FLOAT ON

My first Around the Bay was an interesting experience to say the least.  I was very pleased with the win and coming into Copps in first place was amazing.  In the end the record alluded me, in fact I wasn’t even close, almost a full minute behind.  That was a shame seeing as that we were treated to perfect weather (10C with almost no wind), which is a rarity in late March.

David Karanja and Kibet Rutto (photo by Dean Palmer)

Here’s how the race played out.  For the first 5km we had a pack of 6 or so and went through in about 15:15.  At 6km I pushed the pace a little and then Kibet took over for a few kms as the two of us, ahead of the field, passed 10km in 30:17.  At that point Kibet ran a 2:57km and gapped me.  People were telling me to close the gap but I was more than happy to run 3:03 pace knowing to save some energy for the hills in the last 10km.

At 15km (45:31) my hamstring was getting tight and sore and I wasn’t running too smooth but it wasn’t that bad. I was about 7 seconds back at this point.  Over the next 5km I only made up a couple seconds and passed 20km in 60:58.  Pretty much right on my goal split of 61:00 (30:30 + 30:30) and planning to run 31:20 over the last 10km to get the record.

Going up the first hill on North Shore Blvd right before the 20km mark (photo by Dave Landry)

Even though I had an uphill I still covered 20 to 21km in 3:00 as I passed Kibet but then not long after I got a bad diaphragm cramp.  At first I figured it would go away quickly and I only had to tough it out for a bit.  Now it’s my hamstring and this cramp and it’s too much to handle as I cannot take full breaths of air.  I started groaning like I got shot or something (it was quite pathetic) and slowing down to catch my breath to get rid of the cramp.  A few times I thought I had it under control only to have it come back again once I sped back up.  This lasted through 24km really bad and I was running 3:16/km.  It was getting really ugly.  I was not happy at all and when this guy on a bike started telling me to breathe I told him to eff off (if you’re reading this bike guy, sorry).

At 25km (1:17:09) I was already thinking that the record was lost but knew I still had a chance if things turned around and I kept fighting.  Then I hit ‘heartbreak hill’ which is 420m long at a 7.5% grade.  2/3 the way up I passed 26km (1:20:22) and realized I needed to run 3:00/km for the record and I was slogging up the hill.  At the top it took me a while to get going again and at 27km I knew it was over and stopped pushing and finally my diaphragm felt comfortable again.  Now that I was feeling good again, had Copps Coliseum in my sights, running slightly downhill and a good crowd cheering I managed to run 6:02 for my last 2km.  That 6:02 made me feel a little better about myself but also showed me just how disgusting the previous 3km had been to split 16:10 for my last 5km, (did I mention there was a hill in there!).

Running down York street in the lead of the 30km has been something I’ve wanted to do for years and even though I wasn’t going to set the record and had my most uncomfortable racing experience ever I took it all in and was happy with the win.  I was also very happy with 23 of the 30km, haha.

RESULTS

This was a fun day and a big goal checked off my list but more importantly a big wake-up call to get my body back into a healthy state.  If I was to feel like I did today in the Olympic marathon it would be a terribly ugly disaster.  For the next 6 weeks my main goal is to get back to feeling good.  The good part is that I have a lot of things figured out and I’m going to see my physiotherapists (Brenda Scott-Thomas and Ron O’hare) in Flagstaff, Arizona over the coming few weeks.  Gotta start packing, leaving tomorrow.

My neighbour took this great shot on the bridge (just past 27km)

On Tuesday I was forced to take a day off because my right hamstring was wrecked.  I usually take a day off every few weeks and I’m always 100% fine with that decision.  But when I’m forced to take a day off… well that just doesn’t sit right with me. I start thinking I’m getting off-track from my training and losing fitness.  The funny thing is that I was due for a day off anyways so it shouldn’t matter at all that I’m putting my feet up for a day. Once I had this exact conversation in my head I wasn’t worrying about the missed training.  My only worry was that I was in no condition to run and I had a race coming up in 12 days.

A couple of weeks ago both of my hamstrings were really tight after a workout and it took longer than I suspected for the soreness to dissipate and my right hamstring never got much better.  After this soreness lingered for a while I figured I was going to have to back off a bit to make sure I don’t bring this ache into a 30km race.  Even after backing off a bit my right hammy got worse.

For the past few weeks I have been experimenting with a new stride.  Along with this slight alteration in my stride I was doing some exercises to recruit my glutes in this new position.  I never mastered these new exercises and consequently I was running without recruiting my glutes, therefor overusing my hammys.  Now that I have this figured out I’m doing a bunch of glute recruitment exercises to get back to my normal stride and muscle recruitment.

Unfortunately this has left me with a sub-par running week (one less workout and a few missed km).  My training has gone really well since November so my fitness should be fine but when I’m uncomfortable running it messes with my head.  The good part is that if I keep improving at this rate I should feel pretty good mid-week, just in time for the 30km.

In my last blog I mentioned that I was about to check off the ATB 30km on my race bucket list barring disaster.  I haven’t quite dodged this hiccup and I’ll pull-out if need be but I’m optimistic everything will come around in time to race healthy.

The day after ATB I’m heading to Flagstaff, AZ to join 9 other teammates for a month long training camp.  The first few Speed Riverians got to Flagstaff this weekend and encountered a fresh foot of snow!  It looks like it will warm up in a few days and should be pretty nice by the time I get there.  Taylor Milne, Eric Gillis, Kyle Boorsma and I are sharing a house, which should be a lot of fun.

Weather here looks good for the next week, temps in the 20’s and then much colder for race day (Sunday) which will hopefully play to my advantage against the Africans.  Alene Reta, Kibet Rutto and Benson Cheruiyot look to be my main competitors next weekend.

Kibet and I running together last year in Kenya.

Around The Bay 30km is coming up in two weeks and I can start to drop my mileage a bit and start my taper.  Training has been going well.  I’ve been doing two main workouts a week with the group and then a shorter speed session.  Last week that short speed session was 3 X 400m hills at the 26km mark (they were actually too slow for real speed).  It was good to run the hill hard and get a feel for how much it’s going slow me down and hence how much money I’m going to need in the bank by 25km.  The 30km is an interesting course and I’m excited to see how it plays out.

Many people can’t believe it’s my first time running the 30km and ask why I haven’t done it yet… Last year I wanted to run a couple of half marathons that were one month apart and I wasn’t going to plop a 30km in between them.  In 2010 I was focusing on a 10,000m on the track (which I never ran due to injury). In 2009 I was just coming back from a broken foot.  In 2007/2008 I was also focusing on a 10,000m in April.  2006 were the Commonwealth Games in March. Any year prior to that I don’t think I would of even humoured the idea of racing over 15km.  Yet as early as 1998 or so I figured that one day I was going to race the 30km after seeing the finish live.

Barring disaster I’ll get to check another race off my bucket list on March 26th.  Here’s a list of some of my bucket list races which I have done, probably won’t do and might do one day.

Race a Golden League – I did that by racing the Brussels Van Damme 10 000m in 2007.

Boston Indoor Games – I ran there twice and in one race checked off something I didn’t care to; a DNF.

Sub 4 mile – I ran 4:00.08 in my first mile race when I was 24 and figured I would do it some day.  I only raced one more outdoor mile (4:01) and my 3:40 1500m just doesn’t sound as cool.  With my focus on the marathon I think the door is closed on this one.

Stockholm DN Galan – Famous track race in a great stadium which I will also probably never do.

Prefontaine Classic – I actually had a spot on the start line last year in the 10 000m and was looking to run under 28:00.  When I found out the pace was set for sub 27:00 I chickened out.

World Cross-Country Champs – Fortunate enough to have raced four of them.

Cross Country race in Europe – Got a couple of these in the past two years.  Definitely cool!

Race in Kenya – I could have done one this year but I didn’t feel like racing in the middle of 200+km training weeks, heck I’m already at a disadvantage being from sea-level.

London marathon, New York City marathon, Boston marathon – Maybe in the next couple of years.

Western States 100 – Not any time soon!

Milne, Winter, Boorsma and myself at the Yonge Street 10km tune-up training run Sunday morning in Toronto.  Much better weather than the last time we all ran together… two days earlier we battled 50km/h winds and blowing snow during mile repeats.

Last week the Hamilton Spectator wrote an article about me running in the upcoming Around The Bay 30km.  In that article it’s mentioned that course record holder, Alene Emere Reta, is planning on racing again.  Alene Reta has tested positive for performance enhancing drugs and consequently served a two year ban.  Reta says he took the drugs by mistake, given to him for asthma from a doctor.  It’s a shame Around The Bay, and other big races, don’t have drug testing.  Some road races have drug testing, I was tested after both of my last two races in 2011 (Zoo Run and STWM).  Also, being on the National team I get tested from time-to-time without notice, as recently as last Saturday.

So how do I feel about racing Alene Reta?  It’s a good thing he’s racing, that way I’ll have someone to race because I don’t particularly like time trials. Of course I would be happier if there was drug testing at the race.  And there’s no evidence that Alene still takes performance enhancing drugs or if he does that an in-competition test would catch him.  In 2010 when he set the ATB course record (1:32:22) the day before he ran a 10km in 28:26 (yes, one day earlier).

This past week I ran the challenging parts of the course a couple of times. I will continue to train on the course here and there for the next month in hopes to get comfortable on the rolling hills and the killer hill at 26km.  The good thing about the hills is that I broke Reta on a hill when I last raced him in a 1/2 marathon in 2010.

Good luck to Dylan Wykes racing the Lake Biwa marathon on Sunday. If Dylan runs under 2:11:29 we could have 3 marathoners going to the Olympics this summer.

Random Kenya photo.  Running with Primos and Pieter while the other Belgians harass and take photos from a car.

On Monday I had a great workout in Guelph.  We had a full group cranking it out together on the dirt roads doing mile repeats with hill sprints thrown in after every other interval.  It was fun to work out with the collegiate guys and have 1500m runners right up to us marathoners all together. I guess the common denominator is the 3000m and there are 6 of us who have run sub-8:00 and a couple others really close. Yes, it’s a deep group.

On Saturday at 1pm I didn’t even think I would workout on Monday.  That’s because I completely bonked on my long-run.

I thought I could get away with a 36km run but there were a couple of factors that caused me to fall apart around 34km.  First, I did a good tempo run on Friday afternoon and drained myself pretty good.  I usually do long workouts in the morning and have 24 hours to recover but this time it was a quicker turn-around.  On Saturday morning I ate breakfast at 8am thinking I was going to run at 9am.  However, it had snowed and it was warming up so I figured I’d wait until 10:45 to get out the door for my only run of the day.

I ran 3km to the Around the Bay 30km course, ran the course in a shade under two hours and then proceeded to run home.  I was already feeling low energy levels around 30km and knew it was going to get a little ugly.  It got a lot ugly around the 34km mark.  I had to slow down to a shuffle slower than 5min/km (8min/mi).  Twice in the last 1.5km I had to walk for a bit.  I was dizzy, not thinking straight and utterly depleted.  I finally got home and quickly made a protein shake and had a big meal.

Sure enough a few hours later I was feeling fairly normal again.  But I cannot even imagine having that happen in a marathon and trying to stay on pace through that kind of wall. I’ve never bonked like that before and I hope I never do again.

***

I just got done watching this amazing documentary on Brother Colm coaching in Iten.  Eamon Coughlan travels to Iten to learn what the Kenyans are doing right, there is a large focus on David Rudisha.  It’s cool to see so many familiar places.

Not a bad start.

I got myself in good position after a loop of the soccer field.

The lead pack gapped me early into the race.

This hill was pure insanity. Looking up at the 10 stairs.

View from top of the stairs of the leaders.

Crazy course, tons of fun.

I’m not going to write much about the race because; a) I’m tired from traveling and the six hour time difference, b) IAAF did a good re-cap of the race, and c) I’ll leave with you the “Road to London” trailer for the documentary which comes out in July.

As the article said I raced a lot of that race alone.  That isn’t because I didn’t go out hard, my start was fine.  My problem was that I didn’t have the confidence to go with the move that was made a couple of km into the race.  I’ll blame that on not racing for four months (last race was the marathon) and not having the confidence which comes with racing.  So yeah, I let the group of eight get too far away although it was nice to be able to pick guys off every once in a while.  Little targets throughout the race.  The downside is that I could have challenged for 3rd place.  And I say challenged because Dame is known to have a strong kick.  The guys who went 1 and 2 are the guys who ran 13:10 and 13:11 earlier this week, they’re on a tear!

And for those who are wondering…  The Ethiopian who I helped was not Dame.  It was Endegena, who finished 16th.  You can see how that name, even after hearing it twice, escaped me and hence I referred to him as the ‘Ethiopian runner.’

Endegena’s over-dressed, it was his first time out of Africa. Yes, that is a jacket under the t-shirt and those are sweatpants.

Here is the “Road to London” trailer.  Paul has done good work here, enjoy.