Cresting the wave

Today I ran to work. The plan called for a marathon pace effort. I think I overdid it a bit. Either that or my next marathon will be fast. At 4:54m/km, my marathon time would be about 3h33m. I don't think I can sustain this speed for a whole marathon yet but who knows, with the crowds cheering, maybe I will speed it up :)

Today's run was very pleasant. I always like longish tempo runs. It feels like at the beginning of the run, I am pushing hard to get a good groove going. Once the groove is established, I feel like I am being pushed by the established pace to keep it up and continue doing well. The image that came to my mind today was a surfer cresting a wave, totally in control, riding the wave to the beach. That is how I felt today, totally in control of my machinery and riding the wave I created in the first kilometers all the way to downtown. What a pleasant feeling. The Endorphins were really flowing freely today. Then, toward the end of the run, something funny happened. The Testosterone came out and I started thinking about the Ottawa Marathon, my next race in about a month. Some of you may have seen my tweet after finishing the run, proclaiming that @ottawamarathon has nothing on me. I felt invincible and right then and there thought that I would shred the course apart. Even if the new course hasn't been finalized, I feel that I will do well on May 30th.

The pace itself was fairly consistent, staying between 5:00 and 4:40 once I warmed up.
I've been using both my Garmin and MyTracks from Google on my new phone. Preliminary thoughts are that the voice feedback is fun. It mixes in with the music playing in my BlueTooth headset and feels fairly non-intrusive. However, it's not the best way to see progress in between updates and there's no way it offers as much info as the display on the Garmin. The phone screen is somewhat hard to see in the sun and since it's up on my arm, almost on my shoulder, it's not as easily accessible as a watch. Accuracy is pretty good with about 5% difference between the mileage recorded by the Garmin and the phone. It wouldn't be my only tool but as a secondary/backup device it works well enough. It doesn't offer all the workouts and other advanced features of the Garmin but that's probably just Software related. If someone could come up with a watch like accessory and maybe heartbeat and footpod that works with BlueTooth then maybe we could talk about serious competition. I'll keep looking for other apps and eventually write in a in-depth review / comparison of all of them :)

LA Afterthoughts + C4C

I received lots of online and offline congrats and comments about LA! Thank you! One of the things that came back the most was about taking so many pictures yet crushing my goal at the same time.... How did I manage it?

First of all, I don't think my goal was too easy. I think I just had a very rare perfect day. The fact that I was in a timezone 3 hours behind made the 7am start quite a late one for my eastern system and my nutrition was going right on schedule prior to the race, thanks to an All-you-can-eat pasta special for the Marathon at Maria's downtown LA. The weather was gorgeous. Even if it got a bit hot in downtown, once when we started going towards the sea the refreshing breeze came in to cool us down. The course was fabulous with lots of sights to take your mind off the grueling task of putting one foot before another and the community support was outstanding, recharging my batteries at every turn. I can't forget mentionning that my dad was also inspiring me to push the limit of what I knew I could do.

As the picture taking, I think it actually helped make me faster. Marathoners will know that the course can get pretty lonely and boring. It's not unusual to strike up a conversation with fellow runners when breathing is allowing it. Taking our minds off the littles aches that are developing or not thinking about how much fuel is left in the tank versus how many miles are left on the course is paramount to a good performance. Having the camera and thinking about the pictures and the sights that I wanted to bring back to friends and family did just that for me. While the running backwards was a bit dangerous (I almost tripped at least twice!) it also gave my muscles a break in the motion and I think this had a positive effect.

Where do I go from here? I have another marathon scheduled for the end of May, in my hometown with friends and family watching. I'll have to do well! My goal is simply a repeat of my LA performance to confirm that I am strong and can use the summer to get even faster towards that elusive Boston Qualifying time (3:10 for me).

LA Marathon, like most major races, had a bunch of race photographers on site. I never understood the race photography economy. While I do realize they spend tremendous amounts of money to take all these beautiful pictures such as this one:
What I never understood is the market for these pictures. A single picture will cost you $60. Granted they also offer an "economical' download of all the pictures they take of you for a "modest" $80. I can't justify myself paying that much money for pictures. Yes, I want a copy. These are amazing pictures of what is for the most part an extraordinary event, but seriously, $60 per picture? I had a chat with the girl at the counter at the expo about this. She seemed to hold a position of fair responsibility in the company and all she could do to validate that $80 for a download of all the pictures was a fair price was that it was their most popular product. I don't have an MBA in race photography economics, but let's say there are 50 photographers paid a per diem of $2,000 (I think this is generous, especially for LA where every closet paparazzi has good quality photo equipment), that's only $100,000 of fixed cost per event. Add in a generous amortization of $50,000 per race for website and bib recognition software and you only have a fixed cost of $150,000. If you sell a download package to %10 of the field at $80, that's $200k ($50k of profits). If you'd sell the same package for $25, you'd probably get %50 or more of the field buying it, that's over $300k ($150k profit). Maybe I'm wrong and there's already %50 of the field buying the download and I'm totally off the track here with my numbers.

If you are in the race photography business, I think your sweet spot for an almost universal buyin is about %25 of the cost of the race entry fee. For $25 or less, I'd buy the pictures before the race, before I even see them and not ask for a refund if they are no good. Anything over $30, I'll wait to see the results and if they are good I will get them. Anything over $40 I won't even think about it even if the picture is worthy of Time Magazine or National Geographics.

One of the benefits of having gone to LA is that I broke my phone so I got this new one:
It's more like a computer than a phone really and it has a GPS. I've seen lots of software for running and tracking distance, pace, etc and I will be trying them out in the next few weeks to see if there is a possibility of replacing my garmin. Less electronics to carry while I run is better in my books but I think it will be difficult to replace the purpose built Garmin watch with a more general use device like a phone. More on this as I experiment with the various software. If you have any suggestions for a good running software that runs on Android, let me know!

I totally forgot the C4C with the race excitement so I'll use the comments on my race report for the March numbers, so 8 food items will be donated to the Kanata Food Cupboard. Don't think that's enough to feed the needy? Leave your comments here for April's C4C, for every visitor that leaves a comment I'll donate one non-perishable item. If we go over 8 comments, I'll double March's donation!

Cost of running + 3 in 3

I've been needing a new pair of running shoes for a while now and looking around for good deals on shoes has gotten me thinking about the cost of running. While running is probably one of the most affordable and accessible sports, there are definitively costs, especially for long distance runners.

A good pair of shoes will set you back about $125-150 and last around 500 km. Not to forget other equipment such as tech shirt, shorts, tights, socks and hats, especially in winter with so many layers! Other equipment may be the beloved Garmins, iPods and other technology tools making our runs better. There are also the obvious costs of races and travel to races that hang in the balance.

On top of that, there are nutritional costs. Sport drinks are pretty affordable at 5$ for a tub of crystals that will make 8 liters, enough for a few long runs. Other nutrition costs are the more costly gels and supplements such as glucosamine to ensure healthy joints. I expect that proteins and carbohydrates should be featured in higher quantity in a runner's diet than someone who doesn't exercise much.

There are also a lot of training related reading materials, association membership fees, magazine and coaches that can add up without noticing. I'm pretty lucky I can withstand the elements and run outside in the cold, that way I don't need a gym membership even if I did equip my dreadmill-less home-gym with quite a bit of equipment that I hope can make me a better runner.

Adding it all up makes me realised how much money I devoted to running over the years. I think every penny spent running is a worthwhile investment in making me a faster runner, happier person and most probably a healthier human being. If I was to add up all the running related dollars I've spent in a year and divide by the kms I ran, the cost would come at about $2 per km. That's something to think about on my long runs as the bill keeps getting longer!

Life got pretty busy in the last few days so I had to shuffle my schedule around a bit. I was still able to do 3 back to back running days totalling 32 km. Not bad. I was right on the money for my goals both times yesterday at 10km in exactly 50 minutes and today with a 60 minutes 12k. I don't usually have the power in the legs to do anything else than just keep up when I do back to back, especially after Wednesday's fartlek session. I'm especially happy about today's speed profile, almost a flat line throughout.
It's the first time I notice that I run an exact split with my both my first and last 6km clocking in at exactly 30 minutes!

Let's see how I fare on Sunday's long 32km.

Discovering Pudong

This morning I went shopping to see what around the hotel and found a sports store. I knew I shouldn't have gone in since I usually lack self control when shopping without a specific goal in mind. I was curious to see if prices would be any different. The really high-end/brand name stuff was actually more expensive with the Asics Nimbus for example about 50% more than what I paid for them in Canada. The shopping trip still resulted in a new cold weather running outfit (the entire thing for under $50! unbelievable). It's not a brand name I know but the material feels like quality and it will allow me to remember China on those long cold runs and hopefully make them go by faster :)
Once I came back to the hotel, I thought that running a bit around would be a perfect way to quickly discover and explore the neighbourhood. The weather wasn't great being mostly muggy and wet but it wasn't hell either. I wanted to make it to an area that the map describes as Century Park. My biggest failure was probably to try to memorise the map and Chinese street names and not bring the map with me (I felt it would encumber me). This failure wasn't so bad, since while I may have not seen Century Park today, there is always tomorrow and the weather may be better for pictures!
I also got to run in "Regency Park" which is as far as I can figure out a gated community for the fortunate Chinese families that can afford McMansions. More on my thoughts about this and pictures of the mansions in my other blog: BuzzingInShanghai. Here are some pictures from the more park-like features:
After getting out of the Regency Park, I figured I could still try to find Century Park. I didn't end up finding it, however I found the construction site for the World 2010 expo!
I started running back and while I wasn't focussing on speed specifically, I did pretty well overall. Shanghai has water absolutely everywhere so it makes for a really runner friendly city so far (at least the part I am in). The sidewalks are also wide and fairly quiet.
Once I got back, I turned to the snack I had gotten earlier while shopping. I was hoping that one of these two would turn out to be Coconut buns since they are my favorites.
Turns out that, while both pretty delicious, neither of them were Coconut. The long one was some kind of cream stuffing and the rounder one was stuffed with red beans. I have to figure out what the chinese symbol for Coconut is if I want to be able to identify them easily :)

Not bad for a unplanned run. 14.3km in 1h17.