Training Blog July 26th

First update! So far, most of my workouts have been long steady runs, with three shorter (8-12km), two medium (12-17km), and one longer (>20km) per week. I use this website mapmyrun.com, which is really useful! It's the same as google maps, except it takes elevation into account and has a bunch of other useful tools geared toward runners, including lists of pre-mapped routes of varying distances in your area. If the pre-mapped routes are simple enough that I can remember them and navigate them at night, when I typically run, I'll use those. Otherwise, mapping them myself is fun too, and I can make them in familiar enough areas that I won't get lost :) I initially just ran on the track on campus so I could monitor my pace, but I was hard pressed to find a time when it wasn't in use or closed with No Trespassing signs everywhere. So now I set my stop watch going at home and check my time at the end of the run to figure out my pace. Primitive, right? I'd love to get a GPS watch so I could track my pace throughout...hopefully I'll get my hands on one soon.
I've been trying to track my progress based on my times for 13km runs, trying to maintain approx the same perceived effort each day. I wanted to start doing blog updates as soon as I started to plateau, so I wouldn't find myself reflecting with too much confidence, since you'll usually see improvement over the first few runs of a season that you may never see until the next season :)
My first 13km was tough because I hadn't run that far in over a month! I finished it in 67min, which is 5:09/km, just over the 5:06 that the Scotiabank website recommends for training for a 3h10min marathon. I was also exhausted at the end haha, making it less of a steady run pace, and more of a tempo...but 13k times that I remember since then, at paces that felt less and less like tempo runs, have been 65, 63, 60, 60min. The repeated 60s (59:57 and 59:54) show me that I'm past the getting-back-into-form phase, and now in the trying-to-get-faster phase, which is the point when I wanted to start blogging.
I'll close with some highlights from Monday's run. I was running up a road with small forests on either side, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods. So definitely a safer place to run at night, but at that moment, not much light other than the street lights. All the street lights suddenly shut off, and I couldn't see two feet in front of me! I kept going because the lights were still on 100m ahead, but after seeing the Dark Knight Rises on the weekend, my gut response was 'organized crime operation?'. Turns out it was a power outage. Not Bane. On the same run though, I inhaled a live bug for the first time, AND had a dragonfly buzz into my mouth. With the bug, I felt it fly in, then thought I'd managed to cough it out...then felt it in the back of my throat and realized 'it's not coming back out, is it'. The dragonfly was terrifying though, since it was wider than my mouth and didn't really fit, you know...all it took was one panicked hack to get it out though. A car slowed down because I guess it looked like I was having a seizure, but then I kept running and they kept driving. All in a night's work :)
Until next time!

Fighting With a Lion

First blog entry, here goes! This blog is going to be about my training for the Scotiabank Toronto marathon on October 14th. My goal this year is to run under the 3h5min standard to qualify for the Boston Marathon in April. I've been following the recommended training schedule from the Scotiabank website (http://www.torontowaterfrontmarathon.com/en/training-schedule-marathon-run-310.htm), and it's tough, long, and pretty lonely! So I wanted to find a way to try and unload the hours of solitary work out of my own head and into a place I can remember it later. And I've always loved reading other people's blogs about stuff they love, so hopefully if you read this you'll enjoy it!

I titled my blog 'Fighting With A Lion' because of an article I read about the great Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrselassie, in which a competing runner describes racing against Haile as being "like fighting with a lion". So if you imagine taking on the challenge of fighting with a lion, here are some points that might come to mind: 1) You're not designed to do it. Your body doesn't want to fight a lion. It's made for fighting things your own size. So too with running hard for hours, you're subjecting your body to stress that it isn't used to accommodating. 2) If you make excuses for not sticking to your task, your results will suffer. Fighting a lion, the results of your goal to survive suffer (as do your limbs). Miss a workout, with good reason or not, and you've missed that opportunity to improve. Necessary rest days count as workouts in this case... 3) You're most intimidated when you're about to start. 4) Your adversary will always have more strength and bigger paws, but it's always possible to reach your goal! It IS possible to fight a lion to the death by hand. It's not LIKELY, and I dunno HOW, but in principle it IS possible. So too with training, if you set the ultimate goal of training perfectly all the time, you'll probably slip up here and there, but it's a good goal to strive for. 5) And finally (this is less of an analogy, more of a tribute to Haile), you have to admire how good lions are at fighting. Imagine training until you became that powerful! So too with Haile, look him up, he's pushed himself and seen legendary results that have cemented him as one of the greatest athletes in history. There's nothing fake about Haile running, or lion fighting. They can't trick the public into thinking they're talented, the way celebrities and politicians sometimes can. When you're running a marathon, or fighting a lion, there's nothing fake. You put your heart and sweat into the wild, hot task ahead, and stick with it with everything you've got until you're finished. Dig deep, find the courage and just give 'er!

I'll be back with an update of how training's going soon :) Please do let me know any advice you have for me!