Sunday 10 February 2013

#95 Baby's In Black

It's currently that weird period of time between eating a bunch of food to fuel up and then having to wait an hour or two to actually start the long run. And since it's been over a month since I last posted anything here, I figured I would write down some things.

The last time I wrote (in early Jan) I was dealing with an injury that at first seemed very serious but turned out only to be some bad tendinitis in my left foot. I was able to manage it quite comfortably with ice, massage, Vitamin I(buprofan; Advil) and some well timed rest between runs.

After the long run today, I will have run 5 straight weeks (almost literally as I've only taken one complete rest day in 34 days and counting) without any cause for concern including 3 'mega' weeks that have me right back on track for Boston.

There are 9 weeks still to go and lots of work to be done.


Two weeks ago on Sun 27 Jan, I ran my first race of the season, the Robbie Burns 8k in Burlington, ON. It's a super well organized event with a great 'after-party' and awards celebration. I personally ran a pretty good and strategic race in which I managed a slight negative split and passed two guys in the last 2k which meant I felt really strong in the late stages of the race. I finished in a time of 27min flat (26:59 according to chip timing) which is a pace of 3:22/k and placed 8th overall. I was sorta hoping it would have been about 20sec faster, but was satisfied with the overall performance given the early stage of training and my earlier injury woes.

Black Lungs Toronto was also looking to shine in our first 'official' unveiling as a club. We sent 14 of our runners and had a few on the side-lines as well (Get well soon guys). The group did very well and we had 9 in the top 25 and 12 in the top 50 which is pretty impressive for a race of well over 800 finishers and which also attracts a fairly competitive field. Hiddleston was the top Master (40+) and Davey the 'Grand Master' (50+) and a couple guys in particular (Chappers, Burton and Clearsky) also posted incredible performances.


Next up is the Peterborough Half in two weeks which is another great race and a perfect tune-up for Boston (ie it has hills). Baring any unforeseen disaster today, I will log my first 100+ mile week of training and hope to follow it up with another one next week before tapering somewhat for the Half. Lots of running still to do and as they say, "getting there is half the fun." I'd say it's more like four fifths!


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