Wake Up!

I got a new phone recently…well…not a NEW new phone, a new hand-me-down phone. In the fall I drank the Kool-Aid, went out and bought my wife one of those fancy “i” devices that all the cool kids have. Consequently, her old phone was now up for grabs, and seeing as mine was dying a slow painful death the “upgrade” seemed like the right thing to do. Since that time, I’ve been clumsily figuring out the ins & outs of my not-new-new phone which has been both interesting and frustrating at the same time. This morning, one of the frustrations kicked me in the ass.

I’m typically not a morning runner, preferring instead to get my workouts in after dinner/kid’s bed times etc., however occasionally I’ll be busy at night doing “other things” so it’s either “run early” or “miss it”. Today was one of those days.

Being a diligent…ok, ok… attempting to be more diligent with my training schedule, I set the alarm on my not-new-new phone for 5:45am and hit the hay preparing for an early morning run. When 5:45am rolled around, I was given a sudden crash course in crisis management. See my not-new-new phone has more than a few differences than my old Blackberry:

1. Where my Blackberry had an alarm that gradually increased in volume (to your pre-set volume) my new phone doesn’t, instead it comes on full blast.
2. Instead of being easily “snoozed” like my Blackberry, the new phone needs you to unlock it then turn it off (not exactly easy when you are still half asleep), and
3. Apparently my new phone defaults to an all-too-familiar (and full-blast) beeping sound that I’m sure has contributed to dozens of heart attacks over the years.

Just a quick piece of advice, when you are trying to get out of bed as quietly as possible so you don’t wake anyone else, fumbling with the world’s loudest beeping digital device, while swearing a blue streak and running to the bathroom to see what you’re doing is probably not the way to do it.

Anyway, I’m now apparently an enemy of the state in my own house for waking up my wife an hour early with my stupid phone shenanigans. To be honest, I’m kind of scared to go to sleep tonight…you should have seen the look she gave me when I left this morning…it was cold, calculating, frightening…If you don’t hear from me in a few days…please send help…

Road2Hope Marathon

It seems that every year, by the time I finish the Road2Hope (first Sunday of Nov.), I am so burnt out that I simply can’t be arsed to write up a race report. Even last year when I had a major PB and only ran the half, I simply vegged and my motivation to do a write-up was nowhere to be seen. As such, I still feel obligated to post this (horribly late) for posterity sake.

Road2Hope Marathon – 42.36 km – 03:50 – 5:26/km pace

What a mixed bag this race was.

On the bus ride to the starting area, a chatty dude from Windsor sat down next to me and happily talked away the entire trip. It wasn’t a bad thing, he was quite nice, but one of the last things he said before we left the bus was how much he hated wind while running…I should have seen the foreshadowing but hindsight is 20/20 so…

The first 20km flew by and I stuck pretty closely to the 3:45 pacer until he stopped to use the washroom. Right around that time we hit the significant downhill and I was determined to use it to my advantage, but Murphy did his best to throw a wrench into the works. As we turned onto the Red Hill Parkway, the cold wind coming off Lake Ontario became a massive headwind which negated some of the advantage. I probably pushed too hard on this section trying to bank some time, and when the 3:45 pacer passed me at 33km I was kicking myself for not racing smarter.

I ran a pretty decent race; hitting most of the tangents, fueling well etc., but ultimately I didn’t have enough fitness to hold my position. My right leg (glute, groin, hamstring quad) had been barking since the 15km mark and by the time I reached the mid 30’s I was in some serious pain. My lower back joined in the pain parade as well, but the major contributor was my feet; they were simply aching, and I’m not sure why. My feet hurt so much that I seriously considered taking off my shoes and running barefoot at one point, but quickly realized that was desperation talking. Finally, I knew things were a train wreck when a lady in a puffy winter coat passed me at the 37km mark and I couldn’t catch her…the shame.

maybe not quite that puffy…

This race was still a PB by a couple minutes, but I wasn’t really happy with how I ran it. My mental game was ok, and I thought my fueling was decent, though I felt hungry at the 12km mark, and had finished all my gels etc. by the early 30’s. I thought I had carb loaded effectively the days before the race but something was definitely off.

It’s all in the books now (especially with this significantly delayed race report), time to move onto new challenges.