why did I do the race then, you ask? Well, its fun! And this really was a free race…)
• There was generally very little motivation in my mind today to push my comfort zones. This is probably the worst part anyone will tell you about a 10km race: you need to be prepared to hurt, to deal with the pain mentally. It’s a completely different type of suffering compared with a marathon or the long distance races I do. Well, the pain came with it’s A-game face today and I just wasn’t feeling very masochistic! :D

Post-race:

All said and done, I waited for Garima and Andrew to finish. Since they started in the next wave 5-10 minutes after my start, I had to wait roughly 15 mins for Garima, and then we waited around for Andrew.

Andrew did well and finished under an hour! He was glad I gave him one of my sweatshirts for the run. Running in a t-shirt with temps around 2°C would not have been fun.

 With the wait over, I realized my quads and hips had completely stiffened up and didn’t like the notion of walking around at all! I really need to figure out how to get this recovery-throttling monkey off my back so I can enjoy my races again!

Yes, I'm stinky, I get it.

We grabbed some post-race freebies, bananas, bagels and coffee and scrambled to get back home.

The usual post-race Eggsmart pilgrimage ensued. Lots of brunch and several cups of coffee later,  we were all happy campers and separated ways to get about our Sunday chores of groceries and cleaning. Ugh. 

PS: we accidently saw Garima on CP24 news on TV when they were covering the race… what are the odds!!

Keep pedaling.

.

Goodlife Marathon 2013 Race Report

Sometimes you wonder why things unravel the way they do. After any race, the immediate dissection begins, just to find an excuse for why things didn’t go the way you planned.

But first, hats off to Garima. She didn’t have an ideal day either and still managed a PR of 1:49 for her official time! Her cheerfulness always amazes me. Great job, partner! I’m so proud of you!

My time was 3:10. My goal was 2:59. Needless to say, a spectacular fail! LOL. Unlike the horrible calf cramps of last year that took the blame for my 3:09 in 2012, no single blatantly obvious excuse stands out to me this year. 

Well…except the fact that both Garima and I caught some stomach bug sometime this week (either the pool, or some food, who knows…) and we visited the loo 5 times EACH in the 18 hours preceding the race. Our tummies hurt from being so empty. Of course, that means dehydration. And total stomach shutdown during the race, refusal to accept any calories and/or hydration (We saw this coming, see yesterday's post.)

Parichit’s Race:

With that mentioned, I should’ve known better at the start, but I just kept my thoughts to myself and kept optimistic.

I felt off right from the start, and knew I had to revise my goals, that’s probably the only wise thing we both did during the race….as that prevented an epic blowup two-thirds of the way through.

I tried to stick to the 3:05 pace bunny, but that only lasted till 30 kms. But even between 22-30 kms, I was struggling at 4:30-4:40 min/km pace. I knew if I had to beat my time from last year, I just needed to do this pace till the end instead of trying to speed up till I exploded. This revised my goal to 3:09. So I tried, and there was a lot of HTFU involved in getting the most out of my legs on this day. But its hard when your liver is empty and you can’t take in any calories.

Simple truth: Diapraghm pain = cardiovascular system is limiting. Duh. The legs just weren’t there, so the pace drove my HR up 10 BPM right from the start. I’m used to a HR of 155-158 BPM at 4:15 min/km pace but today I was always at 166 BPM. 

So like I said, you just HTFU and bide time until that catches up to you and bites you in the ass. That happened at 39 km. 5:10 pace, diaphragm hurting, but not my legs. It was now a battle of attrition and will. 

Everything went into just trying to come under the 3:09:44 that I did last year. Missed by 30 seconds. Drats. Crawled home at 4:40 min/km pace. That's usually my "I'm too lazy to run"/ Zone 1 recovery pace (130-140 BPM) but today, it was all I could muster at the end. 

Strangely, I placed better in ranking this year and it seemed everyone was slower. Hmmm. I came 74^th overall, and 12 in the M25-29 age group. Only 25 people broke the 3:00 barrier. A half downhill course sounds easy, but its not.

Garima’s Race:

This being my first half marathon, I wasn’t sure what my goal time should be. But I wanted to set a goal instead of just finishing the race.  So Parichit set one for me: 1hr 45m! To give you a little background, this time last year I couldn’t even run for 5 km thanks to my shin splints (which turned out to be compartment syndrome…but that another story for another day). I used to run 10 km/hr pace by summer last year in my races and didn’t really run over 15 km. So a 12 km/hr pace was a huge goal for me and I wanted to put in every effort to meet it.

So… as Parichit mentioned above, lady luck wasn’t with us and we ended up with some stomach flu the day before the race. Oh man, what a pain in the butt (no wait…pain in the stomach). We managed the pre race with brave smiles telling ourselves it will be fine by tomorrow. I went to see off Parichit at his start time (an hour before me)..wished him luck and hoped to god our stomachs don’t act up.

An hour later…my race begins...the first 2 km are going alright (except for the fact that my shorts kept falling down lol)…and then pain in the diaphragm...I’m tensed thinking I have another 19km to go. But I was determined to try to maintain my 5 min/km pace. Drank some water...big mistake… the stitches came back, tummy hurt and it felt like I was doing situps with every step. But luckily things got better in the next few kms, and I was keeping goal pace till 15 km. 

That’s when the pain came back and I just wanted to stop and walk. I was getting slower by the km….by 17 km I changed my goal = FINISH THE RACE! Lol. I had never wanted to to just stop and walk so bad ever in my life. The best part was my legs were fine but my stomach was giving up, making my body shudder. The only thing that kept me running and searching for the next km marker was...shame! I wanted to run the whole race and be able to say so. 

So like searching for oasis in a desert, I looked for the next km marker, then next and on & on till we reached 20km. Alright, I said to myself: Time to look like a runner…! I picked up some speed, and forgot about the past 20 km. Seeing the finish line had never felt so good. And there I was, crossing the finish at 1hr 49 min and immediately feeling better.

Soo... in conclusion, inspite of the pain and suffering, it was a great feeling to do my first half marathon under 1:50 (I couldn’t dream of it last year!). I came 909 overall, 80^th in my age group (not so bad after all! Okay….its not like I came first…but I am proud of us both, nevertheless). Yes, things went downhill (hehehe sense the pun???) but on the bright side, my next goal wouldn’t be as hard as beating 1:45 which means I may actually live through another half marathon if insanity took over and I registered for one!

PS: I give credit to Parichit for helping me train and actually making me believe that I could do this!

No pain, no gain!

Post Race:

We both saw Pulkit right before the finish! Yay! Thanks for coming, Pulkit. It feels good to have some support and for someone to actually see what we do on a nearly daily basis and for us to get back some visual feedback.

My diaphragm is sore. Here’s the funny part, post-race: my legs are fine. Like they just did another random training run! Quads are also a bit sore, but that’s expected. BUT, as soon as I stopped, I couldn’t move my left shoulder. Yup. Ran 42 kms and the thing that hurts the most is my shoulder. WTF. Goddamn work ergonomics. 

Now that I figured out my calf heart attack issues (hopefully) from last year, this shoulder/neck pain took its place in 2013. I literally had to hold my left arm and couldn’t lift it or put any sort of weight on it for like 1 hour.

The culprit is primarily dehydration, but it’s just bringing out my underlying shoulder trigger points and tendonitis from poor work desk posture and well, sitting at a desk for 7-9 hours/day.

Anyway, we all walked part-way and took a cab on the way home to get refreshed. Then had our usual post-race feast of eggs, bacon, ham, sausages and peanut butter toast! W00t! After rejecting food for the last 4 hours, my tummy still didn’t feel hungry.

Had a good talk with Pulkit over brunch on a lot of random stuff, after which I saw him off as he headed back to the airport to continue his journey back home to New Delhi. Sucks. Wish he could’ve stayed longer.

Now I’m hanging out on a patio at a local Starbucks enjoying the sun and walking around just fine. This random woman sitting next to me looked at my race shirt from today and exclaimed:

Woman: “You did the marathon today?! Shouldn’t you be like…lying on a couch with bags of ice or something?!”

Me: “Nah! It’s a nice day, we’re just walking around and enjoying the sun.”

Woman (clearly impressed): “Wow, you guys are amazing!”

...And here I was feeling sorry for a 3:10 marathon and not meeting my 3:00 goal.  Perspective, eh?

Keep pedaling.

.