A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.

Actually, when finishing down the finish line, I thought I broke an hour. I did not bring my stopwatch so I had no idea of knowing whether I was on a decent pace or not. It did feel like a good run. I think where I lost the most amount of time was going up the hill to the Burrard Street Bridge and also up the Cambie street bridge, but it didn’t feel like THAT much time was lost. I also didn’t feel like I lost much time weaving through the crowds – the congestion in the first 3km was there, but it was always the case with the previous years of running as well.

I arrived at around 9:45am. Taking the Canada Line is such a breeze.

I consciously took it “light” at the beginning, trying not to burn myself out too quickly. Going down the hill on Georgia street, I tried to “glide” as much as possible and use the downhill slope to minimize energy consumption. I pretended I was a bowling ball rolling down hill. After the downhill jog, I ran the pace of the crowd on the left hand side, making some advances through people as necessary, but it was not a hugely fast pace.

I actually felt quite good after reaching the peak of the Burrard Street bridge, and “glided” down again, and ran most of the way down and ran straight until reaching the base of the Cambie Street bridge. I guess my running stride was not very lengthy which lead to the long run-time. For next year, I think I have to work on improving the length of my stride (in addition to losing 20 pounds of mass which would make it easier for my legs to propel my body forward).

I discovered a new phenomenon by observing other people – text messaging while running. Those people are about as dangerous as those text messaging on their blackberries while driving.

This year had a couple changes from the previous year – it was a couple weeks later in May because of the Olympics. Although today was a colder day than average for this time of the year, I think it was an improvement. The other big change is that instead of meeting up in BC Place, they have used the parking lot next to BC Place near the waterfront to put tents and the food and stuff. They had the usual assortment of foods, and I was pleased to see that Island Farms had their chocolate milk very well stocked. They were also giving out samples of Red Bull (which I don’t drink and gave to some homeless guy near BC Place) and the usual bananas and oranges. Finally, they had a stand that was giving out free tubs of protein shake powder, but knowing how disgusting that stuff tastes, I passed even though the lineup for that booth was massive.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.

Basically the story is that my training schedule got massively interrupted by childbirth and respective parenting duties. It was to be expected, but at least I have managed to train twice a week, and a few times three times a week (three times a week is what is necessary to keep up endurance in my opinion). For the last month, I have been exclusively running outdoors since the local gym facility that I normally go to transitioned ownership.

Really not helping was that falling down while running incident. Although I’m fully healed from that, it has given me a little bit of psychological scarring running on slightly uneven gravel terrain!

The other issue is weight gain – I guess age is catching up, but basically the body is really good at packing on those pounds, and is not good at surrendering them so easily. If I am to do this next year with a respectable time, I have to watch this and not handicap myself with an extra few pounds of weight.

Going into the race, I am going to alter my strategy somewhat – I am choosing to not wear a watch. I will also be showing up a little bit later, since I think standing out in the open for half an hour, waiting for the waves of people to clear is more detrimental to performance than having to wade through the crowds of people. I recall in previous races that it was quite entertaining trying to get around people, and this distraction might make it easier to cope with the race. I also have a problem with starting too quickly, and having plenty of people around might mitigate this – where I need the endurance is the 40 to 55 minute mark, and most others wear out at this time. I’m probably going to experience the same.

I also field-tested some new shoes I bought two weeks ago, to good success – less aches and pains on the feet when running, and no blisters or adverse effects.

Best of luck for everybody on Sunday. The weather is expected to be sunny, highs of 16 and lows of 6, which is a cool day for the second week of May, but is perfect for running purposes.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Filed under category Commentary.

Yesterday, however, something bad happened for the first time – I tripped while running and fell to the gravel ground quite heavily. The road that I was running on was an uneven gravel surface, and I’m guessing I just tripped on a rock outcropping and lost balance and fell. It all happened very quickly, although I do recall getting in one “stumble” before I then completely lost balance and fell on my right side. As a result, I injured my right elbow and arm, and palm, although my elbow took the most damage. My left palm has a minor scrape. It was all scrapes and blood (a decent amount of blood out of the elbow) and no broken bones, but still, I can’t lean my right elbow against the car armrest because it will get all bloodied up and hurts. The pain is not extreme, but it certainly is present.

This happened during a planned 30 minute run, and I was 14 minutes out when this happened. After assessing myself and brushing off what dirt and pebbles that were caught up in the wound and trying to make sure it doesn’t infect, I had to run back home to get underneath the shower where I could do a more thorough job cleaning up the wound. I wonder what people thought when they saw the line of blood that streaked from my elbow to wrist while I tried to get back home as quickly as possible.

The advice I would have for all joggers is – be really careful on uneven gravel roads! I intend to steer clear from them in the future.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.

Week 19 consisted of two training sessions, three days apart each. Week 20 started today, and I am planning on getting back to my Monday-Wednesday-Friday routine and build up some endurance by extending my runs out to the 45 minute level. I have currently been doing 30 minute runs to try to keep up my body’s stamina, but I need to build onto this otherwise I will run out of gas in the real race.

There isn’t anything too terrible to report, although I certainly do not feel like I will be able to beat 56 minutes. There are seven weeks left to train.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.

On Sunday, I did 35 minutes straight running. I was going to repeat Wednesday’s run, but I felt extraordinarily well on the treadmill that I continued and did the run continuously. I was only interrupted by the fact that the gym closed and I wanted to leave about 5 minutes for a proper cool-down. It was a rather strange feeling – no cardiovascular problems, no feet problem, no back problems – it felt like I could have done the whole 10km right there and then if given the opportunity.

During the next week, I am going to try to step up my running endurance to 40-45 minutes and make sure I still have my cardiovascular strength. During the month of April I will also have to time things such that I will be able to do the run cleanly, which means doing a few 10km experimental runs, with at least one of them outside when the weather is a bit nicer.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.

This Monday I attempted to start off what was the week 9 of the Learn to Run 10k schedule, but it was horrible – after the first 10 minutes, my left muscle in my left foot started to feel very tense, borderline painful. One of the few things I remember from physical education in school was that if anything hurt – absolutely stop. Ideally, stop before it begins hurting – which I did. I exercised the better discretion of valor and decided to stop my training session and instead just play around with the weights.

I don’t know what was happening that day, whether I got off the wrong side of the bed or didn’t eat well, but I also felt cardiovascularily tired as well, so it was just one of those days.

I rested for a couple days and Wednesday afternoon, I resumed training – and took a longer than normal warmup time, consisting of stretching the various leg muscles. After getting on the treadmill, I felt quite good and did 50 minutes of running (10 minutes running, 1 minute walk, repeated 5 times). There was no pain or tenseness in the leg muscle, so I was quite happy that there doesn’t appear to be any injury.

On Thursday, I did some swimming, the first time I hit the water in quite some time. I am ridiculously bad at swimming, but floundered up and down the swimming pool enough times to get my other leg muscles exercised. I will be taking Friday’s running session lightly before attempting to (once again) resuming the regular schedule next week.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.

My old shoes gave me no issues whatsoever with blisters. My old shoes are tried and true, reliable and great. I am sure that anybody else looking at them would definitely think it’s time for a new pair of shoes.

A couple other exercise notes – one is that I ate some rice a couple hours before training and while I am not completely familiar with the metabolic impact of eating food before exercise, I do know that rice contains starches and carbohydrates which can be easily processed into usable energy.

The first half hour on the treadmill I was watching Poker After Dark – the Cash Game, which I find to be a very entertaining rendition of television poker. The second half hour was spent watching some UFC match where just watching these guys punch and kick away at each other made me feel tired. Eventually one of them won with a “sleeper” hold that rendered the other opponent unconscious. Maybe that’s why I was sweating so profusely.

I am glad to be back on the immunological mend and over my brief illness.

I will also see if I can structure some outdoor runs if we get a sneak heat wave coming around in February – I want my feet to be used to asphalt instead of the rubberized surface of the treadmill.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.

Just like what plagued my training schedule last year, I got another flu. This is twice this year, just like last year. It was not a bad flu by any means – just a very moderate instance of a sore throat, semi-sore limbs and lots of mucous coming out of the nose. What was ironic was that the run I did last Monday, the longest training run of the year, went routinely. The next day, I started feeling the tingles in the throat, so I took things very easy for the next few days and did not go to the gym.

I am ordinarily a fairly healthy person when it comes to my immune system, but the last few years have featured some sort of flu that takes me out of action for at least a few days. This year and last year were two minor flus so far. At the rate that I am going in 2010, this is a flu each month.

I had earlier expressed interest in healing my legs and specifically my calves, so this was my opportunity to take it easy.

Today I feel mostly healed so I headed off to the gym. My recovery schedule will be doing a day of 3 minute run, 1 minute walk (10 times); then 4 minute run, 1 minute walk (8 times), 5 minute run, 1 minute walk (7 times) before resuming my regular schedule. I did the first day today while watching the middle of the Super Bowl. The onside kick to begin the second half was one hell of a gamble, and amazingly, it paid off.

One other note of comment is that I finally donned a new pair of shoes – another inexpensive Walmart shoe special. I had been running with a very cheap pair for the last year and a half, so this is yet another new cheap pair. I started developing the feeling of a blister on my left pinky toe, so I have experience with new shoes and blisters – doesn’t matter how expensive the shoes are, it always happens. And I have defenses to prevent them from happening again. If these new shoes turn out well, great. If not, I’ve got my old reliable shoes (with holes in the mesh in the side, really glamorous – but functional).

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Filed under category Commentary.

After last week’s training, each time I got onto the treadmill I felt my calves were a bit tender. I thought the three days of rest over the weekend would do me some good, but when I got on the treadmill again today, I still felt a bit of tenderness, but it wasn’t as bad as last Friday.

Today I am following the week 8 schedule on the Learn To Run 10k program. Today’s session was 40 minutes of total running, 10 minute run, 1 minute walk, repeated 4 times. It didn’t go too badly since I tried to keep the steps at 180 per minute – my cardiovascular processing has gotten quite a bit better over the past month and exchanging extra cardiovascular load for less impact on the feet is worth it. I didn’t feel as much energy today as I did in last weeks’ session, but I still made it through comfortably – the 20 to 30 minute mark was the worst of it, but the last 10 minute leg went quite well.

There was still the tingling on the bottom of the feet (or rather the right foot) but it wasn’t as bad as previous times.

I am concerned that my calves do feel relatively tender even when rested for three days – makes me wonder whether I should try an ultra-low load week to let the muscles heal. I remember when doing my end of December/beginning of January runs when my schedule was interrupted for various reasons that my legs felt surprisingly good when getting back on the treadmill, at the cost of feeling winded while running.

The rest of the week is relatively light, with 21 minutes of load and 30 minutes of load on the Wednesday and Friday sessions. Next week is when there will be a training session that gets very close to 10km.

The other comment deals with weight management – although weight reduction was not a primary goal for running, it is a secondary objective to at least keep steady, if not reduce weight. After exercise, I try not to eat anything for at least an hour after, and whenever I feel thirsty, I just drink water, until such a time I am no longer thirsty. A very easy way of gaining unnecessary calories through sugar (carb) intake is by drinking sweetened drinks after exercising. Little stuff like this can shed mass – I think I have lost about 4 pounds since beginning this whole procedure. Ideally if I lost another 10 that would be great since it would translate into a much faster run time. I guess the trick is not to gain it back after the race is over.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.