Early morning, Sunday 26 July, 2009. Swieqi - Pembroke - Paceville - St Julian's. Another success from my running point of view, as I managed to do my second 2h45m run in July in Malta, this one in the middle of a heatwave with maximum temperatures reaching 40 C. So, I'm very satisfied that my run-up towards the October Brussels marathon proceeds without interruption, in spite of the difficult hurdle posed by a three-week stay in an impossibly hot climate.
But from a more general perspective, I can only cry in dismay. This time I left several water bottles to pick up at different stages of the run outside my own home in Swieqi, from where I ran a number loops in the surrounding neighbourhood. Most of these went through Swieqi towards St Andrew's Road, into the new Pembroke bypass towards the Radisson Hotel, and back.
On one occasion I decided to break the monotony, and do a detour through the picturesque coastline of St George's Bay towards Paceville and then to St Julian's. It was a bad mistake. The scene was pretty enough. The early morning sun was rising, lighting up the calm waters of St George's Bay in many hues of yellow, orange and fiery red. It was a beautiful sunrise. Around me, on the ground, there was vomit and rubbish, while the air had a strong smell of piss, complemented by a background sweet chirping of loud drunken louts.
I skirted Paceville, and moved on towards more familiar terrain - the St Julian's promenade. For a couple of hundred metres, it was the same old well-worn path that I know and love so well. Then I reached the morning-after scene of the Madonna tal-Karmnu feast. More rubbish, untold quantities of rubbish, plus a nauseating stink. I turned back to Swieqi in disgust, and from then on stuck to the monotonous but relatively clean Swieqi - Radisson route.
As I pounded the hot pavement, I couldn't help pondering the sorry state of our society. To honour the gods of entertainment of Paceville, and to honour the Madonna tal-Karmnu of Balluta, so many people have to behave just like animals. Most of them are probably very concerned about protecting Maltese "culture" and "values" from what they consider to be an "invasion" of African illegal immigrants. But if this is the "culture" they wish to preserve for our children and grandchildren, then all I can say is, God help us.
My next long run will be in the peaceful, quiet, car-free, clean, shaded cool of a forest in Belgium. What a relief that will be.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Staggering back to oblivion
To run a marathon you need to build up your long runs over several months before the event. If this period includes a three-week stay in an infernally hot place, then you need to include at least one very long run during this three-week stay.
This was the problem that had long been on my mind as I was building up my training for the upcoming Brussels marathon in October. This July I'm staying in Malta, where the temperature rises from 23 C early in the morning to the high twenties by 9 am, reaching a maximum above 30 C practically everyday.
So how would I be able to run for 2 hours 45 minutes without dying of heatstroke? To solve the problem I decided to start extra early in the morning, at 5:15, and devised a plan whereby I would remain sufficiently hydrated throughout the run. I filled four half-litre bottles with water and chilled them overnight. Three of these I placed on the ground behind my car, which I parked next to the Exiles beach car park. The plan was that I would run for 12 and a half minutes away from the car park and then back to the starting point, where I would pick one bottle and run out again for another 25-minute loop, drinking the life-saving fluid along the way. I would run three such loops for a total of 75 minutes, and then at 6:30 I would pick up the third half-litre bottle and join my running mates, who at that time were to kick off their 90-minute run from the same place. This added up to the target total of 2h45m, which I would run in relatively cool temperatures.
The Sliema seafront was surprisingly busy for such an ungodly hour in the morning. In particular, there were late night "revellers" staggering back to oblivion, and several cleaners clearing up the mess left overnight by the masses. But the air was fresh, and my long-awaited run kicked off extremely well. Coming back from my first loop I met a group of runners who are training for the Berlin marathon this September. In fact it was one of them, Sylvana Ungaro, who had given me the idea of starting my long run very early in the morning, before sunrise. I greeted them cheerily, and proceeded back to Exiles.
But then, at the end of the second loop, disaster struck - the water bottles, which I had carefully placed on the ground behind my parked car, were all gone! Probably, some well-meaning cleaner picked them up thinking they were rubbish left behind from the previous night, and I was left with close to two hours still to run in the sweltering heat of the Maltese summer, with no water at all to consume...
Drat, drat, and double drat! Well, sort of. The words in the early dawn at Exiles beach were different, but the gist was the same. I ran around the carpark for a couple of minutes, almost like a headless chicken, looking around in the forlorn hope that the life-saving bottles had been placed somewhere close. No such luck! But I remembered that I had a fourth bottle locked in the car, to be used at the end of the run. I opened the car boot, grabbed the bottle, and went off again, this time towards home with the intention of refilling there. On the way I met a sizeable number of my prospective running mates, all riding a mountaine bike with clearly no intention at all of going on a long run. Good luck to them, I'll work this one out on my own as I always do when I'm in Belgium. Then I remembered that at the promenade on top of the Exiles beach there are drinking water taps, which I could very well use to refill my one precious surviving bottle.
So I ran back towards the starting point, as planned in the very beginning, and my heart sank as I noticed that where previously there had been a drinking water tap, there was... nothing. More drats. Last resort, another drinking water tap that I remembered was just behind the corner after the Sliema tower, and - eureka! - the magic fluid spluttered out into the empty plastic bottle. The water even turned out to taste good, without the iodine flavour that it used to have in the past.
At the Exiles car park there were Antoine Attard, Peter Barbara, Alfred Demarco and Savo Ristic waiting for others, who would never arrive. We started off in the direction of Tigne', then always following the coastline to Gzira, Ta' Xbiex, Msida, Floriana, the Valletta bus terminus and all the way back, without too much effort, at a calm, sustained pace.
That was it - I had done it! Two hours and 45 minutes, in the middle of the Maltese summer, my longest run ever in July, and now I know exactly what I need to do today week to repeat the session, in what will probably be more severe weather conditions.
Brussels marathon, here I come!
This was the problem that had long been on my mind as I was building up my training for the upcoming Brussels marathon in October. This July I'm staying in Malta, where the temperature rises from 23 C early in the morning to the high twenties by 9 am, reaching a maximum above 30 C practically everyday.
So how would I be able to run for 2 hours 45 minutes without dying of heatstroke? To solve the problem I decided to start extra early in the morning, at 5:15, and devised a plan whereby I would remain sufficiently hydrated throughout the run. I filled four half-litre bottles with water and chilled them overnight. Three of these I placed on the ground behind my car, which I parked next to the Exiles beach car park. The plan was that I would run for 12 and a half minutes away from the car park and then back to the starting point, where I would pick one bottle and run out again for another 25-minute loop, drinking the life-saving fluid along the way. I would run three such loops for a total of 75 minutes, and then at 6:30 I would pick up the third half-litre bottle and join my running mates, who at that time were to kick off their 90-minute run from the same place. This added up to the target total of 2h45m, which I would run in relatively cool temperatures.
The Sliema seafront was surprisingly busy for such an ungodly hour in the morning. In particular, there were late night "revellers" staggering back to oblivion, and several cleaners clearing up the mess left overnight by the masses. But the air was fresh, and my long-awaited run kicked off extremely well. Coming back from my first loop I met a group of runners who are training for the Berlin marathon this September. In fact it was one of them, Sylvana Ungaro, who had given me the idea of starting my long run very early in the morning, before sunrise. I greeted them cheerily, and proceeded back to Exiles.
But then, at the end of the second loop, disaster struck - the water bottles, which I had carefully placed on the ground behind my parked car, were all gone! Probably, some well-meaning cleaner picked them up thinking they were rubbish left behind from the previous night, and I was left with close to two hours still to run in the sweltering heat of the Maltese summer, with no water at all to consume...
Drat, drat, and double drat! Well, sort of. The words in the early dawn at Exiles beach were different, but the gist was the same. I ran around the carpark for a couple of minutes, almost like a headless chicken, looking around in the forlorn hope that the life-saving bottles had been placed somewhere close. No such luck! But I remembered that I had a fourth bottle locked in the car, to be used at the end of the run. I opened the car boot, grabbed the bottle, and went off again, this time towards home with the intention of refilling there. On the way I met a sizeable number of my prospective running mates, all riding a mountaine bike with clearly no intention at all of going on a long run. Good luck to them, I'll work this one out on my own as I always do when I'm in Belgium. Then I remembered that at the promenade on top of the Exiles beach there are drinking water taps, which I could very well use to refill my one precious surviving bottle.
So I ran back towards the starting point, as planned in the very beginning, and my heart sank as I noticed that where previously there had been a drinking water tap, there was... nothing. More drats. Last resort, another drinking water tap that I remembered was just behind the corner after the Sliema tower, and - eureka! - the magic fluid spluttered out into the empty plastic bottle. The water even turned out to taste good, without the iodine flavour that it used to have in the past.
At the Exiles car park there were Antoine Attard, Peter Barbara, Alfred Demarco and Savo Ristic waiting for others, who would never arrive. We started off in the direction of Tigne', then always following the coastline to Gzira, Ta' Xbiex, Msida, Floriana, the Valletta bus terminus and all the way back, without too much effort, at a calm, sustained pace.
That was it - I had done it! Two hours and 45 minutes, in the middle of the Maltese summer, my longest run ever in July, and now I know exactly what I need to do today week to repeat the session, in what will probably be more severe weather conditions.
Brussels marathon, here I come!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The watermelon race - Birzebbuga 10k, 10 July 2009
Birzebbuga, a seaside resort in the south of Malta, the place where I was born, where I spent most of my childhood summers, and where I spent by far the biggest part yet of my working life.
A mid-Mediterranean break in the peak of summer, plus a break from running in Belgium and the Watermolen Cup, started here in Birzebbuga with what I like to call the... 'watermelon' race. It's the St Patrick's AC Birzebbuga 10k, a tough, hot and hilly race, each edition of which ends with juicy chunks of watermelon, very much appreciated by the exhausted, heat-dehydrated athletes!
I ran this race just like a beginner, having as a joke proclaimed to a number of my friends that I would be "the man to beat", and then, foolishly, believing it myself... So I ran too fast right from the start, staying behind my good friend Lee Micallef with the intention of letting him lead the way and then overtaking him at the final sprint. Yeah, sure... perfect strategy.
I did actually stay quite close to him for a good part of the race. But it was bloody hot! It was ever so hilly, although I should have been prepared for that - it's not as if the hills have just grown higher this year, or that they might possibly have shrunk. I also hadn't slept very much the previous night, due to the Air Malta flight being two hours late.
So I wasn't in ideal shape on the day. In the long descent from Hal Far back to Birzebbuga I was already tired, and the killer hill, at the Tal-Papa housing estate, was just around the corner. Surprisingly enough, it was at the final part of this hill that I almost overtook Lee. Another long descent and he literally ran away from me, while I was only interested in finishing the whole damn thing. An old acquaintance who is currently staging quite a good comeback, Antoine Zammit, did what I should have done and what I normally do - came from behind and finished strongly. Him I also didn't see again until at the finish.
A heartbreaking characteristic of this race is that you run right in front of the finish with 2km still to go. There are already the fast finishers doing their cooling down, while you have to sweat out an additional 2km loop. I didn't slow down to a walk at that point only because it wouldn't look good at all in front of so many people. So I stuck it out beyond this point, with the intention of slowing down just as I was out of sight of the crowd. But, somehow, I kept going, and I must say that it was quite an achievement for me, on this day, to actually keep running the whole distance.
The finishing time was a respectable 44:29, only a few seconds more than my 'standard' 44 minutes for a 10k. Very good, in fact, considering all the difficulties mentioned.
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