Monday, November 20, 2006

MAD ABOUT RUNNING

MAD ABOUT RUNNING - I was reading Vicky's running website, cause she just ran the Kerikeri half marathon, and as it happened, so did I.

On Saturday 18th November 2006, I stole someone's identity and ran in the Kerikeri half marathon! It was basically a last minute decision to run - here's how it all happened.

Ages ago, J planned to run the half. She asked me if i wanted to do it - "No thanks!" was my reply. I have basically lost my motivation to run - right now, I'm enjoying my mountainbiking and it's now part of my Saturday routine.
So, J was training for the half, but then she pulled a muscle in her leg. Once that got better, she started training again and got shin-splints. So no more training ...
About a week or two out from Kerikeri, she was always mentioning that her shins were sore, so I basically said it was a bad idea to run. (Undertrained + shin splints = bad experience on race day.)

Now we had already booked accommodation, and we were planning to go up anyway to support the other runners from J's workplace. (It's become a tradition for quite a few people to go up and run and have a fun weekend away.)
So I began to turn over the idea of using J's race number and entering, just to see if I could do it.
I told a few people on Friday and they thought it was crazy (but not impossible!) You see, I haven't been doing any regular running at all for months - in fact, my training has been really slack lately. Mostly mountain-biking once a week, sometimes road-riding on Thursdays, and the weekly gym session.
So, anyway, I packed my running gear and we drove up to Kerikeri on Friday afternoon.
I woke up and felt good on Saturday morning - another guy from our group had to pull out and I ended up using his race number (since I was more likely to get a result being a guy - rather than pretending to be my wife!) So, for the record my name in Kerikeri was "Scott Hodge".

So, put on the running gear, and headed out to the start line - got there about 7:30am. It was COLD ... spitting down, and a cool breeze. Oh yeah, and i taped my secret weapon to my arm - a couple of EAS Energy Gel pouches.

Lined up at the start - probably about half way down the field. Gun went at 8am, and it took me a minute to reach the start line.
I planned to run 6 minute k's for the first half of the race, and then take it from there depending on how my legs felt.
So, started off taking "little steps" - well, that's what it felt like, a really short stride, trying to go for "minimal leg damage". Quite a few people passed me, but that's what I expected. I hit every km marker basically right on 6 minutes for the first 10km. I wasn't feeling tired but my legs were definitely feeling tight at that stage.
I'd taken half a gel at 30 minutes, and another half at 60 min.

The course was going downhill now, so I opened it up a little just to test the legs. It felt ok, but I couldn't keep it up for 11kms, so I stayed at the 6 min/km pace.
I figured I'd open it up at 16km (5km to go - anyone can do that!), and just tried to keep it steady from the 10km mark to the 16.
By this stage my breathing was a bit heavier, but still didn't feel like i was really exerting myself. I had another half a gel at 80 minutes.

Finally, I hit the 16km mark at probably 95 minutes. So 5kms to go in about 25 minutes to come in at 2 hours. I started to stride out a bit, taking my normal running stride. My quads were really tight, but they didn't hurt.
I saw J and some other GC supporters at the 18km mark - they all cheered me on, which gave me a real boost, and I ran hard to the 19km. Well, it seemed like I was running fast!
I passed quite a few people in the last 2kms, and really ran hard down the main street at Kerikeri. Gave a final little sprint to get to the finish line in 2:00:50 (gun time); 1:59:35 (chip time).

Had a rest and a Mizone and chatted to some other GCers at the finish line. Basically hobbled around like an old man for the rest of the day ... walking extremely slowly.

Overall: I'm glad i did it. I can now say I ran a half marathon with no training in 2 hours. Would I do it again? Only if i trained properly. But that's going to require 12 weeks of proper effort - I don't know if I'll find the motivation to do that. Maybe I'll get hooked on running again ... who knows!?!?

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

It's 10:46pm on a Tuesday

And I feel like blogging, which is a bit strange.
This morning I went for a swim for the first time in probably 6 weeks. I decided to stay out of the pool since I put a small hole in my shin during a mountain biking ride. It was taking ages to heal up so I figured keeping it dry was the best bet.
So finally the scab fell off, and my leg was practically back to normal.
I mucked around something chronic, and got to the pool by about 8:30am.
After that much time off, I figured that I should take it easy and swim 500m easy. But after the first couple of lengths, I was feeling pretty good, so I ended up swimming 750m. It was pretty slow going, and i definitely felt tired towards the end - just no arm strength. But at least it wasn't a complete struggle.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

What's happened lately ...

Well, nothing much of note has happened lately.
I've been mountainbiking a fair bit lately, and also doing a bit of road riding.
Went out to Woodhill on Saturday, and did a 30km ride in 2:20. Headed off to the Northern trails - rode NZO course, plus a small section of the Specialized course.

Work is busy as ... I'm a bit stressed at the moment, because something went wrong at a client site. We will see today whether it can all be fixed.

Anyway, apart from that things are just rolling on as they always have ...

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Training update

6/5/06 - Raced in TotalSport Summer Series #3 MTB @ Hunua.
Did the 30km shortcourse in around 1:50.

7/5/06 - Short road ride along North Western cycle way.

8/5/06 - Ride to work and back on commuter. Seems to be ticking along quite nicely.

10/5/06 - Swim 1km @ Cameron Pools.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Swim Training

So I got out of bed at 5:54am this morning. I was lying there for a while beforehand, wondering whether I should get out and go swimming or not. As it was, there was no going back to sleep, so I got up, mucked around for a while, got my stuff together and finally drove off to the pool.
Got into the water around 6:40am ... saw Brent there. He was just finishing off his session with the tri-squad. He reckoned I should try turning up at 6am for the next session, and having a go with the squad.
Anyway, I swam about 1000m. Couldn't quite be sure, cause I couldn't count properly. My arms are good and tired now. Think I'll go to bed.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Road Ride

Sunday morning: Went for a 35km road ride today - out to Glen Eden, up West Coast Road to Scenic Drive, and back home. Beautiful morning for it. I've heard that Sunday mornings are the traditional "big ride" day - that was clearly the case out in the Waitakere's. Saw at least 20 other riders out on the west coast roads, in fact I tagged onto one bunch coming back in towards Titirangi. Makes a nice change riding with a bunch (although i just stuck on the end of the last guy ... don't know if they'd really want to ride behind some random.) There's a whole art to group riding that I haven't really looked at yet.
The other notable thing about this ride is that it's a really nasty climb from Glen Eden to Scenic Drive. I was down in the granny ring (my roadie has triple chainrings - yeah i'm a beginner) and really puffing away. I don't know how you'd get up with standard road rings.

Stats:
Distance: 35Km
Time: 1:20:29
Max: 66.5km/hr
Avg: 25.8km/hr

Monday, February 27, 2006

History repeats

Well, we are just suckers for punishment.
Back two Saturdays ago, J and I went down to do the Lake Taupo relay again. We went down on Friday night, J stayed up all night and ran 10km at 5am. I went to sleep. And then we drove back to Auckland at about 9am.
Got back to Auckland around 1pm, J had a quick nap, and then we were off to Mike and Andree's wedding ...

Now this weekend we went with J&K to Rangitoto. We kayaked across - about 45 minutes there, walked up to the top, and then kayaked back again (1:15 or so). I was so stuffed by the end of that.
Spent all Sunday lying round feeling tired, and now i'm back at work - still tired.