Training – Page 3 – My Second Running Life

Seeing Double?

Yesterday’s run along the Bow River was nice, but for the ice. And the wind. Otherwise, it was perfect! Good company, bright sunshine, and lots of runners out. Thanks, Deb and Sherrey for getting me to 13k, which was more than I expected to do.

Given the conditions, we decided to head east from Eau Claire. Better to warm up a bit before facing the breeze. We reached the 12th St bridge in Inglewood before turning around, 3k into our run. Even after so many years, passing the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers always feels special to me.

Our crossing point happens to be the location of a unique statue. Or maybe not so unique. But more on that shortly.

The statue I’m referring to is called Wolfe and the Sparrows. It was sculpted in bronze by Brandon Vickerd in 2019. Vickerd is a Hamilton-based artist and professor at York University.

General Wolfe was the commander of the British forces at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. He led the British to a rather important victory there in 1759.

As I stepped carefully around the statue… that ice!… I stopped to admire it for a few seconds. I wondered what Vickerd had in mind when he replaced Wolfe’s upper body with a flock of sparrows.

Later, I read the city’s description of the statue, which states that the community wanted something “critical, challenging and funny”. I think Vickerd succeeded with this piece.

According to his bio, Vickerd seeks to “provoke the viewer into questioning the dominate myth of progress ingrained in Western world views.” His Wolfe statue touches on themes of indigenous reconciliation, so maybe he hit the mark there too.

Why? Apparently, in many cultures and religions, sparrows represent good fortune, happiness, and resilience. They are non-native birds in North America, which makes them a good choice for a piece meant to convey the importance of reconciliation.

I like Vickerd’s statue a lot. I decided that whatever he intended, it works as a thought-provoking piece of public art.

Back to our run. Continuing west along the river past 14 St, we saw many familiar faces, including some quick runners in RunCalgary‘s 12k’s of Christmas. Well done, Reinier and Mel, Matt and Jeremy!

It was a quick pace at the front of the pack

Now, what about my comment about the uniqueness of the Wolfe statue?

On the drive home, I asked Deb to make a slight detour so we could stop at Calgary’s “other” Wolfe statue. Appropriately, this one sits in Wolfe Park in Mount Royal.

This bronze statue by Scottish sculptor John Massey Rhind was completed in 1898. It was originally located in New York City and was sold to Calgary philanthropist Eric Harvie in 1966. The statue was donated as a public art piece in 2009.

You’d have to call this version of Wolfe a traditional rendering. It shows the general looking off into the distance as if contemplating the battle to come. (By the way, Wolfe didn’t survive it.)

I like this statue too, and I’ve photographed it often. It certainly is a worthy addition to the neighbourhood. I try capturing it in different lighting conditions, as it seems to change the expression on Wolfe’s face.

From chest level down, these two statues are identical. Vickerd chose to do this. Was it homage to Rhind’s statue? Maybe. We are left to wonder what message he was sending by adding the swallows. For me, while the original statue is handsome, it can’t match Vickerd’s version as a provocative piece of art.

In closing, we’re fortunate to have two very different Wolfe statues in Calgary. Both are impressive pieces, in their own way.

Dealing with Low Motivation

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Do you ever feel that you’ve lost your motivation to run?

It happens to all of us. Maybe you’ve recently finished a major goal race, or you’re just not sure what your goals are. You feel like you’re going through the motions.

Whatever the reason, you should know that you’re not alone in feeling low on motivation from time to time.

Getting through these inevitable low stretches can be a challenge. When this happens to me, I trust my instincts. I remind myself that running is an essential part of who I am. I know I won’t feel this way forever.

Here are a few thoughts on managing feelings of low motivation.

(1) If you need a break, take it

Could your lack of motivation be a signal that you’re physically burned out? If so, take a break from running. It doesn’t have to be a long break, or even a predetermined timeframe, unless of course you’re injured or you’ve just run a goal race of anything more than 10k. In that case, you should make sure you take your full, well-earned recovery.

Burned out? (Elbow Drive, Calgary, 2020)

If your body is telling you that you’ve overdone it, there’s no downside to taking a hiatus. Think about it as some fun time away from running. During your break, you should fill your running time with something else: ride a bike, or swim. Maybe take up the guitar. You’ll almost certainly miss running and want to get back to it before too long. And when you do, you’ll probably find you are fully motivated.

(2) Forget structured training

When we’ve finished a race buildup, especially if we nailed our goal time, the last thing we want to contemplate is backing away from that structured environment. After all, we lived in a world of tightly managed, regimented training for months. But give it a try. Your low motivation could be as simple as being emotionally spent from too much structure… too much focus. It’s almost as if you’re trapped.

If you think this might be the issue, run to perceived effort for a while, not a target pace. Give yourself permission to back away from weekly mileage totals and hard workouts, which you should be doing anyway if you’re recovering from a goal race. I’d recommend forgetting about structured training for at least that long. The hardest part might be getting over the feeling that you’ll lose fitness. In the long run, you’ll be better off if you come back emotionally charged for the next build-up.

(3) Try a new running challenge

One of the tricks that has worked for me when I feel unmotivated is to commit myself to a different running challenge than I might normally pursue.

For me, the local Strides Run Streak is an ideal way to end the running year. I like it because in addition to the totally achievable (one mile per day) running goal, I incorporate a photographic element into my daily runs. I’m giving myself goals that have nothing to do with pace or distance. To me, it’s like a series of small tests that I know I can pass, even if the running is easy and most (but not all) of the pictures aren’t keepers.

Find your own challenge: maybe you could sign up for a winter cross-country race series like the one the Calgary Roadrunners put on every year. Do an urban orienteering event. Or try a month of weekly parkruns. My advice is to look for something that isn’t high stakes.

(4) Remind yourself why you run

The final thought I will leave you with if you’re feeling unmotivated is that we sometimes get too caught up in the process of training and racing. I call it the “what” of running. Sure, there’s nothing to match the feeling of achieving a goal. By doing so, we get instant validation and tangible evidence of our progress as amateur athletes.

I think the problem comes when we set up an endless cycle of goal setting, which can get in the way of the pure joy that comes from just running.

Missing the “why”? (Sedona Rainbow, 2021)

My advice is to remember the “why” for our running. I suggest you do a bit of reflection on this question. Write down three things that you get from running, things that have nothing to do with goals or target races.

Before you know it, you’ll be back with a renewed commitment to the sport we love.

What a Difference a Week Makes

As anyone who has lived here can tell you, Calgary doesn’t do fall very well. Sure, it can be nice one day, but we know not to be fooled. It’s only a matter of time before the weather turns into a demon.

This past week was a good case in point.

The First Responders races are hosted by Multisports Canada, in support of all first responders – police, fire, EMS and military. Races are held across Western Canada. This year, the Calgary race was held on October 22, on beautiful St. Patrick’s Island.

It was a cool day… a perfect day for racing. A good turnout for the 5k, 10k and half marathon races provided lots of opportunities for runners and spectators. Deb and I were there to cheer on some young athletes from our club. We were also fortunate to have Dan in town for the weekend. He was with members of his Cold Lake squadron, to compete in the 10k.

Overcast skies and the scenic backdrop of the island also promised some great photo opportunities. I got myself ready in a few strategic locations, with my Leica M10 and the excellent Voigtlander 75mm Heliar f1.8 lens in hand.

Competitors in the Half Marathon make their way across the George C. King Bridge

The racers didn’t disappoint. There was plenty of excitement and some terrific performances. You can find the results for all the races here. The ageless Maria Zambrano, who has been a fixture in the Calgary race scene for decades, won the 10k outright, in a sparkling time of 36:09. She isn’t getting older, she is getting faster. Amazing!

Maria Zambrano heads for home in the 10k

Providing more evidence that age is really just a number, Andrew Brown took home top honours in the half marathon, running 1:26:35. By the way, Andrew is in the 50-59 age group.

I was wearing two hats (well maybe three, given the temperature.) As an assistant coach, I was rooting for two young runners in our Adrenaline Rush club, Alison and Owen MacPherson. Both raced their plans to perfection, chalking up negative splits and looking far too comfortable at the finish. Dad Gord was there to cheer them on!

The MacPherson family celebrates two fine performances in the 5k

Now, what about the demon, you ask?

Our time ran out on Monday, with the arrival of a cold front. It was the first blast of winter. By the time it was done, 15cm of snow had fallen on Calgary, and our pleasant fall was a distant memory. We are still digging out! And running on treadmills for the most part.

Proving the resilience of the Calgary running community, a small army of volunteers picked up their shovels and headed for the track at the Glenmore Athletic Park.

As Deb and I worked to clear a couple of lanes on the back straight, I did some math to take my mind off my aching back. It took us an hour of hard work to clear about 200m of one lane. Did you know that one lane on a standard track is 4 feet (1.2m) wide? That means each of us did about 250 square metres of shovelling.

I also had time to figure out that the total surface area of a 400m track is about 4,300 square metres. So, between Deb and I, we managed to clear about 12 percent of the total surface area of the track. Thank goodness we had a lot of help.

No wonder I’m sore today.

Deb, Reinier Paauwe and Jeremy Deere work on the first corner

It all goes to show that Calgarians are adaptable, resilient and community-minded. We runners in the southwest will have a few lanes to train in, at least until the next snowfall.

Stay warm!

Thoughts on Pacing

It was a scenario that will be familiar to many runners. I arrived at our weekly interval session, only to find that my Garmin Forerunner watch had died. Given that our workout called for 600-metre repeats, and I had been tasked with leading a small group of new runners in our club, I had a sinking feeling. How would I measure our time and distance? And what about managing the pace for our group?

Fortunately, my training partners had fully charged watches, so we got through the session with no issues. But for me, going through the workout without a watch did make me think about the challenges of finding… maybe feeling is a better word… a specific training pace. That is especially true if we are building to a goal race, when pacing is most important.

Alex Hutchinson just wrote a piece on pacing for the latest edition of Canadian Running magazine. His article, Pacing for the Marathon, goes into the science behind pace-making and explores some of the latest research on the subject. Anyone who has tackled the monster that is the marathon knows how difficult it is to parcel out your resources over 42 kilometres.

Hutchinson’s article makes the point that the relationship between running speed and energy consumption isn’t a straight line, which argues for holding a steady pace in a race situation. In short, surges cost you more energy than you can get back by slowing down. The problem is that most runners tend to NOT run evenly-paced races. Of course, there are many variables that contribute to this result, including the course profile, our individual fitness, our perception of the distance itself, and the psychology of running against other competitors.

Hutchinson makes another point that seems to get to the heart of the issue. He notes that modern pacing theories focus on a runner’s subjective perception of effort. This suggests that with experience, a runner can learn how hard a pace should feel.

I couldn’t agree more.

This research supports the argument that we need to develop a good sense of what our target pace feels like.

I’ve long been a believer in doing at least some of my running without a watch, at least not a GPS watch. In my view, not every kilometre needs to be accurately timed. And besides, I think it’s too easy to rely on our high-tech devices rather than our own innate sense of what pace we are running.

Like most things, good pacing is a learned behaviour. We can work to improve it. For me, interval sessions are the perfect place to do just that. By working as a group, and especially by taking turns to lead a rep, we can improve our individual feel for pace.

There are also opportunities to improve our ability to dial in a pace in a race situation. For example, we can look for a local parkrun or low-key 5k or 10k race where we can practice finding and holding a goal pace.

Here’s another idea. Run a race (maybe not your major goal race) without a watch. See how close you can get to your predicted time. You’ll be training yourself what a certain pace feels like.

These skills can be very valuable on goal race day. I’m reminded of Trevor Hofbauer’s impressive run in the 2019 Toronto Marathon. At the time, his 2:09:51 finish was the second-fastest marathon ever run by a Canadian. Trevor ran that race without a watch, as he does with much of his training mileage. He said about his remarkable race, “I don’t use pace now, I just go off of time and effort. And that was how I ran today.”

I think there is something to be said for this approach. It requires a runner to be aware of how a given pace feels and trust in their training.

And what about our interval session, the one I ran without a watch? My internal watch told me we had kept a nice steady pace. When my partners shared their data later, it turned out that our pace for each 600m repeat was within a few seconds of our target. Not bad!

It’s Collateral

By any reasonable measure, I shouldn’t be writing this. I shouldn’t be able to do much of anything. And yet, here I sit, thinking and typing. My typing is certainly no worse than it was five years ago. That was before my first running life abruptly ended.

Over the last month, I’ve had an opportunity to push against the limits of my compromised vertebral artery system. Vertebral arteries – “verts” – are the second major set of arteries that supply blood to the brain; the back of the brain to be precise. The verts account for about 20 percent of the total blood supply to the brain. When they are blocked, like mine were, the result is an ischemic stroke.

In 2017, I had a number of transient ischemic attacks, or TIAs, which are often called mini-strokes. The strokes were due to a blockage in my left vertebral artery. The result was a long stay in the Foothills stroke ward in Calgary.

I’ll repeat what I’ve said many times since then: the doctors that deal with stroke patients every day are heroes. I know this firsthand because the Foothills heroes stabilized me and saved my life.

The blockage in my left vertebral artery remains untreated. This is only possible because my body has made a rather ingenious adaptation to the blockage, by building secondary arterial connections to keep blood flowing to my brain. We were able to watch this in real time, on a video taken from an angiogram procedure. It makes for fascinating viewing.

As I pushed through a 16k run in the snow yesterday, or a 20k run in fine weather the Sunday before, I realized that I am a real-life experiment. While I am apparently able to cover these distances without too much trouble, it has not been a straight-line recovery. Just after my hospital stay, I had trouble walking around the block. Slowly but surely, I put my life back together. As you’ll gather from the title of this blog, I call it my second running life.

I barely managed a 500m walk/jog a month after my last TIA. A year later I finished a 5k race side-by-side with my wife. Last year we ran the First Half Half Marathon in Vancouver.

Now I’m at what I think is my upper limit. I can get through 20k, but not without discomfort. I know I’m at my threshold because my neck/shoulder are generally screaming for me to stop by the end.

Curiously, this is the same symptom I experienced before my strokes, when I was training at a much higher level. The pain was most severe during marathon buildups, and I’m certain that it was the first warning sign of the arterial problems I would have a few years later.

It occurred to me that I could perhaps use these pre- and post-stroke data points to estimate the change (if not the absolute amount) in blood flow to my brain. My assumption is that by comparing the usual measure of maximum oxygen uptake – the “VDOT” – I could arrive at an estimate of the amount of damage done to my vascular system by the strokes.

Before my hospitalization, I was training at a VDOT of between 50-52, based on my being able to run 1:25 to 1:30 for the half marathon. Last year, my wife and I completed a half marathon in 2:06, which suggests a VDOT of about 35. In both circumstances, I would consider myself to have been at my oxygen uptake limit.

Based on these empirical results, it would seem that I’ve experienced a reduction of between 30-35 percent in my ability to process oxygen in competitive running situations.

I’m not sure these estimates would have any value in a clinical setting, or whether it would be useful information in determining the next (if any) course of medical action. But it does make some sense, when you consider that I cannot come close to the kinds of performances I could manage five years ago. Even so, the fact that I can get through a strenuous run or race at all validates what I’ve come to see as the silver lining from this whole episode: I’ve been given a second chance, thanks to the remarkable machine that is my body. I know I mustn’t waste it.

On Racing and Recovering

Yesterday’s long run turned into a bit of a slog. Deb woke up with a pinched nerve in her neck, and I was feeling, well, crappy. Fatigued. Lethargic. We started with a walk, thinking that might be enough. Once we were warmed up, we slowly added some pace, but our run ended up being well short of what we planned to do, both in distance and pace. It was one of those runs best forgotten.

There may be more to the story than bad luck. You see, Sunday was two weeks on from a half-marathon that we ran in Vancouver. (Incidentally, it was the fantastic and well-organized First Half Half. Highly recommended!)

Although two weeks should be an adequate recovery period for a half, it got me thinking about how much downtime is enough after a race. I’ve always subscribed to an easy-to-remember formula that I learned years ago. It goes like this: treat yourself to one easy day for each mile you race.

Spelling it out, for a 10k race that means (more or less) a week of easy running; for a half marathon, two weeks; and for a marathon, a month.

There is a tendency to want to shorten these recovery periods. After all, if we had a positive race experience, why wouldn’t we want to get back in the saddle as soon as possible?

For me, that has usually not been an option. Inevitably, racing has taken more out of me than I’m willing to admit. Even after the immediate post-race soreness had cleared, the residual fatigue was too much to overcome in a few days. My effort in interval workouts or long runs during the recovery period, if I could do them at all, had to be scaled back significantly.

Add in the effects of aging, and whatever issues come along with it, and the rule-of-thumb recovery periods should get even longer. It makes sense that we aren’t as quick to bounce back as we used to be.

So, whether or not our recent experience was tied to an inadequate recovery or just bad luck, it’s worth remembering that a race puts major stress on our bodies. In summary, we should always respect the need for a full recovery.

Tag: Training