Marathon Sub Stance

Marathon Sub Stance

Ottawa Marathon Leaders 2014

I am blogging about my sub 3 hour marathon which gets way more notice then better amazing stuff.  For example, a lot of amateur runners can get down to 2:30 or 2:40 in a marathon and that is amazing.  However, the sub 3 hour wall gets all the appeal.  Mainly because anyone can do it and popularity always revolves around the most likely.

For the next few sections, I'll talk about my first trial race, then the fail race, then I'll review the Ottawa Marathon where I, along with many other runners, nailed that 3 hour mark.

Toronto Yonge St. 10K

A target race requires two test races.  A push race and a the upset race.  Either or can be sequenced.

I put the push race first to set the tone for my confidence.

This was the Toronto Yonge St 10 k which is a huge competitive affair consisting of a moderate downhill component.  

I ended up with a time of 37:23 (mm:ss).  

From that finishing value, I went to the RoadWarriorRunning Race Calculator to find that the predictor for the marathon was calculated to 3 hours and 52 second.   That was way past my goal which was a great confidence builder.  Mind you, as said, this was mostly a downhill course.  The marathon did not have a downhill.

Sporting Life 10K

This was my upset race since all confidence building carries with it ego manifestations. Everything ready for the final race, including twelve 30 kilometer training runs. I needed an my ego smashed so that I didn't go out too fast as I always do.  Shattering my ego and picking up the pieces really helps to get it right for the final competition, being more aware of the limitations thought gained through the training regime.  Plus, training to smash my ego scares me so I put more investment to prepare.

I needed to purposely sabotage myself and deal with the challenges, meaning going out faster, finishing way too fast and hurting!  All that hurting and pain made me slow down and helped me remember why racing is not all what appears to be.

From that train wreck, I ended up with 38:22 (mm:ss).  This hurt and set me back a minute from my last race on the same course.  

This was worse than the time that I raced a few weeks before, which set the tone as the upset race.  Which helped to set the focus for the marathon as I wasn't super fragalistic to go superman through the entire 42 k - I had significant limits to take note.

Ottawa Marathon

This was the target race, which meant that either everything would matter or all would shatter.

The first 5 k of the marathon was smooth, the course was perfectly flat and there was more than enough supporters cheering on the sides of the road.

Luckily the sun shadowed by a rolling crisp cool fog which contained the marathon for the next 30 km.  This was too good to be true.

I kept up a consistent pace up to the half marathon since the rolling fog followed us.  Once I hit the half marathon, I did a full check.  I still felt strong, my breathing was consistent, I took water or Gatorade at every station, my feet and legs were somewhat fine, a little tenderized.

Staying relaxed I noticed that I was having a tough time keeping my intended race pace, deviating a bit.  This did increase the pressure for the sub 3 hour but managed to stay relaxed.

Once I reached 30 k, I did another full calibration of all systems.  Since I was told the last 10 k of the race is where it all starts, I was very cautious and scared.

When I reached the 36 kilometer mark, I searched for that usual discouragement in me, but since I did train so diligently, I couldn't find it.  Usually, in a race, I experience a point where I just want to quit. Not this race, no way.

Eventually I reached the 40 kilometer mark.  There was the very minor few runners who stopped in their tracks whom I had no way to help, while the majority of the participants in my sequence were staying strong.  This cluster of runners helped me maintain.  All I could do was watch the runners in front of me and mimic their strength. Eventually, I arm pumped forever to get to the finish line.

Motivation

Substance

What was the motivation to get me from out of nowhere to suddenly achieve a sub 3 hour marathon?

Let`s start with the two main cognitive motivators for goal reaching:

• Substance Achievement
• to posit through that achievement that one exists as a whole distinguishable from it's properties. In these cases, I want to differentiate myself from the social vices and norms.  Creating a standalone definition of myself.
• Emergence Achievement
• a higher-level aggregate demonstration of skill and accomplishment composed by it's properties. In these cases, I find motivation to conform to a distinct group or sub-culture, sharing the resources within that group.

For the most favorable outcome of a race, the strategy is to combine both motivators through race competition and running clubs/community.   

There has to be huge passion to be selfish to create substance, while at the same time, immerse in a sub-culture or group and contribute (emergence).  It is the mix of both motivating factors which helped me to achieve even greater accomplishments then what alone could be possible.   

The Big Bang of Running

Introduction

A usual way to express an interest in running is to first hash through the origin.  All runners do it, which seems to be the only sub-culture which elaborates greatly on the origin of things.  There was once a philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who appealed to origin of things, mostly to set the tone to cut out one's unnatural tendency to accept the observable moment as truth.  

A runner knows that the observable moment is the worst assessment to value their engagement.  It is rather the ongoing overarching goals that push them forward and not so much the current status, unless of course, the current status means a PB (personal best).  Other than that, any single runner's current performance is always a stepping stone for the next goal.  And each goal that is set tops the previous, not so much by a factor of time improvement, but a set of many variables that all merge together at the future point of contact.

All of these goals, the future outlook, all seems to be the story for each runner to at least look at one single point of origin, the big bang of their contribution to the game.  

So, it is of the interest also for this blog post to go through the origin of... running.

The Big Bang

The initial interest to saturate myself into the running world may not reflect my current reason why I maintain involvement.  A few reason for this, but the most notable is that I was younger at the initial point of integration and now an older, somewhat different person.  The difference mostly due to the fact that whatever was happening back then just is not the same anymore, even if I try to force it.   Still, we runners are always asked why we first involved ourselves in such a lifestyle and we always like to respond with the same level of intensity as our current status.

Assuming that I will not answer the question directly, what got me involved in running, since it changed to why I do it today... What initially got me involved in the running world?

The Origin of Running

Every race changed my perspective.  Actually, every time I went out and ran my perspective changed.  Even more so, every time I ran with others in my running club, my perspective changed.  What was my original perspective compared to what it is now?  I really have no idea however I could sit and tell you a lot of stories, a lot of PB's, a lot of injuries and really compel you into something that seems dramatic enough to be my reason for starting to run.

All I know is why I run now and I feel so privileged to still be able to keep on going.   At least I can tell you this much, this post is the origin of my running blog summing up what got me this far since I started.