My year began with a quest to find out what was going on with my heart. I withdrew from the 2021 marathon at the 10k finish at Kapiolani Park with a crazy high heart rate and feeling dizzy. This was not new to me but I thought I had it under control with medication. Unfortunately I was not carrying my Kardia EKG and could not get a recording. In March I ran the 10k hard, in order to trigger the same response, and from that recording my cardiologist could determine I do not have A-fib. What I have are Premature Atrial Contractions (PACs).
This is good news. PACs are not fatal, whereas A-fib and other arrhythmia can be. Nobody can say whether or not PACs have any impact on my athletic performance. It seems reasonable that they would.
To help me explore this issue I purchased a Frontier X heart rate monitor strap. This is a typical HRM combined with some clever sensors that monitor EKG and breath rate. After a workout a recording is uploaded to the cloud and analyzed for irregularities. The company is not prepared to say what kind of irregularity it sees, it just flags the timeline every time it sees one. I have a lot, and based on what we know I assume these are PACs. The frequency of PACs varies considerably from day to day. Here is a typical result (the “O” for "other" flags along the bottom are the arrhythmia).
The only pattern I could see in all of my results was a flurry of PACs when the intensity dropped. This is clearly visible in the last third of this example.
The 10k I ran in March got me to thinking about how slow I run. I even devoted a blog post about it http://windsofhawi.com/drupal/node/39. After a few weeks of marathon training I decided to seriously consider walking most if not all of the race. Jason Koop, in his book Training Essentials for Ultrarunning, recommends devoting workout time to practice walking. I started spending more and more of my long run workouts walking, while running the midweek runs and interval work.
My marathon plan was to walk the first half, then run as much as possible in the second half. That would give my heart time to settle down, to get past all of the craziness and stress at the start. In practice I went from a 22:00 walking pace to 18:30 and could even sustain 18:00 for ten or fifteen minutes. Since running only made sense if it was a lot faster than that, I practiced running at 16:00 and that worked out to be just below lactate threshold. Basically my goal was to be out there, have a good time, and finish.
For nutrition I carried a bottle of Skratch Labs, which supplies 100g carbohydrate (400 kCal), six Precision Hydration gels (30g carbohydrate, 120 kCal), plus two more GU gels with caffeine. The bottle would last two hours, then a gel an hour after that. On top of that I would drink water and sports drink available on the course. It all worked perfectly, even though many of the aid stations were out of sports drink by the time I got there.
This was the 50th anniversary of the Honolulu Marathon. Mahalo Nui to the many people who have kept this event going strong, and to all of the volunteers.
I was pleased to see the return of many of the features and people that make this race special. Great fireworks at the start. The bride and groom couples, the runner playing tuba, the guy who runs in geta. Santa at Murphy’s on Nuuanu Street. Sunrise on Diamond Head as the leaders fly by. Residents offering misty water sprays and Krispy Kreme donuts, plenty of encouragement all along the course. There is always a little bad with the good, many walking wounded and runners down all through Kahala, shoes off, rubbing cramped calves. Thankfully there were no Satohap booths. Japanese love that stuff. I can’t stand the smell!
This year, as I was outbound, I paid attention to the running and walking form of the returning runners. From Kalani High School to Aina Haina most runners were still running, but looking very tired. The occasional walker looked beat, clearly having run the first part too hard. By Kawaikui Park there were as many walkers as there were runners. Everyone was frowning. By Niu Valley, everyone was walking, and more smiles. By then I was only five miles behind them, actually a part of that group. Walking as fast as I could and feeling great. As for running form, what is there to say but that I saw every imaginable example of poor form. My coach brain kept offering improvements. A welcome diversion.
In training I was able to stay above a 19 min/mi pace, often 18:30 or better. I knew the hills would slow me down so I set my time goal of under nine hours. I did 8:49:44, and am pleased with that. In recent years I never come close to my estimated time. In case you are wondering I was not last. That honor belongs to Mikayo and Miyuki Sato, with a time of 17:07:41. Gee, I coil have stopped at The Counter for a beer and burger and still beaten that!
The really strange part was not having Pattie to greet me at the finish. She always packed a bag of recovery goodies and walked back through Waikiki with me. A good reason to sign up for next year's race.
Will I be back next year? Of course. Well, that depends on how I do at Ironman Cozumel.