Sunday, February 25, 2024

Another record falls

Two weeks ago I ran my best effort but didn't record a numerical "personal best" for a particular distance. Yesterday, I ran my 13th ever parkrun, this time at Hobsonville Point, and carved 10 seconds off my previous record.

Parkruns are 5km timed runs that occur in parks all over the world (well, 23 different countries). It is a delightful story of organic growth of a good idea. Most runners, myself included, train for "big" events and are not primarily interested in the social side of running. Parkruns were started by an Englishman, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, who just wanted to have a regular, timed 5km run. The early advocates had volunteers to record times, but since then it has become more organised happening without fail at 8am on Saturdays, and now you can get your personalised barcode that you can take anywhere there's a parkrun, run and get your time. For serious runners, that's great but the unexpected benefit is that people who did not have a time as the main goal, but just wanted to have a routine social run. There will be people from all walks of life, some running, some walk/running and others just walking, chatting before, during and after. 

I have friends who are regular parkrunners. Some have it has part of their purpose. Others are just in-between a focussed training plan and just want to keep the legs turning over. Others are "retired" from focussed training and just want to maintain their fitness and identity as a runner. It hasn't really played a role in my running as evinced by my meagre 13 events in almost 6 years. For me it barely had a function in my running. Saturdays were the days I wanted to run long, and if I were to do a "race" I wouldn't just participate, I would want to do it as a time trial, or if a friend was in town. This occasion it fulfilled both of these purposes.

I have run several parkruns, Cornwall Park, Owairaka, Western Springs and even in Hagley Park (although unofficially). Hobsonville Point literally had its inaugural event on the same day as I recorded my previous 5km PB on the same day at Cornwall Park, 19 mins and 54 seconds. I was always planning to check it out but almost five years later, mainly with the motivation of running at the same event as a high school friend, I went. But it also fit well in my training. I was not yet cranking up my mileage on the weekends, I wanted a bit of a measure to consolidate my understanding of my fitness and generally felt I might be in a good place to break the five year standing PB. 

Before you start a 5km race, you need to have an idea of the pace you think you can maintain. For a runner, the margin of error with pace gets more difficult the shorter the event. There are calculators to figure out, based on a previous event, how fast you should be able to run. Based on Coatesville, I should be able to run 5km in the range of 19:00 to 19:30, which sounded surreal for me, maybe something in my mindset that I need to challenge. It demands a sustained sub-4 min/km pace for almost 20 minutes, when even for 10 minutes it'd be a challenge. The last kilometre of a well-paced 5km is very close to suffering.

But I had to trust my training and the information I had gained from my previous run. So after finding the course, chatting with my mate, under perfect conditions I started the run. I had imagined Hobsonville Point as a flat coastal track. I was a little bit wrong, though not hilly, it's got its fair share of undulation. And there are six sharp turns, which slow you down and force you to accelerate back to your pace. My pace for every kilometre were: 3'46" 3'59" 3'53" 4'01" 4'07" The last two kilometres were in the suffering category but I'm glad it didn't balloon as it can easily do. The final time, 19:44, just 10 seconds off my Cornwall Park PB of 2019. This was a relief but I was disappointed not to be able to hold on better to get it into the 19:00-19:30 area. But, as with my Coatesville effort, as long as I stay injury free, the signs are good for the rest of the year. I have a great foundation for all my events.

My return to Parkrun coincides with a controversy. My description above I hope shows how wholesome it started and how most people would take it. Unfortunately, any platform can be contested ground in the culture wars. Parkrun had built in records for male and female participants for their general metrics. Even though registration at Parkrun allows a range of responses to the gender question, either from suspicion or actual events, transgender females were believed to be recorded among "biological" females, which was thought to be biasing average results, taking records and introducing an element of unfairness for those who valued their statistics and standing.

I pity any organisation that suddenly has such quandary cast upon them because of the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't aspect to it. Parkrun opted out of it completely by taking away the gender aggregated statistics altogether. The topic came up with my high school friend but I hadn't followed and just said that transparency is always the best approach. After writing this, I felt more about the participation focus of such events and now think Parkrun did an appropriate move. Individual records are viewable, just not the course records by gender, or your standing within your gender. But in saying that it is silly that everything has to be contested. Those who reject transgender participants self-identifying taking part in a range of events might not have realised that since you don't generally confirm any of your details against a birth certificate, all categories of information for all but the Olympics is trusted when it is submitted. 

One critic however tweeted: "Rather than give females their fair sports results from parkrun – where it would be very easy to add course records for non-binary categories, they have removed all records, I hope parkrun will listen to the fact that the vast majority want a fair sport for all based on the biological reality of the bodies we run/race/compete with." Being a cis male, I am only speculating from the sidelines, but there is no compulsion for someone who identifies contrary to their birth certificate to put "non-binary" (which would be inaccurate, anyway) and not just put what they identify as. 

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Back on track

2023 was a strange year in my running. It on one hand was the year that I ran the most, 3850km, more than the 3,111km in 2019; yet on the other hand, a year where I ran only two events and did not run my best. To be clear, I wasn't looking for personal bests - I was looking for a consistent year of running, and had two goals: a mileage goal of 4,000km in the year (not achieved) and a climbing goal of 52,000m ascent for the year (achieved) and that good performances might be a by-product. When the mileage goal started to slip out of reach, I switched to a new goal: pace.

For most of the year, I had been noticeably slower at the fastest part of my range compared to other years. To put some numbers to it, at my best I could run 5km in less than 20 minutes, but in late 2023 I would not be able to go under 21 minutes; in a half marathon at my best I could go under 1 hour 30 minutes, but I would struggle to go under 1 hour 40 minutes in 2023. These margins might seem small but the work to get them down would usually take a long time. So, I switched to pace training in December. The implications of this are that mileage comes down a bit and very specific work-outs are used to sharpen up. Such an example might be 10x400m, or 3x2mile runs, where you run particular distances at fast paces with rests in between. 

The surprising thing was that the fruit came quickly. I ran a mile in 5:49, a lifetime best. At the end of the year, I almost broke 20 minutes for the 5km park run (where humorously all runners had to squeeze past a van and its trailer on two parts of the route). My pace training continued into 2014 to prepare for my main target event, the Coatesville Half Marathon. 

I have a lot of affection for this event. Early in my running in 2017, I ran the Coatesville Classic (8km), which I described here: Crypticity's abound: Comeback and then the Half in 2019 (Crypticity's abound: Mark). Quoting myself for brevity: "The Coatesville Half course is notorious. It is the hilliest course of the series with one significant incline at 3km, another at 10km, another at 14km and another at 16km." In 2019, I ran 1 hour 37 minutes, which was a solid performance in what would be my best year in running, so I was looking for the run this year to be a bit of a bellwether for the year ahead.   

The lead-up through January was very good. In a time-trial I ran 1 hour 35 for a flat half marathon distance. On the Saturday eight days before the run, I ran two training runs that surprised me in pace that exceeded what I thought I was capable of, a 5x1mile and a 2x4mile. Unfortunately on the last one at the very end of the last 4 mile I felt a tightening in my hamstring and I jogged home very gently. I gave myself a two day rest and then did some light runs to test it out again. I felt OK so continued with my normal "week before" taper runs. And then we come to the day of the race.

After a poor night sleep, I woke naturally at 6:12am with a start. My shock at the time jolted my heart and mind into action. Somehow, my 5:30am alarm had not vibrated me awake. In fact, it claimed it had and was doing it every eight minutes, as if self-snoozing itself without any fuss. I had to leave by 6:30am to realistically get to the venue and be ready for the 7:30am race start, so I exploded out of bed, changed, coffeed and threw everything in a bag and left the driveway at 6:32am. So far no speeding tickets have been received, so my arrival in the Coatesville Pony Club car park at 7:07am can be said to have been smooth and without issue. I grabbed my racebib and then to the back of a very long queue for the portaloos. I tried my best to do some dynamic stretches while in the line, and then after a quick prep in the loo, jogged over to the middle of a tightly packed starting chute at 7:27am without any real warm-up. 

Perhaps due to the adrenalinised chaotic start to the morning, I was much faster than my race plan, which was to aim for 4:30/km pace (which would have me on a 1 hour 35 min finish speed) until the downhill speedy finish and go sub 1:35. I had to first push through the mid-pack runners to the front 10% to find people of a similar pace, and that meant my speed at the start was a bit reckless. Fortunately for me there was an easily recognisable Zimbabwean female runner, Ketina, who usually is about my pace, so I used her as an initial measure where I needed to be and I caught up to her and dropped a bit of pace for the hill. 

There began the very familiar pattern of my usual strategy: slow on this hills (letting my pace peers pace me) and then reeling them in on the flats before passing them on the downhills. Ketina disappeared after the first such iteration, and once I was at the top of the first hill, I sped up and didn't slow down. Looking at my watch, I was clearly in the 4:10-4:25/km range - too fast but feeling strangely comfortable. I kept going pulling past more pace peers to the halfway turn when I had a rather cruel realisation that I should have anticipated. My watch had measured my distance 200m short of what the marker was indicating. This was a problem because that meant I was going even faster than my watch was telling me. I could have been going 5 seconds per kilometre faster than I was reading off my watch. 

For any race, the best indication of whether you are going too fast is your breathing (and also one of the best ways to know if your running companions might be entering into a struggle phase). I checked myself and thought I was still breathing quite evenly so I held my pace for the last few hills and then made the final turn onto the downhill home straight. It was then that I knew that it should be just a matter of cruising to the finish line, a certain PB, probably a couple of minutes under, and done on one of the more difficult courses.

It wasn't to be though. About 2km from the finish, I felt the tightness in my hamstring return. I couldn't but cut pace just a little; then, a pain radiated out from that point, and I shortened my gait and cut pace once more. By the time I had entered the Coatesville Domain I was not enjoying running and would have had a noticeable limp. Only one person passed me though and I got over the line at 1:30:12, my third fastest half marathon time. 

For perspective, despite the niggle, I would say this is my best performance. My other two fastest times are 1:29:58 at the Waterfront Half, the flattest possible course. and 1:30:04 on the trickier Millwater Half. But none of them are like Coatesville. It's kind of amazing that after all these years though all three PBs are clustered within 14 seconds of each other after different 21.1km races.

I gave myself a break of four days from running and then ran 5km on Friday evening with hamstring sensations but no pain. This morning I ran 22km with only mild sensations that never amounted to anything and then a massage and some strengthening work. I hope the hamstring is just an oddity that with a bit of rehab I'll get back quickly onto a regular routine.

So the omens are bad/good. Bad that I picked up a niggle/weakness of some sort. But good in that I have the best foundation for a year of good performances. My next chances to race are:

- Hobsonville Point ParkRun 24/02/2024 (goal: under 19:30)

- Waterfront Half Marathon 07/04/2024 (goal: 1:27)

- Kirikiriroa Marathon 09/06/2024 (goal: under 3:20)

- North Shore Marathon 15/09/2024 (goal: under 3:15)

All with ideal training...


 

 

Sunday, November 19, 2023

“You’re not actually legally obliged to have an opinion.”

Thus spoke Bill Maher in his show Real Time. He claims that social media has forced individuals, and corporation, to feel like they need to have a thought and a stance on every current event, whether it be the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the marital situation of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith and Elon Musk's running of the app formerly known as Twitter. You could easily argue that any consumer of news was similarly exposed in pre-social media times. His point is that people for some topics it has become obligatory to have an opinion, even when there is no realistic need; worse, to not have an opinion, presumably in some circles, is to be not caring. 

Having recently watched the New Zealand movie Uproar set in New Zealand at the time of the 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand, you can imagine a time where this country was divided and those of an anti-tour opinion would see status quo or disinterested positions as actively supporting racism through a lack of a denouncement. But you could say that public opinion or making a bigger "scene" could trigger a symbolic cancellation of a tour or, more long term, political change locally, or even political change in South Africa. That was completely outside of the social media era but also it was a bit closer to home. 

The topic of apartheid in South Africa was probably understood well enough by both sides. Pro-tour people justified themselves that sport should be separate from politics, and even could argue that if anything rapprochement through sport could lead to the ends of the anti-tour position. Uproar touches on the irony of that time that many of the anti-tour activists have been focussed on the South African apartheid and blind to racial discrimination at home. 

The Israel-Palestine situation is one of the topics that Maher though was talking about, especially critical of university students in the US who protest against Israel in support of Palestine, without any condemnation of the 6 October attack by Hamas that "started" the current situation. Worse, the retaliation for the attacks have apparently reawakened the latent antisemitic tendencies in some parts of humanity. For New Zealand, while there are Israelis and Palestinians here (one of my colleagues of mine is half-Palestinian) and our Government at some stage will have to decide in what way it will support one or both sides, it seems strange to think that we must have a stance on the rights and the wrongs of it. 

I regard myself reasonably knowledgeable on the history of the region where Palestine and Israel sit for an average guy but still I would not want to say any rights or wrong overall. The Hamas attack was abhorrent but the situation prior means that asymmetric attacks (and defence in the case of human shields) were always probable. The government elected by the Israeli people was unhelpful but expectable in the context. The government elected by the Palestine people was unhelpful but expectable in the context. Zoom back to President Clinton's attempt at Camp David, the decision by Arafat to reject the deal was unhelpful but expectable... and you can go back further and further in the karmic cycle. At the end of the day, choosing to support either side sounds like supporting a side in a toxic relationship for a couple who cannot separate or divorce, but may well kill each other. Any support is just based on limited knowledge of the rights and wrongs.

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

The magic ingredient


No, the magic ingredient is not alcohol despite the photo. I’ve had a breakfast of 肠粉 (rice rolls), 刀切糍 (not sure if there is a name for this) and 烧肉 (pork belly); then a lunch of fresh bamboo shoots fried with two kinds of pork, sautéed gaaichoy and two kinds of pork, friend together. It was something rather perfect. It might just be something latent in the crockery. But probably not. It is the taste of home. 

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Strike three

The event chose to put this on their Facebook!
In perfect conditions, I completed my eighth marathon distance this morning. It was never going to be one where I was expecting to cover myself in glory; the eleven weeks between the Kirikiriroa Marathon and this one was blighted by a fall, a cold, a niggle and generally lacklustre training. And from my learning from the Kirikiriroa race, I had steeled myself to restrain pace from the beginning. Despite thinking I was doing this, the final quarter rhymed with the previous race: it was a struggle.

The North Shore Marathon route is now equal with Auckland Marathon as the event I have done the most. The Auckland event starts with a bit of undulation through the Shore, a cruise along the motorway to the Bridge, then after the Bridge it is basically flat to St Helliers and back. The North Shore event is simpler: First you start along Milford Beach (beach section 1) then climb onto the road to Takapuna then run the full Takapuna Beach, then you climb out of there to Takapuna Grammar, then drop down to Narrow Neck Beach (fortunately not on the sand), then you climb out of there before dropping onto Cheltenham Beach for an interminable soft sand section, then you are rewarded with a climb up and around Northhead... and then you do it in reverse, and then back, then in reverse. Three beach sections time four, two Northheads. In some ways, it should be the easiest one to pace as you are fully aware of what is in store after you've only done a quarter... yet every time this event gets me. 

My first attempt was in 2018 where I felt well trained and plunged in and started struggling after my second climb of Northhead (about 31km in), and even walked at around the 37km mark, and pulling into finish around 3:44. (My blog of it: Always crashing the same car

The next year I wanted to remedy this and ran what is still my best attempt completing the course in 3:32. Cruelly this was not official because the full marathon event was cancelled due to the threat of a weather event. I missed the memo, as did others who turned up early to run. Sixteen of us decided that the weather event wasn't going to materialise and ran it anyway. It went smoothly until about the 37km and I slowed down but was still proud of the effort. (Blog: This is number five and I'm feeling quite alive...)

So, what happened this time? Basically it was a rehash of my first attempt but with a slower pace for the first three-quarters, and never walking from fatigue this time round. One annoying thing was that my watch recorded 20.6km for the first half. This means either it was shorter than a marathon, or my watch hadn't quite tracked it accurately and I was actually running faster than I should have been. 

Will I be back? Almost certainly - their Super Earlybird price is pretty super so it "won't hurt" to join it. And I want to nut it out. But this will probably be my last marathon for 2023. One interesting thing about this year is that I've only done marathons - no halfs, no ten or five kilometre events. Not surprisingly I have not really regained my pace from previous years despite having run high volumes. So I would like to try getting that speed back in the last four months of the year, and I would like to see if I can settle my score with the Omaha Half Marathon in December. 

Wednesday, August 09, 2023

Normies

I remember the era that I went into the ESOL industry well: I'd just come back from Taiwan, just turned 21 and the International student boom had just begun, and schools were literally taking anyone. Yes, it would have been far more aggrandising to say that I met some stringent standard but I more or less just walked in. And it was great! I was surrounded by a whole lot of students in their late teens and early twenties from other cultures, not dissimilar to me. I had a fascination with cultures and languages from Asia. I made friendships; I had students at my parties; I was invited to parties; they took part in my events, and it was a pleasure to be in the throng. I was still finding myself at the time. I got into a relationship for the first time, not with a student although I felt close to several early on, and had moved out of my parent's home for the first time. And to be clear, I never "crossed the line" into the emotional and romantic sphere with students, but I did many things that in these days a teacher would be fired for. I have a collection of photos of my crimes: I had a weird send-off for graduating students where I picked them up into my arms for a photo. (In my defence I picked up not just the girls but the guys.) In a ritual I cannot remember the origin of, there is a photo of a female student and I holding the same two cubes of Cadbury chocolate between our teeth. And a certain infamous Mt Eden photo, there were students. Back then I was never spoken to about my conduct with students quite possibly because there was tacit approval to "engage" the students and make sure they have a good time. Or maybe they just didn't know. That is me, but at the time to my knowledge, one maybe more, of my colleagues in my first school were crossing the "relationship" line, and there were certain students who were known to not mind crossing it either. 

The relationship line is a bit of a hairy line to cross in any event, whether in the inappropriate teacher-student dynamic, or just in general life. Making a move or a pass on someone, whether there is someone deliberately on the search for someone to be with, or interpreting signals from someone you are receptive to the interest of is one thing. And there is plenty of less nuanced behaviour that can result when one side is infatuated. Already this year I have had a teacher report an irrational, infatuated student to me, which was very distressing to him. But regrettably it is usually the other way around.

Norms are funny beasts. It would be interesting to know how much #MeToo was a watershed moment, or whether it was just emblematic of the changes in society, where we see much more thinking about consent in all respects, autonomy, mana and hauora. Thinking back to my AIESEC days, people were compelled to do things they did not want to do whether it was to drink an "eggly" (a disgusting raw concoction), drink, strip or whatever. Some would say this was the secret sauce in the organisation to bond people. Others might have trauma from some of these. And then there was the stuff that might happen behind closed doors, perhaps with different degrees on insobriety. I think it reflected quite a bit about the expectations in society around the time. You still hear about some organisations, such as law firms, where there is still a sense of this where only recently some people have stood up to say "no".

I find it quite jarring looking back on my early teaching, and the culture of AIESEC because norms have shifted even in this short time. However, those things might be tame when put next to things seen and done "teaching in Asia". Simply put, there are those that go over to teach or experience the world, but there is also a group who go there mainly for love, either the fleeting sort or something more permanent, and often seek it within the student body. To be clear, they and colleagues are the main people you spend your time with as an expat teacher. Just like my first teaching, a lot of them are going into a group of students who are a similar age to them. There might have also been some who found love within the student body incidentally; they may have been in relationships when going over (either with partner in tow or in a newly established distance arrangement), but who discovered something fresh and new in their place of teaching. Either way though, it was something that was explicitly told to teachers they could not do and yet was something many did anyway. 

Since coming back to New Zealand I have found that within the English teaching area there are so many ex-expats, and it is among them that regrettably there is the highest rate of crossing the line here. Regrettably I know of five individuals who have done so - I won't say the time or name people, schools or anything identifiable. Three were caught revealed and disciplined; another one was known although the complainant did not want to make it an official complaint so no action could be taken directly; and the final one we only knew about after he left while being disciplined for some other piece of unprofessional conduct. What do they have in common? Well, beside being cis-white males (I don't think that's too much to identify them), they are travellers, most ex-Asia. While there was clearly one ratbag, the other four were generally sincere. One even was the "grass" who helped a student report the conduct of one of the others of the five, and who said that he thought it was unacceptable that teachers behave that way to students... 

If I had to categorise this limited group, I'd first say there are the ageing "players", gents who have probably had a way with the ladies in the past, generally handsome, even charming, but with that expectation that girls should like them, and when their fancies are roused, that girls must like them. Then there are the older men who just do not read signals well. There is a certain Asian feminine virtue to be polite, engage positively and never to say "no" explicitly. One such case is referred to obliquely here: Crypticity's abound: Swirling in the calm. The oddest experiences from this was genuine confusion by the teachers involved; one seemingly blaming the complainant: "She just isn't mature enough" (to understand his sincere intent in asking her, his student decades younger than him, out.) The other one most awkward of all, in a disciplinary meeting triggered because he was infatuated so much that in the meeting the teacher was saying "I don't know what went wrong - everything was going so well. And then she stopped responding to my texts and calls." Having to explain to a man who was on his second marriage, not just about ethics and the staff handbook regulations, but also that she just isn't into you, at all, and never was and never will be. And no, you cannot meet her to say sorry because your presence creeps her out. 

And then there is the one case that doesn't really make sense at all without something lying underneath that is unknown.  

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Inevitability


2018 was the year when I fell four times on runs. The first was a pre-dawn fall in the Domain; a vehicle came up behind me with lights on and I moved to the verge, my own shadow making me oblivious about the drain I was about to put my foot in. That was interesting because I was fine apart from a bit of a graze at the time, but my knee swelled up a few hours later at work. Then there were the two minor falls on daytime long runs: one I was crossing a road while fiddling with my waist pouch and looking out for traffic; the middle of the road had a raised section which I clipped my foot on and had me in a heap in the middle as concerned motorists stopped on either side, but not grazes to show for it. Then less than a week later, my foot hit the base of a sign on a Great North Road footpath sending me again into the pavement but with some lost skin. Then what was the most catastrophic of the series, I was waiting for the Omaha Half to begin and jumped up onto a boardwalk only for my feet to slip out from under me and a heavy fall on my buttocks. I completed the run but the delayed effects of the fall put me out of running for some time; it took almost two months to get back to it. It was freakishly high to wonder whether I should really be out there running at all. Yet in all the years around it, 2016-2017 and 2019-2022, I only had one other fall, a wipe-out on gravel at a sharp corner in an event. 

The forces of probability over a habitual action are worthy of us all to consider, just like speeding on a windy road, even one that you know, could eventually end in disaster. As a runner, and morning runner at that, there are many factors that raise the probability of a fall. There is visibility, which, even with the waistlamp I bought after the first fall in 2018, cannot illuminate every threat in a timely way. Little unevenness on the path is enough to catch a shoe and unbalance. Even with illumination, you can be dazzled by headlights, twilight can cause less visibility than in darkness, and rain or fog on glasses or in the lightbeam are dangers. The moisture factor boggles the mind: I don't know if it is shoe technology or sheer intuitive skill that means the many thousand footfalls on wet footpaths do not regularly result in slips. However, three of the four 2018 falls happened in broad daylight, some surfaces are perilous and distractions can lead to misfooting.

On the 29 July this year I had the fall that broke five straight years without hitting the ground. It was inevitable, thinking of the above, that I'd have another moment of grazed hands, but this felt almost unavoidable on a practical level: I entered a trap. On one of my regular pre-dawn loops I turned onto Portage Road crossing it earlier than usual. I would usually take a newer footpath on the outside by bus-stops but it hadn't yet started and traffic was coming, so I ran onto an older, inner footpath that passed businesses. It was a bit cracked and a copse of trees were to its side blocking street light illumination but I charged down it with only my own light. It was going to be tricky because I'd have a sharp right-hand turn at the end (so not to run onto the road) but not something I hadn't managed before. As I approached the turn my lamp revealed late that the end of the footpath was a stretch of shiny mud, but it was not like I hadn't run in mud before. I slowed and took it with caution but as soon as my first foot hit the mud it slide out and my momentum took me face first to the pavement, my hands fortunately bracing the impact. There was a half second of fright and then a half second to rise and run, and another half second for the burn on palms to register. I was still five kilometres from home and still had work ahead. The result once at home and in the light was several wounds, three on my hands, both elbows and a knee. 

I ran the loop again in broad daylight and I can only conclude that running it if ten normal runners went through that path in the dark, at least five of them would come to grief. It allayed some worries; I knew it just had my number and now I had its.