Believing in dreams

It is perhaps not surprising that some elements of performance can become a part of identity. Like I always say that I am bad driver, as if I haven't improved as a driver in all these years. Or that I am digitally literate even though my capability is rooted in technology that is years old, and I could be reduced to a novice by changes in AI.

For running, for a long time, 3 hours 30 minutes was a part of my running identity. It took me three marathons to hit it but was a goal from the beginning. Even with later efforts, it had the gravitational effects of a mean to which everything will regress to. It is essentially a marathon you'd run if you kept just under 5 minute kilometres, another mean value with extraordinary gravitational power for me. Early on, based on my performances at other distances, race calculators boldly said that I could do faster, well out of the orbit of 3:30, but when it came to race day I was always doomed to underperform the expectation. My personal best at the marathon is 3:22, which itself was an underperformance on a well-trained year. In 2023 with a pile of mileage under my belt, I could only do 3:34 in my best of two performances. 

It is safe to say I've been burnt enough from hope, and while I do think that I will better 3:22 at some stage, there is an assumption in my being that I'm a 3:30 person. And while the benchmark for a serious marathoner is 3:00, that's a cake that does not have a slice for me.

Even with this fatalism, 2024 has come to possibly be the Peppermint Patty who has put a time in front of me to kick to goal. Every metric is pointing to a much better time than I have ever had before. My 5km time indicates 3:11 is possible. My half marathon time suggests 3:06. The marathon, however, is quite different to these events and needs different training to actualise these times, but even my training is indicating it possible. 

Six weeks out from the Kirikiriroa marathon I ran a 33km long run with three roughly 5km sections that were meant to be in the range of "marathon pace", the last of which was to be after the 25th kilometre, when you begin to tire, and should be the fastest of the 5km intervals. This can be hard to judge if the terrain is hilly because, while you have the pace showing on your smartwatch, you never know how the ascents and descents affect pace. This can be fixed with apps which can make adjustments for different surfaces and give you an idea of your "gradient adjusted" paces (GAP) once you're home in the analysis. For this reason, I chose to run along the cycleway by the motorway and return via a flat river valley through Henderson, I had planned to run the first at 4:40/km, then 4:30, and finally 4:20. On the run, I felt I nailed the first two but struggled on the third as expected. Back at home, I got to unexpected news: when adjusted for gradients, the three 5km segments were 4:30, 4:26 and 4:23 respectively. Clearly, the river valley had more undulation than the others and made what felt like a difficult section reflect that I was putting in more effort than the other two. 4:30/km pace, if it becomes my pace for the marathon would be a 3:10 result. 4:23/km, the final pace from the training which should be more reflective of my ability, if it were to become my pace for the marathon would be a 3:05 marathon result. This training run was also apparently the second fastest 30km effort of my life, only achieved before in race situations.

Of course, there is plenty of room for chicken counting. There is still plenty of training to do and improvement to make. But also factors beyond myself could sabotage these possible outcomes. There are three more peak weeks of training and currently I'm still intending to do the Huntly Half Marathon which will be the best indication of a target time. 

If I were permitted to do some chicken counting and blue sky dreaming, I would like to think that I could hit the 3:05 time on a flat course, and with more training, perhaps by the end of the year, I could hope to crack the 3:00 time. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Fortunately tomorrow is a rest day and it's time for me to let my body recover.

Observing a day

It's ANZAC day, which I do observe chiefly in my thoughts although very occasionally at a dawn service. This year I observe it in my usual way with a run with 45 days to go to the Kirikiri Marathon. Statutory holidays are interesting "islands" within a training block, like a little island in a river. A normal week would have its usual pattern of training, which for me usually is a rest day on Mondays, Tuesday to Thursday with a range of runs, Friday with a run if I'm in peak week, then two long runs of different lengths on the weekend. Workdays have a capping effect on distance and effort, with 15km being the maximum unless waking up super-early or leaving home late. But the "mid-week" medium-long run is really useful and fortunately that is what statutory holidays like ANZAC day can bring.

My ANZAC day running last year was a fizzer. The year had started pretty much the same as this year with consistent strong running and I had great hopes. But on the 22 April 2023, I ran with my friend Aaron J and he introduced me to a route called the Concrete Monster, which ascends steeply into the Waitākere hills. He is a natural runner of the kind that I'll never be - and when running with him I'm always trailing a bit behind and usually running faster than I would normally. The run itself is something I'm still pretty proud of, but the next day my quad was tight and sore and it took time to figure out that it was just a tight knot and not an injury. ANZAC day was thus a quite day at home in a week that I should be beginning my peak period of training.

It's 45 days to go to the Kirikiriroa Marathon so basically there are three weeks of "peak" training to go and then three weeks of taper. In 2023, Kirikiriroa was my sixth official marathon but my first since 2019, and the first time I had run that particular event. Training had been solid up to the Concrete Monster, but that quad issue, then an ankle niggle a few weeks later compromised the peak weeks. In the end I ran 3:34. I'd felt like a million dollars for 30km and then re-experienced "the Wall" that all marathon runners know so well with a struggle home in the last 12.2km. My target had been 3:28-3:30 but I shot well over.

If my recent hamstring issue was a reminder of anything it is that strength and conditioning are always going to be useful not just for the race, but more importantly for managing my way through the peak weeks without issue. None of the niggles in the last year and a half have been injuries fortunately but every niggle that requires days of rest and recovery takes away the momentum.

My run today was a confidence booster. 24km with 10km at what I hope will be my marathon pace of 4:30/km. If I can achieve this, I'll have a sub 3:10 marathon PB and a foundation to look at the benchmark 3 hour mark on a flatter, faster route. Even without the coming weeks, training calculators with my recent Waterfront and Parkrun performances, I should already be at 3:10 fitness, so I think aiming for it would become a conservative goal and give me the chance to check myself after the last hills and push the time lower if I feel I can.

I have the opportunity to put another half marathon race into my schedule as a time trial three weeks before the marathon. It's the Huntly Half, a famously fast run, which I haven't done before. It can be done and returned from in a morning and, provided the peak weeks go well, will be a great barometer for what I should be able to achieve in Kirikiriroa. I am pretty confident I should be able to better my Waterfront time if all things are smooth with training if I did it. I would aim for 1:26-1:27.

Anyway, just have to do the strength and conditioning, avoid rakes and uneven pavement, Covid, cyclonic weather conditions etc. and hope for the best!

To live, to die

I am a reader, yet for the occupational tumult that I've been in, I've had to make prioritising choices not to read much in the previous few years. Whenever things got busy, reading gave way to working and running. In 2022 it was only audiobooks that I "read". But injury and holidays give me an excuse to get back to it. 

Over Christmas I read Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, and a Chinese book, The Chronicles of a Blood Merchant (许三观卖血记）by Yu Hua (余华), The latter was the second book I had read by Yu Hua; the first was during the start of the pandemic, his most famous book, To Live, that was made into a movie. It was a delightful almost child-like read of some very serious topics, and in some ways it was an echo of my wife's grandfather - the protagonist was the son of a landlord who lost everything in the Revolution. (But as opposed to A Gong, the protagonist was a ne'er-do-well who wasted his money.) The Chronicles of a Blood Merchant and another book of Yu Hua, The Seventh Day, had sat on our bookshelf for four years until the present period to be read. I'm glad that holidays and then this hamstring niggle have given me the chance to read them.

The Chronicles of a Blood Merchant is another child-like tale of a simple man who discovers that selling his blood can give him money to address the crises that arise in his life. China at the time did not do blood donation, and in fact the act of giving blood was considered expending life energy and not an advisable thing to do, hence the buying of blood for the medical system. That weird premise is just a background detail of the sacrifice he made as his life tracks the Chinese Revolution, the Great Leap Forward and then the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, surely not some small moments, to get his family through. It is really the family focus that hits home in the most peculiar way in this story, as he discovers that his first firstborn of his three sons is not his. (The result of a rape by his wife's previous admirer.) And how he struggles with first rejecting him, then showing partiality, to accepting him as a son, then almost loving him at times beyond the sons that were his flesh and blood. Also it is a thorough exploration of how people see self-sacrifice and denial in their lives.

The Seventh Day was unexpected after these but it made sense by the end. It opens in the most peculiar way that, as a non-native reader, it made me question whether I understood the Chinese correctly: 

"It was thick and foggy when I walked out of my rental home, into a city that was wriggling awake in empty chaos. The place I was going was a funeral parlour, a place called a "crematorium" in the past. I received a notice to go there by nine a.m. The time of my cremation was half past nine."

It is a strangely beautiful book even if written from an ambivalently afterlife perspective on the life lived before and the affections with the world that has been. Again it was written child-like and the elements of surrealism that were in his other works are exaggerated here. 

I had read most of it before the Waterfront Half. My debilitating "hamstring injury" was addressed by a few specialised exercises and stretches, and just like my hamstring after Coatesville, it has not made a peep since. But I had new reason not to run much. In a great display of irony, the ankle on my other foot caused me a lot of angst. It started just after the race when I had a massage at the venue as a pre-emptive especially for my hamstring, but coming of the massage bench I put my left ankle on the ground and a bolt of pain almost sent me to the ground. I could walk but it felt as if I had sprained it. After a little walking I was manageable. My arch was sore and my upper ankle tight. The rest of the day was fine, I felt it tight the following morning but could still run 10km, but at work I couldn't walk naturally. The next day was the same, and on the third day, and another 10km run it finally felt a bit more normal. I managed to read a few more pages of The Seventh Day and got to the end tonight.

I ran 24km up one of the steepest roads in the Waitakeres with no trouble to my hamstring or my left ankle. My hip, well, it was cranky on the way down the hill. Looks like I've got some strengthening and conditioning to do!  

On the water front

Even in this scientific age, some feeling of superstition is hard to avoid. People talk about not jinxing things, and whether it is to avoid the risk of reputational damage, or just not to feel stupid, we don't generally state things in certain terms about the future. My last blog was published on a Sunday two weeks ago with a lot of expectation about an event, the Waterfront Half Marathon, which was beckoning to be yet another performance ceiling breaking event. Everything was auspicious for this - a clean sub-90 minute half marathon. My big talk was of a sub 1:28 result which would be a cathartic breaking of the 1:30 barrier that had always been such an issue for me. 

Well, if I had a decent memory, I should have the lead-in wasn't actually so auspicious before the last blog: my Coatesville Half run was marred by a hamstring issue. And I should have recognised that as a bad omen, or at least an important issue to work on, because just three days after the blog, and eleven days before the race, I set out in the morning on what would be my last real effort run before the event and promptly had an issue. The run had initially felt really good as my body demonstrated that it could handle pace and sustain it. But then just as I was about to take my foot off the gas that feeling in my hamstring returned, a tightening, the feeling of something bunching up, and then pain. It was exactly what had happened last time. So I stopped, stretched, and then as it was a work day tried jogging back the 4km home while not trying to aggravate it further... The whole return journey I was bothered by the fact that this was happening just eleven days before the Waterfront event and I would be losing some of my preparatory running.

Thinking back to the Coatesville hamstring issue, it had got better quite quickly with a post-race massage, a rest of a couple of days and some light running. So I tried repeating this treatment plan this time and while in Ashburton three days after the issue returned, I tried running gently and felt the issue come back on the run, and the sensation linger for a day. I tried some of my own exercises and stretches and on the following Wednesday, one whole week after the recurrence tried running but gave up after just 2km. I "gave in" and went to the physio. It was just four days before the event and I was feeling rather negative about the whole thing.

But the physio was great and she reminded me it was two years since my last visit! There was a good logic in my understanding of the injury (it was aggravated by pace and braking going downhill) and the treatment (strengthening at the lowest point on the hamstring which was not strong enough and improving flexibility). There was a nice new exercise, the neural stretch, that I enjoy doing and I'll probably include it into my strengthening regime. This whole episode made me think that I was very resilient physically last year but had upped my pace pleasingly in the last three months, but that I hadn't really done much to improve my tolerance of these kinds of efforts. 

So anyway, Thursday I did the prescribed exercises, Friday again. Saturday morning I went on an 8km fitness test/shake-out run. The tightening was there after two kilometres but I continued to run and found it didn't get any worse. I put three "race pace" 400m sections and it still didn't worsen. On that basis for the first time since the injury, I was positive to run the Waterfront Half, which was actually just this morning. 

Having run it before, I knew what to expect pre-race: in a word, pandemonium. They close Tamaki Drive and all the parking along it so when you add the vehicles of the 2500 runners and event staff, it makes for a stressful parking spot hunting expedition. Similar to Coatesville, I was a bit rushed, but fortunately managed to do everything I needed to do, and get into the starting chute through a side-branch. 

Ever since my recent fall, the GPS tracking on my watch had become very finicky. On this occasion, when 0700 hours ticked and the race began, my watch was still searching for signal after two fruitless minutes. I sprung my way through the early bunching, although a traffic island almost took me out (it looked like a clearing ahead - just didn't see the reason for it). My pace still looked slow on my watch but I knew from some familiar faces around me that I was going pretty quickly. Slightly worrying at the time was that I could feel tightness almost straight-away but it didn't affect my gait or pace. And in fact, not long after I didn't even think about it at all!

My biggest piece of luck was a running friend, Aaron J, noticing me and ran beside me. He is definitely in a faster class of running, and was unnerved that we were apparently in the same bunch so I asked him what his watch was giving him as a pace, to which he said: 4:04/km. (My watch was still finding its bearings with 4:29!). Now, for reference, 4:16 was my Coatesville pace. 4:10 was my goal pace for this race to get to 1:28, and I was going significantly faster than those times. It felt easy - and despite trying to slow down, the objective timings after the race showed I wasn't decelerating at all. I did 5km in 20:28, a pretty good parkrun time, and ran the second fastest 10km of my life, 41:08, in the first 10km of a 21.1km race... Aaron, though a very fast runner, had not been training much but is the kind of runner who can more or less, roll out of bed and run faster than most. He had humble goals and was happy to run with me while he found what pace worked for him. After about 10km I told him I'd drop back and until about the 14km I found it easy enough to sustain pace (which turned out later to be 4:06/km pace, which would have been a 1:26:30 finish if I had the gas to maintain it!). 

But after 14km my pace started to drop, at first without my feeling any difference. My watch started to indicate it and I was a bit worried that I might really start to decelerate. My hamstring was not even perceivable, although another quirky issue (my right hip flexor) did start to have some impact. Fortunately, though about 15-20 seconds per kilometre at times I still managed to recover and push towards the end. I cruised in the finish at 1:28:28, a personal best by 1 minute 30 seconds.

Now, 30 seconds faster would have gotten to my pre-injury goal of sub 1:28, but just getting to the end of the race without issue was the real prize. The PB was the cherry on top. I have confidence that my running has not been derailed and with continued conditioning I can build up another string of training for the Kirikiriroa Marathon in June. But I'll leave prognosticating about how that will go to.... after the event this time.