CRANKING IT UP...

Cranking it up...

The great thing about a marathon clinic is you never know who might show up, what level of talent they possess or what level of potential they might have. Tuesday night was our second tempo run. 6K for most, 8K for those of us wanting to run a 3:30 or faster...

Hugh and I went out together to do an 8K together (Hugh has run a sub three hour marathon in his youth, AND RUN BOSTON!) and the rest of the usual suspects who would be with us, or more accurately, in front of us, are either recovering from injuries, on vacation, taking time off or were simply nowhere to be found.

As H and I went out, we were paced step for step by a tall, lithe young blonde woman who appeared to be in her early twenties. She was cheerful, talkative and despite my going out fast from the get go, was none the worse for the effort or the pace. After the first one and a half kilometres I urged C and Hugh to run at their own pace and not be slowed down by me. I did suggest to Hugh that if I caught him at the end, "You'll be in trouble, Hugh". A suggestion more for my benefit than for Hughes...

Long story short. This 24 year old blonde named C absolutely kicked my ass in the 8K run. I did 8K with Hugh in 34 minutes, cranked my heart rate up to 185 and she beat the both of us by at least 200 meters. At the end, when I was redlined, or beyond my redline at 185, Miss C was pulling away. It was a thing of beauty.

We went out to Lumberman's Arch and back on the Sea Wall and this woman was absolutely effortless. I mean she ran beautifully. No visible strain or effort or fatigue. And a perfect stride. I might suggest she alter her arm swing slightly, but to what end? She flies over the ground.

I went out at 166-168 on the way out for the first few K, and for the last 4K I was 170 plus and did at least 3K at 180 plus. Look at that heart rate chart. For a good ten minutes I was trying to hold steady at 184-185... I did not have another gear to shift up into other than a final kick of maybe three or four hundred metres. This was 10K race pace for me.

And to be honest, it was a brutal pace for me, right on the ragged edge of breaking down. Hugh admitted later to seeing 177 on his heart rate monitor and he will admit to being a full ten years older than me (and I'm 44).

At the half way mark I was about fifty metres behind Hugh and Ms. C and I decided to try and catch them. Emphasis on try. After a long hard push, I caught Hugh with about 1,500 metres to go, but Ms. C was still accelerating away...

In the end, Hugh and I were running, making that racing, neck and neck, stride for stride. It was great, it was beautiful and as a training run, it was probably incredibly stupid. We were way outside our planned heart rate training zone. And I was supposed to be the guy nominally in charge!

Hugh, being the far smarter of the two of us, suggested we do a long easy cool down rather than sprint like mad men towards the finish, which is what we had set ourselves up for, neither one of us wanting to yield a step or ease up as we got caught up in the pace and with the finish line tantalizingly close. What a great running buddy, one who is smart enough and gracious enough to save you from yourself... So in the end we did a long cool down, easing up and tailing off our speed. Every once in a while, though, it feels great to blow the carbon out the pipes. I feel the need for speed!

The mysterious Ms. C is fast, maybe as fast as Rachel (a 3:27 in Vancouver) and is certainly someone who can push me in training, and a few other people I can think of...

Wow! Amazing talent that appears completely out of the blue. I chatted with her briefly after the run and Ms. C never ran in highschool or university. She doesn't have a best 10K time because she hasn't really run one. She just finished her first half-marathon in 1:31 and decided to move up in distance.

Gadzooks!

And Hugh! I hope I am half as committed and half as talented in ten years time.

Wow!