Comments on: Kaiser Half: A Race Report

By: kellydunleavy

kellydunleavy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:04:40 +0000

intersting, i’ve never heard of that, but now i’m going to try it

By: Chuck Ojeda

Chuck Ojeda — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:37:52 +0000

I love half marathon race reports. I think in my spare time I’ll spend most of my day just reading them because I can’t run right now & I’m trying to get over a case of pf in my foot.

Basically, what happened with you not getting your 1:30 is you just didn’t WANT it bad enough. Don’t you love that reason? It’s so simple – but that’s a guy answer.

Now, for the rest of the story… two things/suggestions helping side stiches (1) you actually got a bit dehydrated (never mind that we’re in winter). If all the fluid you took in was what you mentioned… it wasn’t too much drink that troubled you, but not enough. I have trained quite a bit in hot weather and the only times I got side stiches was during the hottest periods when I didn’t bring enough water. (2) Actually the second issue is a remedy, not a cause. When the side stich comes on, what you want to do is try to breath rythmically. By this, you want to blow out/exhale somewhat forcefully the same instant as your foot strikes, and this should be on the same side as the stitch side. It totally works, either it has something to do with forcing you to exhale more completely and expell the CO2, or it takes your mind off the pain and gets you to concentrate on something else. Just don’t do it ever other step – that’s too often. Say the pain is on the left side -then when that left foot strikes the ground forcefully blow out like the impact of your foot hitting the ground is pushing the air out. Do this every other left foot strike, and usually in about 100 yards, you’ll feel a release from the stitch. I run into this problem mostly at the Oceanside half Ironman as it really warms up by the second half of the run, and I’ve usually failed to hydrate enough.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:36:01 +0000

I don’t get cramps, so I don’t know. Actually, cramps are very mysterious things, hard to pinpoint, hard to predict – your best bet is to do this kind of intensity in training, or slightly harder, and eat/drink the same things in training and at the same rate that you will in races.

good effort though. you’ll feel much better with more training and more rest. doing a race at the end of a training block is always really painful.

By: rachel

rachel — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:20:35 +0000

I never thought about it that way – that once you stop you’re F’ed because your body thinks the race ended.

I lost about 4 minutes in the last two miles of the women’s marathon in that damned wind on that not-so-great highway. Steve’s right, 1:35 is still good.

By: Kathleen@ForgingAhead

Kathleen@ForgingAhead — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:37:20 +0000

I was hoping I wouldn’t be the first to comment because I’m useless re: reasons why your body did what it did.

You ended up close to your goal so that’s pretty sweet. Sorry it had to be rough last 6 miles though. That sounds painful.

I’ve filed the “don’t start walking or your body will think it’s done” statement in my brain for future reference.