Thursday, January 29, 2015

Oxymoron

Running is a great way to deal with the pressures of life but when the pressure is on I can't run!  Yesterday was one of those rare days that I was just too too stressed to lace up.  

Tonight I did a 5Ker @5:15 pace on some fresh legs ....guess there is nothing wrong with an unexpected reset day.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Monday, January 26, 2015

Faster Again

5:15 is the new treadmill pace!   The hurting parts are holding up well and I totally credit the Hokas.  I am going to hold this pace for few weeks before inching ever so slowly towards 5:00 pace goal!

Logged a whopping 5K today on my meal break.  

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Baby it was cold out there!

10K same as yesterday but a little more pop in the legs.   -11C ,  stiff cold northerly breeze ...baby it was cold out there!

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Little out and back

Logged a little 10K out and back on the 2nd.   Was a little beat up after yesterdays "speed work".   Was going to do the fun run in Creemore but I wasnt really up to it!  

I needed that!

 Its been pretty easy going since I went away on my Ski trip so I challenged myself with a longer"fast" run on the treadmill yesterday logging 25km.    













The HR tells the story of my Run.   Ramped up to a 5:18 pace over the first 3K then help it there unitl the 20K mark.   20-21K I cranked it up to a 5:00 pace then at 21K I started a cooldown backing it off to a 5:30 pace , then at 22K  it was a 6:00 pace, 23K 6:30 pace then at 24K it was a walk at a 12:00 pace.  HR crept from the low 130s to just breaking 150 from time to time as I approached 20K.   Looking at the graph the spike coincides with the 5:00 pace then there is 3 somewhat distinct drops as I gradually slowed to a walk.   I didn't do any fluids or nutrition and wasn't sweating much but I am sure thickening of the blod accounted for the slowly rising HR.

The  cool down was grueling at the slower pace.   5:30 was OK but 6:00 and then 6:30 was absolutely tougher to "Run" .   Hips , quads , glutes all complained at the 6:30 pace.  Skipped the usual 7:00 segment and went right to a walk!

Other data ... faster I Run the better my "Running Dynamics"





















Thursday, January 22, 2015

One more!

Last 5k lunch run at a mostly 5;18 pace.  

Decided to ramp it up to a 5:15 pace next week and hold it there for the next 4 weeks before incrementing the speed again.  

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Monday, January 19, 2015

Strange but true!

Logged my first run after 5 days not lacing up.   I was in Mont Tremblant Skiing ... 2 days on the road and 3 full days on the Mountain.  I either didn't have any time to run or I was way too tired.  

I thought the 5:21 pace would feel really fast today but it didn't.   I cant exactly say I just had 5 reset days but I certainly did have fresh legs on the Treadmill.

 The usual 5K was logged and it felt good to be back!  

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Video blog of todays run

12.2  logged on the 2nd today.

Video blogged it ...






































and looking at the heart...


Sunday, January 11, 2015

Solid Treadmill Run

4 hours of sleep today so I jumped on the Treadmill early in my shift logging a 12K run at a mostly 5:21 pace .  Technically speaking it was my second run today!  

Got some really good data today ...






Saturday, January 10, 2015

Funny Week

 It hasn't been a great running week.   Working mids I usually get some decent runs in but I skipped a couple of lunch runs.   Sunday I was recovering from R4K ,  felt good but tired and dried out.   Friday I felt like I was coming down with a cold.  It didn't bother me much on Sat at R4K but it made for an achy Sunday recovery.   Mon I got out for a little road run. Tues morning I was beat ,  tried to Run but ended up doing a 30 min walk.   Wed morning I had the full blown runny nose so I totally skipped out on the lunch run.  Thurs I felt way better and logged  a decent lunch run at my new 5:21 pace.  Fri I was busy ,  left the run too long a was just way way to tired so I skipped it.   

Feel like I am back on track this morning logging a 10ker at a mostly 5:21 pace.   Planning on two more longer treadmill runs this weekend before wrapping up the mids Monday morning.  




Thursday, January 8, 2015

Max HR at 3:00 am ... maybe not such a good idea.

 Its been forever since I determined my Max Heart Rate so on this mornings 3am lunch run I cranked up the treadmill to a fish out of water pace and came up with 164 BPM.    

Today's data ...




































Heart Rate 
Throw the first 8 min of data out.  Ran at a 5:21 pace with a HR around 133 bpm.   At around the 23 min mark I cranked er up to a 4:00 pace ant the HR climbed and climbed unitl I hit 164 BPM.

Cadence 
I have a lack luster turnover of 160 spm at my 5:21 pace but when I crank it up to a 4:00 pace I am hitting 175 spm.  

Vertical Oscillation
At a 5:21 pace I was bobbing a whopping 10-11 cm but when I cranked it up to a 4:00 pace it was much less coming in around 9cm

Ground Contact Time
5;21 pace averaged 280 ms but when I ran at a 4:00 pace it dropped to 240 ms.   

According to Garmin I am a much more efficient when I run fast!   

So I logged a rather interesting 7K this morning at a mostly NEW 5:21 pace until I I tried to make my heart explode!   

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Run 4 Kids 8 Hour - January 3, 2015

 Did my 4th consecutive Run 4 Kids Race at York University yesterday.  Had a fantastic day heading down with Grant and Patrick.   Had some great results with Patrick Running his first Marathon then he went on to blow away his first "Ultra" logging 55.1 km.  Grant had a great day logging 68.59 km good for 3rd in the overall Mens category.  I logged  61.6 km  having fun along the way.   It was so nice to see the OUS crowd .  This race has turned out to be a sort of "off season" family reunion.

Had allot of fun with my new Garmin 620.   I wore the HRM and was gathering a ton of data.   The race plan kind of developed as I went along.    I more or less did a constant Run for the first 4 hours and was totally blown away that the Garmin sans GPS was within 100 meters of the Chip results.   That all changed when I introduced some walks and a break.  Official distance was 61.6 km and the Garmin came in at 64.96 km.    I decided that I was going to Run to my Heart Rate holding it in the high 130's.   I was able to maintain around a 6:30 pace over the first 3 hours













 Between 2hrs30min to 5hrs30 min the Heart Rate kept climbing into the 140's.  I slowed down to close to a 8:00 pace to keep it in the 130's but it was really getting hard to run  that slow!!!!    I changed my target HR in the last 2.5 hours to maintain it in the 140s and I was able to get back to my 6:30ish pace again!!!!!  Its been forever but I am really in need to establishing my max HR again.  

 Paused the race at the 5.5 hour mark to celebrate Patricks first ever 42.2.  Posted to Facebook that if we got 5 likes in 10 min he would go on to make it an Ultra ...he blew that away!



 Had a small problem with my chip registering laps in the final couple for hours.  I caught it not registering twice.  I was concerned that I dropped allot of other laps but when I looked back at my Garmin data vs official race results I could only find one discrepancy...no big deal.

It was pretty warm this year.  Managed the Nutrition ,  Hydration and Electrolytes fairly well.   Over the 8 hours I drank 4.5 Liters of Water , 0.8 Liters of Beer and ate 1 Cliff Bar ,  1 Yogurt, 1 Slice of Pizza , 7 Gu Roctanes and managed at least 7 S Caps.  I was still a little dehydrated but not enough to affect the Run.  


















The Garmin 620 collects tons of data  ...
















So what does all this mean.  

Pace is obvious.  You can clearly see when I stopped and when I walked.  You can also see me clamping teh HR in the 130`s vs the 140s.

Vertical Oscillation.  Green is good,  Blue is very good and  Purple is stellar.    Purple is walking LOL!  On the treadmill I an 10cm but on the track its 7-9 cm.  

Ground Contact Time.  I am on the ground way way too long but it was a slow ass flat footed run.  I suspect running faster will reduce that .

Cadence ...still on the low side 150-160 strikes min.  Need to work on this one!



I choose to have fun over covering more distance today.  If I had of forgot about the Heart Rate and not spent time taking pictures and posting to FB I would have been closer to 70 km.  I was pleased that my last and first hour were around the same pace and I didn't have any walks due to bonking.

Finished 10th out of 26 entrants and 7th out of 16 men logging 61.6 km in a little under 8 hours.


































Splits...there are allot of them.

Lap   Lap Time  Elapsed Time
1:    1:54    1:54   
2:    1:45    3:39   
3:    1:44    5:22   
4:    1:48    7:09   
5:    1:45    8:54               
6:    1:40   10:33   
7:    1:39   12:12   
8:    1:27   13:38   
9:    1:29   15:07  
10:    1:31   16:37
11:    1:28   18:05  
12:    1:31   19:35  
13:    1:30   21:04  
14:    1:32   22:36  
15:    1:40   24:15
16:    1:40   25:54  
17:    1:40   27:34  
18:    1:59   29:32  
19:    1:41   31:13  
20:    1:39   32:51
21:    1:36   34:27  
22:    1:34   36:00  
23:    1:32   37:31  
24:    1:34   39:05  
25:    1:38   40:42
26:    1:34   42:15  
27:    1:29   43:43  
28:    1:27   45:10  
29:    1:29   46:39  
30:    1:31   48:09
31:    1:28   49:37  
32:    1:28   51:05  
33:    1:30   52:34  
34:    1:28   54:02  
35:    1:25   55:27
36:    1:27   56:53  
37:    1:28   58:20  
38:    1:36   59:56  
39:    1:31 1:01:26  
40:    1:29 1:02:55
41:    1:32 1:04:27  
42:    1:27 1:05:54  
43:    1:34 1:07:27  
44:    1:35 1:09:01  
45:    1:38 1:10:39
46:    1:46 1:12:24  
47:    1:39 1:14:03  
48:    1:33 1:15:36  
49:    1:29 1:17:04  
50:    1:29 1:18:32
51:    1:28 1:19:59  
52:    1:28 1:21:27  
53:    1:29 1:22:55  
54:    2:06 1:25:01  
55:    1:44 1:26:44
56:    1:33 1:28:16  
57:    1:30 1:29:46  
58:    1:30 1:31:15  
59:    1:27 1:32:41  
60:    1:27 1:34:08
61:    1:28 1:35:35  
62:    1:28 1:37:03  
63:    1:30 1:38:32  
64:    1:29 1:40:01  
65:    1:29 1:41:30
66:    1:40 1:43:10  
67:    2:24 1:45:34  
68:    1:32 1:47:05  
69:    1:30 1:48:35  
70:    1:28 1:50:02
71:    1:30 1:51:31  
72:    1:32 1:53:02  
73:    1:47 1:54:49  
74:    1:38 1:56:27  
75:    1:34 1:58:01
76:    1:31 1:59:31  
77:    1:23 2:00:54  
78:    1:38 2:02:31  
79:    1:29 2:03:59  
80:    1:32 2:05:31
81:    2:04 2:07:35  
82:    1:32 2:09:07  
83:    1:37 2:10:43  
84:    1:35 2:12:18  
85:    1:32 2:13:50
86:    1:33 2:15:22  
87:    1:32 2:16:54  
88:    1:36 2:18:29  
89:    1:56 2:20:25  
90:    1:33 2:21:57
91:    1:34 2:23:30  
92:    1:33 2:25:03  
93:    1:36 2:26:38  
94:    1:37 2:28:15  
95:    1:40 2:29:54
96:    1:41 2:31:34  
97:    1:38 2:33:12  
98:    1:43 2:34:55  
99:    1:44 2:36:38 
100:    1:40 2:38:17
101:    1:45 2:40:02 
102:    1:45 2:41:47 
103:    1:44 2:43:30 
104:    1:43 2:45:13 
105:    1:46 2:46:58
106:    1:45 2:48:42 
107:    1:40 2:50:22 
108:    1:40 2:52:01 
109:    1:49 2:53:49 
110:    1:41 2:55:30
111:    1:42 2:57:12 
112:    1:37 2:58:49 
113:    1:44 3:00:32 
114:    1:41 3:02:13 
115:    2:14 3:04:26
116:    1:44 3:06:09 
117:    1:46 3:07:55 
118:    1:47 3:09:41 
119:    1:44 3:11:24 
120:    1:47 3:13:11
121:    1:50 3:15:00 
122:    1:46 3:16:46 
123:    1:57 3:18:42 
124:    1:46 3:20:28 
125:    1:46 3:22:13
126:    1:50 3:24:02 
127:    1:49 3:25:51 
128:    1:54 3:27:44 
129:    1:48 3:29:32 
130:    1:50 3:31:21
131:    1:53 3:33:13 
132:    1:52 3:35:04 
133:    1:48 3:36:52 
134:    1:53 3:38:44 
135:    1:49 3:40:33
136:    2:32 3:43:04 
137:    1:52 3:44:55 
138:    1:52 3:46:47 
139:    1:52 3:48:39 
140:    1:52 3:50:30
141:    1:50 3:52:20 
142:    1:53 3:54:12 
143:    1:53 3:56:04 
144:    1:54 3:57:58 
145:    1:54 3:59:52
146:    2:47 4:02:38 
147:    4:11 4:06:48 
148:    3:28 4:10:16 
149:    1:52 4:12:07 
150:    1:48 4:13:55
151:    1:49 4:15:44 
152:    1:51 4:17:34 
153:    2:01 4:19:35 
154:    1:52 4:21:26 
155:    1:50 4:23:15
156:    1:50 4:25:04 
157:    1:57 4:27:01 
158:    1:48 4:28:49 
159:    2:00 4:30:48 
160:    1:48 4:32:36
161:    1:44 4:34:20 
162:    2:02 4:36:22 
163:    1:47 4:38:08 
164:    1:46 4:39:54 
165:    1:45 4:41:38
166:    2:29 4:44:06 
167:    2:24 4:46:30 
168:    1:48 4:48:17 
169:    1:45 4:50:02 
170:    1:44 4:51:46
171:    1:46 4:53:31 
172:    1:43 4:55:14 
173:    1:44 4:56:57 
174:    1:49 4:58:45 
175:    1:46 5:00:31
176:    1:44 5:02:14 
177:    2:47 5:05:01 
178:    1:49 5:06:50 
179:    1:48 5:08:37 
180:    1:44 5:10:20
181:    1:43 5:12:02 
182:    3:16 5:15:18 
183:    1:52 5:17:09 
184:    1:44 5:18:53 
185:    1:41 5:20:33
186:    1:48 5:22:20 
187:    1:43 5:24:03 
188:   12:17 5:36:19 
189:    1:47 5:38:06 
190:    1:45 5:39:50
191:    1:37 5:41:27 
192:    1:35 5:43:02 
193:    1:39 5:44:40 
194:    1:39 5:46:19 
195:    1:36 5:47:54
196:    1:38 5:49:31 
197:    1:55 5:51:26 
198:    1:40 5:53:05 
199:    1:42 5:54:47 
200:    3:17 5:58:03
201:    1:51 5:59:54 
202:    1:44 6:01:38 
203:    1:39 6:03:16 
204:    1:37 6:04:53 
205:    2:28 6:07:21
206:    2:01 6:09:21 
207:    1:44 6:11:04 
208:    1:42 6:12:46 
209:    1:41 6:14:26 
210:    1:41 6:16:07
211:    1:39 6:17:46 
212:    1:36 6:19:21 
213:    1:34 6:20:55 
214:    1:34 6:22:28 
215:    1:35 6:24:03
216:    1:33 6:25:36 
217:    1:31 6:27:06 
218:    1:33 6:28:39 
219:    1:33 6:30:12 
220:    1:34 6:31:46
221:    1:35 6:33:20 
222:    2:02 6:35:22 
223:    1:37 6:36:58 
224:    1:36 6:38:34 
225:    2:11 6:40:44
226:    2:47 6:43:30 
227:    3:19 6:46:49 
228:    2:09 6:48:58 
229:    1:38 6:50:35 
230:    1:36 6:52:11
231:    1:36 6:53:46 
232:    1:32 6:55:18 
233:    1:33 6:56:51 
234:    1:33 6:58:23 
235:    1:31 6:59:54
236:    1:36 7:01:29 
237:    1:32 7:03:00 
238:    1:38 7:04:38 
239:    1:58 7:06:35 
240:    1:08 7:07:43
241:    1:32 7:09:15 
242:    1:32 7:10:47 
243:    2:15 7:13:02 
244:    1:59 7:15:00 
245:    3:03 7:18:03
246:    1:42 7:19:44 
247:    1:34 7:21:18 
248:    1:35 7:22:52 
249:    1:35 7:24:27 
250:    1:39 7:26:06
251:    1:36 7:27:42 
252:    1:36 7:29:17 
253:    1:36 7:30:53 
254:    1:35 7:32:27 
255:    1:44 7:34:10
256:    1:38 7:35:48 
257:    1:42 7:37:29 
258:    1:36 7:39:05 
259:    1:34 7:40:39 
260:    1:39 7:42:17
261:    2:57 7:45:14 
262:    4:50 7:50:04 
263:    3:12 7:53:16 
264:    3:10 7:56:25 
265:    2:50 7:59:15 

Friday, January 2, 2015

Tapering is expensive!

2nd of two taper days.   Today I registered for the Sulphur Springs 50 miler ...4th consecutive year doing this distance in the Dundas Valley.  I had wanted to do the 100 mile event but I am working 12 hour days race weekend.    I didn't want to burn another 1.5 vacation days as well as loose out on my shift premium and have to shell double $$ to do the 100 miler.   Next year!  



Thursday, January 1, 2015

Taper Madness

Day one of a two day Taper before R4K 8 Hours on Saturday!

Looking for something to do in place of running I registered for the Dirty Girls 24 Hour in late July.