Post Mississauga Report

Just like the week or so leading up to the Run for Retina Half Marathon, going into today's Recharge for Milk Half Marathon there was a lot of uncertainty. Although I been lucky this year to set a new personal best in every race i've competed in I have also had to battle a lot of pesky overuse injuries - maybe there is a correlation between all the training to get the pbs and the injuries...Anyways even with injuries from Achilles tendinitis (which as of about thurs of this week started to heal thanks to alot of eccentric calf raises) and a reemergence of my old tibia issues in my left and right legs, I was able to achieve the time I set out to meet in my Post Around the Bay Post from March of sub 1:12:30. Honestly leading into this week I looked back on my post from March and thought setting that goal was probably too ambitious. Right now it hasn't really set in yet, I'm still in a bit of a state of shock that  I actually did it. 

So the day started at 4:40am with a good long (15 min or so) hot shower which I always do, not only to wake me up but to have some time to go over my race plan, and obviously to just warm up my muscles. Had my typical oatmeal and a banana along with a coffee. Now for those of you reading (for the few I should say) if your just starting out running or triathlon or whatever endurance event - practice your nutrition in training. Some say coffee is a diuretic (dehydates you) but actually just so you know only very high doses of caffeine would have that effect - studies show 600-700mg of caffeine will produce this effect (about 6 cups of coffee). But, its whatever works for you - for me if I don't drink coffee at breakfast I will feel sick and get a bad headache (happened once this year when I accidentily slept it and had to flat out run to the bus to make it for class - worst day ever). I guess you could say I'm addicted but its not really to the feeling from the caffeine - sounds strange but I find even just holding a cup of hot coffee in my hands to be relaxing plus I love the taste. Wow - now that I've wasted your time going off on that long tangent - back to the day. Got to the race at about 6:30 and  the race started at 730. I did a big long warmup of running As, Bs, etc. Before the race there was a moment of silence for the victims and all those affected by the Boston Marathon bombings. 7:30 the gun sounded and we were off. Started the race so fast getting to the 5k mark at 16:48. When I saw the digital clock on the side of the road I thought to myself, "easy there big fella, this is a recipe for disaster" - so clearly so good ole positive self talk. Mostly during these race I have a constant conversation going with myself: my legs are screaming, "What are you doing to me man this is nonsense" my  mind saying back "Aww this is nothing suck it up." The mind won this battle because I got to the 10k mark at 33:30 so a 16:42 5k split. At 10.5 this is a huge hill so me speed slowed a bit there but I pushed though and the fatigue by just increasing my stride frequency - since when you fatigue you tend to start over-striding. At 15k was at 50:54 (so 17:24 5k split) and this is the point where I start doing some math in my head of what time I'm on pace for - surprisingly these simple calculations can be very difficult while running at top speed, almost like you forget how to add. 20k at 1:08:07 (17:13 5k split), and 21.1 kilometers the half marathon distance in 1:11:53 - these are values from my garmin and it calculated the route to be 21.28 km - in which case my finishing time was officially 1:12:22 for 4th overall. I will update with some pics soon. 

So up next is the Barrie Half Marathon June 16th. For this one I would say my goal is sub 1:12 but I think this will be very difficult. Not necessarily because I'm not capable of it but because last year the winner was in at 1:19 which means I will likely (unless there are different competitors this year) be the one responsible for setting the early pace instead of at mississauga where in the beggining I'm being pulled along by runners like Lucas McAneney - a great runner out of Toronto who came second in time of 1:06:55 and couple years ago was top Canadian in the Ottawa Marathon. I hope my achilles injury is behind me and my tibias heal up - think I'm going to start take a real ice bath a couple times a week. One more thing the next price increase for the Scotiabank Toronto Waterront Marathon is May 27 and I still don't know what to do. If there are any other runners (or anyone) I would love to hear your opinion of whether I should make another go at the full - maybe run sub 2:30 (obivously you are going to slow down through the second half but I think I am more than capable of a 1:5 half marathon average) - or keep trying to improve on my half time.