The horn blows and we're off..... but lets rewind a little bit
Friday May 27, 2011
So the prep for a marathon usually starts off a lot earlier than just race day. Some people say that you should start drinking more water the week before, but I usually drink enough water as it stands, it just becomes a lot more important in these days before. So here I was drinking lots of water making sure I wasn't thirsty
Saturday May 28, 2011
This was a day that I definitely felt quite fat as all I was doing was sitting there, and eating. Even Ken was like man is all you're doing sitting and eating? Ya pretty much. Because you want to make sure you're not tapping into any of your energy reserves. That also creates a slight problem because your last run that you want to do you don't want to go too deep. So nice short run to make sure the legs were all nice and ready to go, had some good pasta which I have my mom to thank for that. It was also this night that I was stupid and ate some spicy soup. Absolutely fantastic soup, but wrong time to have it.
Sunday May 29, 2011
This day started quite early with me eating MOOOAARRRRR, I probably could've scaled back the food a little bit but I mean hey I did it last year and it seemed to work alright without me getting too hungry so we'll do it again this year right. I woke up at 4, ate some more pasta and some Slim Fast (I can't remember if I've talked about it, but if I haven't I shall soon it's a great recovery drink). Went back to sleep and then I woke up at 6 to have one last snack and sip on some gatorade before the race and that gets us all the way to start of the race....7 AM
7 AM
The horn goes off, and man the organizing committee has absolutely no imagination just like every other race committee. What song would you play to get all the runners motivated before a race in the morning? Clearly some music from BEP is warranted, and what other song then Let's get retarded, but of course they wouldn't play the real version, and they played radio edit version "Lets get started". Thank you calgary marathon for fulfilling the obligatory cliche song to play before the race.... greatly appreciated.....NAWT.
So another gripe that I have with races is that all too often people are horribly out of place with their seeding in the race. And we absolutely love it when somebody stops about 100 meters after the line comes to a complete stop right in the middle of all of us running. We absolutely love it guys, we enjoy nothing more than filtering through all of your trying to get ourselves into where we want to be. So please guys if you can't run that pace, or at least hold that pace for a reasonable distance, do not plop yourselves there.
Alright enough griping now and it's all about the race. This year I have to say I trained a whole lot more than I did last year, this was partly due to the fact that I didn't get swine right in the middle of training which forced me to take a very awesome and completely un-wanted break in the middle of marathon training and from there I never really ever recovered and thus ran a very painful marathon last year. This year though I was going to shoot for a relatively ambitious 3:30, that might have been slightly over ambitious but hey I was going to target something around that pace. When I hit mile 6 my stomach decided to play unhappy camper and this really happened at probably one of the more inopportune times because I was feeling good, I was nailing a nice 8:20-8:30 per mile pace. But of course stomach problems hit. So I walked a bit, rested up and ran again, but my stomach would have none of it, so the next two miles were a disaster. From there I was ~240 seconds behind schedule, not a huge deal, I had 20 miles to make up that kind of time, 22 seconds, ya I could claw some of that back, maybe not all of it. So got back on track and was like I'm going to do this, and proceeded to pretty much claw back 40 of those seconds over the next 4 miles, not quite where I wanted but hey now I was only 200 seconds behind right?..... WRONG Stomach decided to play unhappy camper for the next 2 miles, and surprisingly nailed 2 miles both at 10.04 on the dot, totally not trying to becaues I wasn't feeling good. The worst part about this was this was after I had managed to run down a TON of people coming up Shaganappi Trail and then looping around Varsity Acres. It was at this point my body was finding it unbelievably hard to make use of anything that I was taking in and as you know that once your stomach is not aggreeing to play ball you're done. From there my stomach would feel good, and then feel bad, good bad good bad, and I was just absolutely done for at that point. It become a question of not can I finish, and how can I finish.
I talked earlier this week about what to do when shit goes wrong and I started reasoning with myself, Kel one more mile then walk for a minute, and it's amazing when people cheer you on. Speaking of which holy crap there were a ton of people that ran Boston out cheering on the course, it's kinda cool to see that so thanks to the people I will probably never get to meet but helped me through. I hung onto the 4 hour pace group for quite a while, met a really nice guy from Ontario, who was trying to run a marathon in every province. Thank god he picked ours over edmonsuck, but that helped for quite a bit because running with a group you don't feel as bad, it's a collective effort moving forward. This year I actually could run down Shag, slowly but I could run down shag and it felt good unlike last year where I was absolutely hurting like no other. It was cool running along memorial because TONS of people cheer you on, encourage you, give you motivation, they tell you you're looking strong (Even if you're looking like crap) and it actually does help.
The last stretch when I was 10k out, I started doing some time distance calculations and was like 4 hours is a very reasonable goal to hit and I can totally do it, it's only 10k common Kel you've run a 1 hour 10k for the past.... umpteen years so off I trotted. I'm really glad I brought along some extra gels because even though I probably didn't NEED them, it was nice to have something sweet in the closing bit and just putting on the after burners. So finishing straight I was starting to hurt but I had to put in a last kick, and so I did sprinting to the end, eating up a bunch of people that didn't have a finishing kick. At the end yeah I hurt, but I wasn't absolutely and completely drained like I was last year. It's a nice feeling that I didn't hurt and could actually walk but that's because I couldn't run as hard as I wanted.
Cool things from this race include:
My name is apparently Kelving.... which is absolutely hilarious because if you know my last name is Ng. The Ng is pronounced like "Ing". So come at the finish line when the announcer calls out people's names he was like Kelvingng.......errrrr 20 years old from Calgary. It definitely brought a smile to my face.
Second thing is the timing chip is not so much a timing chip as it is a timing tag(s). Its on your race bib and you MUST wear your race bib for it to work. See those strips on the sides, and the one on the front at the bottom?
So I mean how was the race overall, well it was nice, good weather, nice to learn where I stand for my next marathon, and we're back to training again. Thats going well so I'll keep you guys posted on the raod to the next one
~Cheers
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