Ohtawara Result: 3:06:58

Full splits at my log.

My first marathon was 3:06:06, on this course, so that is one of the benchmarks I would very much like to have beaten. But I didn't. The very most I dared hope for was sub-3:05, but I didn't really think it was achievable, and it turned out I was certainly right about that. The disappointment--satisfaction mark was 3:10, and I was comfortably under that. No PW this time. So I am happy.

I ran pretty strong right throughout and only had a 1-minute fade in the second half. Finished with legs screaming and breathing through the roof, so I cannot say I left anything out on the course. I suppose the best way to sum it up was as a no-fuss, business-like performance.

And now I just discovered that I made it into the Tokyo Marathon on the second draw of the lottery. I am chuffed about that because, to be honest, I really couldn't see myself training on without something like that to aim for.

Cheers for the good wishes!

Quick update

I have to apologize to Scott in particular for not updating sooner re intentions for Ohtawara. Well, I have entered, and my full intention is to run it, though I will be threatening for a PW I think. It has been a very up and down preparation. The best way to catch up is by browsing my RunningAhead Log, but in a nutshell, after finally getting some consistency together after coming out of the period of work helldom, and starting to inch my long runs up towards 30 km, and starting to get some relief from the summer heat and humidity, what should happen but I get a leg injury. The old biceps femoris again. First it was just a niggle, but then I tripped and tore it. That was about three weeks ago. I had five days off, then tentatively started coming back. After a week of that I brewed beer and got a really crook back from carrying heavy pots of water and wort, and that caused other problems when I tried to run through it. I battled on and now things have come back to an even keel and I am trying to get consistent again. I actually ran 33 km last Sunday at reasonable pace, so I'm feeling a bit more confident about the marathon again, provided I can have a good October, with 4 or 5 good long runs and a few race pace runs, and hill workouts. I aim to do at least one and maybe two hill workouts a week.

So that's it. Scott, have you entered and are you interested in Ohtawara? Sorry if I've given you a bum steer by being quiet for so long. It has just been so hard to know which way things were headed.

A race!!

My comeback from Achilles injury continued with my first race since March (or was it April?). It was the 10 km event at Ohtawara, where I have run the full marathon the previous five years in a row. When I applied for this race, the Achilles still wasn't great and I thought I might just be jogging around. However in the past two or three weeks it has been giving no trouble at all and I'd been doing 10 to 12 km runs at a steady pace fairly regularly. The Wednesday before the race (which was on Sunday 23rd), I joined our club's track workout and managed some respectable times over 1600 m to 400 m, so I resolved to give it my best in the race. It was a beautiful day in Ohtawara. Fine, no wind, about 12 to 14 degrees. I ran with a heart rate monitor and decided to go out at 160 and bring it home over the last few km at 170 and see what kind of time that gave me. This turned out to be pretty much the right strategy except that I actually did 165 on the way out and was at 174 over the closing stages. So it wasn't a jog in the park! I didn't see any km markers until 8 km whereupon I discovered I needed to make up 5 seconds if I was to beat 40 minutes. I was already going very hard, so this was quite a throwing down of the gauntlet by the running gods. So I really gritted my teeth and pushed into the light headwind. At the 1 km to go marker I had made up only 1 second. Uggghh ... really had to dig in. The race finished with the last 200 m on a running track ... I went in the gate needing to run the last 200 m in 40 seconds ... oh dear! Well, I gave it what for, and as I was sprinting down the last straight like Usain Bolt (or so I imagined) I could see the clock closing in on 40 minutes ... 39:55, 56, uggh, 57 ahhh, 58, 59, eeeeghhh, and I crossed the line. I wasn't sure if I had registered a 39:59 or 40:00, but later when I checked the official results it was 40:00! Although three minutes slower than my PB, I was actually extremely pleased with that as I thought that a time around 42:00 would have been more than acceptable at this stage of the come back.

Bits and bobs

I've been so busy since the marathon that I hardly have time to scratch myself let alone write blog posts. I'm changing jobs at the end of the year and have been preparing information for the new company and involved in trying to recruit my replacement at the present company; I have been trying to create a DVD movie thing from photos to commemorate my Ma & Da's upcoming 60th wedding anniversary; I have been organising the race to precede our club bonenkai (year-end party) on Saturday the 8th; I have been trying to be a bit supportive around the house (and failing); I have been trying to get the running kicked off again...

The week after the marathon (which was on Fri 23rd Nov) I only ran on Wed 28th, 7k, and felt great at first but some calf weariness by the end. Then I ran the same run on the Saturday and got through it fine. Then 15k quite slowly last Sunday and then this week 10k, 12k, 15 k (with 6 x 100 intervals at 3:45 to 3:32/km--weary after that), rest, and then 12k this morning. The aim has been recovery and settling back easily into it. Next week I will try to notch up the work load, but I have several year-end parties coming up and feel a bit run down from lack of sleep. Why am I writing this instead of going to bed?

Marathon Nutrition
Clairie wanted to know about what I ate before the marathon (I think that was the question). Well, Joachim got us a fix of maltodextrin from his secret source in East Germany, so a few of us were having 1g/kg of bodywweight per day of that for the four days before the marathon to supplement regular carb loading. I also made an additional effort to try to keep up protein intake; wherever possible I was trying to generally observe the 3-4g carb to 1g protein thing. I was taking protein in the form of soy milk, yogurt, eggs, that kind of thing. During the race I didn't have anything much until about half way, then had a gel. At 30k I had a special drink which contained sports drink and some gel with a protein component. I don't think the protein counted for much at that stage. Then I had another gel at 35k. Bloody wind was the limiting factor though at that point. I don't think the attention to protein ended up contributing so much to my performance because my calves were still holding me back. Maybe if I had the right shoes the calves would have been better and I'd have had a stronger second half...but I really felt mostly free of pain very quickly after this one and I think that may have had something to do with the extra protein.

Other stuff
It is now a bit cold and dark in the mornings and I am finding it interesting to try to get up at 5:30 after going to be at 11:00 to 11:30. I have no running tights at present and need a new heart rate chest strap to replace the one I lost. But I simply can't afford these investments at present, so I am running with icy knees and no metering other than time and, on the rare occasions the footpod decides to work, pace. At least I have gloves thanks to Jim.

So that's where I'm at. I think that will do for now.

Ohtawara 2007

My preparations for this race were, I think, pretty difficult to fault.

I trained well, cross-trained and strengthened, managed niggles and blisters, gave up grog and cut way back on coffee and junk foods for the final month, generally ate healthily and took some vitamin supplements etc to keep colds at bay, freshened up my legs, carbo loaded well, borrowed a replacement heart rate belt, made sure my shoes and gear were good ... in short, everything I could control, I did.

The one thing I couldn't control was the weather, and while it was fine, the wind decided to blow and the temperature was probably the coolest we've had at around 6 degrees--the surrounding mountains were shrouded in snow. The race is two loops of a roughly rectangular course. We were lucky in one sense that for most of the course we were at worst just buffeted from the side and were not significantly affected. However from 15 to 21 km and 35 to 41.5 km we had to cope with the double whammy of a slight uphill combined with a strong, blustery headwind.

I'd decided that the right pace for me to go out at was about 4:05 to 4:07. If the fade was minimal and left me feeling strong near the end, it would get me very close to a PB. Right or wrong, I really did not believe a faster pace would be sustainable, so the best I was going to get would be a slight PB.

Joachim and I ran together from the start until just after the half way point, at which point he put the accelerator down. My calves were telling me that it would be suicide to try and stay with him. It is difficult to express my appreciation for his calming presence during that first half. We rolled through the first 15 km right on pace, mainly going off my heart rate and our combined pace judgment as he was having some troubles with his Garmin. An example of the kind of reassuring presence he provided was when I was having trouble with my race number. Two pins had ripped through the paper and I mentioned it to him. He said, "Ah, don't worry, it's not mission critical." Ha ha .. exactly. I really didn't worry about it after that. As we came to inclines or into the wind, it was "Don't push too hard, don't try to fight it, conserve energy." Calming, reassuring. We got through these sections on the first lap without incurring too much time or bodily damage. The second time around the fight would be a bit more serious.

We went through the half in 1:27:23, perhaps 50 seconds slow. Not too bad, but we'd lost more time on the windy, uphill section than I could really afford. And while I generally felt OK, leg fatigue was certainly starting and my calves in particular had been feeling tight since about 15k (the Tarthers were probably a bit too light). I knew at that point that the PB was going to be hard to achieve, but we were back to the non wind-penalized section of the course and I thought that a strong sub three was there for the taking. The PB was still not beyond reach, but there was zero room left for fade.

While Joachim pulled ahead I settled into fight on my own. I was happy that nothing really changed and I had decent splits to 25 and then again to 30 km. Then 30 to 35 was still respectable and I was moving well, sometimes really getting a move on with some wind assistance. But then came the 35 km mark, which signified the start of 7 km of slight continual uphill, strong headwind, and serious cold. I made sure I got my last gel into me and really knuckled down to the fight. Unfortunately it was impossible to avoid a significant slow down through this section. The wind was stronger than on the first loop and the leg fatigue, quite obviously, was much worse. Still, I did my very best and got as much pace out of my legs as I could muster and never felt like I was shot. All I wanted was a break from the wind and I thought I could have continued extracting my target pace, or perhaps better, out of my legs.

But after the struggle, by 40 km I knew the goal was simply to get under three hours. Even though I had a little bit of buffer, I knew I had to run at well under sub 5:00/km pace, so it was still no gimme.

The Namban cheer squad was spread out along the main road over the final kilometer to the stadium. They were a great boost and I felt that I was really pushing as hard as I could. "C'mon Steve! You're sub three!!" As I turned the final corner to run the last 150 to 200 m to the finish line, my watch ticked over to 2:59...bloody hell, cutting it a bit fine here, I managed to get a final spurt out of the legs and crossed, relieved, in 2:59:40. My third sub three-hour marathon in the bag! All of them on this course!

How do I feel? It's hard to say. Not rapturous, but satisfied. I had felt there was a very real chance of slipping under the PB. I did the best I could under the conditions and recorded a solid time when it would have been easy to give up and just coast in to a 3:02 or 3:03 or something. Beating three hours was always my B goal, and I achieved it, even if by a narrow margin. So yep, on balance, happy.

Enough for now. Here are the splits. I'll be putting the data onto my log tomorrow and might make a couple of follow-up posts on some other facets of interest, like my heart rate data, and maybe some piccies.

section time (pace/km)
0-5 21:05 (4:13)
5-10 20:00 (4:00)
10-15 20:34 (4:06)
15-20 21:21 (4:16)
20-25 20:27 (4:05)
25-30 20:44 (4:08)
30-35 21:47 (4:21)
35-40 23:26 (4:41)
40-42.2 10:16 (4:40)

Oh yeah, Joachim went on to run about a 1-minute negative split for a 2:53:xx!! Fantastic race for him. He'll be putting up his version of events on his blog.

And one more thing ... A huge congratulations to young Christian, the boyishly handsome young chap I met on the start line of the Shinjuku City half marathon at the start of this year. On that occasion he stuck behind me until about 14 or 15 km before fading to finish a couple of minutes behind me. He subsequently linked up with us at Namban and has trained the house down by following an on-line coaching system from Switzerland (his home country). Yesterday he ran a 2:50:xx! He could have easily gone sub 2:48:48 if it were not for the wind. Fantastic. Hard to say how much better he will get, but 2:40 and beyond is distinctly possible (not that I want to put any pressure on him :-)

Thanks one and all for the support and kind wishes. It has been hugely motivating.

Final countdown

If this were a normal marathon week, i.e. with the marathon on Sunday, then today would be Wednesday. But Ohtawara is always on the national holiday of the 23rd of November, no matter the day of the week, so this year it is Friday, making for a nice long weekend.

The last week of training, if you can call the late stage of the taper "training", went fairly well. If I did anything wrong it was probably to run just a little too much. But if this is the case, I don't think it was by a big amount, and the rest of this week will be very quiet. Maybe just a light run tomorrow with a few stretches at race pace.

Last week was as follows:
Mon: rest (was suffering from blisters as you may recall)
Tue: 12k easy at 4:45/km
Wed: 8.5 km of easy jogging and 5 km of 1k repeats at target race pace on the track with Joachim, Paddy & Adam. We tried to run the pace by feel and were a bit slow at first (4:12, 4:20, then a bit fast, 4:01, 3:57, 3:57)
Thur: 7.5 km on treadmill with 6k at about 4:00/km. 750 m swim
Fri: Nothing
Sat: 3.3 km easy followed by 10 km at race pace. Again, went out too fast. Three x 3.3 km loops at 3:59, 4:03, 4:08
Sun: 14 km running easy by feel. Felt fairly easy, but was in the low 4:20s for much of the run. I probably ran 4 or 5 km too long for this run, but bugger it, I also run because I enjoy it, and this was a nice morning for a run.

Week total: 60 km

What I've found over the past week is that 4:20/km feels like an easy pace and is one I am sure would have me still feeling pretty strong at 30 km. If I wanted to run the marathon as "train-through" race with only the thought of posting a solid but not best possible time, then 4:20 would be a good target pace. At the other end of the spectrum, I can feel aerobically fairly comfortable at 4:00/km, but it is clear that this would trash my legs and energy system by 20 to 25km and who knows how ugly it could get over the final 15 km.

My conclusion then is that 4:05 (2:52:18 marathon) is the fastest pace I could attempt to run, but I am pretty confident it would still result in a nasty fade that could see me struggling to squeak in under the 3 hour mark. I think that 4:10/km (2:55:49 marathon) should see me to 30k, after which it is hard to say what would happen. A faster finish from 30k is very unlikely, so targeting 4:10 pace would probably leave me with almost no chance cracking the 2:54:47 PB, but a reasonable chance of staying under 3 hours.

So that's my analysis and feelings; I'll leave it up to yourselves to conclude what I should do. I will reflect on this over the next few days and make my own decision. I'll probably decide on the day, most likely right about the time it is too late to undo the damage of yet another too-fast start! My honest feelings, though, are that a PB is a less than 50/50 chance.

On the body front: all the training-induced leg niggles have cleared up. My lower back and hips are as good as can be expected, the blisters and infected toe have all healed. The only real niggle is the long-standing Achilles. No doubt it will nag away until after 10k when it is warmed up. Later in the race other pains will overwhelm it anyway.

So that's it, nothing left to do except rest and carbo load. Thanks for the support and interest. I'll let you know how it goes. I can tell, you, I'll be looking forward to my first beer in a month at around 2:00 on Friday!!