Official Hiatus

Just a quick heads up- I'm in the thick of exams now and likely won't be updating until mid-August. Thanks for sticking with me! 

- Patrick 

Miracles

I debated putting the blog on hiatus since I'm approaching exams and such, but figured a quick update wouldn't take too long. 

I tried an experiment last week that entailed doubling as long as my foot or IT band could handle it. This bright idea was conceived as I was faced with the prospect of having to get orthotics…I figured if I'm headed down that road anyhow, I really have nothing to lose at this point.

Surprisingly, my body handled it pretty well. Monday through Thursday were double days, as was Saturday, and my IT band held up just fine. To help out my foot, a metatarsal pad was placed on the left insole of my flats by Waterloo Sports Medicine on Wednesday to aid in preventing the beating my forefoot takes in them, but this only seemed to exacerbate the pain towards the outside of my foot, especially when I wore the flats for a workout Thursday evening. This carried over into Friday, even though I switched back into my Asics, and though Saturday morning I was feeling good, I regretted the evening run. Got a little too excited about the trails while I was home I guess. 

Sorry about the downer nature of this blog at the moment. As I've found out consistently over the years, there are no miracles in running, and apparently none for recovery either. I'm truthfully quite encouraged by the fact that I was able to get 5 solid days where I felt semi-normal again. I'll try to build on that as August approaches.

The Olympics start in the London soon, so why not watch Great Britain's greatest milers in the Los Angeles 1984 final?  Again, the better video doesn't allow imbedding, so here's the crappy American version:

The video I wanted to imbed is here. 

Rotisserie grill

While other sane people were spending their Friday evening doing their best to stay cool or take part in activities more appropriate for the sweltering weather, I and bunch of other crazies decided we'd all get together at the track down in London and see how much we could make ourselves sweat after twelve and a half laps inside TD Waterhouse Stadium. 

Which is to say Liam and I went ahead with running the 5000, despite the humidex still being reported at around 37 Celsius when we toed the line at 9:20 PM. 

To be frank, it wasn't the most pleasurable racing experience I've ever had. The first kilometre was hit right on schedule- a 3:05 with Liam sitting in behind that was bang on from the first 200. Happy to hit the first checkpoint relatively comfortably, I stopped listening for splits and worked on maintaining the same effort level. Based on my experience last year, I was hoping difficulties wouldn't arise until passing through 3k.

"6:16! 6:17!" I still have no idea how it happened, but somehow 3:05 morphed into 3:10+ as we hit 2K. Knowing I couldn't increase my tempo, I checked out racing for time at that point and tried to hold my position. I put a gap on Liam near the halfway point and from there on it was a solo effort in no man's land until Matt Brunsting lapped me with 500 m to go. 

I crossed the line in 15:52. How much was the heat worth, and how would an extra 50 miles a week leading up to it benefited me? I can only wonder. On a positive note, my IT band had been hurting all day leading up the race, but wasn't impacted once I had my spikes on. 

Running history video of the week: Joan Benoit winning the 1984 Olympic Marathon. The time she ran in the Los Angeles heat is still the Olympic record. To take the lead 14 minutes into a marathon and hold it for the next 2 hours+? Incredible. 

Frankenstein

Last summer while working in Hamilton I trained with the Harbour Track Club, which is composed almost entirely of McMaster athletes who stick around post-exams. While the women running with the club were probably a dozen strong, there was only four guys who were consistently in town to train: Noah Fleming, Sean Bowen, Ryan Tice, and myself. As it turned out, given our preferred events, this worked out fine. Tice and I were focused on running a 5000 on the track and that required that each of us didn't overdo it so as to be able to help the other through the next workout. Since we were also doing our off-day runs together in the Dundas Valley, we are also quite aware how the other was feeling on a day-to-day basis. In this way we trained symbiotically, feeding off each other on tougher days while keeping the easy days easy whenever one of us was feeling a little banged up. 

As our off-day miles started to creep up, Tice's weekly totals became higher than he'd ever done before, but unlike in the past, he managed to stay healthy as we continued our build. We both cracked 16 by a significant margin in the early July 5000 we had targeted, and continued to work out together for the rest of the summer during Harbour Track's hiatus before the CIS cross country season. For a guy who had never even been an alternate for a championship squad, I predicted Tice would crack the top 7 for McMaster and race at CI's. 

Fast forward 12 months, and I can't believe the monster I helped create. Tice not only made the CIS squad, he was the 4th scorer on a team that finished 6th in the country. He ran low 8:40s and 4:02 for 3k and 1500m indoors respectively (for a guy who'd never broken 9:10 the previous year) and has already run a faster 5k on the track AND road this year than I ever have. Simply put, he's been tearing it up. 

Why the lovefest over Tice? Well first of all, he deserves some credit for how rapidly he has improved in a year. Secondly, there's a Tice 2.0 that's currently in the barn, getting ready to blow the doors off. His name? Liam Mulroy. 

I can't say for sure, but I suspect Liam has been running more mileage this summer than ever before. And he's certainly running faster workouts than he's ever done, and in the process is absolutely crushing me. In what is becoming a cruel twist of fate I can only laugh at, I've added Liam to the list of people that I've trained with that can sprint faster than me. So that means the list of people who I have better wheels than is now reduced to…nothing. Again. Darn. 

Liam and I are both running 12.5 long laps on the track in London on Friday. The humidex is predicted to be 42…here's hoping it gets down to mid 30s by the time we race under the lights. But watch out world! Liam Mulroy is gonna set the track on fire. As they say on Letsrun…you heard it here first!!! 

Personal update: I'm still having injury issues, but am hoping I can crack 15:50 on my lowest mileage summer in about 4 years. 

In other news, I'd like to begin some form of weekly segment on this blog: a video related in some form to the history of the sport of running. Most will be race videos, but I'll try to find other stuff as well. The motivation behind this is a general lack of knowledge I've noticed among runners about some of the great runners of bygone eras. Does anybody who cares about the NBA go "Magic Johnson who???" Heck no. So take some time and educate yourself. 

To begin, here's some background information to set the tone:  It's August 13th, 1997. To cap a monumental year in which he started by setting successive records at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in 800 in both the heats and the final, Wilson Kipketer is attempting to break Sebastion Coe's outdoor world record of 1:41.73. A month earlier he managed to tie the record, which had stood for 16 years, and so it was speculated that it was only a matter of time before Kipketer bettered what was then considered one of the greatest track and field performances ever. In Zurich, Switzerland, in a stadium full of knowledgable and enthusiastic fans, Kipketer made his run at history: 

"48.10 AT 400 METRES! "

Want to make track exciting? Have these guys commentate every race. No one does it better than the Brits. (I'm aware the quality of the video is poor. For a link to a better version that doesn't allow imbedding, check it out here)