Toronto's Marathons - One Must Go

The city has finally decided that Toronto needs one world-class marathon rather than two mediocre ones fussin' and feudin'.

Finally!

Up until now, Toronto has had the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon in September and the GoodLife Fitness Toronto Marathon in October.

They are only 3 weeks apart, leaving some residents fuming... shutting down a slew of streets once for a marathon gets folks a bit upset, but when they do it all over again just a few weeks later? Then the gloves come off.

There are clear benefits to having a marathon in the city. People come from all over Canada (and beyond) to participate, they stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, and they experience the city in a way that is second to none. Even as someone who has lived here more than 10 years, I was surprised how wonderful the people of Toronto were when I ran the Toronto Marathon.

But two marathons? In 3 weeks? It's twice the aggravation for dubious additional benefit.

In fact, it has been argued that having two marathons prevents either one from being particularly successful. The Toronto Marathon had around 2,000 finishers, Toronto Waterfront had just shy of 3,000 (not including the shorter distance races). These are not particularly impressive numbers - even the 30K Around the Bay race in Hamilton draws over 6,000! Chicago is a similar sized city and draws 30,000.

For 2011, the city will put out a request for proposals. Undoubtedly, the two existing races will submit bids, and possibly others.

In my opinion, Toronto's wish list should be:

• Size - more people, more economic impact
• Showcase Toronto - the course has to showcase the city's neighbourhoods and sights.
• Profile - the Waterfront race has this, big prizes attracts some top marathon talent.

There is no reason why a Toronto Marathon can't be the biggest and best marathon in Canada, and be a destination race for athletes outside of this country.

Smooth Freestyle Swimming

This little animation has been making the rounds for the last few months.

Mr. Smooth!

He's a virtual swimmer who is supposed to represent smooth and near-perfect form. There's some debate to the perfection of Mr. Smooth, but he's so much closer than me I'll call him "good enough"!

Of course, being virtual, he doesn't have to worry about sinking, breathing, or having his butt handed to him by the 14-year-old girls from the local synchronized swim team (don't ask).

I'm too slow to really give people swim advice, but I do know a few things I've done wrong over the years. Hopefully they spark something in perfecting your own swimming technique!

My Mistakes

• Looking forward - you'd think looking where you're going would be a good thing, but no. It has a tendency to lift your head, which sinks your feet. Swimming "downhill" is preferable, looking straight down. (Of course in a triathlon, you need to occasionally sight to make sure you're on course, but that's an exception!)
• Over-reaching - this is one I just realized the other day... I've been reaching so far forward, I'm twisting my body, and my hand is crossing the center line. This blog post has a great summary of the problem and picture. The solution is quite simply to keep your arm's reach in line with your shoulder, and be careful not to over-rotate when breathing.
• Pushing down - When you start your stroke, it's important that you bend your elbow and push the water back, not down. If you push down, your head pops up (much like in "looking forward") and your feet sink - bad. This tendency is especially strong when taking a breath. Check out Mr. Smooth - the palm of his hand is perpendicular to the water surface, facing directly behind him, for his entire stroke... awesome.

The real take-away from Mr. Smooth is just how flat and clam his body is when he's swimming. It looks effortless (and of course, being a fictional swimmer, it is!). He is just laying on the water, stroking forward with a gentle kick... it's hard to be that comfortable in real life, but with the animation it's a little easier to visiualize.

Fighting Trainer Boredom

The trainer is cycling, minus almost everything I love about cycling.

Oh sure, I'm on my bike, pedals are moving same as always.

Now matter how much I turn up the fan, it's not the same as that feeling of moving through the air outdoors. I'm not getting anywhere, not seeing anything new, not fighting the elements.

It is soul-sucking. But when you live in Canada, there are times of the year where it's a neccessary evil.

So here are a few things I've found make it more tolerable, sometimes even almost enjoyable (but not quite).

Spinervals

Coach Troy Jacobson leads you through a complete workout. There are several videos with different goals, usually from 40-60 minutes long. And if you listen to Coach Troy, you will get a heck of a workout, and you will learn to hate him intensely (nothing personal Coach, but I equate your voice with severe pain).

Toys

Heart rate monitor, cadence meter, speedometer - all of them give you data to understand and think about, which beats watching the clock tick down (it'll never get to 0:00 if you watch it!). Set some goals (or let Coach Troy set some for you) and use your toys to track them (ie. stay above 120 rpm for 30s on , 30s off, repeat 5 times).

Cycling/Triathlon Videos

When I'm doing less structured riding, I find old cycling videos of Tour de France stages or Paris to Roubaix really get the job done. You find yourself matching their cadence almost like you're riding with them.

And if you close your eyes and let your mind wander just a little, you almost feel like you're in front of the TV watching the Tour de France...

Snakes on a Plane

No. Don't do it. Terrible movie, and not the least bit motivational for cycling.

In general, non-cycling content just doesn't get the job done for me. Your mileage may vary, but no matter what, stay away from Snakes on a Plane. Even if you try to watch it ironically.

Get Outside

It's going to be +2C here tomorrow (35F), so on go the long pants, shoe covers, gloves, etc and I'm heading outside... it's a bit of extra work getting prepared, but a break from the trainer helps me remember why I'm doing it!

Speed It Up!!!

My goals up to now have mostly been around distance.

Century ride - check!
Marathon - check!
Ironman - check!

It's always been very rewarding to cross off those new distances, to go that little bit further, but now I've gone as far as I really care to...

So now what?

Speed!

I've been getting faster each year, but I feel like it was almost coincidental. Doing more of anything will make you faster at first, but there's a point where it's not enough. It's time to focus and do some serious work-outs with getting faster as the priority, rather than just going further and further...

Cycling Speed Plan

• Spinervals in the winter
• Long steady ride
• Hill repeats, intervals, tempo rides

Biking is probably where I've been the least structured. I pretty much have two rides I do: long and slow or short and all out.

This year I'm going to work on carrying the intensity of a Spinervals spin session onto the road on my short rides.

Running Speed Plan

• Hills, hills, hills
• Tempos
• Trails
• Long Steady Distance

When I say "hills hills hills", I don't mean hill repeats, I mean incorporating hills into almost every run. On long runs, this means slowing and keeping a steady heart rate. For short runs, I treat them more like intervals, where I go hard up the hills, recover, then go hard up the next one.

Trails - I felt like the off-road running I did at the end of last year strengthened a lot of the muscles that don't get direct attention from road running. I'm going to try to get out on the trails now and then to keep it up. And it was fun!

Swimming Speed Plan

• Improve Form

My biggest limiter in the pool is still form, no question. If I improve my form, I will go faster. So my workouts have been around practicing form, rather than really doing a swim "work-out" as such.

I'll change that up a bit this year, and try to do sets where I focus more on really pulling through the water with power. It's a secondary concern, though.

Weight Loss Speed Plan

I've talked about this before, but it's a bit part of going faster: dropping weight.

No matter how hard I train, if my weight stays where it is, I'm leaving something on the table. That's not good enough! I dropped a few pounds before Christmas, some of which were kind enough to return, but I would like to see a 10-15lb drop by the time I do Muskoka 70.3 and the fall marathon.

Faster Goals

I want to find a sub-1:45 half marathon by the spring, and somewhere around a 3:45 marathon in the fall. I think it's there. And in general I just want to see faster bike splits, especially at races I've done before.

Comments/Advice appreciated!

Run, Fatboy, Run! Weight and Performance

How much is 20 pounds?

The other day I was at the store and picked up a 20lb bag of road salt. Oh. My. God. I can't imagine running with that extra weight, it's staggering. How did my knees handle the pounding? Next time you see one of those big bags give it a try... really drives home how much of an impact it should really have!

I remember showing up for my first 1/2 marathon in Peterborough.

I looked around and realized "I don't look like these people"! They were thin and athletic, I was close to 200lbs with a pretty respectable gut on me. I ran my little (big?) heart out to a 2:07 finish, side by side with some of the skinies.

The Performance Penalty

But what is the true penalty of extra weight? How much faster would my debut have been with the same training but 20lbs less to lug around?

Well first let's just look at the calories:

Calories (kCal) = 0.406 * (weight in pounds) * (distance in kilometers)

So plugging in the numbers for a 1/2 marathon, we get:

180 pound runner = 1542 kCal
200 pound runner = 1713 kCal

So it's just under 200 kCal difference. Doesn't sound like much, but it means running out of glycogen stores earlier or (more sensibly) having to knock back some pace.

Slow down, Fatboy!

Runner's World examined the issue in this article. Their conclusions was that all other things being equal, "healthy runners will race about two seconds per mile faster for every pound they lose". For a half marathon, they have a 20 pound reduction translating to slicing a staggering 8:44 off your time.

Almost nine minutes! Wow.

I recently did a half marathon in 1:47:43, at about 185 pounds. My goal is to get my weight under 170, which wouldn't quite be a drop of 20 pounds, but close... maybe I have a 1:40 in me yet!

Implications for biking and swimming

For both, the answer is "it depends".

Swimming - Fat floats... 'nuff said! Well not quite - you are punching a larger hole in the water which must use more energy. But on the other hand, I saw a program once on a gentleman attempting to swim across the English Channel, he intentionally gained massive amounts of fat to help him achieve the task (some of that may have been to tackle the cold, though!).

Cycling - I played around with this calculator a little. Being heavy increases rolling resistance, but relatively insignificantly. It would also increase your aerodynamic profile, but again this effect would be relatively minor for only 20 pounds. That leaves the biggest impact being dragging those big fat cells up hills! The amount of force that takes goes up pretty much linearly with weight... so either drop some pounds or ride flat courses.

Weight Loss = Magic Bullet?

No... remember the term "all things being equal". A heavy but fit guy can beat a light but unfit guy. But if you train the same amount, being lighter can shave precious minutes off your time, it's great bang for your buck!

End of Year Rest and Relaxation

'Tis the season to take a break...

Ironman wiped me out a bit more mentally than I think I realized. The post-Ironman high kept me going through October, but I think a few weeks of R&R were overdue!

So for the last few weeks I've cut back significantly. A couple of runs a week, some mountain biking, the odd indoor trainer session (Spinervals!), and a swim here and there. No schedule, just doing what I feel like for as long as I feel like as fast/slow as I feel like.

It's all very liberating... much different than the training "workout" mentality!

I've also been taking the opportunity to bring my weight down, controlling calories to drop a few pounds. I was getting into the high 180's after Ironman, I've managed to get that down to the low 180's with the intention of getting to the 160's for the race season (specifically for the fall marathon!). No magic, just keeping my calories in to about 2000/day and keeping active.

2010 is coming, though... it's time to awaken from this slumber and get back at it!

Running

I'm going to do the Peterborough 1/2 marathon again at the end of February. That means I need to start training... hmm... last week. OK maybe next week! It's a B or C race at best, so I just want to make sure I'm doing 20+km long runs before then. I'm hacking together a plan for that now.

Biking

My 5th Paris to Ancaster! I can't believe it's been 5 years since I first got my ass handed to me by this race... but I'll be back for more in April.

Until I can get back outdoors (probably in March) I'll be using Spinerval DVDs and doing a lot of intensity, intervals, just anything that can help with this rather unique race (see last year's race report for the gory details!). On-road, off-road, drafting, mud, wind, a killer climb, it has everything. Good way to get a well-rounded start to the season!

Swimming

My first triathlon won't be until late July this year... a bit disappointing, but something had to give. I just have too much going on, including a long relay adventure race in June. I'll be trying to improve my swim over the winter, though, focus is still on technique.

2010 - here I come!

I'm ready to rock!!! There's a lot to be said for some time off, even if it drove me a little stir crazy at times.

Mountain Biking - Joy and Pain

The Joy

There is nothing quite like bombing through a forest on your bike, a bed of fallen leaves beneath your tires. One moment you're in a sparse maple forest, the next you're on a bed of pine needles shadowed by towering spruce trees.

Not only do you get to experience nature, but as a cyclist it's a whole different challenge. Staying upright as you navigate between trees, across sand or mud, over a stump, around tight turns... you figure out how to keep a bike upright very fast, or end up on your butt.

If you attack the trails, you get the adrenaline junkie experience of trees whipping by your head and being just a little bit out of control. Or you can back off a bit, take it easy, and soak up your surroundings.

And the surroundings can be spectacular... especially when the fall colours are at their most brilliant, it's amazing.

The Pain

With the challenge comes the occasional painful moment. I had two this weekend.

First, we ended up on a trail blocked by several downed trees. As we crawled over and under them, I managed to get a few good gashes from dead branches that were sticking out (see picture). No big deal, they clotted and I kept riding, but not for pretty boys!

Second, as we rode down a rather narrow trail, I failed to notice a thick branch at head level... as I went under it, it clipped the top of my helmet, snapping my head back. My neck immediately hurt which made me quite concerned I'd done serious damage... fortunately it felt better within a minute and after a sleep it's fine.

Most of my spills have been at low speed and didn't do any damage, other than to my pride.

But we've had other incidents over the years... a buddy of mine cracked a helmet on a fall, that and I had a pretty good spill at high speed when I hit some sand that knocked the wind out of me. Both were scary, as you realize just how far away any real medical assistance would be. We've been more cautious since, and we're better riders than when we first started.

Joy > Pain

Is it worth it? Absolutely! If you're just starting out, here's some tips:

• Stay on the main trails ("double track") until you get used to it and get your bike handling skills up to snuff
  
• Keep in control - and that really means keep the speeds low, especially downhill. It's easy to get going quick, only to realize too late that there's something in your path.
  
• Watch for mud and sand... these can be right smack in the middle of the trail, and it takes practice to be able to navigate through them without taking a spill.
• Wear a Lid - helmets are absolutely critical while mountain biking, it's suicide to be out there without it.
  
• Carry first aid stuff and cel phone - just in case
• Don't ride alone
  

And have fun!

Next up... mountain bike skills 101.