2011 Races

I’ve been negligent in posting information to this blog, which I intend to rectify. The 2011 race season was really great! Karen and I participated in a few races including a full marathon (42km or 26mi). Although we didn’t get a lot of official races in, we did a lot of running training for the ones we registered for. These are the races that come to mind:


Halifax Bluenose – half marathon (May)
Intact Edmonton Derby – full marathon (Aug)
Regional EMS Ambulance Chasers Run (Sep)

Training for the Edmonton marathon was an experience like no other. We made the decision to commit to the marathon 8 weeks before race day. I wouldn’t recommend to anyone that they take on a race like this without at least 12 weeks of training. We felt that our half-marathon base was fairly strong, so decided to go for it. We officially started the marathon training at the end of June, when we got back from vacation. Incidentally, this is what the schedule roughly looks like when you have 8 weeks:

Week 1: 20km
Week 2: 25km
Week 3: 28km
Week 4: 31km
Week 5: 34km
Week 6: 37km
Week 7: 39km
Week 8: 10km (taper and rest)

You’re supposed to include some cadence runs in the middle of the week to improve your speed on top of the long distance runs. I can say from experience that each of the longer weekend training runs, with the exception of the first week, were extremely tough. The addition of 3km each week doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, I felt each step of the extra 3km every week. Just to be fair, some people wouldn’t have run up to 39km in training, but Karen and I felt we needed to be comfortable at the distance.

In the end, I was happy with the training and our performances at the race. I posted a personal best at 4hrs and 13 minutes. Up until the last 10km, I was on track to break the 4 hour barrier. The shortened training and heat eventually got to me, but it was the best I had ever felt on a race course.