Running

I’ve been gradually building up my weekly mileage for the last 6 months peaking at around 100-120km per week for the last month. I’ve heard people saying that success in ultras is all about Time On Your Feet and I’ve come to agree during this last training cycle.

It feels like a flywheel. Each week of consistent, high mileage has added outsized benefits to my overall fitness and pace.

For many years, I’ve been limiting easy run pace to around 6:30 min/km in order to keep my HR at 140 bpm or less, which is technically Zone 3 for me, but it felt about as slow as I could practically run without sacrificing form. I’ve done several 6+ month blocks of strict Zone 2 training with little or no measurable benefit. I even did a lactate test to accurately find my Zone 2 heart rate.

My brother and I had talked about running the CanLake 50km ultramarathon about 9 months ago, but fter my marathon in May I decided that I just didn’t want to invest the time in training that such an event would require and so I pulled out. He continued training and ran the race last weekend, and I couldn’t be more proud.

A few months ago he asked me to crew for him, and maybe pace him during the race. I hesitated for a while but eventually decided that I’d do it. My main concern was that the race was being held on the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, so when my family opted to have Thanksgiving dinner on Monday instead of Sunday I felt I could go.

The Limberlost Challenge (TLC) 2013 was my first trail race. I had been running the trails of Hardy Lake Provincial Park for several years but had never taken the next step, but after my marathon in May I decided that I wanted to focus on trail running.

The atmosphere at the start was very different to a road race. I find that the people at the start of a road race are usually limbering up or stretching or trying to get mentally focused. Very few people are chatting. At TLC many of the runners knew each other and were casually talking while eating muffins and sipping coffee. I managed to strike up 3 or 4 conversations before the race.

I finished the Toronto Marathon on May 5, 2013 in 3:54:10 and I’m satisfied with that result. Overall I found the race to be much more enjoyable than it was in 2005, mostly because of the improved course and better crowd support.

Getting to the start was a bit of a hassle, as it often is in Toronto. The subway gets to sleep in on Sundays here so there’s no public transit. I wish I had paid the extra $8 at registration for the shuttle bus from downtown but I didn’t think about it at the time, so I ended up having to take an expensive taxi.

The last marathon I ran was the Toronto marathon in 2005, and I finished in 3:57:36. I was shooting for a sub-4 so I was pretty stoked with that time.

Now, nearly 8 years later I’m excited to be running it again, but I’ve done a lot of things differently this time.

I’ve been running less. A lot less - only once per week. Last time I was training about 5 days a week and it really felt like a grind towards the end. The ramp-up was too fast, and I had several injuries throughout the training program including my knee and lower back. So this time around I decided to mix strength training and running so I’ve been lifting weights 3 times a week concentrating on the big compound movements, and running my long distances on the weekends. I have been virtually injury free and have not really felt like the runs were a grind - even those bitterly-cold pre-dawn winter runs.

Strength, stamina, fitness. These are the words that endurance athletes evoke, but these attributes play a much smaller role than one may think.

Endurance sports are about enduring pain.

It takes many hours of training to build up sufficient strength, stamina and fitness to be able to complete an event like a marathon or an Iron Man, but these will only take an athlete so far. Once you can run for an hour or two, you can run all day provided you can work through the pain.

I used energy gels extensively when I was training for my first marathon back on 2005. I sucked one down every 45 minutes on my long runs, as directed on the packaging, and it definitely helped.

I never really thought much about their ingredients; all that mattered was that it helped me get to the next level of endurance running.

I’m a little older, and a little wiser now, and have started paying attention to just about everything that I put into my body, even those little 100-calorie energy gels. On closer examination, they came up lacking.

In old-school arcade games you had no way to save your progress so if you lost all your men then you had to start from the beginning again. And again. And again. Until you improved enough to be able to conquer the monster at the end.

It was frustrating but I think that it taught me a valuable lesson.

Each endurance run “starts from the beginning” and I spend a lot of time getting back to the point where I need improvement - the last few miles. This continuous repetition helps me become proficient at the first 75% of a distance, and reminds me that the training doesn’t begin until it gets difficult.

An article on The Greatist by JC Deen titled “common workout mistakes” lists combining cardio and strength training as a mistake.

This is incorrect according to this study done at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. In fact, they found that combining endurance training and strength training in the same session yielded the benefits of both.

The subjects showed improved strength similar to those that did only strength training, and improved endurance similar to those that did only cardio.

Winter running in Canada is awesome. It’s extreme, refreshing, and challenging but you do need to apply some common sense.

You have to be flexible with your schedule - it’s rarely a good idea to run during/after a fresh snowfall because you have to run so slowly that there’s no workout, so you get cold, and you slip-and-slide into an injury. It’s kinda fun to do it once or twice though, especially if it’s a clear day.