Like the poster says… 5h41 mins
Race Day: The Marathoning 3
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Like the poster says… 5h41 mins
Author Archives: specialk
Week 90: And on the third and final try
The Greek Orthodox Church allows us to get married divorced two and remarried three times. The last marriage is really the last try…
And this too is my last bite at the 5h 41 minute apple.
The first time I did a Marathon, finishing was the goal.
The second time I did the Athens Marathon, I wanted to break 5 hours and finished 1 minute slower than the first time. Who can forget the 5 pictures I took to immortalize my failed attempt at breaking my PR.
And on this my third and final time, my goal is to just beat my PR.
Week 88 – Damn you to hell big data
I’ve been not losing weight recently. And I, as is tradition, invented many interesting theories about my weight loss. Many interesting theories that explained how the Laws of Thermodynamics and my weight problems were fundamentally unrelated.
Those guys who invent fanciful fusion machines were all people who had weight problems. The laws of physics don’t apply to how people gain or lose weight and therefore certainly don’t apply to how Fusion may work. If Cold Fusion is possible, then losing weight unconstrained by Thermodynamics should be possible…
Except. Except. Except – Fusion is not possible.
Here you can see how many steps I took as measured by my new iPhone 6+
Here you can see my weight more or less track my activity.
As my activity increases, my weight drops and as my activity decreases my weight increases.
Big Data once again bursts my delusional bubble.
What to do… What to do?
No more big data. Enough already. I want my delusions.
Week 86: The need for sleep
The last two weeks have been brutal. Back-to-back 2:30 hour runs. Mind you my coach was wondering if I could turn one of those into a 3:30 run. My personal life was like nooooo…
One of the big things I did this week was run on a trail. And man running on a trail in the middle of the blistering hot day is hard.
First of all your speed is noticeably slower when you are running on loose gravel than when running on cement.
Secondly, you’re going slower because of your of fear of slipping.
Thirdly, you have this feeling that if I die here, will anyone know or care and that makes you even more cautious..
I’ve stopped updating my weight. Nothing really nefarious going on. Just I haven’t been losing weight. And to be honest, not really trying anymore. With the Athens Marathon only a month away, the weight is what it is. Losing weight now would be a mistake. Need to make sure I don’t gain any.
Booze and Trainning
Last weekend I got drunk celebrating my tenth year wedding anniversary. And the next day the training was rough… Very rough. I once again had to remember that I am not 20…
Week 86 – 4:45 marathon (over two days)
Training for a marathon is brutal. Trying to set a new PR for a marathon reminds me of the following quotation from the Shepherd Boy by the Brother’s Grimm:
But nobody could, and the king said, “The third question is, How many seconds does eternity have?”
The little shepherd boy said, “The Diamond Mountain is in Lower Pomerania, and it takes an hour to climb it, an hour to go around it, and an hour to go down into it. Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.”
The key to setting a new PR isn’t to go fast, it’s to go consistently faster over a long time. Your job is to chisel a tiny bit of time over every mile. And that is hard. Because in the beginning you need to go slower than you want and in the end you need to go faster than you want. Go too fast to start, and you have nothing left in the end, go too slow at the start and you can’t cover enough distance fast enough to end.
This balancing act is something I have yet to master. I look more like the amateur that sprints the first two miles, only to discover that there are 24 more to go. My closing times aren’t bad they are ghastly. And every time it’s because I came out way too strong in the beginning …
Part of it … I know this is heresy, may have been that I was simply not fit enough. A combination of extra body weight, and a lack of depth of training meant that I had enough strength to do a half marathon, but was finished around mile 15. All that was left between mile 15 and 26 was survival …
This is not for the faint of heart. This setting of new PR’s.
And therefore it is encouraging that over the last two days, I was able to finish a full marathon in 4:45 minutes. Obviously it’s much easier to take a 24 hour break between mile 14 and mile 15 than continue running, but this is a good indicator.
Another strong indicator is my best times for my long runs are all this year and are all a full minute faster than last year.
Unlike last year, though, I refuse to believe anything is in the bag. I refuse to sign the rights to my memoirs “How I did the Athens Marathon in under 5h42 minutes” until after I do it.
Hubris, the gods like to punish. And I refuse to be proud…
Week 85 – Rest
Spend enough time reading about the key to training and you’ll read about Rest.
How rest is important.
How it’s all about rest.
Rest, rest I tell you.
The key to getting into peak fitness is recovery.
Rest.
When you start training the idea that you would need to be told to stop is … well absurd. After all my second post was about how thankful I was for a rest day.
This past week I have been supposed to be resting. Unfortunately because of a rather nasty data corruption bug, I have been unable to sleep. And by the end of the week I was exhausted. I could barely move. And I told my coach who said:
You need to rest. You are not going swimming today, tomorrow’s workout is being reduced you need to rest and be ready for the back-to-back long runs.
So I went to sleep for 9 hours, and was feeling great, and told my coach that I was feeling fine, and he said:
All the same, it’s important to be recovered after your “recovery week” and before heading into this next block of training. Erring on the side of some extra rest will allow you to come back strong for the end of this week’s long runs.
And then I realized I was reading one of those articles… and I was that athlete who didn’t want to rest, because well exercise is sooooooooo much more fun…
Two years into training … and I am a different person. And damn resting is booooooooooooooring.
My heart bleeds for Lake Tahoe, Residents and Triathletes
There was a wild fire in lake tahoe that resulted in the cancellation of the Half Ironman.
My heart bleeds for the trees that are probably getting destroyed because of a century of excessive fire fighting, and for people’s homes that are at risk and for the area that is getting hurt…
And as a triathlete, my heart bleeds for those who trained for this race and it was their first half. Working that hard for that long only to have it go up in smoke is painful.
For my scoffers
Four years ago, a doctor looked at me and scoffed when I suggested that I might be able to get my health under control
Two years ago, I scoffed at myself that I could get my weight below 200 and keep it there.
Kostadis 2 – Scoffers 0
Oh okay, the scoffers do get 1 point – I didn’t do the Athens Marathon in under 5 hours.
New PR for 5km of 24m58
I just did a tempo run on the track and crushed my old PR of 27:39 from last year.
And I did my first sub-8 minute mile since I was 18…
Woot! Woot! Woot!
Week 80 – Long sleep and updates
First updates… unfortunately life has once again intervened pushing out my ironman, AGAIN! That’s okay. Opportunity to do more half-ironmen. And remember the purpose isn’t to get to Ithaka, the point is to get there when you have accumulated the wisdom and experiences of a lifetime.
One of the indirect consequences of this inability to get an Ironman done, is for me to refocus my thinking on whether my long term 20 year goal should be to finish 150 marathons… Marathons have the nice property that they require less training and less equipment …
On Friday (Aug 8, 2014), I went for my first long run after my return from Greece.
And I learned something that it is, indeed, possible to go running and fall asleep while running.
This was shocking.
I had no idea this was possible. To be so sleepy that you find yourself wanting to just curl up on the ground and sleep… Worse you’re so sleepy that you can’t see straight or run straight.
I figured that if you’re that sleepy you shouldn’t be able to run period.
Maybe you aren’t … Maybe it was a sick dream.
The first three miles were surreal. My running partner,
basically dragged me around the neighborhood.
Figuring my diminished capacity was unsafe with my dog, I decided to finish the run solo.
Unfortunately, that’s when I discovered the dry heaves.
Turns out when you are that sleepy you can only go so fast. Every time I tried to pick up the pace I stopped on the side and executed the dry heave maneuver. Fortunately it was late at night and no one saw that. Really.
Because I am that obsessive triathlete, instead of just stopping, I pushed on some more.
The problem then was that the slower pace was just simply not comfortable. And yes I managed to re-tweak my calf! Ice-packs here I come!
Finally reaching my house, took a shower and crawled into bed. I do not remember the part about crawling into bed. I am just certain it happened because I woke up there.
My wife is an amazing tolerant person.