Monthly Archives: October 2013

I FINALLY feel like a runner!!!!

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I had always wondered if this feeling would ever hit me. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve definitely burned through my fair share of running shoe rubber over the past fifteen years, however for some reason I’ve never really felt like a runner. To describe training, I would always say I’m going for a run, however I suppose I always considered myself more of a “shuffler”, or a “jogger”. Last Sunday, that feeling changed.

Back in 2008, I recall very vividly sitting in a basement classroom at Western University with one of my graduate school colleagues. At this point in my life, I had just completed my first ironman – but no joke – I barely made it through that marathon (and my bike time was almost faster than my run). The friend that I was speaking with was/is an exceptional runner, and went on a year or two later to Boston-qualify. That one fall day, I remember sitting in the classroom telling her “I have a goal of someday running a sub two hour half marathon, but I’m not sure I can ever do it”. I felt slightly embarrassed by this goal, knowing how strong of a runner she was, but her response was a super cool and confident “of course you can!”

Chris and I arrived in Kelowna two nights prior to the Okanagan Half Marathon. We had our trip to Kelowna booked many months ago, to visit my family for the long weekend, but only decided earlier in the week we would register for the race. Chris ran with me in Melissa’s Road Race two weekends prior, and we were partly waiting to see how we felt after that before we made a decision about registering.

The day before the race my parents organized a pre-wedding “fiesta” for us. There was a ton of great food and booze. Probably too much good food and booze! If this was an “A” race for me, I probably would have made more of an effort to abstain (i.e. telling my Mom it’s not necessary to bust out the Limoncello after all the guests have left)! However, looking back I was approaching this more of a training run, and I’m not even sure I would have categorized it as a “B” race. So, bring on the martini’s!

I didn’t wake up on Sunday morning feeling incredible, knowing that was going to be the day I would achieve my goal. I didn’t even feel 100% on the morning of the race and I certainly didn’t go to the race with the intention of pushing myself too hard. I wasn’t hungover, but my stomach always seems to feel upset and nervous before a race. Regardless of all of the above, for the first time in my running “career” something finally clicked and I had an amazing race!

Chris and I made it to the start line with maybe 5-10 minutes to kill in the corral. Chris moved up to start around the 1:40 pace bunny and I settled myself in between the 2:00 and 2:15 bunnies. I didn’t really have a plan. I just wanted to go out and get my long run done, in preparation for NYC!

It was a perfect fall morning for a run. I started out running a comfortable, steady pace but I could see the 2hr bunny disappearing off in the distance. This didn’t really surprise me, since I’ve been dropped by the 2hr bunny in all of my previous half marathons.  I also didn’t really care that much, as I wasn’t approaching this race with a time goal in mind. After 10 minutes of running, most of the pace bunnies walk for one minute (the traditional Running Room 10′s and 1′s program). After their first walk break, I had caught up to the 2hr group and they took off and started running again. This leapfrogging happened again 20 minutes later. After their second or third walk break, I was ahead of them. I could hear the bunny tell his group to slow down since they were going too fast. This made me think…. if they’re going “too fast”, and I’m ahead of them, maybe I’ll run their pace for awhile and see what happens! So I started running with the bunny and the 2hr pace group, doing 10′s and 1′s.

The Okanagan Marathon course is flat and fast. I hit the 10km mark in City Park in 54:41min. Not only was this my fastest 10km split ever, but I felt strong! We headed to the south side of the bridge for the second half of the run. However, at 12kms, our bunny announced he was going to veer off to the bathroom, and for us to keep going. No sense in me stopping, so I kept running, along with a few girls who had also been running with him. We kept expecting the bunny to catch us, and I even looked back a few times to see if I could see him but he didn’t seem to be catching up. It’s funny, all I kept thinking was, that poor pace bunny, his time is going to be way off. Never once did I think that I was going faster than a 2hr pace and had essentially “dropped” him!

One of the girls who had been running with the bunny was a nice lady named Fran. We’d never met before, but I’m sure if we lived in the same city we would be good running friends. After the bunny went MIA, Fran and I stuck together, taking a few scheduled walk breaks and pushing each other on. We chatted a little bit, but mostly we were focused on having a great race and finishing strong!

Excited to see my Mom out cheering!

Excited to see my Mom out cheering!

I saw my Mom with about three kilometres left to go. I gave her a high-five as I ran past and had every intention of telling her how awesome of a day I was having, but I don’t think I ended up saying a single word. Fran and I agreed to take our last one minute walk break just after we saw her. We did a quick walk and then dug our heels in for the stretch to the finish! I was in the zone and totally determined at this point to finish in under two hours (for the first time ever)!

Fran had a really strong finishing kick. Stronger than mine, but I think I did a decent job keeping up with her. I was so excited to see Chris in the finishing chute, and I ended up finding him waiting right after I crossed the line. Lucky for me, he had been there waiting for about a minute. I don’t think either of us had been expecting me to finish sub 2 and I think we were both equally surprised. I couldn’t believe my time! My chip time was 1:55:58hrs! This was over eight minutes better than my previous PB – a 2:04:02 in the Ottawa Half Marathon in 2011. I shattered my previous personal best. Absolutely demolished it.

After meeting my sub 2 goal, for some reason, I finally feel like a real runner. No, nothing has changed at all from the week before the race to now. But I somehow feel validated. I’m so proud. Possibly prouder than I’ve ever been from a race before. Running has always been difficult for me, and to meet this goal makes me feel a huge sense of accomplishment! Chris had a pretty good run too! You can read his race report below.

Look how big my smile is! I almost wore my medal for the rest of the day!

Look how big my smile is! I almost wore my medal for the rest of the day!

As I write this, I’m ten days away from the start of the New York City Marathon. My results from the Okanagan 1/2 are a huge confidence boost going in to NYC. I’m so excited to run this once-in-a-lifetime marathon and will be sure to post a blog once I’m back. One thing to note: the New York Marathon will be my last race as a “Schwartz”!

Okanagan Half Marathon race report!

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So a couple of weeks ago I wrote that I was planning on running a half marathon and had a two-week plan to get myself ready for it. In truth, I had been running more than just two weeks before the race, but it was pretty inconsistent and I wasn’t actually specifically training for anything. The two week plan was to specifically prepare myself for this race. I wrote out a plan… and then changed it the next day! After talking to my “running guru” (actually just a colleague who has a lot of running experience), I completely revised my plan to take his advice. My workouts included some 7-minute intervals at just above race pace, some 2-minute intervals, a tempo run, a steady-state run and the standard long, easy run. I did a lot of stretching and foam rolling to try to keep my legs loose and limber during the two weeks leading up to the race, and I found myself feeling pretty good in the days before the race.

Kim and I flew to Kelowna on Friday after work to stay with her parents over the Thanksgiving weekend. On Saturday morning, we drove down to the race expo to pick up our race packages. I thought it was pretty cool that they had a big crate of apples for people to pick from, but Kim laughed at me when I took a photo (apparently random apple crates are common if you’re from the Okanagan ;). I spun the Running Room wheel that shows up at pretty much every big race expo in Canada and won a pair of socks (score!), then Kim and I went for an easy, 20-minute run along the waterfront to stretch the legs. Later that afternoon I had just the right amount of day-before-the-race-homebrew, and we got to bed at a decent time to make it down to the race site for the 7:45am start.

It was a chilly start, but we knew the temps were supposed to climb into the teens by noon-ish so we dressed appropriately and dealt with a bit of a chill in the air before the race. That’s a really tough part about running in the fall – you start cold, but then get really warm once you get going. It can be difficult to dress appropriately! Anyway, after wedging ourselves into the starting area the race got off right on time. The route starts off in downtown Kelowna and makes its way north through some older neighborhoods and some industrial areas before looping back around to the start/finish area and scooting right past it to head south before looping back again. Kind of like a big figure-8! This course was flat, flat, flat! I don’t know if I’ve ever run on a course this flat before. Definitely one to keep in mind if I want to try for a PB time. Besides being flat, it was a pretty nice course. There were quite a few turns along the way but volunteers and signs were always there to point me in the right direction. My favourite part was probably running through a nice little neighborhood just south of the start/finish area in city park.

Before this race, I had run 3 “official” half-marathons before. In every one of them, I went out faster than I should have and ended up in a world of pain by the end of the race and doing everything I could to make it to the finish line. That’s not great for the confidence, so my strategy for this race was to start slower than I thought I could run and then pick up the pace after the half-way point if I felt good. A strong finish is what I was going for, and a negative-split would be even better.

From the beginning I kept checking my watch over and over to make sure I was pacing correctly and not getting caught-up in the excitement. 4:40/km was my early race goal and I did a pretty good job of sticking to that pace, no matter who may have passed me. When I hit 12km, my legs still felt pretty good and I convinced myself to wait until I hit the 13km mark before picking up the pace. 13km came and I still felt good so I went for it! I picked it up a bit so that I was running roughly 4:25/km. This still felt good but because of my past experience I was hesitant to push it any more than that. I hit 18km and though I was working harder my legs still felt good so I upped the pace again. I ran my last two km’s at 4:10/km pace – definitely working hard but I could sustain it and my legs still had enough for a sprint to the line at the end. My chip time (this is what I’m going with!) was 1:35:57, which makes this race my second-fastest half marathon! It wasn’t a PB, but I can definitely take a personal victory from finishing strong and having a big negative-split. That’s a confidence builder for sure, and next time around I think I’ll try for the elusive sub-1:30 time.

So it was a good day for me, but is nowhere near the race that Kim had. I’ll let her tell that herself though!

It’s pretty late in the year, so it is unlikely there will be any more races for me in 2013. It’s time to start thinking about next year and having a bit of fun in the off-season!

Melissa’s Road Race

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There’s a number of races I’ve had on my bucket list for the past few years. One of those has always been Melissa’s Road Race, held annually in September, in the incredible Banff National Park. When Chris and I moved to Alberta I knew it was a race we needed to sign up for. Fortunately this year the timing worked out perfectly with my training schedule for the NYC marathon, so one cold wintery morning in February when registration opened, I was on it!

At the end of September we drove the four hours down to Banff, leaving after work on Friday evening (the race was Saturday morning). We missed bib pickup on Friday night, so we had to go early to the race site on Saturday morning to pick up our bibs. Given that there was snow in the forecast we prepared ourselves for a potentially chilly run and tried to dress accordingly. Man, were we (and the weatherman) wrong.

Melissa's Road Race

The 22km race started at 10:40AM. Granted it wasn’t that warm while we were picking up our bibs or waiting to start, but boy, oh boy, I was smoking hot within the first kilometre or so after starting. In retrospect, I should have known better – it’s not as if I’m new to running and don’t know what’s appropriate to wear in different temperatures. I was wildly unpinning my bib, pulling of my jacket and tying it on my waist and stuffing my toque and mittens into any pocket that might fit them. It’s surprising nothing was lost! I ended up running with my jacket  tied around my waist for 20-some-odd kilometres. Check it out  below.

One surprising(ly sad) thing for me was that this was the first time my name has appeared in the women’s 30-something results  Every other race I’ve done thus far I’ve always been 29 and under! Sure, I know I had a big birthday recently and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it was still strange for me to see. I’m now in a way more popular, and definitely more competitive age category. Darn!

There was another first for me in this race. My lovely fiancé decided he would run alongside with me! Chris had been joining me and supporting me on some of my longer NYC training runs, so he had been prepared for the distance, but definitely not at his usual speed. Even without much training (he had been spending most of July and August preparing for the bike for Challenge Penticton!), Chris was definitely capable of finishing the race much faster had he gone on his own. So now that I’ve accepted that my running partner is destined to set a “personal-worst” for this distance, what did I do next?! I enjoyed absolutely every moment of it, and didn’t worry about slowing him down at all! It was his decision to run with me because he wanted to, and he could have easily gone ahead on his own if it bothered him. I loved running with Chris, my own personal pace bunny, having him to talk to and being able to help push me through if I ever needed an extra boost.

The race course had spectacular scenery and at the finish line there was doughnuts and beer for runners, plus a ton of awesome door prizes. Historically, Melissa’s sells out right away, so if you’re interested, set a reminder for that one wintery day in February when registration opens! It’s a race I definitely recommend.

Next up, the Okanagan Half Marathon this Sunday in Kelowna (sadly my personal pace bunny has already told me he’s going to be running his own race). After that, it truly starts to become taper time for the New York City marathon. I couldn’t be more excited!

Two weeks to get ready for a half marathon? No problem!

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Last weekend I ran the Melissa’s Road Race 22km with Kim, and now I’m feeling motivated to do another half marathon on my own. Well, Kim will be running too but we’ll be running our own races instead of beside each other like we did at Melissa’s. All summer, I was trying to prepare for the bike leg of Challenge Penticton and did very little running until early in September. Most of this running consisted of running with Kim on some of her training runs. I thought that would be a good way to ease my way back into running without pushing too hard, as I would inevitably do if I were to run on my own after a long running lay-off. So anyway, here I am a few days after Melissa’s and less than two weeks from the BMO Okanagan half-marathon, and I’m starting to train on my own to try to get a decent time at this race.

Two weeks isn’t much, so I have no illusions of grabbing a new PB but I would still like to do well. I’m setting a somewhat realistic goal of running my second fastest half marathon. That sounds like I’m reaching, but really I’ve only run three of them and my fastest was about five minutes faster than the other two. My PB was achieved on my second half-marathon, and the third ended up being very close to the same time as my first because I went out way too hard trying to PB again. Figures! So yeah, my game-plan this time around is to start out at a reasonably sustainable pace and not really pushing too hard. Then if the legs are being agreeable I can pick up the pace on the back half of the run and slide across the finish line with a time in-between my PB and the other two. But with only two weeks to prepare, how do I plan to do this?!

Well it’s kind of straight-forward and it’s also a bit of an experiment. One of my colleagues is a pretty fast runner (2:35 marathon PB!), and recommended that I try doing some 5-10 minute repeats at just above my goal pace with 3-4 minutes of easy running in between each interval. If I do 3-4 of those per workout to start that would probably give me the most bang for my effort. Last night I tried this workout for the first time and only did 2 efforts because I didn’t have enough time, but I’ll do the workout again early next week to give myself enough time to recover before the race. I’ll do the usual long, slow run on the weekend – I’ve already got 22km from last weekend, so this weekend I’ll go with about 20km. I’ll also throw in a couple of shorter runs at a moderate-easy pace and a tempo run later this week for about 12-13km. I’ll want the legs to be nice and loose for the race on October 13th so I’ll make sure that any runs after next Wednesday are at an easy pace. I’ll also foam roll my calves, quads and IT bands every night between now and then. This is how I envision it:

Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 2×7 min repeats – DONE
Wednesday: Easy run 6km (postponed due to cold, raining Edmonton weather)
Thursday: 13km Tempo
Friday: Easy run 6km
Saturday: Long, slow 20km
Sunday: Rest
Monday: 3×8 min repeats
Tuesday: Easy run 8km
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Easy run 6km
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 15-20 min Easy run with 4-5 20sec strides
Sunday: BMO Okanagan Half-Marathon!

There, so I’ve got less than two weeks and I’ve got a plan! I’ll try to keep things updated here as it gets closer to the race. Wish me luck!