Stocktake

Well, those interim goals have appeared, that's for sure. I'm turning 40 tomorrow, and while that seems to have spurred a bit of irritating introspection, it's also got me off my arse and entering some races. I've taken it easy over the last few weeks, I've honestly found the build up to my birthday a bit stressful this year. It's a milestone number, and my birthday is at an awkward time for celebrations, so it's easy to fall into the trap of not building it up so that I don't get disappointed when people can't make events. It leaves me a bit m'eh about everything. I had a good night out with a couple of mates, so there's nothing real to complain about. I have it pretty good.

So running and cycling has been a bit off recently. I did get to go for a really nice run through North Head National Park in Sydney a few weeks back. It was hot, but considering how much I'd had  to drink the night before, it felt surprisingly good.

I still cracked on and do a 23:15 parkrun last week, in brutal conditions (287 degrees and 60% humidity). Allegedly, that's gonna add about 4.5% to times, and as a run it sure felt much like a 22:15 did 6 months ago, though with more dry heaving.

I've also written down some goals. Sure, they're attached to some bottles of beer, but it is very, *very* nice beer.


So, where was I...

In the next few months, I've lined myself up for:

21/01/18 - Ipswich Trail Run Series #1 - White Rock
11/02/18 - Ipswich Trail Run Series #2 - Hidden Valley
04/03/18 - Ipswich Trail Run Series #3 - Castle Hill
25/03/18 - Up the Buff 25km
15/04/18 - Gold Run 5km
01/07/18 - Gold Coast Marathon

I plan to have a good crack at a sub-20 5km at the Gold Run, and in my head those trail runs should encourage a reasonably consistent preparation. A good crack at the Gold Run will then set up nicely for a solid build up to the Gold Coast. This year's goal should only be 3:45ish, maybe 3:30 depending, but the marathon is a harsh beast so plans are best written in the wind.

With a few weeks off work over Christmas, I should be able to work out a training plan and sort out some level of support. I bristle a bit at the though of paying to go for a run, but I think some sort of coaching could be valuable.

Coasting

It has been a while, but this blog isn't going to be a consistently frequent thing, and things feel right for a quick stock-take.

Since the couple of surprising PB's I achieved in August, my focus has shifted a bit, become a bit broader, but hopefully not to the point of losing focus on my goal. Writing this post up is partly me trying to restate that goal to myself. So that's the goal - 3:10:00 at the Gold Coast 2019. 614 days to go.

I've been doing PT sessions at a local gym for over a year now, and it's been great to have some external support for stating and achieving goals. The gym runs occasional 10 week challenges, with a body composition scan at the start and finish, and ongoing encouragement to use a food diary. The food diary has been my main motivator for joining in, as my past experience tells me that bad habits slip back in very easily, and it's very easy to just not notice.

I did pretty well with the 10 week challenge this run through (I did it at the start of the year as well), losing about 4.5kg, and dropping by body fat from 15.8kg to 12.6kg. My body fat percentage is just over 15%, so that's heading in the right direction.

I have also managed, for the first time in my adult life, to be neither overweight nor obese.

One funny thing I've found is the feeling of being a bit fat, of taking up just a bit too much space, hasn't really gone away yet. I still don't immediately recognise myself in the mirror.

It's nice to have met a goal, but things have gone a bit off track since the challenge finished, with the inevitable "off-the-leash" weekend, some widespread rain keeping me off the bike and a few worrying niggles resurfacing.

Still haven't committed to another interim goal yet, and I need to, or things will start to drift again.

I've found myself heading along to group bike rides more often, as the social aspect of cycling is far more rewarding than running the same old routes by myself. The lack of a social running group in my area has been a bit of a barrier, so I will be trying to seek that out in the future.

So I guess that's the interim goal - find a goal that gets me part of the way there. That's good enough for now.

Personal bests

I absolutely smashed my 5km pb two weeks back, taking it from 22:43 down to 21:10.5. While it wasn't the sub-20 I was challenged to do, it shows a couple of things :-

• that goal is within reach
• I'm probably capable of more than I allow myself to believe

It was an ugly run though, very cold (for Brisbane). I ran at my threshold for the whole thing, which is not my usual strategy, and I started to feel sick with about 400m to go. I fumbled stopping my Garmin at the finish, which meant that while I knew my time was better than 21:30, I didn't know how much better.

BRRC 5km

I did not recover very well from this run. My legs were sacks of wet sand for about a week, and I've been struggling with niggles and losing consistency since. I really felt fatigued afterward, which I guess shows how much I pushed myself. Nevertheless, I'm happy with the result, and look forward to bettering (but maybe not for a few months). I'll be resetting my usual 5k expectations to sub 23:00 though. That seems reasonable now.

Anyway, after a few weeks of struggling to get out and do as much stuff as I've wanted, and an extremely hectic working environment, I lined up at the Brisbane Marathon 10km yesterday morning. I hadn't really been looking forward to the run, but luckily my sister-in-law was running as well, and her enthusiasm got me to the race precinct, where the atmosphere of the start line got me pretty pumped.

I'd started to settle back into an sub 50:00 run in my head, and lined up with the 50 minute pacer... who I stuck with for the first km, and then left behind. The Brisbane Marathon 10km course is a winding, twisty affair, with a couple of short but rather steep climbs. There are a few hills through the city that are allegedly quite high, but must be relatively gradual as they are *relatively* manageable.

It's the climb up from the river to the Storey Bridge that's the killer. It's not long but it hurts. Then there's a long long long down hill section from the bridge back to the other side of the river. It's a tough course. Looking at the Strava activity, the elevation data is all sorts of messed up.

Brisbane Marathon Festival 10km

I had another great run, a 15 second PB. But the difference in the courses was enormous - I have no idea if this is a valid comparison, but using the "Grade Adjusted Pace" times from Strava would make it a 44:35 run, which would have been a huge PB, of over 2 minutes.

Well, it's been a big few weeks of resetting expectations for me. I am pretty certain I will attempt the 2018 Canberra Marathon, so it's back to building a base up until Christmas, when the training will start in earnest.

The Plan, or at least, the planning for the Plan

There's just under 24 months until the Gold Coast Marathon 2019, so that's just under 23 months to get my marathon time down to 3:10.

That's equivalent to the half marathon in 1:30, 10km in 40 minutes and a 0:19:31 5km

So, 24 months to get my 16 minutes off my half marathon PB, 6 minutes off my 10km PB and a pretty huge 3 minutes off my 5km PB.

My 5km PB is almost 3 and half years old though, and my 10km PB is even older, so I'll be having a crack at both over the next few weeks.

Tomorrow I'll have a crack at a quick 5km. I've been challenged to attempt a 20 minute, but I'm not sure that's possible or smart, so I'll probably aim for 22 minutes and see how I go.

I've entered a 10km in a few weeks, so it'd be good to get under 45 minutes for that.

Anyway, the schedule for the next few years looks a bit like:

April 2018 - Canberra Marathon
May 2018 - City 2 South
July 2018 - Gold Coast Half
August 2018 - City 2 Surf (?)
October 2018 - Melbourne Marathon
March 2019 - Twilight Half
July 2019 - Gold Coast Marathon

Parkruns will be scattered in there, and I'm aiming to spend from now until Christmas 2017 building a bit of a base. Consistently getting in 20km a week of running and around 80km of cycling would be good.

But hey, best laid plans and all that.

The Goal

So, what now.

While training for the 2017 Gold Coast Half Marathon, I kept seeing the fanciful times that the Race Predictor on my Garmin was displaying and scoffing - "A 1:31:35 half? Poppycock! A 42:50 10k? As if!" Despite allegedly being backed by well founded research, I just couldn't relate those times to how I was feeling in my running.

Well, a few weeks ago I found myself tearing up as I watched Eliud Kipchoge fall short of a sub-2 hour marathon by less than 30 seconds. Despite the artificiality of the setup, the effort was painfully real and it was still a truly incredible thing to see. It made me re-consider my attitude somewhat and despite my better judgement, I got inspired.

If the expected race time for someone with my VO2 max and lactate threshold was as stated, why shouldn't I commit to actually doing it? And if, at that point, I was allegedly fit enough for a 3:18 marathon, with the training I would be doing, that time would only decrease. So, why not go for a Boston Qualifier (BQ) and be done with it.

I've learnt that I need to take things like this slowly, so allowing 2 years or so seems prudent. Righto, that means aiming for a BQ at the 2019 Gold Coast Marathon, when I'll be 41.

The BQ time for a 41 year old is 3:15:00, but if the field is over-subscribed, only the fastest get in, so let's make it 3:10:00 to be safe.

So, the goal: 2019 Gold Coast Marathon, sub 3:10 or 4:30/km

And I need to figure out how to get there, from here.

Gosh it's been a long time

I forgot all about this, but it was hardly a thing really. Might try something different with it, for a bit anyway.

My last post to this was in 2007, and since then, well music is still important to me, but also now is running. and motorbikes. Both relatively unexpected developments to be honest.

Anyway, I decided to get fit at the start of 2008, did my first half marathon that year (Mount Isa Mine to Mine, 1:55:30 or something) , a second half marathon a year later (Gold Coast Half Marathon, 1:57:09). Then in 2010 after a third half marathon (NQ Games Half Marathon, 1:59:06) I tackled the big one at the Gold Coast, finishing in 4:24:34. And with that I was done for. I got more involved in a local running club, discovered the joys of trail running, and well and truly overdid it.

2011 included the:

1. 34km Black Snake Trail Race, with >900m of elevation, along with the recce run a few weeks previous which I started intending to do only 20km, with no water and no food, and got a bit lost for a while. The recce took 6 hours. The race was way better at 4 and a half.
2. 45km Mt Haig Trail Marathon, with 1200m of elevation gain (yet somehow easier than the Black Snake)
3. 2011 Gold Coast Marathon, in 4:11:34. I wanted sub 4 but over-reached, so this run featured my fastest half-marathon so far at 1:50:30, and my slowest at 2:11:04. 
4. 64km Kuranda to Port Douglas, in about 8:55. My garmin ran out of battery at 61.5km and 8:44.

Awesome right, except it was way too much way too soon, and when I moved to Brisbane later that year, I soon discovered after a bout of sciatica (I hope never again), that lower back pain would be my good mate for a while to come. 

Fast forward through 6 years of physio, chiro, pilates, the gain and loss of 15kg, and multiple false starts, I made it to the finish line of the 2017 Gold Coast Half Marathon in the unexpectedly good time of 1:46:04, and it's time to reflect, and decide on the future. 

Coz I'm back, baby.