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Well, you’d know if you heard Zack’s race results on Fitspeek 19. But, if you forgot, or didn’t hear all of these folks did the Okanagan Marathon back on Thanksgiving Day. All finished! In this race report, we hear how Rio Glowasky did on her very first marathon.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

I’ve been asked by fellow athletes and friends over the past few months: why run, why race, and why invest time and money doing it.  After contemplating these questions over several miles in the sunny days of summer and fall, I now have an answer.  I run because it gives me joy and I have fun doing it, I race because it keeps me accountable, and I invest because there aren’t many other things I’d rather be doing.

I accomplished my 2017 running goals this thankful October 8^th.  I can and can’t believe I did it.  I bettered my 1/2 marathon time, I broke a sub 60min/10km, and I ran a marathon with consistent training, no injuries, and discipline. 

In May I competed in the Scotiabank Half Marathon in Calgary and bettered my time by 4 mins from 7 months prior in 2016.  Although that was already an improvement and technically a check off the goal list, most of my training is done after the snow has melted after May.  So on Labour Day weekend, I decided to participate in the Kelowna Wine Country Half Marathon to gauge improvement from spring to fall.  It also sounded fun with a wine tasting after the finish line and was advertised as a relatively fast and scenic course with a total elevation change of 536 feet and net loss of 422 feet.  In reality it was the toughest one I have done yet with hilly winery roads and a relatively warm morning. 

What I took away from this race however was how good I felt.  First, when I looked at my watch to see that I had ran 3.1mi in 27mins, and just a few years before I couldn’t run that distance under 31mins.  Second, when I had maintained my pace, and at 6.2mi I was under 60mins which was a goal in itself this year, let alone racing that speed in a 13.1mi race.  And third, when I finished with a 2:07.46, 7 mins faster than the one ran in May.  After 4 Half Marathon races in 15 months, I incrementally improved my divisional place 2 weeks later.

I participated in my third consecutive Melissa’s Road Race in Calgary.  Another hilly 10km race up and down Tunnel Mountain. I have often questioned why I do it and I decided half way in the summer to register again, as running up hills continue to be one of my biggest challenges and I wanted to keep myself accountable to hill train.  Although I had accomplished my goal of running a sub 60min 10km in the spring, this would be the only race I would do year after year yielding a fairly accurate measurement of improvement.  I also learned a few things.  I learned the course from the two prior years, and knew now when to take my gels and how I needed to pace myself.  This year I learned that I should take back up race clothes as I dressed for weather a few degrees cooler and regretted not having an option to dress down.   I did have the most fun this time however feeling good enough to do a little dance when starting the decent after the last incline, and improved my divisional place from 42% the year prior to 88%.  Wow… 88% percent of Females 30-39 finished after me… no kidding I felt like dancing!

I talked to several people about ending the race year with a Marathon and again spent many miles thinking about it.  I heard other people’s stories of doing one, or intending to do one, or why some would never do another one.  My respect for marathoners has grown over the years as I have cheered them on.  I looked forward to completing my own for most of the year.  I now know the feeling behind those faces of smiles and grimaces… only 26.2mi can create them. 

I was also given a lot of advice in order to be successful at the BMO Okanagan Marathon.  I was told not to do anything new a few weeks prior that could create injury.  I was anxious to get back to yoga after a few months away from the studio and said to myself… I’ll just take it easy.  I over stretched a knee and felt it ache for a good third of the marathon.  I learned to listen to the experienced. 

I was told that I should be able to rely on what the aid stations have.  I packed a backpack full of gels and 2 liters of fluid and didn’t use 2/3 of it.  I learned that aid stations are hard to rely on when they are generally unreliable, but that it can still offer most of what you probably need.

I was told, finish it without hurting yourself.  So I tapered early, did some shorter runs, and even a swim to limit impact before the race.  After mile 15 I said to myself, how can you not hurt doing a marathon?  48 hours after the race however, my stiff peg legs were gone and I recovered quicker and better than a lot of races I had done this year.  I learned to be responsible.

I was told that pacing was key, this wasn’t a half!  In August I decided that finishing the marathon in 5 hours would be a realistic challenge.  I ran mile over mile consistently, not deviating more than 40 seconds per mile with an average pace of 11:21min/miles.  I finished with a chip time of 5:00:12, smiling and proud.  I learned to pick a pace, stick with it, and if you still have anything left, you’ll need and appreciate it in the last 6 miles.

I’ve started to contemplate my running goals for 2018.  What’s next?  While I have some ideas, I think it will take a few frosty outside runs to solidify.  For now, I am thankful for my continued discipline to run when I have wanted to socialize and patio.  I am thankful for the connections I have made through talking and participating in the sport.  I am thankful for the improvement and achievements I obtained.  AND I think to myself…. What a Wonderful World.

Coming up on Saturday October 21st at Rotary Stadium in Abbotsford is the 10th annual Cares Run.

Fitspeek host Kevin Heinze gets more details about the Cares organization and about the run in this Fitspeek Express Interview.

Although the Abbotsford Trail Running Club has only been around for a few years, they have been making a positive contribution to the community. This week’s feature interview is with Mike Thomas from the club. He will tell us about the big trail race they have planned called the Vertikiller.

It’s crazy the amount of local support they are receiving from sponsors like Kintec, Old Abby Ales, and F2C. 

 

 

Also in this episode, we find out about the health benefits of peanuts, the results from the Dynamic Race Events Cultus Lake triathlon, and Kevin Watt has his Instagram shouts outs.

Hear all about it by pressing PLAY below .

 

I haven’t done an Ultra Post in a while. We pick it up as I get off my bike after the 275 K ride.

Day Two and a half

Part A: Freshly Laid (Recovery Gone Wrong)

Just like the day previous, my preparation for the next day of the Ultra came as soon as I hit the finish line. After some hugs and pictures, and a call to Bruce Wenting in Mission, my crew and I focused on preparing for the 84 kilometre run that loomed ahead on Monday. Job one was to get me off my feet and re hydrated

And although you may think that I would be sick of sugar and caffeine after almost eleven hours out there, I was happy to quickly down a can of Coke. Then things started to go wrong, but how can things go wrong when you are already done the day’s race?

The thing that I failed to do right after getting off my bike was go straight to the massage table sign up sheet. That was a big mistake. The folks that finished their rides after me did that and were able to get their massage right away. I, however had to wait for an hour. This hour had a cascading effect on the rest of the whole event – strange, but true. Here is how it happened.

After an hour of waiting around and wasting away after the ride, having nothing but water, Gatorade, and potato chips to refuel me, I finally made it to the massage table. Although I thoroughly benefited from the massage, it took an hour. My crew and I were the last people to leave the finish line area. By this time, it was about two-and-a-half hours since I finished the bike and that refueling window was slammed shut.

Day Three: Part A – The Last Supper

Despite having a great massage and a supportive crew around me, I was pissed off and feeling hopeless. To compound my foul mood, my left knee was killing me. I thought to myself there was no way I would be in any shape to take on my very first double marathon that was about to begin in about eleven hours. After some confused and spirited discussions among my crew members, there was finally a decision about where we could eat. Food was going to happen, eventually.

The nice thing about Princeton is that it is a pretty small town and finding the place we were going to eat at was very easy. That was a blessing, and so was the amazingly quick service that we received at the Princeton Grill and Bar. The problem was however, that I wasn’t really hungry.

As you can see here,

I sat in a zombified state watching people eating and drinking and talking around me as I dreaded the next 24 hours of my life.

To end off the night at the Grill and Bar, we all shared a piece of cake to celebrate my brother’s birthday. While we were starting to sing Happy Birthday to him, Steve King, Steve Brown, along with their friends and family all joined in. How could you not be happy after something like that? Unfortunately, I rose to the occasion. I stumbled out of the bar and into Kevin Watt’s truck mired in a sea of self-pity and fear. I was pretty quiet on my ride back to the motel.

 

Why do people climb mountains, do marathons, swim from the Mainland to Nanaimo, and all that other crazy endurance type stuff? And once they have achieved their goal, what keeps them challenged?

This week in Fitspeek 17, Zack Neufeld (dude above with Ironman hat)explores push and pull motivations in his Between The Ears segment. We’d also like to motivate you to listen to the rest of Fitspeek 17 which also has: Kevin Watt’s (man in black) Instagram Shout Outs, The Wenting’s Word of the Week, our upcoming events schedule, and our feature interview with Michelle Ingall from the Campbell Valley Wine Run that is being held on Sunday September 24.

Hear it all by pressing play below.

The picture below does a pretty good job of expressing my approach toward the second day of the Ultra 520 K. I knew from the very outset that it would be a challenging day in ways that I could not imagine and time did not really matter that much. The day featured a 275 kilometre bike ride through the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys. Although in training, I had done rides of almost nine hours, those rides were not after a previous ten hour day of swimming and riding. I was going to be as cautious, smart, and gentle as possible on the bike, to preserve my soul for the double-marathon the following day. What you see in the picture is me at about the three hour mark, rolling out my back and hips on a yoga mat. It seemed to work wonders for me and although that whole stop (just before the WALL in Okanagan Falls) took me about ten minutes, I think it was time well spent. In retrospect, looking at this picture makes me respect my competitors even more, and here’s why. Although every person doing the race had a crew to help them through the event, I was truly blessed to have the support that I had. I had an official crew of four, plus on this day I had an additional five people for emotional support.

My team catered to my every need. If I wanted perogies instead of gel, they were there, waiting for me at the next stop. If I didn’t like the tilt of my aero bars, I had a replacement bike ready to go. If my private parts started to get unhappy, I knew Chamois Butter was only twenty minutes away. If I got sick of F2C, I had a choice of green tea, Red Bull, or Coke at my “bicycle-buffet” as you can see here. I’m quite sure that I had the best support out of all the racers out there.

 

But in spite of all the niceties afforded me, I still had to go the distance and for me that took almost eleven hours. In that amount of time a lot can happen to a person’s mind and body. I remember doing the long and lonely climb to the Twin Lakes Golf Course feeling just hopeless. Ninety minutes later, I was still in a funk. I guess emotional peaks and valleys are a lot longer on bike rides lasting just as long as some of my entire Ironman races!

One of the things that sustained me (or distracted me) was the thought of folks like Craig Premack doing sixteen and twenty hour rides and Geo Wade doing eight and ten hours swims. Another, very tangible thing that helped me get through the day was the gearing on my bicycles. Even though my motivation and energy levels waivered a lot through the day, it was pretty much impossible NOT to keep going with a bike that had 12/32 gearing. They also gave me the opportunity to SPIN up all of the nasty hills that the course threw at me.

The two main things that I learned from Day Two of the Ultra 520 K were that even though you think you may be fully prepared to take on the challenges of a super long event, there are going to be things that may happen along the way that you will not necessarily be fully prepared for and this is part of the appeal. The second thing is much more pragmatic – comfort trumps aero on long distance bikes. Even though I thought my bike positions were optimized, my mind and body after seven hours seem to say  otherwise. Perhaps a less aggressive position on the bikes would have lessened the suffering. Or maybe it is just that this princess just needs to toughen up!

I’ve been on the road and offline for a while, here’s the next post based on the pictures you see here. I think one of the biggest words in my Ultra 520 experience was US. In the Ultra I was part of two US’s. The first US was my crew and me, as I wrote about in my first blog post. The second US was me as part of the group of 14 participants in the Ultra 520K. Take a look at this picture to your right. That’s it. A field of 14. Doing an event over such a long period of time with so few participants was very different than doing an Ironman when you are competing against somewhere between one and two thousand people. The vibe at the event was very much a laid back one. The most obvious example was shortly after this picture was taken at the start of the swim. With such a small field and such a long race, there was no fighting, punching, kicking, or biting, for the first 300 metres of the swim to jostle for position. In fact, drafting on the swim was not even allowed. The start of the swim instead was just a gentle roll out with my kayaker and myself taking a deep breath and heading out for some distant mark on the smoky horizon.

The second picture that you see here, ties in with the title of this blog post with the key word gratitude. All through the first day of the event, I was filled with gratitude: gratitude that I had overcome the meningitis to make it to the start line, gratitude that I had a wife and a family and friends that volunteered their long weekend to help me do this crazy event, gratitude that the currents in Skaha Lake pushed us, gratitude that I had a steady and rewarding job that afforded me the time to train and the money for the entry fee. The list could go on and on but one I want to focus on is gratitude for having an enthusiastic swim coach for the past five years. The not-so-bad-looking swim form that you see in the picture is partly thanks to the efforts of Ryan Clifton. Through his persistence, patience, and expertise in imparting good swimming technique, I was able to make it through the 11 kilometres (ask me about why it wasn’t 10) of the swim. Of course I was of course also grateful to get the heck out of the water as well.After finishing the swim, there was still 150 K of biking to do before US got to the real finish line for the day. More on that part later.

Over the next week or so, Fitspeek will be primarily text and pictures. Fitspeek was designed to be a more permanent place than Facebook to post observations from my racing, training, and interactions with people in the endurance sports community. We start with the picture above. If you didn’t know it, you may think that this was some sort of cult indoctrination ritual. It sort of was and I bought into it 100%.

In this picture, taken at about 6:20 AM on Saturday  August 5, 2017 are some of the most important people in my life at one of the most intense moments of my life. This picture is also sort of a time bridge between my past, present, and future. My first set of reflections deals with people.

At the centre of the circle is Race Director Steve Brown. His masterful organizational skills and compassionate spirit got all of us to the finish line.

On the far right of the outer circle, wearing a green t-shirt and red back-pack is Andrew. He was my paddler for the 10…er 11 kilometres that I swam for the 1st event of the race.

On the left side of the outer circle you will see a guy with a white t-shirt. He is Fitspeek co-host Kevin Watt. Kevin was the crew member responsible for safety, photography, and bike support. He also provided me tremendous wisdom and compassion during my dark moments, and there were many.

What is really cool is that in this picture, is that he is standing between Rob and Heidi Bryden – people that I swam with in my 1st Master’s Swim Course back in Airdrie, Alberta, 17 years ago.

The other guy in a white t-shirt on the left side of the outer circle is Sean David. He was a calming influence in the sometimes crazy and intense 31 hours that I spent out on the Ultra 520 race course. His technical expertise in tracking my calories helped ensure that I had enough energy to go the distance.

Standing to the left of the guy in a beard and a purple t-shirt is a person who has experienced incredible personal and physical growth over the past few years. Rio Glowasky is now a hard-ass runner ready to take on her first marathon. In addition to her athletic talents, Rio was the right-brained creative genius who designed the crew t-shirts, supplied me with buckets of positive energy, and a never-ending supply of Rio Gels! As a side note, Rio may be working with that bearded dude at next year’s Ultra 520!

To Rio’s left is our Crew Chief (although she called herself something else). Elise Reeh organized the crew’s duties, indulged my “princess-like” behaviour over the past nine months, selflessly handled the shell of my body after each of the stages. My amazing wife (Ironman 2005) is also without doubt the most driven and wise person I know. After knowing and loving her for 27 years, my respect and admiration for her continue to grow daily.

In the next few updates, I’ll be posting some pictures about special moments in the expedition!

 

There may be a high degree of randomness in this one – hang on! First some quick context via a back door brag. I’ve done 9 Ironman Distance Races and about 50 1/2 Ironman Distance Races. Back in the day, when these events used to have a carbo – loading dinner the tone was often like this picture. Whose is bigger, faster, longer, stronger? It gave the athletes (primarily male) a chance to let all the other athletes know (before there was Strava and Facebook) just how good their equipment was and how much they were training. Talk about Power V’s and Deep HEDs and 25 hour taper weeks were table fodder.

My impressions from the Ultraman meet and greet (not really a carbo – loading affair) were much more like this picture. Steve Brown has really crafted a family like (dare I say cult like) vibe. With only 12 other participants, there is no opportunity to be some anonymous blow hard big shot, which I sometimes am at triathlon socials. I did not see one “I raced at Kona, so look at me you poor mortals and despair” t-shirts. Instead, what I saw, heard, and participated in were just a bunch of genuine conversations about why people decided to sign up for the Ultra, some advice giving from those who had done it before, and talk about their home country (there are quite a few non-Canadians doing the race).  Not once did I hear a reference to an 11/58 fixie that dude rode all winter for base training! Just like a group of junkies chatting to each other about their favourite way to rig up, by being with a group of peers who had done eight hour bike rides and four hour treadmill runs seemed to normalize or validate my experiences of the past months.

Right now it is almost 8 AM on Friday August 4th. I’m not really thinking about the race. That is partly because to me, right now at least, it isn’t a race. It is more of an expedition. I have my supplies and my crew. The training did NOT go well but it is done. As average of an athlete as I am right now (2 minute and 10 seconds for 100 metres of swimming, a 5.8 miles per hour running speed average for a half marathon, and an FTP on the bike of 200 watts) one thing that I am good at is playing the hand that I have been dealt wisely. There will be no athletic acts of heroism this weekend, just a relaxed but focused drive for each day’s finish line. To get there here are a few things I need to remember

• Slowing down is ok, so is stopping – but no longer than 1 minute.
• Your stomach is going to hurt, but not for the whole event, peaks and valleys.
• Just because your stomach is hurting doesn’t mean you stop eating, keep trying different stuff.
• Puking is ok. Try it. You may like it. Hit the reset button. Get ugly when needed.
• Draw on tusk power every day.

If your energy or interest is crashing, it means you need more sugar.

That’s it for now. My next post will likely be when this is all done, I might have a few things to write about.

For the next few days I’ll be bringing my Ultraman Blog off of the back page and onto the front. As you may have heard or read, this is the weekend that I am doing the Ultraman 520 in the Penticton area. It’s a 3 day event that has a 10 K swim and 150 K swim on day one, a 270 K bike on day two, and an 84 K run on day three. We are in Penticton right now to do all of the prep. stuff that is required. Today we go shopping for supplies! We also get a chance to pick up the race package and meet all the folks (maybe a dozen) who are doing the event. Yesterday, Elise and I finally got a chance to see the run course. For me it is going to be so much more than a run course. It will be a walk, and maybe at times a crawl course. The stretch from km about 55-70 I suspect will be especially challenging. That is because at that point I will have been on the course for about eight hours and I suspect I will be pretty tired by then. There is a lot of up and downhill during that part of the course, so I’ll have to make sure that my pacing and nutrition are good. Of course in order to be able to get the opportunity to run/walk, I have some work to do on Saturday and Sunday. Keep checking in over the next few days, this could be quite the freak show!