Firstly, sorry for the long delay since my last post. It's been a mad few weeks and its difficult to fit in all my work (including some evening meetings), sixteen or so hours of training plus core exercises, keeping my training records up to date, starting a food diary to try and get my nutrition sorted, a half marathon and a training camp (more about that later), talking to the senior pupils at East Taieri Primary School about my story... and somewhere in amongst all of that ... life. So the blog has had to go on hold for a little while.
Needless to say I am still working hard and (hopefully) making small gains in my base fitness. I am staying as close as possible to the program that Coach Geoff has me working on, but the weather has been all over the place and some sessions have had to be move indoors. Its been a month of big contrasts in the weather. I've trained in everything from driving rain, to heavy snow (last Saturday on our long ride), bitterly cold winds and gusts of up to 140km/hour (last Wednesday night when doing some speed work - I've never run so fast in my life). Contrast this with a balmy (well, high teens anyway), sunny day on Sunday 12th, when I ran the Dunedin Moro Half Marathon and my body doesn't know what it is up for.
The Moro Half turned out to be a bit of a disaster all round. The day started out with perfect conditions: overcast, about 12 degrees and not a breath of wind, so I was all psyched for a good race. I had already done 13 hours of training for the week and had a light pool session a couple of hours before the half marathon, but I was feeling good. I wasn't setting out to do a PB, but I just thought I'd settle into a rhythm and see how things panned out.
After my pool session I headed up the hill for a quick second breakfast and to pick up little bro' Chris. I figured he'd have some wholemeal toast that I could lather with jam and peanut butter, but no such luck, so I settled into a large bowl of rice bubbles, milk and a couple of tablespoons of sugar (Mistake No. 1). I figured, I'd had enough in my first breakfast and didn't go too hard in the pool and thought that there would be energy drink on-course (Mistake No. 2), so figured some high GI nutrition would be fine to get me through.
As I said, conditions couldn't have been better. It's a tough course as far as the local half marathons go and the large crowds mean that PB's are very difficult, so I was pretty relaxed, but when the gun went off, I thought 'what the hell, I'll give it a bit of nudge today' (Mistake No. 3). The first 1,500 metres was slow as all the foot traffic slows everyone up, but after that I settled into a nice comfortable rhythm at about my PB pace. In the last few halves, I'd been having trouble getting back into rhythm after a drinks station and my pace had slowed by 10 seconds or so after each one, but Geoff had given me something to try and it had worked a treat. In fact, after the first drinks station (5km), I even picked up my pace for about 1,500 metres (Mistake No. 4). By the 7km mark, though, my right hip started to tighten and I started to feel like I was running with a flatty. There was no power at all in my right leg and it was starting to drag a little.
I managed to cope with the pain in my hip through to the 12km mark, when I was distracted by a conversation with a fellow competitor and it seemed to disappear. I picked up the pace a little again (although, by now a PB was gone) and headed up the Roseneath Hill. By now the sun had been streaming down for the past 20 minutes and I sweating like I was in a sauna and, while I had managed to get plenty of water on board at the drinks stations so far, there was no energy drink. Then, half way up the hill, WHAMMO! My head went into a tail spin! My vision was a little blurred and just putting one foot in front of the other became and huge undertaking. I could no longer run in a straight line and I knew this wasn't a good sign. I had seen people pass out in this race before so I decided that I'd better not end up in the gutter and shipped off to the hospital where they would tell me to lay off the training. Time to walk.
I ended up walking a few times between over the last 6 km, but still managed a course PB (1:58:36, 90 seconds faster than last year). I was in a sorry state at the finish. My legs almost gave way on me and I had to lay on my back for a good 10 minutes and I needed food and drink and lots of it. It took me a full hour to come right, but at least I wasn't as bad as the guy that had passed out with 2km to go.
Lesson learned, though, get the nutrition right and drink more. I also learned what it was like to literally run on empty and some of the early warning signs for when this sort of thing kicks in. I reckon this is gonna come in handy during Challenge Wanaka next January when the temperature could peak well into the 30s.
No comments:
Post a Comment