Project 245: Race and Debrief
Get ready for more blah blah blah
Before anything, I just wanted to mention the unfortunate and rather sudden passing of Adrian Lehmann, a 2:11 marathon runner at the young age of 34. Adrian was supposed to participate in the Zürich marathon, as the defending Swiss marathon champion, but had to pull out after it was reported he had a heart attack on the week of the race. He later passed away because of complications from the heart attack. I personally didn’t know Adrian, having met him just once during the Swiss half marathon championships in 2020 but many close to him mentioned what a wonderful person he was. I am deeply saddened by this news. May his soul rest in peace.
On Monday morning, the day after Zürich marathon, I slowly walked to the office. My training plan said 2 days of rest/cross training. I chose to walk because frankly I can’t be bothered to do more than that. Walking downhill felt a bit atrocious and I am not looking forward to the walk back. The conditions on Sunday’s Zurich marathon were genuinely the toughest I have ever run in. It’s funny because before arriving to work on Monday, I ran into a colleague who had done the Patrouille Des Glaciers on the same day as Zürich marathon. He was happy about the good snow conditions they got during their race. I joked to him, “Your good conditions were our downfall.” Running in a sleet, buffeted by the wind and having your muscles seize up because of the cold because you don’t have that much body fat isn’t pleasant. Plus my pair of Alphafly 3s were a size too small. I usually wear Size 42, but went for Size 41 because for the last couple of Nike shoes, I had a bit of a heel gap in size 42. But Size 41 was definitely not the way to go on Sunday as I ended up with a blue, swollen right toe. It was a tad painful to sleep with and I almost ended up choking on the paracetamol tablet I sleepily took, not realizing it was the dissolve in water kind. I tried to swallow something of the size of a 2 CHF coin or a CR 2032 battery and for a bit I was a bit skeptical if I would need to wake up Béné to perform the heimlich maneuver on me. So, I’m a bit sleepy and a bit sore but really happy that I was able to finish a marathon. I don’t need to harp on about not being able to finish a marathon for 5 years anymore. Plus, with the things that went wrong and the things which went right, I can now write a debrief and structure for December’s marathon in Valencia.
The Race:
I think I have already whined about the conditions but I will perhaps do it a bit more because it is my blog. I have raced in the wind and I have raced once when it hailed for a bit, but I have not raced in freezing rain. (I should perhaps move to the UK and do a season of cross-country. Then I can shut up about racing in tough conditions).
Come to think of it, it was quite pleasant at the start. It all seems like a distant memory. When we lined up at the start, it was rather calm spare a few drops of rain falling . I was stress-free because personally, I knew that I need to pace 2 hours 45 minutes, which is physically 80% of my current marathon capability. I liked that feeling.
The gun went off and we happily departed, clicking off 19:29 for the 5k. By 8k, we formed a little group for people who wanted to run 2:45 and passed 10k in 38:54.
The course loops in the city for 10k before continuing along the shores of Lake Zürich for the a bit. The group absorbed people we were around 10 people at halfway, which we crossed in 1:22:33(2:45:06 pace).
But towards the turnaround near 24k, I felt Joan drop towards the back of the group.
The turnaround a little bit of hill and towards the end of it, Joan was a fair bit back. As we were on pace, I chose to drop back to him to bring him back to the group.
But I saw that the next 2 kilometers were getting slower and I decided to press on with the group for 2:45. I went back to the front of the group, now battling the headwind and getting rather wet. There were a couple of elite women in our group who had taken off from the big group and were going at it alone, who were more at 2:45 pace. So, I caught up with them and asked if they needed pacing. They were fine without me, so I accelerated for a few kilometers but the freezing rain started falling. I missed a water cup in one aid station, only to be helped to a cup of water but a runner I had passed.
Isn’t marathon just wonderful? I asked him if he needed to be paced but he was struggling with injury and was content to be on his own, so I thanked him and pressed on. By 33k, the weather had really become murderous. My clothes were soaked and freezing. My psoas began to seize up, hamstrings got tight and I battled a light cramp in my left calf. But you know, the pace was easy so getting through it wasn’t that much of a problem. The city roads definitely felt different on the last 5k but the people were amazing.
Despite the shit weather, there were lots of people and I had a good time getting them to cheer. I loved the energy of the crowds.
The finish was a bit emotional. It’s been a tough couple of months. The process of finding a job was difficult, trying to get through work days was emotionally draining and there was this added pressure of not having finished a marathon in 5 years. I got the job, I managed to resign from my old job, I managed to string together a big training block and this race felt like the culmination of a lot of effort. I am genuinely happy to have the DNF monkey off my back. Also, I did 0 marathon specific workouts for my pace, which makes running this 2:43 a very good base workout.
Things which went well:
- Training: I haven’t been this mentally happy while doing 100 mile weeks in my life. Running 12-13 hours a week is a challenge and I felt I was able to balance it well. The morning runs were part of the routine and the afternoon runs were a nice break in the day. With the new job, I will get access to the forest at Chalet a Gobet, which is a far better training venue in terms of building strength(and good for the knees). I am of the belief that the best way to get fit is to run hills and the forest area is a beautiful crisscross of not flat trails (I have stopped using the word “hilly” for any of my routine routes after the trail season last year where I realized what the word “hilly” really means.)
- Community: I have spent a lot of hours training alone. And I still like going on solo runs, where I can be alone with my thoughts. But for longer runs and tough workouts, doing the sessions alone is akin to running a marathon solo. It is often unpleasant. Sharing the trauma of a workout, sharing the workload during a workout or during the race, knowing that you’re not alone helps a lot.
In Zürich, I was almost always with a group, mostly because I chose to pace people. In Valencia, my goal is definitely a lot more selfish. But given the depth of field in Valencia, running in a group is a very real possibility. Plus, almost all the members of my running group CTT are doing Valencia marathon. There will be an amazing training group as well, which is just wonderful. I am looking forward to that. - Nutrition: It can be summarised by one sentence: Shoving food in your mouth is the answer. I ate well and the only day I ate ramen noodles with a miso broth for dinner, I struggled on my run the day after. Too few calories in that dinner. A deficit comes back to haunt you. I will continue to shove food in my mouth and let my metabolism do the rest.
- Sleep: I’m not saying I slept more. I usually sleep between 7–8 hours a night and that’s what I managed, along with the occasional bad night of sleep. But the worst nights of sleep weren’t as bad. How you may ask? It’s simple: Stoicism.
The truth is not every night is going to be the perfect. Especially at the end of big mileage weeks, it became more and more difficult to get a restful night because the body was just too tired. And when we are woken up, we try too hard to fall back to sleep or choose to get distracted by technology. I simply told myself that just because I am up doesn’t mean I won’t fall back to sleep. If there was something I could control like changing my blanket or taking a medicine or drinking warm water, I did that and then went back to bed. Even if I felt wide awake, I kept my eyes closed and eventually sleep came along. Not stressing about not sleeping helped me sleep.
Things which didn’t go well:
- Strength training: I didn’t particularly do that much strength training (or at all) during this base phase. Everytime I lift weights, my back has a tendency to get misaligned which clearly shows I have a problem of lifting form. I will try to work on this with a gym trainer and lift under the supervision of a professional. I didn’t even bother doing clamshell or any other band work, because I was focussing on Yoga and Pilates. And while they are very beneficial, I clearly felt that stronger glutes and hamstrings would have dealt better with the cold, slippery conditions.
- Sore throat two times in 5 weeks: Granted, I lifted my mileage by a lot in a 5 week period, running over 500 miles and I had a cold prior to it, which almost never healed as a result of the stress on the body. I have been very careful with my nutrition, but given that I am drinking 3–4 liters of water a day I tend to urinate a fair bit. I don’t know how much of it is true but I have heard that excessive urination can cause a loss of nutrients. Like I mentioned, I felt immediately better when I supplemented my nutrition with Athletic Greens.
I know high mileage wrecks up the immune system and I drink to thirst, not to meet an arbitrary goal. There were days when I drank 4 liters and still was thirsty. I think the idea would be more consistent with supplementation and see where that takes me. - My foot: I want this blog to be PG 13, so I am not going to put pictures of my foot here but take my word for it, the blisters dot the landscape of my foot like craters on the surface of the moon. It was not a very pleasant thing to run with these blisters and it was a pain which could’ve been easily avoided. I will book an appointment with a podiatrist now that I am done with my build and in fact, I will do this once more in September/October before the build for Valencia begins.
- Shoe size: I already mentioned this earlier, the Alphaflys I ran in were too small. My toe was swollen for 3 days after the race and blue in color. Again, I will recycle my training and racing shoes to avoid simple issues which, in hindsight, could have been easily avoided.
It is an interesting blog I read recently and it puts into words something I have felt for a long time. Tl;dr the blog talks about differences in tennis players. The Federers, Nadals and Djokovics they win matches by hitting winners. They don’t wait for others to make mistakes. They really hit shots which make the opponent stare back in awe and often clap. Then there are the amateurs, who win more points when others make mistakes. Just by keeping the ball in play and avoiding stupid mistakes, you can win more points.
This applies to life as well. I will take the example of running. Emile Cairess is a wonderful marathon runner. He ran 2:06:46 in the 2024 London marathon, a time which is elite among elite. But these days, modern marathon podiums usually require faster times than that. This the era of the super shoe and now everything: your diet, your training, your recovery is dialed in. Coaches are not fasting their athletes (atleast the smart ones aren’t) and all of this has resulted in seeing a marathon major podium with all times under Sub 2:06 a common occurrence. But London 2024 was a difficult day for many. The lead pack of 10 went through halfway in 61:29 (2:02:58 marathon pace). But, as per letsrun.com half of the lead pack DNFed and 3 ran massive positive splits. (Including one Seifu Tura, who ran the second half in an abysmal 94:25. I checked his splits and though he had fallen off the 2:02:58 pace, he still was through 40k in 2:00:40. Apparently, he covered the last 2.195k in 35:40. So he basically walked the last part.) Emile was not with the lead pack at halfway and though he also positive splitted (ran the 2nd half slower than the 1st), he was rewarded for running within himself as he ended up in 3rd place. He took the podium by not making mistakes. (and by being quite brilliant, I am not saying that he got lucky. Running 2:06:46 and becoming the fastest British born runner ever is an incredible achievement. More about Emile here.)
But in our amateur arena, I know one too many people who go too fast and then die slow painful deaths. I did it too in some races and then I figured out that negative splitting is a lot more fun because you catch so many people.
Many of the things I mentioned above which didn’t go well for me, they count under this act of avoiding stupidity. Basics like not falling sick because of a lack of nutrients or making sure your shoe is the correct size and your feet are not full of blisters, they can make training and racing a lot more fun. Even in terms of training, working properly on your muscles and doing marathon specific workouts is the way forward.
Another example of avoiding stupidity is trying to force double threshold in my life. I am not a pro athlete. I will work 8 hours and 24 minutes every day at my new job. I will work at 100%. So, trying to fit a threshold session in the AM and another in the PM with a job in between might seem badass and I might see progress, but I don’t want to end up with chronic fatigue. Threshold once a day, once or twice a week with a steady dose of hills and soft surfaces is a far more sustainable option.
Also another thing I learnt from this project was that if you have a goal to run the marathon in a certain time, then you should be prepared to run both faster and slower than your goal pace. You should be malleable and maybe, you should not focus so much on what your watch is telling you. Your body is a far better indication of that. Emile Cairess ran with a simple casio watch during London. Jake runs without a watch for all his races, mostly because he is there to race people and not worry so much about what his watch is going to say.
Cairess took the splits on course to keep track. In Valencia, if my watch is telling me I am on 2:25 marathon pace at 30k, I will still make sure to check that I passed the timing mat 1:43:06 into the race. If the timing mat says 1:45:00, then I am on 2:27:41 pace, no matter what my watch is telling me. And in training, I will not bother if I ran 3:25/km or 3:30/km for the 4*5k workout. One of them will clearly feel marathon pace and one of them clearly will not. Like Mark Wetmore said, You can’t run faster than what you’re capable of. But to run what you’re capable of in a race which matters to you, that takes effort. I feel we are blind to our own capabilities and like to announce to the world that we want to hit a certain goal. For example, I just casually slipped in 2:25 as if I am going a hair’s breadth from breaking it. The reality is, I ran 2:34 in London 5 years ago and since then, didn’t finish a marathon until last weekend, which was in 2:43. Given my performance in the half marathon and 10k, I know that a more realistic target would be 2:29. I know that the Peter Bromka once said “the pursuit of an audacious goal is the most noble pursuit I can imagine” but I think if you listen to Americans too much you will get fired up but not achieve much. Because dreaming big doesn’t always result in achieving big. I would rather go by what Jake told me. To shave off a minute off my time and work methodically towards the 2:20 goal. I will see how the summer goes and how the form is during Morat-Fribourg. Even so, I am sure to work my way to 2:25 is still a few years ahead. First, let’s find a shoe which fits well. Onwards.
To close this week’s blog I want to give a shout-out to both Alistair and Thibault. Alistair smashed a 14:59 5k, his first Sub-15 in 2 years which shows that his hardwork has been paying off. And then on Sunday, Thibault ran an absolutely masterful race in the rather hilly 20 km Lausanne to finish 6th overall and 2nd Swiss in a remarkable time of 1:05:04.
