DNFing in Lanzarote... :-(

Thursday, 5th December, 2013 – 6.5km Recovery Run (5:30/km)

This was just a relaxed run to keep the legs ticking over. Nothing to report.

Friday, 6th December, 2013 – Rest Day

Arrived into Lanzarote around 6pm and spent the evening with family who were already here so kept this as a rest day. Still feeling good for Sunday.

Saturday, 7th December, 2013 – 6.0km Recovery Run (5:23/km)

Went out for a run along the seafront this afternoon. It was pretty breezy out which both helped to cool but also to slow me down a little. Not sure how this will work tomorrow...

Sunday, 8th December, 2013 – 19.3km Lanzarote marathon - DNF

Well that wasn't the way it as supposed to happen! After going for a meal last night where I had Chicken Cordon Bleu I woke this morning with dodgy stomach issues. 2 visits to the toilet pointed towards an eventful race in store! I had to get a taxi from my apt to the race HQ and then get a free bus from there to the start. While waiting around at the start area I had to use the facilities once more and things weren't much improved.

I decided I'd stick to my plan regardless so off we went at 9am. The first 5km were uphill and I had accounted for this with my pacing strategy. By the end of this section I was pretty much on track so it was now meant to flatten out for the next 7km. This never really happened though as it was quite undulating so hard to zone in on a consistent pace. By the 8km marker I was beginning to realise that I simply was not in racing form today so I paused at this water station to take a salt tablet, knowing I'd be especially prone to electrolyte/hydration issues with my stomach the way it was. 

The next 5km was an out and back section to the same water station and this was getting to be more and more difficult. My HR was not especially high but the effort felt much worse than MP effort. I stopped at the same station to take more water and let the body relax. By now all thoughts of a fast marathon were out the window and I was more concentrating on a strategy to simply finish the run. Worse case scenario I thought was I 'd do the HM course and at least finish one of the races.

Immediately after the 13km station we turned right towards Costa Teguise and this signalled the start of a 5km downhill section to the town. Things should be easier here and I felt it was a good stage to ease back and recover somewhat. The truth was far different. About 1km later I had to pull in to the side of the road thinking I was going to throw up but after 10 seconds I knew it wasn't gonna happen so I rejoined the race. This was feeling physically very sore now as well as my stomach issues, so it was no surprise to me that when I hot the 15km marker and there was a tiny uphill section which forced me to walk that my race was over. If I was feeling this bad since almost the start and it was only getting worse then there really was no point in continuing. Not that it was a mental choice - My body was simply saying no!

After making that decision I still had to walk the 4.5km back to race HQ and even this was a real struggle. I couldn't even force myself into a slow jog on the remaining downhills. I was very relieved to be back at HQ when I eventually arrived. The heat had added it's tuppence worth to factors by now so all it took was a small sip of coke to set me off. I had to go off and find a discreet spot to heave my guts up! In the mix I could see the remains of last night's dinner which I cursed as the offending party.

Oh well, nothing to be done now. That evening I went home and slept for 16hrs solid. Definitely not right! To be honest, with the hilly/undulating nature of the first 20km and the ever-present wind on the course I doubt I'd have managed to get the time I was hoping for anyways so not quite as disappointing as Rotterdam DNF earlier in the year but a pain in the guts regardless!

Week 48 Summary:

RTW: 5 from 7 days

DTW: 46.6 km

DTY: 3,692.2 km

The following week I was recovering from the food poisoning and effort before just relaxing and enjoying my hols until I returned to Ireland. Decided to take the rest of the week off too and start afresh on the following Monday.

Week 49 Summary:

RTW: 0 from 7 days

DTW: 0.0 km

DTY: 3,692.2 km

Well that weekend didn't go according to plan!

Saturday, 21st September, 2013 – 3.0km Warm Up (5:15/km) and 13.1km DCM Series HM - Aborted run (4:40/km)

Pacing crew before the run

Bit of a disaster today with the Half Marathon. Ended up having to drop out after 8 miles for reasons I’m still struggling to comprehend. 

The day started off well with an easy jog across to the gathering point where I met my fellow pacers. After a few photos and general chat myself and Johnny went off for a couple more kilometres with the main aim to expand the HM out into an overall Long Run. Before long we were back in the starting positions for the race.

Myself and Joe and Dominic were positioned at the start of Wave two where I was briefly joined by my Brother. Damien played it smart however and retreated back a few rows as we were about to start as he felt 1:40 would be too fast for him. A couple of minutes after the first wave was set off we were moved up to the starting line and a few seconds later we were off.

Almost immediately Dominic lost his flag off his pole even though Eugene had gone round to most/all pacers and duct taped them together. The first few miles went well with the run down Khyber being nice and handy way to start and the pull up to wellington being the first little challenge of the day. Before long we were out the back of the Zoo and running on the North Rd. By mile 3 we were on target but we all felt mile 2 had been a little long and mile 3 a little short so we were going to have to keep a close eye on things. Around this time a pacee almost went flying to the ground alongside me – another victim of unintentional tripping in such a close knit group.

We continued on to the Castleknock gate before doubling back and then going through Farmleigh. I had been keeping a close eye on 4:40/km on my watch and was happy that we were well on target. Around here I noticed my HR was higher than I’d have expected it to be but thought little of it. After a brief spell outside the Park we returned in through Knockmarroon Gate and almost all of a sudden I started to feel like things were getting tough. Hoping it was just a temporary blip I continued on silently in the hope things would get easier. They didn’t. It was getting progressively tougher throughout mile 7 and by the time we were on the Ordnance Survey Road I was a few metres behind the other guys. The breeze was on our backs around here but I was finding the temperatures pretty warm and the lack of cooling air to be an issue. I stuck at it though as I hoped things would get easier again when we hit Chesterfield Avenue where it opens up and hopefully the side breeze would act as a cooler. Unfortunately though about 500m along that road I was now struggling to keep within 10m of the other two guys and felt things were just getting worse. I knew that on a normal day I could just ease off and jog it home to the finish but that wasn’t an option today with the pacing responsibility. There was nothing left to do but notify the guys I was cooked and had to pull out. First though ihad to make up the 10m to tell them that which was a fair old struggle on its own! I felt like a right dick having to pull out of the pacing job, that’s just not supposed to happen! The guys were very understanding in fairness to them and they looked like they had it covered anyways so just after the 8 mile marker I pulled in to the side of the road, so annoyed with myself.

HR data for Dublin HM - I would have expected it to be around 152bpm average

In the immediate aftermath I tried to work out why this had happened. Probably a few contributing factors – Poor nutrition the day before, warm temperatures, I had two t-shirts on (to avoid chafing mostly), the backpack was giving me serious issues for the opening miles and even after that it was still a little uncomfortable, and finally the MLR on Thursday combined with the Yasso’s on Wednesday and the Athlone HM last weekend were probably just too much too soon before the race.

Sunday, 22nd September, 2013 – Rest Day.
To make a miserable weekend even worse Mayo fell to the Dubs! In fairness Dublin deserved it but can't help thinking that if COC was quicker taking the two straightforward frees or the Ref played the 30 secs he promised (the Dublin cynicism demanded another play be allowed!) then perhaps we might have been able to tag on another point and come back another day. Oh well, c'est la vie! 63 years now...!

Week 38 Summary:
RTW: 6 from 7 days
DTW: 72.0 km
DTY: 3,033.8 km
Chicago - 21 days (3 weeks, 0 days)

Monday, 23rd September, 2013 – Rest Day.
My post match funk had not yet cleared so tacked on another rest day.

Tuesday, 24th September, 2013 – 32.0km LSR with 2 x progressions (5:14/km)
I had yesterday and today off work so this afternoon I went for an LSR as my last long run before Chicago. The first 8km were done at a leisurely pace, approximately 5:25/km. As I turned on to the royal Canal however I found myself getting a little bored so decided to throw in a progression type segment whereby I ramped up the effort a little extra at the start of every new km. By the time I turned around at 12th Lock I had ran 15km so I threw in another similar progression segment on my return to Phibsboro. The remainder of the run was back down to 5:20/km pace and i managed to append an extra 2km to bring the overall distance up to 32km by the end. Pretty knackered by then and not really enjoying the abdominal wall issues...think I may have tweaked something in that region but probably actually all connected to the same niggle I've had the past few weeks with the hamstring/glute/adductor/abdomen now. Feels like the injury is just floating around the place! If it was just in a localised area I'd have gone to the physio by now but can't think how such a vague injury could be diagnosed that easily.
The progression data shows the following Max HR vs Pace graph:

I hope to build this up over a few more runs and races to see if the correlation bears resemblance to the theoretical HR ranges for speed zones. We shall see.
Week 39 Summary (so far):
RTW: 1 from 2 days
DTW: 32.0 km
DTY: 3,065.8 km
Chicago - 18 days (3 weeks, 4 days)

My bad habit continues...

Saturday, 15th June 2013 – 27.4km Portumna Forest Marathon DNF

Sunday, 16th June 2013 – Rest Day

"I guess I got a bad habit 

Of blowin' away 
Yeah I got a bad habit 
And it ain't goin' away Yeah"

Well, that didn’t go to plan! Almost a week has passed since the race and I’m still trying to fathom why my second goal marathon of the year resulted in a DNF once again.

The lead-in…

I really dislike taper time as my discipline & diet often fall apart. I end up getting lazy which results in eating crappy foods, feeling sluggish on easy runs and generally feeling guilty that I haven’t done enough. The day before the race though I managed to have two medium sized pasta dinners to maximise the carb intake. I also decided not to run in order to be as fresh as possible for the Midday start. 

Up at 8:30am on race morning, I devoured a couple of scones and a cup of tea and was on the road by 9am. Arrived into Portumna for 11am, and after registering I hung around the finish area for a while chatting to a few fellow runners and helpers. 

Race

With 20mins to go we made our way to the race start and after a 5 min delay (which was just enough for us to get soaked by a thunder shower!) we were away. A mini group had formed in advance, all looking for about 3:15. Myself and Joe had been in Rotterdam where we both had very disappointing races and this was payback time! Dave was my co-pacer for 1:45 in Wexford. He wasn’t sure what time he was capable of on the day so his game plan was to hang with our pace for as long as he could. Anthony (or Plumber77) - a new guy to us all – completed the quartet and was looking to beat a PB of 3:16.

Photo courtesy of Peter Mooney

There was a nice bit of chat between us over the first few kms. At various times each of us took up the pacing duties. We were sticking to approximately the correct pace by the time we were passing through the finish area for the second time (7.2km point). This had consisted of a 2.2km run from Aldi to the finish area and then the first of 8 x 5km loops. The loop was pretty flat with just slight drags here and there. The surface was good with tarred paths combined with gravelly sections. Unfortunately there was just a couple of short potholed sections towards the turnaround point but these were nothing too drastic. There was a lot of tree cover also and this seemed to throw my GPS signal off quite often. This meant I wasn’t sure if I could really trust the data it was feeding back to me so I kept asking the other guys for confirmation that we were on target. Even though the inclines were minimal they were still slowing us down enough to make keeping a consistent average pace difficult. Eventually I gave up trying to run the right pace and ran by perceived effort instead. This was probably where I was lulled into running that bit too quick.

Lap two was more of the same only a little faster. Again there was a little confusion over what pace we were running (add in to the mix kms v miles to further complicate matters!) and we worked out that we had just slipped off the pace a little. So, lap two came in at 20 seconds quicker than lap one. Not a huge difference in pace (just four sec/km) but probably the straw that broke the camel's back.

Photo courtesy of Peter Mooney

Lap three and we appeared to be back on pace. I noticed though that the effort began to feel just a little tough. The rest of the guys seemed to be still going steady. Then just after the start of lap four at 18km it dawned on me for the first time to check my HR. it was showing a rate of 156-158bpm around now and I knew I had to ease back. My marathon HR ceiling is 150-152bpm so I was well above it now. The next couple of kms saw the rest of the gang break up ahead of me too. Joe pushed on as Anthony and Dave continued to run together. By the time I hit the turnaround point I was in serious blow-up mode. I stopped to get a bottle of water and throw in a salt tablet, and to help lower my HR in a bid to give myself a chance to return to a fully functioning level. This didn’t work though and by 500m later the HR was sky high again. That’s the problem once you overcook things early on in a marathon – it’s so difficult to recover from. The last 2km of that loop was a real effort and when I approached the finish area I had almost fully decided to stop and DNF. My pace for that 5km had dropped to 5:00/km and was only going to get slower. 

Goal time was well gone by now and any chance of PB was drifting away. Just after the finish area I was about to slow to a walk when I heard a shout from Anto who was doing the 100km. I wasn’t sure what he roared at me but the facts that the t-shirt I was wearing was from his 50km race and that I had ran barely a quarter of the distance of his race meant that shame prevented me from stopping here! I thought one more loop and see if I recover. A lot can happen in 5km! 

Photo courtesy of Peter Mooney

At this time my mind began to ponder turning this into a long slow run, and complete the marathon race, and forget about the inevitable slow time. As the kms slowly ticked by though I concluded that if I was just going to flog myself to get to the finish my recovery would take weeks rather than days and all for nothing really. Instead, I gave in to the Central Governor and reckoned that if I pull out at the end of the next loop then I could be back in training after a couple of days. The body was weak but the mind was weaker/more cunning! So, resigned to my fate I jogged the remaining 2km of the loop. Even at that pace though I had to stop and walk for 20m on the final straight. It seems that lots indeed can happen over 5km but in circumstances like today they are rarely good things. Eventually I made it round to the end of lap five and stepped off the course. First thing I did was remove my number before anyone could work out what had happened. Then I watched for a few minutes as the 50km finishers were arriving in to complete their distance (they had started 2hrs before us). A couple of minutes of that was all I could take though, and disappointedly, I faced into my 2.2km trek back to my car.

Afterthoughts

Still not quite sure what went wrong but my main reckoning is a combination of my pace being slightly too quick too early and the heat oft the day. Perhaps also I was low on nutrition (I don’t take gels and the Midday start time wouldn’t have helped). The result was an unsustainably high HR – I checked the data on the walk back to my car and was surprised to see it was consistently above 152bpm for about 10km before the blow-up. I usually keep a keen eye on the HR data during the run but today that lapsed for some reason. Perhaps I got caught up with sticking with the other guys rather than running my own race. Had I been running without such a friendly bunch maybe I’d have eased back much earlier and stil nabbed a sub 3:20 (which I would have been very satisfied with even before the race). 

I will be running the Le Cheile Midnight marathon this Friday night in Leixlip so I think I will make the HR display my main data field and keep sub 150bpm all the way and simply discover my pace and time when I cross the line instead. It’s a low priority run and all I really want to do at this stage is finish it to get some confidence back. After all, these DNFs are just a bad habit that needs breaking.

Week 24 Summary:

RTW: 4 from 7 days
DTW: 50.9km
DTY: 1891.0km

Rotten Rotterdam

Saturday, 13th April – 4.8km Easy Fartlek Run Arrived into Schiphol airport and got the train to Rotterdam which took only  25mins - great service. Dropped off our bags in the hotel and then called into the expo to collect our numbers. There wasn’t a whole lot else to see there so headed back to the hotel again for a lie-down before myself, Philip and a few Celbridge AC lads (who were travelling with Philip) all went for a run in the park beside the hotel. Nothing too strenuous, just shy of 5km with a few faster segments thrown in. A good leg loosener.