Heading for the light

Today I ran the New Balance Waterfront 15km in Ajax and, I have to say, I felt great. I ran it as a workout, 12 x 1km hard with 250m “float” where I averaged 2:56 for the 1km repeats and around 3:30/km for the 250m float. That netted me 46:15 for 15km. Cool weather today was a relief after having a couple of my big efforts in September done in hot and humid conditions. Not Doha hot, not even close, but still hot enough to affect pace.

Rock ‘n Roll Philly Half on September 15th was a good effort and I have to be pleased with running 65:47 in hot conditions. The course is fast and I can see how one would run fast there under the right conditions. I felt really good that morning and found a nice pack early on and just focused on running with the pack and not looking at my watch.

As we approached 10km my pack had recently split apart and I saw my 10km split on the clock. I was expecting to see 31:00 so when I saw 30:32 I got excited and thought today was going to be alright in the heat. After that I was paying attention to my splits (to stay honest whilst running alone) and after 12km I kept getting slower and slower. I was catching up to a few athletes so it felt as though I was still moving ok but my pace kept suffering.

Seeing 65 on the clock was disappointing but once I saw the full results and talked to other athletes who thought they were going to run much faster it put things in perspective.

Approaching finish line of Philly Half

On Wednesday I got a knock on the door at 6:30am after having just gone to the bathroom. That meant I had to drink a couple bottles of water and a couple cups of tea to produce a urine sample for the drug testers. After blood and urine samples completed I drove to Guelph for a my longest session of the build, (5km warm up, 26.2km marathon effort, 4km cool down).

During the 26km marathon effort my stomach didn’t feel great and I blamed it on the extra fluid I drank that morning. However when I got done my cool down I found out my son had puked up his breakfast that morning. Perhaps I had a little bug too? But I really didn’t feel that bad and still averaged 3:11/km for the 26km. I was hoping to average 3:09/km for that session so I really wasn’t that far off and it was a little warm.

That’s why it was sweet to run 46:15 for 15km today when I had expected to run about 47:00.

STWM should be an interesting race for the spectators. There are a lot more quality Canadian men than usual because of the trials nature of the race. I could see a big pack going out faster than 2:14 pace. Whereas usually there are only 1-4 athletes going out at that pace or faster.

Cam Levins, Tristan Woodfine, Trevor Hofbauer, Thomas Toth, Aaron Cooper, Rory Linkletter, Evan Esselink, Kevin Coffey, Sami Jibril, Chris Balestrini and Dylan Wykes. I might be forgetting someone right now but that is a lot of guys who have potential to run a fast marathon.

STWM OCT 20, three weeks to go!