Race report: Baystate Marathon 2017

I've never actually hit the wall in a marathon. Never even had the chance. I always cramp before I ever get to that point, and always in the same place, the vastus medialis part of the quads. After my last marathon disappointment, I headed to the physiotherapist who said in no uncertain terms: work on glute strength.

Well, three years later, here we are and I've just done marathon #7, the Baystate Marathon in Lowell. How did it go? Read on...

Training

If you've been playing along for a while, you know I spent 7 years in journalism. Daily news reporting is sort of a non-schedule: news happens at any hour of the day or night. There was lots of shift work, and lots of 12-to-14-hour days during crises. I loved it, but it was kind of all-consuming. The point is, training through years of being a journalist, even before kids, was excellent training for fitting in the training around major stresses.

So when the husband's month-long work trip was rescheduled from November to September-October, I managed to deal. Just barely. I ran with the stroller. I ran at midday when it was 85 degrees out, in full sun. I had a neighbour babysit on Thursdays after D went to bed, and did the second half of my long run on a weeknight on the treadmill. In the end, my mileage for this training cycle totalled something like 640 miles over 18 weeks, not including the marathon: nothing spectacular, but a slow and steady drip drip of consistent work.

A note about time

The backstory: Back in 2014, I ran my 6th marathon at Gold Coast in Australia. While it was a gorgeous day out, marathon #6 was a crushing disappointment for me, due to debilitating cramps and likely under-training and under-fueling. Yes, it was a PR; but a PR by a single, hard-fought second, and way closer to the 5-hour mark than I wanted to be, or that all the race equivalency calculators said I 'ought' to be. In the three years since, I'd convinced myself that my inner 'turtle girl' was right - that I have no real business running marathons... but the itch to do so was still there.

When you have absolutely nothing to lose, you let go and become a master of total non-attachment. I let go completely of any marathon time goals. My process goal for Baystate was to train properly, stick to my race strategy, and see how it went. I even outsourced my training plan - I asked Coach Nicole from Community Running to write me a plan for a small extra fee, and we'd check in with a phone call every so often.

Somewhere along the line I said to her, "I know exactly how I want to feel during the race. You know the middle miles of a half marathon? With the sun shining and the wind in your hair, and you're flying along, feeling the earth return to you all the energy you put into it with every step? THAT is how I want to feel." And I believed it with every fibre of my being, and I knew that it was true.

I'd trained using a goal pace of 9:05, which roughly dictated my tempo and speed efforts, but by the time race week rolled around, I was so burned out from work and solo parenting that I honestly no longer cared if that was race day pace or not. (See: no time goals.) Plus, I tend to be on the slower side of race calculator predictions the longer the distance gets, even if conditions are perfect. Perhaps I'm just too chicken to race a hard half or full marathon. That's fine. I'll get there.

But not Sunday. I had every intention of finishing, and no intention of pushing hard.

Before the race

I drove up with my friend T, who was doing her first marathon, and we checked in to the Radisson in Chelmsford around 3pm Saturday before hitting up the expo at the same hotel. I'm not an expo-lingerer unless I spot an amazing deal on consumables I already use (gels, socks, etc). We wandered around for a bit, did our nails back in the hotel room, and headed out to dinner at Scola's Italian in Dracut. The portion sizes were so big, I had enough linguine + meatballs left for myself, husband and child the day after! Ahhh, America. We fell asleep around 9pm.

At 5am, T's alarm went off. I'm so used to waking at all hours and getting very little sleep that a 5am wakeup call was fine by me. Morning routine, totally practiced and utilitarian after weeks of 5.30am long runs. Instant oatmeal, coffee, nuun, wash face, visit bathroom, get dressed. Bodyglide, bra, tank top, shorts, socks, shoes, Garmin. Decided to run without visor, gloves, arm sleeves, or water bottle. 6:15 shuttle bus to the start. Drop off bags. Run into friends, take selfie, head in to UMass's Tsongas Center to wait, pee, eat a Luna bar. I felt - loose. Preternaturally calm. Totally zen.

By 7.45, it was already warm enough that I wasn't shivering in the start corral - so, a little warmer than ideal. So what? That's not something I can control. Plus no sleeves or gloves or bottle to weigh me down. I planned to start with 9:30s and hold that pace throughout. Anthem.  Pushrim start. And then we began.

Zen habits

Miles 1-5. 10:20, 9:21, 9:16, 9:32, 9:40.  Gel at mile 5. My plan was to take a gel every 5 miles and water at every water stop (about every 2 miles).

I started somewhere around the 10min/mile section of corral, and took the start very easy (10:20, mile 1). I chatted with people, including a woman doing her first marathon, and then had to pick my jaw up off the floor when we ran by her family and FIVE kids - the youngest were 5-year-old twins, I think. (Spoiler: she finished with me.)

I saw my fan club (Mr. GCA and D-money) who had driven up from Boston that morning and strategically situated themselves up the road from a giant playground. After I saw them the first time...well, what do you do with a toddler while mom runs a fall marathon? You go pumpkin picking, apparently. Now we have two enormous pumpkins and a toddler who has learned the word 'wheelbarrow' and uses it enthusiastically.

Miles 6-10. 9:29, 9:16, 9:37, 9:28, 9:28. Gel at mile 10.

Fall colours on full display. The course wound through mostly residential neighbourhoods until we got to the part along the river, heading northeast towards the Tyngsboro Bridge. At mile 8 I saw a teammate - hooray! - who shot the single happiest photo I've ever seen of myself during a marathon. It's pretty easy to be happy at mile 8.

photo credit: Tommy M. 

Miles 11-15. 9:38, 9:25, 9:53, 9:28, 9:38. Gel at mile 15. Surprise! Got the single salted watermelon gel I'd packed in my SPIbelt amid all the sea salt chocolate GUs I'd bought in bulk. It was a very tasty game of roulette.

I sang "Top of the World" to myself over and over in the exposed middle miles, and meant it.

Somethin' in the wind has learned my name
And it's tellin' me that things are not the same
In the leaves on the trees and the touch of the breeze
There's a pleasin' sense of happiness for me

I'm on the top of the world lookin' down on creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I've found ever since you've been around
Your love's put me at the top of the world

Why is nobody else running the tangents? People are weird. (For the record, I finished with 26.2 on my Garmin, and I think this is actually just really good tangent-running rather than a short course.)
Roadkill: Only two dead animals this year! The 'highlight' of last year's half was a flattened raccoon.
Slow and steady. If I'm Turtle Girl, I'm going to own it.

Miles 16-20. 9:48, 9:30, 10:04, 9:59, 9:53. Gel at mile 20.

I still felt good, like I was merely on an extended long run, but the lengthy exposed stretch around mile 18 was starting to get hot. I knew that I could certainly make it to mile 20, as I'd done on my long runs, and then I could re-evaluate how I felt beyond that.

To distract myself, I chatted with a senior gentleman. At my pace, there are always senior gentlemen, the sort of crusty gent who's been running for decades and is now basically enjoying life. This one told me war stories of marathons past, talked about running Baystate in its early days, and BQ'ed by finishing a few minutes ahead of me. When we got to mile 20, I said, this is the fun part now, isn't it?

Miles 21-23. 10:21, 10:16, 10:41.

I could feel my quads starting to protest, and gritted my teeth at mile 23 as the protest crescendoed into a full-blown revolt. It was warm now, and I knew from last year that the final miles were in direct sunshine. At each of the last few water stops I downed a full cup of Gatorade, which helped stave off the cramps for a minute or two each time.

Miles 24-26.2. 10:56, 10:39, 11:21, 9:37 pace for final 0.2.

With my quads cramping hard as usual, I was in no mood to walk and take a gel at mile 25 - I just wanted to keep shuffling on into the finish. Shuffle, shuffle. One foot in front of the other. All I had to do was not stop and I could be proud of my effort.

I didn't stop. 4:19:38.

The end

You guys. YOU GUYS. That is nearly 35 minutes off my last marathon time. The cramps didn't kick in till Mile 23, much later than usual, which I think is testament to being (mostly) properly trained and being pretty conservative. (A 22-miler next time, perhaps? Step-mill for cross-training? And some real lifting instead of just myrtls?)

I think what I'm happiest about here is that I finally feel like I'm beginning to run the marathon to my potential, my fitness and my training. I managed to stick with the race plan until the cramps really started in earnest. That decision to try and hold 9:30s, or rather a comfortable sort of just-a-little-faster-than-long-run pace, instead of pushing any harder, was the right one. I enjoyed the whole darn thing. Even the crampy bits.

Maybe one day I'll race a marathon - go out at a harder effort, endure discomfort for more of the marathon, see where it gets me. Right now? I'm satisfied with this.

A special message for Turtle Girl

*sings* I'm gonna get that turtle right off of my back -- BYE, FELICIA. It's been a long, strange trip from that 6+ hour marathon to this point. (Apparently when I PR, I go big or go home?) I am not a frequent racer, let alone of marathons, so each one is a bit of a milestone.

December 2009 - 6:18 - my first marathon. No idea what to expect. There was cramping. And walking. A lot of walking. 

December 2010 - 6:30 - total disaster, GI distress, threw up, never did eat or drink enough. Weirdly enough, caught up with friend who was also having stomach trouble, and we walked to the finish together.

March 2011 - 5:15 (Tokyo. -63 minutes) I don't recall the circumstances in which I signed up, because you had to enter the lottery well before December 2010, so I was somehow hoping to run two marathons ~3+ months apart...?? I'm not even sure what I was thinking. I think Tokyo was supposed to be some sort of casual vacation-run.

(Took a long break here to delve into the wacky world of triathlons)

December 2012 - 5:19:54 - another Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon

August 2013 - 4:54:18 (-20 minutes at Perth)

July 2014 - 4:54:17 (-1 second at Gold Coast)

(Had D-money in 2015. 2016-17: ran 5 half marathons; 4 were race efforts; 3 were under 2h, so, you know, pretty reliable.)

October 2017 - 4:19:38 (-35 minutes)

I'll bask in the glow for about a week. Where are my cape and tiara? Thank you, thank you. Then I'll recognise that this is equal parts valid and addle-pated, and then buckle down and start thinking about my next adventures in hobby jogging.

Thanks must go to:

1. Husband, for taking the toddler during all of those weekend long runs and freeing me up to go do stupid sh*t like run 3.3 miles on the treadmill on Sunday afternoon so I'd hit exactly 50 miles for the week. Even when he abandoned us to do a month of fieldwork, he batch-cooked like two weeks' worth of meals beforehand. You're the best. Love you!  
2. Community Running. Somehow track workouts are more fun in a giant group, even if you are generally DFL in the marathon group.
3. And especially Coach Nicole. I asked her to write me a plan - essentially outsourcing all my planning and worrying, since I have quite enough to worry about. She did all the worrying for me, and then some. I'm pretty sure I gave her a heart attack a bunch of times during this training cycle.  
4. Baystate organisers and the city of Lowell for putting on a good show. Did I mention the water and Gatorade at every stop were COLD? Also, people of the Merrimack Valley, you guys are A+ spectators, y'all.

Race logistics

Marathon finishers: 1,332. There's also a popular half marathon option, where I got my PR last year and sliced 10 minutes off my previous half time.
Course: Two loops - one big loop and one small one (if that makes any sense). Mostly flat, one uphill at the start, mini rollers. GORGEOUS fall scenery along the river. Somewhat exposed around miles 8-11, 18-21. The route is narrow in parts (down to half a lane or just a road shoulder), but the field is small enough that it's not a concern.
Start time: 8am (you get to wait inside the Tsongas Center at UMass till about 20 minutes before the start, so don't worry about packing a throwaway shirt unless it's freeeeezing)
Parking: $5 flat / day parking at 3 designated garages, free street parking throughout the city of Lowell on race day.
Transport: For the second year running, the organisers offered shuttles from the race hotels, both to and from the race. <- huge perk!
Course support: Fluid stops every ~2 miles. Both water and lemon-lime Gatorade supplied by perky, adorable high-school cross-country teams at each stop. GU gels at miles 7 and 17.
Swag: Long-sleeved gender-specific tech tee with thumb holes, hefty finisher medal with moving parts
Post-race food: Cape Cod potato chips, PB&J sandwiches, bananas, and 3 different kinds of soup - chicken noodle, minestrone, and vegetable
Photos: Free (!), by Capstone Photography

New Zealand Week 2: The Lazy Week

See, the time elapsed between Part 1 and Part 2 didn't even take that long. I didn't even end with a throwaway dramatic cliffhanger! (However, as there were only 2 weeks of our NZ trip, this will be Part 2 of 2, not a trilogy.)

You may recall some time ago, in a galaxy far away, I took a hike in New Zealand. In the interim, life and work intervened. Well, here's Week 2 of that much-anticipated adventure.

Should I be recovering from an 80km hike in the middle (Week 5 of 18 to be precise) of marathon training?
Whatever.

After the Walk In The Park, we took (just the one) van to a medium-sized town, Nelson, on the north end of the South Island, where we stayed the night at a backpacker hostel...with pudding.

From Nelson, we took the world's littlest passenger aircraft, a Cessna 208 Caravan, to Wellington, which is North Island's southernmost city, and drove over to my friend Nick's place.

I met Nick years ago while travelling in Ecuador (that is yet another story for another day) and he is a great world traveller and eco-activist who is taking the scenic route through university and just finishing up.

We spent a terrific day in Wellington - a good chunk of it was in Zealandia, a wildlife sanctuary that people have worked very hard to restore to its original condition - before all the invasive species invaded. It being a Monday, admission price was just $10. What's better than visiting a really high-quality wildlife sanctuary? Visiting a really high-quality wildlife sanctuary for $10.

New Zealand has terrible problems with rats, possums and other invasive species, which eat the eggs of native birds or compete with them for food, and in some cases have driven them extinct.

People don't help much either. Once upon a time they used to hunt weka and these wacky-looking flightless birds, closely related to swamphens, called takahe.

that's a radio transmitter, not a silicon-based mutation

What Zealandia has done is to restore a good chunk of outer Wellington to a slightly more pristine state, and has built fences and other protections to keep the rats out. There was a tuatara section, a couple of huge eels slinking around in a stream, finger-length insects called weta, and I spent at least forty-five minutes entranced by a small grey North Island robin.

The next morning we set off for Napier where my grandmother's youngest sister, sixth brother, and niece and nephew (grandma's second sister's children), live. (are you confused yet? I have a large, complicated, stubborn, and bossy family - and that's only one quarter of it - I have three other grandparents you know.)

driving into town - isn't it gorgeous

There, we spent four days just completely relaxing, being fed vast quantities of very fresh food at the various wineries in and around the Hawke's Bay area...

l to r: grand-uncle, his wife, and you know whom - at Elephant Hill winery.
thinking about this makes me hungry again... 

 and also food made by my grand-aunt and uncle, who are both fantastic cooks: lamb roast, laksa, tom yum mussels, or luak, panfried salmon... as well as cakes by my grand-uncle. (In return, I baked sticky date pudding with caramel sauce on our last night there).

And I might've even run once or twice.

New Zealand: A Much-Expected Journey - Part 1

And a much-overdue blog post. We in the Chua-Bramante ('Team Chuamante') family like to do certain things in supremely scrambled order, somewhat late. I got back from NZ at the end of May, and promptly 1) hosted friends 2) had a nightmare week at work 3) had another nightmare week at work that ate my life. Indeed, I joke that we'll finally have a combined bachelor/ette paintball party (stag vs doe, of course) after the birth our firstborn. (No save the dates for THAT yet - sorry parents.)

So of course we finally went on honeymoon in May, after squirrelling away a few dollars each month for this trip and using my parents' frequent flyer points which we got as a wedding gift. Why yes, it's been 1.5 years since we got married...

Ah, New Zealand. The land of hobbits and wacky animals. All of them are so marvellously tame (except for the orcs). There are no seriously wild creatures in New Zealand. At least none that can kill you.

This here is a weka, about the size of a large chicken. They are technically a vulnerable species, but on the Heaphy Track they are a menace. One ran away with a fellow hiker's Ipod Shuffle. Guidebooks tell you not to chase them as they'll only run farther away - just watch where they stash your stuff and go and retrieve it later. On the track, we saw a good 25 of them, just hanging out. 

Don't fall off or into any mountains though, that's a different story.

Week 1: The Active Week

In May, New Zealand is not quite in the depths of winter, but it's getting there. It was rather chilly when we landed in Christchurch, a city that crumbled under the force of a major earthquake two years ago. Christchurch is still being rebuilt, and there's plenty of work for builders and architects - including a couple of friends who moved there from Singapore. We stayed with one of them to relax for a couple of days.

The upside to a major earthquake is that you get to rebuild your city from scratch. There are some interesting things going on, including the Re:START container mall and Gap Filler, as well as some rather stupid-sounding planning decisions.

We spent some quality time there, then in one very long blitz, travelled from Christchurch to Nelson to Collingwood to the start of the Heaphy Track on a series of smaller and smaller buses until finally we were going down a dirt track in a van with a trailer. Side note: Every small town in New Zealand has its very good cafe with very good coffee and what are perhaps the best chocolate caramel slices in the world.

The roughly 80km Heaphy Track is a Great Walk, meaning it's designed to provide tourists a pleasant introduction to New Zealand's wild places. And how pleasant. There were some seriously luxurious huts (four walls, gas stoves, running water, and even LED sensor lighting in one of them!!). We'd planned meticulously for a four-day trek. Dehydrated meals, snacks, hut bunks, bus pickup at the end. Only trouble was, the weather forecast on day 2 of our trek was for heavy rain. And it was supposed to be our long day (24km)...

We got to the trailhead at 7pm and stayed the night at Brown Hut. The first morning was bone-dry and lovely. We were supposed to walk 17km to the next hut, but ended up walking 30km to the one after that to eat 13km into Day 2's walk. With full packs (about 1/3 my body weight). Ouch.

"We're doing this! We're doing this FOR REAL!"

now imagine like this, but wet

But that was nothing compared to Day 2.

We woke up to a massive storm outside. There didn't seem to be any lightning, so we (wo)manned up, raincoated up, backpack-covered-up, and marched on. (Mind you, at this time of year it was about 7 degrees Celsius when we started in the morning.) If I kept my raincoat hood up, my glasses fogged up. If I kept it down, water streamed down the back of my neck. I had my arms across my chest for warmth, and when I dropped them to my sides again, icy water streamed out of my sleeves. It rained sideways, from all directions, at the same time. By the end of our 11+km walk - across squishily exposed territory - there was nothing that was dry. Thank goodness for Ziploc bags.

At Saxon Hut, we changed out of our soggy clothes and tried to warm up. Puddles everywhere.

All of a sudden, there was a knock on the door. And then another. And then another, till a quartet of friendly, woolly-hat-clad, bearded...mountain bikers barrelled into the room. This year was the third and final year of a pilot trial - mountain bikers were allowed to bike the Heaphy in winter, during its less crowded season, so they were out in droves.

biker (L) and the husband (R) trying to start a...coal-fired stove. 

They were just stopping over for a few hours, so after they left, we sat by the fire trying to dry our things. The general rule of hiking is that you have just two sets of clothes: one to walk in and one to sleep in. Maybe some spare underwear and socks, and another shirt if you are very dainty and want a clean shirt after the whole hike is done. So the next morning, there were more than a few yelps as we struggled into our less-soggy, but still-cold gear. I could swear that my boots had frozen overnight...

The next two days (20km and 16.2km) were much drier and less eventful. On the last day we went down South Island's north-western coastline, facing the wild Tasman Sea, and were treated to some spectacular scenery.

Okay, fine, here is a picture of my gourmet trail lunch.

And some nikau palm forest.

Now you're jealous, right? 

Finally we ended up back in Nelson, at a cute hostel called Tasman Bay Backpackers.

And that's all we did for the first week - walk a lot.

Mind you, we did walk 80km in four days over interesting terrain and all kinds of weather, so we could use some sleep.

At this point I could use some sleep too so I'll stop here. I might split the NZ blog posts into three to make more money attract more hits. What's that you say? Oh, too soon.

Double points if you got all the Hobbit references. 

One variable at a time

Yesterday and Monday I had the day off ('off' - as there is no such thing as an off-duty daily news journalist I also had a contact lunch meeting and did an interview). I managed to run 6km on Monday and go to the beach with my colleague (also off) and finish the book I was reading, and go to the track on Tuesday before my Very Long Day, which involved that meeting, the interview, and my sister's wedding-dinner food tasting (shortest and best wedding dinner I have ever been to, folks. Delicious.)

And today is a public holiday, Labour Day. Which totally explains why I'm still doing bits of work...

On Tuesday the thought that got me through my track workout was: "I would have to run an entire marathon at this pace to ever qualify for Boston." Why yes, that is my 10K race pace and the pace at which I was doing the interval set. There will be no BQing any time soon.

One variable at a time

Chatting with my colleague Serene about our lives in school reminded me of science practicals. And any good scientist knows you change only one variable at a time.

So I'm training for Perth the exact same way I trained for Stanchart: with one difference - going longer. Not a longer long run one day each week. A little bit longer every day. Nothing that much more than 10 or 12km at a go. Maybe 15 or 20 on weekends. Same pace range I always do (I am so slow that my marathon pace...IS my easy pace). But a little bit longer every day.
For Stanchart I started out at about 35km a week and worked my way up to 55km at most.
For Perth I'm starting out at 40-45 a week and working my way up to 60-70. And staying there until it's taper time.

As any scientist knows, you don't really know the outcome of your experiments in advance. You can have a good guess about what the outcome is supposed to be. But it can take years to nail down the best methods for what you want to accomplish. I have the rest of my life to play around with changing these variables for marathon training. Let's see how this works.

Weighty issues

No, I actually have no issues with my weight and never actually have - despite ten years of ballet (aka 'looking at oneself in a tiny leotard in a big mirrored studio' - somehow I was always more concerned with how high I could jump, whether I could balance on the pirouettes, etc).

Some people do though. This is called a mismatch between reality and the expectations in one's head/ imposed from outside. I especially like this wonderful, scathing commentary by a blogger I've never actually read before - 'on beach bodies and other reasons society sucks'. Thanks Holly for sharing it with me!

Some gems: "I don’t want to be the skinniest person in the cemetery. I want to be the last one to get there."

"All I’m saying is that you don’t have to get your body ready for summer, certainly no more than you should get your body ready for any other season. (*Editor's note. Except for the winter ski season if that is a thing you do, for which you really want strong quads to protect your knees. Also your core if you are doing really any sport at all in any season.) Your “bikini body” is whatever body you put a bikini on and anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t really helping you at all."

I agree with 99.9 per cent of everything she says except for one tiny mistake: assuming that skinny girls eat nothing but a lettuce leaf and a pea for lunch. (Didn't she see her own chart up top? The only thing that you can tell about a skinny person from looking at them...is that they are skinny. Not whether they have an eating disorder or are depressed or are starving themselves.)

Not that I am skinny myself (does it matter? who cares? NOBODY), but I HAVE got the 'You need to eat a burger' comments before from people who don't know me and my eating habits at all (my eating habits are my own business thanks...don't get me started on the instagram foodporn...). So judgey. I would be glad if people stopped making those sorts of comments about the way anyone looks. I'm going to have popiah at my grandmother's place now. You're all beautiful.

Workouts this week 

Friday: 5.6km recovery run
Saturday: Swam 1.2km for fun
Sunday: Ran 12.5km
Monday: 6.5km
Tuesday: Speedwork - 800/1200/1600/1200/800 at 2:10 going up and a smidgen faster on the way back down
Wednesday: 15km - 10km from home to Tanjong Beach at Sentosa and 5km for the run leg of the fun sprint tri my tri training group was putting on

Liebster and lovin'

Oh my goodness, nearly forgot to share the Liebster Award bloglovin':

I nominate my friend Shu - an ex-colleague, now teacher (once a journalist, always a journalist...no getting away from it) with the most delightful sense of humour. She's no slouch in the photography and fashion departments either! I suspect she has too many followers to qualify for the award, but I wanted to share the love because I miss her.

Things I'm loving right now:

1. Edward Humes' book Garbology, about America's (and the developed world's) addiction to refuse-generating Stuff and what this does to the environment. Each chapter reads like a magazine article: you'll meet the Bay Area family whose entire trash output per year fits inside a mason jar, the world's first garbage archaeologist, and the Trash Trackers of MIT.

2. This week my friend from our university's dance group visited Singapore with her boyfriend in the middle of a trip around Australia/ New Zealand/ Southeast Asia. So of course we had to feed them. We all had crab last night.

 this is salted egg crab. it doesn't look like much but it is delicious.
not my photo, borrowed from someone else's review...too busy eating to take photos. 

3. The Yellow Fellows, who are running to raise funds for the Singapore Cancer Society, which does free cancer screening, public education, home care, and funds treatment and transport for low-income patients. They ran the same 10K I did this morning, and their shirts were even yellower than mine. There's a link to their donation site on their Facebook page.

4. We had friends over last night and they used all the regular glasses so I'm drinking my Nuun from an old pasta-sauce jar. Lemon-lime with an ethereal whiff of tomatoes.

5. The watermelon and grapes I thought to toss in the freezer yesterday. Mm.

Things I'm loving somewhat less right now - because I am also a curmudgeon, ok?: 

This morning I did the 2XU

 ("2XU: two times you!" "one of me is enough for the world to handle, thank you very much")

10km as a tempo run, using the bib of a friend of a friend who couldn't make it. (I got stuck behind a lot of people at the start, started tired and got tireder, and my phone claimed it was a tiny bit short: 9.8km in 1:01. Except my friend's GPS said 10.41 km. I feel like I've fallen into some kind of gravitational distance warp here.)

But my body, without my consent I might add, has made it its mission in life to chafe in as many interesting places as possible. And I don't mean interesting places like 'inside Marina Bay Sands'. Stupid weather. Stupid shorts seam. Stupid me, forgetting the Bodyglide...

The reason I want to do longer tempo runs is... I signed up for the Perth marathon in August.

I've cramped after 25km on every single marathon I've done, and if I don't cramp I will almost certainly PR (under 5:15). A bit of back-and-forth email discussion with one of the coaches led me to the conclusion that what's going on is
a) I lose a lot of salt
and
b) muscle fatigue from not being conditioned to push hard on longer distances.

So part of the solution I've come up with is
1. longer tempo-paced runs (which for me is a little bit over 10 km/h). Going to force myself to do more of these in the months ahead. I hate tempo runs...
2. speedwork + strides - which Tuesday night track takes care of, but it's geared towards sprint-distance training
3. more strength training -  anyone got a good routine?

"If you can't run a fast 10km, you can't run a fast marathon," said my coach.
(Hey coach, I'm just trying to PR here, not qualify for Boston! This IS my 'fast', or at least a level of fast I'm confident of doing. It's not very fast for the other people you coach, but where I am is where I am, so let's work with what I've got, OK? Having the inverse of natural ability is kind of frustrating sometimes.) (And here we insert a very important note about mental health: I have some stress issues and if I'm not running with joy, if I'm running on upset or stressed or angry, I don't race well...so please don't feed the self-doubt demons in my head.)

Workouts: 

Almost none this week, it has REALLY been a nightmare at work. 

Tuesday extra exhausted track session.

Thursday easy 5k recovery run.

This morning: 10?km, getting slower every km I ran.