Monday, August 25, 2008

Victoria Marathon Training - Week 11

Week 11 down - I can't believe it. I kind of messed up this week and ran less than I was supposed to (according to my schedule) because I was looking at Week 12. Oh well, what can you do? Long run on Sunday was 15 miles around the entire downtown Vancouver peninsula (including Stanley Park).

It was POURING rain...which I can't really complain about because I've been so lucky with the weather all summer and it was more pleasant than being too warm. I couldn't have been more sopping wet by the end if I'd jumped into the drink - but it's all good. The iPod and Garmin survived as well. Rain or no rain, you can't beat running around the Stanley Park seawall on a Sunday morning. At least it wasn't crowded...

Current Marathon Training Playlist:

1. Don't Bring Me Down - Electric Light Orchestra 2. Vanished - Crystal Castles 3. I Like the Way (Radio Edit) - Bodyrockers 4. Just Dance - Lady GaGa 5. Dangerous (feat. Akon) - Kardinal Offishall 6. We're Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time) - Trooper 7. Shut Up and Let Me Go - The Ting Tings 8. Cry for You (USA Radio Edit) - September 9. Waterloo (English Version) - ABBA 10. Call on Me (Eric Prydz vs. Retarded Funk Remix) - Eric Prydz 11. Just What I Needed - The Cars 12. Disturbia - Rihanna I need more songs - but I have a hard time finding the exact right ones...any tips would be great.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Victoria Marathon Training - Week 10

Another pretty good week of running. Sunday I ran the longest distance so far in this training cycle - 17 miles - in the beautiful, rural town of Sidney, BC, just outside of Victoria. My Dad has a house there and it's also the location of my fall primer half-marathon, the Landsend Half Marathon on September 14th. So I decided to run the race route and my Dad came for half the distance on his bike.
The route is very scenic and interesting. There's a fair amount of agriculture in the area...
...and plenty of big hills! I did notice most of the big ones were during the first half of the course. There was one in particular around mile 4 which was about a mile long. Another important hill occurs around mile 8 and is very steep but short. It was very nice to run alongside the ocean at Patricia Bay and feel the breeze. I think the gorgeous surroundings will make the race more fun even though the hills present a bit of a challenge.

After an hour and a half with me my Dad changed places with my boyfriend Ian, who drove by to meet us. I didn't take any pictures of the biggest hills, I guess I was too busy just trying to either make it up or run down as fast as I could! A few notes about this first really long run:

-total time: 3:02:19 -Ate a lot of pizza the night before (veggie) & 2 packages of instant oatmeal 3 hours before the run -I drank a total of 2 litres of water mixed with gatorade (1/2 a scoop per 500 mL) and ate 3 Clif Shot Bloks during the run -I did not run out of energy, but my legs , feet, & hip joints became very sore and tired by around mile 13 -No stomach issues during the run -I TOTALLY crashed (mentally) about 2-3 hours after the run and needed to eat a date square to get myself functioning again -I had some GI issues later in the day

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Victoria Marathon Training - Week 9

This week extra nice because we got to spend it at our hidaway in Pemberton. We did a lot of napping and reading newspapers. We don't have cable or internet up there so what else does one do? Oh, yeah, we also did some outdoor activities like running, golfing (Ian, not me), mountain biking (again, Ian, not me), barbequing, hiking, and our new fun activitiy - looking for Geocaches. The highlight was our "big" hike - 4 miles at the peak of Whistler. If you look closely at the picture of my handy-dandy GPS Garmin thing-a-ma-bob you can see the elevation reading of 6024 feet. The terrain was not super easy, but interesting. We were walking around on the black diamond ski runs (for non-skiers that means Advanced). Funny to see those familiar slopes in the summer. We did not find any lost gloves, goggles or ski poles. We did however, see a grand total of 4 brown bears (from the safety of the gondola thank goodness). I think our dog Freddie had a nice vacation. He likes to hang around and be lazy (kind of like us), here's a clip of him doing just that on our deck.

Wrapped up the week with a 5K race back in Greater Vancouver (Ladner to be precise, which is part of Delta I think). I was fighting a head cold so I almost flaked out - Ian stayed home and slept in even though he was registered.

Happily all the 5K finishers got medals. I came in 11th overall and 5th among the ladies. My official chip time was 27:25. First time I had the Garmin for a race, big help to see real time info on pace. I think I can still improve, but I need to do more speed training. Back to the track on Tuesday I think....

Just a little housekeeping...I seem to have lost track of my weeks at some point so I have gone from Week 7 to Week 9. Think I'm on track now.