Distance makes things seem smaller...

As Ive mentioned before, there are a lot of great benefits in being a total rookie.
Its so easier to go longer or faster than you've ever done before.

Cycling is something I'm very new to. Sure I had a bike as kid... but Ive never done a lot of cycling. Deciding to get into triathlons, of course, makes this a bit of a priority.

Over the last while, and particularly since finishing the half marathon, Ive been just focused on base raining.. ie trying to get the miles / time in with the running and the biking (and swimming but that is still lagging furthest behind).

Every time I go out on the bike, I cycle 12 miles. This is how far I need to cycle in the bike leg of a sprint triathlon, so its important to know I can do this. At the moment i am FAR slower than I need to be, but there is plenty of time to worry about that, for now I am just concerned with being able to do the distances.

However, I recently decided that I am going to enter an Olympic length triathlon in August... So I know i need to cycle further. This week I am off on a weeks vacation from work, and despite a bad start to the week (one scheduled rest day followed by a TOTALLY unscheduled rest day), I picked it up a bit last night with a 10k run and today planned a longer bike ride.

I headed out on the road for a 2 hour ride with no real route in mind at all and by doing so, discovered that travelling longer distances by cycling really does give you a different perspective on distance. I know belfast isnt a huge city, but i really did a fairly big loop today, which included going from the highest point in Belfast to the lowest... and back to the highest again.. It was an amazing feeling to know you have travelled so far. The GPS route below (click for large image) is where I cycled, 24.11 miles in total...


MY average speed for the whole ride was 11.6mph. I know this is pretty slow, but there was a lot of climbing. Here is the GPS profile...


You gotta admit, thats pretty impressive for a total rookie!

The hardest part was undoubtedle the 10% climb right up to the top of the mountain, right at the end of the ride. This was TOUGH. but, whatever doesnt kill us etc etc...

This was how it looked and belive me it was a lot harder than it looked


Beautiful view from up there though,




Came home feeling great and spend the afternoon hanging out, playing and eating ice-cream with my son. Now just finishing this off and about to settle down to a nice glass of red wine.

Techno dependancy

Tonight I headed out to do a 10 miler.
The family were away for the night, so rather than my usual run where I just go out the front door and run, I decided to drive to somewhere a little more picturesque,
and a LOT more flat.
I'm kinda sick of hills. My house is quite high up, and the first mile is downhill. Which means the last mile is uphill.
Anyway, so I drove the few miles down to the shore. Parked the car and just before heading off, took out the phone to snap a quick photo.
As I was putting on my camelback and sending the pic to twitter, a guy on his bike stopped by to ask if I was a runner, and handed me a flyer for a 10k a few miles up the road.

We had a little chat, with him asking me about any races I had done and inviting me to come along and join his running club if I felt like it. Very nice guy.

Anyway, after this brief and pleasant interlude I donned my earphones, hit play on the ipod, pushed start on my Garmin and off I went.

One mile into my run, I glanced down at my wrist to check my pace and lo and behold. The garmin was dead!

I knew the battery was a bit low, but this is the first time the battery died on me during a run.
I felt a bit lost! I was running a route which I had never run before, so had very little way of gauging distance. If it was my normal route, I would have known exactly where to go for my 10 miles.. but on this occasion I really had no idea.

So, I took out my Blackberry and, while still running, tried to use google maps to calculate how far I should be running. Which is, incidentally, not easy to do.

Which brings me to the point of this Blog... Technological dependency.
Going for a normal run, I carry with me an iPod, Garmin and often my blackberry. So.. a music player, a GPS system, a heart monitor, a phone, Internet device, camera and full access to my email.

Seriously.

Its a bit nuts really.
I mean, I can run without any of these things, but I find them useful. I enjoy listening to music or podcasts while I run. I like snapping the occasional photo and I am pretty OCD about my pace and distance.
It is amazing how all pervasive technology has become in our lives.

Training has been going well the last few weeks. I haven't posted since the half marathon, but Ive been feeling good since. I took it pretty easy for a week after the marathon with just a few short runs and after that Ive been base training.

I don't start my marathon training till July, and I will be doing a few triathlons before the marathon, but I haven't decided which ones yet for sure. So, I'm just trying to get into a rhythm of multisport training.

Ive cut my running down from 5 days a week to 4, and have upped the mileage to compensate for this (hence the midweek 10 mile runs). In addition to this I am now swimming and cycling more. Yesterday I actually managed to get in 750m in the pool, a 20km cycle and a 10km run. Most exercise I've ever done in a single day! That is, of course, far form the norm. I just had a few spare hours.

I will post again soon with some more detail on my current training, once I get into a better routine. In the meantime, all the best from the sunny beaches of Belfast ;-)

The first half

Sitting on a flight to london and finally have time to update on the weekends race.
Last week I had taken it relatively easy. I ran 10 miles monday night, to make up for missing my long run on sunday. Then on tuesday night I did 10k in about 52 minutes... Which is only about 2.5 minutes off my best time.

Wednesday I took a day off, then thursday I ran 3 miles fast. Did the three miles in just 24 minutes... The fastest run I've done. When I analysed my garmin data later I discovered that my heart rate was in zone 5 (above 90% max) for 85% of the run. This gave me a real confidence boost and had me psyched for the run on saturday.

My sleep on friday night was a little unsettled as I was genuinely excited about the race. Saturday morning I woke at 6 and spent a few hours ganging out with my son and eating sensible foods like bread and bananas.

At 8.30 I headed to my friends house and we set out together for omagh.

Once we got there and picked up our numbers, we had plenty of time to hang around, warmup and stretch. The buzz around the registration area was pretty cool. As we lined up at the start line, I was impressed by the variety of participants. There was a 4 mile fun run occurring at the same time so we were lined up between young kids, older folks and very obvious athletes with their club kit, wraparound oakleys and armbands specifically designed for holding gels.

On that note I have to briefly digress and wonder... How many gels do you need for a 13 mile run? Seriously, I saw one girl that had an armband with about 6 in it. Is it really possible to use that many? Yuck! I had one bottle of double strength energy drink and that seemed fine for me.

Anyway, we got started and I set off at a decent enough pace. Bear in mind that this time last year I had never run in my life. When I decided I wanted to start running I was running 1 minute and walking one minute and it killed me. So... When I say a decent pace, I mean just under an 8 minute mile.

The course was pretty cool. Quite varied, and far from flat. I kept the pace up pretty well and by the time I hit the 10k mark I was very close to a pr for a 10k. This was when I started to think seriously about what sort of time I could manage.

I knew I could do it in under 2 hours. My personal target, and the training plan I had been following, was for sub 1 hour 50. I hadn't followed the plan that closely though and had skimped a little on the speedwork so I hadn't been that confident I would manage it. However, as I hit the 10k mark I was (for me) fast and still feeling good. So I tried to pick up the pace a little more to be consistently under 8 minutes per mile.

The toughest part was around the 11 / 12 mile mark where there was a long steady hill that looked like it was 13 miles long, and in reality was probably over half a mile. Once I got over this I really pushed and the last mile was probably my fastest of the race. When I saw the 400m to go sign I genuinely sprinted for the line.

I finished in 1 hour 45 mins and 16 seconds. This totally amazed me and I was genunely over the moon with this time. I had been playing around with a pace calculator and figured that to get this time basically requires an 8 min mile for 13.1 miles and I honestly didn't think I could do this. Somehow, I did. My friend had actually only come in about 2 minutes before me.

So, I've completed my first half marathon, set my PR and set the bar. Now all I have to do is improve it. Based on this I am going to have a target of 3 hours 45 for the dublin marathon in october. Its ambitious, but I've plenty of time to get there.

When I looked at my garmin data later I found that, like the 3 mile run a few days before, I actually ran 85% of the race in heart rate zone 5. I will also post the course map and profile later.

Finally, I had sat down the night before the race to program in a playlist for the run and the music really helped, so just for the hell of it, this is what I listened to as I ran. I had just downloaded the new NINJA (nine inch nails and janes addiction) ep and the new prodigy album and hadn't had a chance to listen to them yet, hence the high density of their tracks...

Bixby canyon bridge - death cab for cutie
Fallin - de la soul and teenage fanclub
Invaders must die - the prodigy (first song that made me speed up)
Chip away - janes addiction
That's what you get - paramore
Dawn of the dead - does it offend you, yeah?
Clap for the killers - streetsweeper
Battle royale - does it offend you, yeah?
Rocket queen - guns n roses
Non-entity - nine inch nails
The oath - streetsweeper
Complication - nine inch nails
Whores - janes addiction
Omen - the prodigy
Smack my bitch up - the prodigy
We're in this together - nine inch nails
Their law - the prodigy
Head like a hole - nine inch nails
Hearts burst into fire - bullet for my valentine (this is where I started running my ass off)
Every day is exactly the same - nine inch nails
We are rockstars - does it offend you, yeah?
Come and die - fatal and therapy?
And as I finished....
Going out of my head - fatboy slim.

Brickin it

Last night I did my first proper "brick" workout, ie going straight from bike to run.
Actually, yesterday was a serious workout day. I was at the gym at 6.30am for a 45 minute spin class, then 30 mins of weights, then work.
When I got home from work at about 6 it was still bright, zane was staying at his grandparents and steph was at college, so rather than sitting around on my ass I got on the road.
I cycled 12.2 miles (20km) and was annoyingly slow as before. I had planned on finishing the rider at my house, but the loop I cycled meant that I came back by my place about a mile short so I just kept going. I cycled into glengormely and looked out for somewhere to lock up the bike. Shortly after hitting the 20km mark, I saw a fence beside a bus stop. So I pulled over, jumped off the bike, chained it to the fence, threw my helmet in the camelback and started running.
I got a lot of strange looks from the people at the bus stop... And I think this is the moment that I learned that doing this sort of training means not giving a shit what people think of you or how weird you look.
I was prepared for jelly legs, but I was rather surprised to discover how my body dealt with this, which was to run faster than normal. Like, quite a lot faster. I started out at a 7.30 pace and kept thid going for about a mile I think.
I decided that I might as well run a sprint triathlon distance hard, then finish with two easy miles.
I was pretty happy to do the initial 3.1 miles in 24 mins. That's good going for me.
I got myself back to the bike, and gently cycled the 2 miles home.
Totally excellent workout, and to top it all off my wonderful wife picked up some KFC for us on the way home.
Nice.

13.1

So, yesterday I was meant to run the "between the bridges" race in Belfast. This was a bit of a strange one. To celebrate the completion of a large new section of motorway (highway) they shut it down for a few hours and had a 10k on it.
I thought it sounded like fun. Unfortunately though, I was totally disorganised and had left registration to the last minute. I contacted the organisers last week and found that while there was no race day registration, I could go and register at a local shopping centre for the few days beforehand.
So on Friday evening, I left work a little early and drove down the road to meet my wife so we could sign up. When we got to the registration, however, it seemed we were a few hours too late. Apparently there was a totally unexpected demand for the race and the 4500 places had already been filled.
This was a pity, as with a half marathon coming up, I had decided not to aim for any particular time and was going to take it relatively easy and just run the race, for fun, with Steph.
Oh well, this meant I would have to just do my long run as scheduled.
Come Sunday morning and after a 6am wakeup call from the little guy and a few hours hanging out with him, I started getting ready to go for a nice long easy run.
I was planning a 12 miler, so sat down at the computer and tried to figure out a decent route with map my run. I was quite amazed to see quite how far 12 miles is. I kept planning out routes and then finding that they weren't long enough.
Eventually, i had a good route planned and just as i was getting my gear on, it started snowing.
Fabulous.
I had two new things to try out on this run.. Firstly I bough a Camelback when I was in the states a few weeks ago and hadn't been out on a long run since buying it so was looking forward to trying that out. The second was a new sports drink I had picked up while we were out on Friday. The last few longer runs Ive done I've tried using Lucozade Sport and Powerade. They both helped, but I had wanted to try out something a bit more complex, i.e. with more than just sugar in it. So i picked up this "Iso Energy" stuff. Its got carbs, electrolytes, amino acids and to top it all off.. some caffeine.
So I filled up the Camelback with water, made up a litre of the iso energy drink, downed a couple of hundred mls before starting and hit the road and had an excellent run.

The first bit of the run was the toughest as, I was running the road over the top of the Cavehill here in Belfast. I actually ran to one of the highest points in the city.. Its no mountain, but its far from flat, as you can see from the GPS elevation profile.
Having this at the start of the run was great though as the subsequent prolonged downhill gradient was a breeze. The lowest point was the bottom of the Antrim road, and I took a two minute break to watch the runners who were doing the 10k. Turning around at that point and realising that the remainder of the run was a gradual uphill was a bit more of a challenge. Although I think I decided around this time that I was definitely going to push it beyond the 12 miles and go the full half marathon distance.

On the whole, the run was enjoyable and pretty easy going.. apart from the last 1.5 miles. That was when the pain kicked in both knees and my hips. But I struggled through and finished the 13.1 miles in 2 hours 3 minutes. I think the Iso Energy stuff really helped.. a few times while running I started to feel myself lagging so I took a swig at that and it really helped. Also, the Camelback is a great purchase. No carrying water bottles in my hands and its really comfortable to wear. I can highly recommend it.

When I got home I felt totally fantastic.Its a really good feeling when you do something new like a new PR time or a new longest distance. Of course, still being a running newbie, I get to do this a lot! Indeed, as with today, I usually do both at the same time, which is a lot of fun, but sets the bar for what I have to beat next time.

I learned my lesson from missing out on the between the bridges run and so have now signed up for the half marathon in omagh. Two weeks to go and as planned, I want to do the half marathon in two weeks in less than 2 hours. Having done this run in around 2 hours lets me know that I can definitely do it.

Below is the full GPS profile of the route. As usual, click for full size goodness.

Running one of the wonders of the world.

This week I am in San Francisco for work purposes.
I decided, while here, that I really wanted to run the Golden Gate Bridge. I mean, how often does one get to run along one of the 7 wonders of the modern world?

I didnt have a decent camera with me, I forgot to bring one, but I did have my trusty phone cam... So here is a little photostory of my memorable run. All images can be viewed in glorious full size with a mere click...

For a start, there was no way I was going to be able to run to the bridge from my hotel. Im staying about 7 miles from the bridge. That each way plus the 3 miles across the bridge and back would be WAY too long.

So, I looked at my options and decided I may as well do something touristy in the process and ride the trolley. I headed from my hotel to Powell and boarded this very car...


I rode the trolley to the end of the line, Bay. From here I started to run. Thanks to google maps on my phone, I figured the best way was to run along Bay for a while to Lombardo then head onto the marina. Once on marina, I got my first good view of the bridge,


This was actually my first time getting a proper look at the Golden Gate bridge. Ive been in SF a few times now, but never had any free time. Once we drove somewhere were I got a bit of a glance at it, but it was very foggy and didnt look very impressive. I got lucky today and it was clear and sunny.

The run along the marina was nice. Lots of other runners, nice sea air, beautiful view. As I got closer to the bridge and actually started running on the path alongside the road, it was strange. Lots of traffic beside me, no other people. Also, lots of puddles. Apparently yesterday there was a huge amount of rain. Score one for luck for me that I missed it. At a few parts where there were pedestrian subway underpasses under roads, I was actually running in ankle deep water.

I think at this point I was running along state route 1 or "california 1"

The run was certainly longer than I had thought. My training schedule for today was actually a rest day. Some chance...

The thing about running towards something as tremendously large as the Golden Gate Bridge is that you see if from very far away and it just doesnt seem to get any closer mile after mile. Eventually, however, I reached the bridge and paused to see this rather spectacular sight...


Didnt pause for long though, at this point I think if I had my legs might have seized up. I pushed on and started running along the bridge. This was the sight that greeted me as I ran onto it.

The run itself was completely exhilarating. It honestly was fantastic. I think part of this was due to a larger than usual endorphin rush, probably caused by the fact that I was running much further than planned just two days after my longest run to date. However, it was mostly just from the sheer thrill of doing it and from the incredible beauty of the views and majesty of the bridge itself. It looks amazing in photos.. yes. Its a wonder of the world.. yes. But none of this really conveys how incredibly impressive this thing is as you run along the length of it. The full length is 1.7 miles, so the run across and back was the easiest 3.4 miles I have ever run. The view from the bridge was spectacular. Sadly the cam phone photo does it NO justice. You can just about see alcatraz in the distance.


When I got to the other side, I turned round to run back and found myself running the full length with a smile on my face and at a fairly decent pace, at one point I glanced at my Garmin and was flying along at about a 7:30 minute per mile pace (thats fast for me.. ok!). I had my iPod on and as listening to "Does it offend you, yeah?" which just seemed to work perfectly.

So here I am, halfway across... loving it...


I came off the bridge and ran back via Crissy Field, along by the ocean which was also beautiful. I had figured out before I even reached the bridge that by the time I finished I would probably be close to 10 miles. I figured that after 12 miles on sunday my knees might protest too much and thought I may have to stop running and walk at some point. Luckily, I stuck at it, my knees did indeed protest the pounding but not enough to stop me. In total, by the time I made it back to the trolley stop I had clocked in a total of 11 miles and had hugely enjoyed it.

When I finished, it had just turned 9:30am. I have to say, starting your day with an 11 mile run that includes running along one of the wonders of the world is FANTASTIC... but... its tough to live up to. The rest of the day seems long and dull by comparison.

Just to finish off, here is a screengrab from google maps of my route....

First 12 mile run

Today I did my first 12 mile run.
Previously my longest run was 10 miles.
I was over at a friends house last night and told him I was planning the 12 miles today and he suggested we run it together. Now, Ive been running less than a year, and Liam has been running for about 25 years, but I though, what the hell.. why not?
So we met at a nice sport and set out. from the very outset, I knew Liam would have a faster pace than me... and while I am sure I slowed him down a little, I dd my best to keep up.
IF I had gone out to do this run myself, I know I would have probably done 10 minute miles and taken 2 hours for the run. Thanks to being pushed a little, I did it in 1 hour 43 minutes. An average pace of 8:36 per mile. For me this would be good going on a 5 mile run.
So, much as I like to run alone, I guess the lesson here is.. if you're going to go running with a friend, might as well run with a friend who is a better runner.

Ive attached my route, just because to me it looks good. Click the image for a nice full size version of this.