Bret

AM - 4.5 easy miles with Delaney from her apartment in Brooklyn.   My flight last night was cancelled and my morning flight also cancelled which gave me time to run with her and have breakfast.  Weather was cooler and drizzly with wind and low cloud cover.  The easy pace was just what I needed. 

AM - 7 miles with Dan and Darryl at an easy pace. 

AM - 3 miles - easy shakeout before church in the rain.

PM - 14.25 miles on the treadmill.

AM - just under 3.75 miles on the Milton trail in a light drizzle, cooler temps and unfortunately, dark enough now to need a headlamp at the 6:15 am start time.  Legs were expectedly very fatigued after the volume of miles yesterday.  

AM - 4.25 miles with Dan in WC at a very pedestrian pace - I am catching a cold and felt kinda bad for the first couple of miles.  Enjoyed the conversation and we met a family awaiting a school bus pick-up with their very large English Bull Mastiff - named Clyde who weighs 220 lbs according to his owner.   Very sweet dog despite his imposing size. 

AM - a little under 6.25 miles this morning solo.   Felt really kinda bad for the first half of the run, and then felt only moderately bad the second half. 

AM - 3.75 miles with Dan early before I had an early day at the office. 

AM - 4.25 miles with Dan and Greg for their birthday run - with Darryl too from Starbucks near where Greg lives - very early.  And they got free coffee drinks for their birthdays afterwards. 

AM - 4 miles on the treadmill early before taking Tracy to the airport.  Was not really feeling it this morning; and she was actually concerned and said "you never do that, what's wrong."  But honestly it was just bleh and did not feeling like pushing through if it was not enjoyable.

PM - 15.25 miles on the treadmill in the afternoon.   First part of the run took a while to find my groove, but ultimately settled in and ground through to get a solid long run in.

AM - 4.25 easy recovery miles before church. 

AM - 5 miles on the treadmill because I did not feel like running in the rain this morning.   First mile was slow and clunky, but ended up running reasonably well the rest of the workout. 

AM - 5 miles from the trail to the clubhouse and then Wood Valley through east bluff into North Valley and back down on Dinsmore.  Quite heavy humid air with lots of rain from yesterday.   Decent effort in the last couple of miles.  Pace was good but I did not feel like I had a whole lot of depth of energy but would like to get to a point where it is there.  

AM - just 3.25 miles this morning as I have an early dentist appointment today.  

AM - a little less than 5.25 miles in the neighborhood on a sticky warm morning.  Ran without fueling today and with the exception of maybe not feeling quite as much "pop" in the last couple of miles comparatively - not much difference.   Just not feeling all that strong and relaxed on my solo runs.   Perhaps because I am not running with someone to distract me, I am just focused on how I am feeling too much.  Sure do miss running with my dog as well.   Saw my neighbor today with her very large bull mastif named Clyde - who was very responsive to my greeting today and happy to see me.  

AM - 7 miles solo and very easy for the first few miles from Wood Rd down Redd to the trail head on Brittle all the way back up to the end of the Milton Trail.  Lots of people out today.  Right hammy has a little niggle.   

AM - 12 miles solo this morning as a couple of the guys were out of town and one was doing a half marathon to pace a friend.  This is 2 weeks out from Sydney and so I wanted to go 10-12 miles but at an easy enough pace so as not to tax or deplete my fitness such as it is.  Slow start gradually got to a decent long run pace but not too fast.  Felt fatigued but not too terrible.  Watch battery died before I finished - so 12 or a little less was the total. Checked all the boxes for the effort today.  Now I will just maintain with easy efforts to keep fresh and try to avoid injury or illness.  

AM - very slow and easy recovery shake-out from yesterday's long-ish run.   Getting to a point where the old body just does not bounce back as quickly as I would like even from moderate efforts on medium-long runs.   Oh well - nothing I can change about that - just roll with what I am given.

AM - 4.75 mile trail run with Dan who is back from a vacation in Maine.   Got to hear about his trip and catch up a bit.   He's out the next 2 days or so to take his son off to Va Tech for his first year in college.  

AM -  3.75 miles with Dan quite early as he leaves to take his son to college today.  Pretty decent pace after the first mile. 

AM - 5.25 miles solo this morning from Wood Valley into the North Valley neighborhood  and coming back all the way up Dinsmore instead of cutting over on the trail through the backyard.  Intentionally kept myself from even beginning to push at all today - wanting to not strain or injure anything in the last 10 days.  Not that I expect to run fast in the race - so it is a little weird to do, but my mindset is to be able to complete the event in a healthy and relaxed form. 

AM - 4.25 miles with Dan on the Milton Trail this morning.   Lots of people out walking and running on the trail this morning which is usually completely absent anyone except ourselves at that hour.   Felt crappy in the first mile and really the first half of the run - but seemed to be fine after the turn-around and distracted with conversation.   Dan was back from dropping his son off at college - his last child out of the house - and so our discussions centered around that change in his life stage with he and his wife now effectively empty-nesters with his older children already out of school and living on their own. 

AM - 3 miles - tapering.  First mile was extremely slow and unsmooth - slightly better in the second and got down to a decent pace in the third - but legs felt depleted - nutritionally.   Had a special gala function last night with some different foods - none of which had much in the way of carbohydrates and I did not do any fueling before the run.   Hamstrings telt much better after having breakfast.  

AM - 8 miles with the guys on the Greenway.   Relaxed feeling effort which was a little bit faster than the pace Richie and I plan to do Sydney next week - He's not been running very many miles due to work commitments, but he always gets up for these races - and the weather is supposed to be very comfortable in the upper 40's to start.  

AM - 3.25 miles with Dan in the neighborhood before church. 

AM - 4.5 miles with Dan from his place this morning.  Pace was decent and the air slightly cooler.  It is good starting from his place because for the first half mile or so it is slightly downhill which allows for an easier and faster warm up time.   Nutrition and sleep were off last night.   Having a hard time figuring out what is going on with my intake that is giving me lots of GI churn. 

AM - 3.25 miles with Dan in the neighborhood before heading to the airport for Sydney.  

AM - 2.25 shake out miles in Sydney around the Harbor and Opera House. Arrived yesterday but lost Wednesday in the flight and needed the day to acclimate.  

AM - 3 mile shake out run with Richie around Sydney Harbor. 

Sydney Marathon - 2025 

Traveled to Sydney Australia to participate in the latest of the World Marathon Majors - #7.   This was an enjoyable race for me -  My build-up to this event was primarily just getting in regular training with longer runs in the range of 2 to 2.5 hours in the weeks leading up to the race.   My body does not seem to handle VO2 max training or long tempo runs without significant recovery time - but I do seem to be able to work decently through recovery of endurance efforts.   So I I had low expectations of going "fast" but had a confidence that as long as I kept things in-check aerobically, this would get me through the race.

Richie's build-up was spotty at best.  He had a few good races in July and did a half in early August that suggested he was fit - but he had zero long runs over 13 miles and very few miles in the last month or so of training due to his work/travel schedule.   But historically he always "shows-up" on race day.

He felt as though he would like to run just below 4 hours and so that meant around 9 min pace.   In 2021 Richie suffered a TIA at the end of Boston - and though he had zero ongoing issues or deficits - it has caused him to be very cautious not to go too deep in these events.  

At my age I have long since given up the idea of running a personal best - and running these races with a companion / racing/training partner is really the best way to experience them.    So  running with Richie was the plan - and though we have run many races together - we really have only ever finished 2 of them together.  Something always happens - one of us is not feeling it, or one of us is feeling extremely good in the race and by agreement we agree to let that person go for it.   

Today was a day that Richie was not feeling it, from the very early miles and though we kept together for nearly 2/3rds of the race - he admittedly was yo-yoing and knew that I was feeling really quite good.   

After hitting a pit-stop at just under halfway and not knowing how many minutes or so that were lost, I began trying to make up some time to keep us on track for a sub 4.  This mean moving the pace down to 8:45's instead of the 9 mins or so pace.   This seemed to be where he began to fade.   

The course was quite hilly with over 1000 ft in elevation and lots of turns and narrow sections and at least 2 180 degree out and back turns.  And though we started with cool temps in the upper 40's by the time we were near the 15 mile mark, the sun was bright and the course was completely exposed.   

As I checked back for him a couple of times when he was fading between 20k and 25k and slowed to rejoin him, he finally signaled to me to just go around the 29k mark.  

At this point I just let things flow - and after a mile or two of running low 8's - I popped in my air pods and locked into see how I could do.  Turns out I had a good bit left in the tank after running so conservatively the first part of the race.   Ended up with a negative split.  First half 2:01 and second half 1:51 and change.   9:17 ppm to 8:30 ppm. 
 

Richie ended up having to walk a bit coming in at over 4:30 hours.   

Saw Tracy in the final half mile as we finished in front of the Sydney Opera House   Overall this was a very enjoyable experience