Iċ-ċ bit-tikka

Naħseb l-espressjoni "ċ bit-tikka" hu l-uniku ġid li qatt ħareġ minn dik l-imbierka tikka li l-professuri tal-Malti kienu insistew, u donnhom għadhom qed jinsistu, li għandna npoġġu fuq is-c.

Żomm. Is-c? Jew iċ-c?

U hemm titfaċċa l-problema, u r-raġuni għala naħseb li jmissna nneħħu t-tikka darba għal dejjem minn fuq iċ-ċ. Billi l-ittra c ma teżistix fil-Malti, lanqas għandna mezz kif ngħiduha bil-Malti, u jinqalgħu ħafna u ħafna każi fejn niġu bżonn naqrawha, prattikament kull fejn ikun hemm sensiela ta' oġġetti li jingħarfu minn xulxin b'ittra differenti. Il-Maltin insolvuha billi naqrawha bl-Ingliż. Appuntu. M'għandhiex isem bil-Malti għaliha. U lanqas ma jkun korrett li taqraha "ċe", għax bla tikka ma hix "ċe".

Eliminajna mill-alfabett tagħna waħda mill-aktar ittri komuni fil-lingwi tista' tgħid kollha tad-dinja li huma bbażati fuq l-alfabett Latin. U għalxejn jaħasra! "Għax hemm storja warajha." Allura? Is-soltu tagħna l-Maltin. Ħloqna rota kwadra.

B'dir-rota kwadra, allura, "ċentimetru" fil-qosor jiktbuha "ċm" - li xjentifikament hija sagrileġġ! L-istandard internazzjonali tal-qisien jispeċifika ċar li l-indikatur ta' wieħed minn kull mija huwa "c", bħalma 1 minn kull elf huwa "m", wieħed minn kull miljun huwa "μ", miljun huwa "M" (mega-), eċċetra. Dawn l-istandards josservahom kulħadd l-istess, u ma jistax ikun mod ieħor ladarba l-istess xjenza hi pprattikata fuq skala globali. U allura ħadd ma joqgħod jilgħab bit-tikek "għal raġunijiet storiċi" - ċentimetru tinkiteb cm, bil-lingwi kollha. Full stop. Imma mur spjegaha din lill-iskoss professuri li għandna. Kull fejn tħares "ċm", left right and centre. Meta mhux ukoll jagħmlulek °Ċ għal Celsius, għax mingħalihom li tfisser ċentigradi...

Le, le, il-premju Nobel fil-fiżika għad nieħdu xi darba.

Post-marathon blues?

So what's next after last Sunday's marathon?

Medium term: quite a clear target here - the Vise Maasmarathon. This event, which is held in May, starts at Vise in Belgium, going along the Meuse (Maas) riverbank into Maastricht in the Netherlands, and back to the starting point. It's an interesting idea, and in fact the organisers market this marathon as an intra-European event, in full European integration spirit. It seems to be a pleasant enough, flat route, not too crowded. The month of May itself is attractive. Seven months is enough time to take a good rest from last Sunday and build up to the next marathon. Besides, I enjoyed Maastricht when I visited it last summer, and would love to include it in my next marathon. So, unless any unforeseen circumstances crop up, the Vise Maasmarathon it will be.

Long term: to run as many marathons as my health and well-being will allow. I have two targets in particular, but I won't spell them out yet... Make that three.

Short term: ah, there I get stuck. Nothing interesting in sight except for a long, dark winter, which one can hardly consider to be very interesting. They don't organise many races during winter here, at least, not any that I know of. I won't even be in Malta in time for my favourite Mdina-Spinola this year, so basically I don't have anything at all to motivate me, except the Vise marathon. Actually it might be a good thing as I can relax for a while. But will I have any motivation to do speed training? I don't think so!

Mil-lum il-gallarija fetħet it-twieqi hawnhekk

Ħallejt jumejn bil-midalja tal-maratona żżejjen il-parti ta' fuq tal-blogg - issa wasal il-mument li ngħaddi għall-kumment li jmiss u allura nressaq ir-ritratt tal-midalja waħda 'l isfel.

Iddeċidejt li ma tagħmilx sens li mmantni tliet bloggs. Tan-naħa l-oħra se jibqa' hemm arkivju, mimli materjal li dehrli li kien interessanti meta ktibtu, u li dejjem insibu interessanti meta mmur inqalleb ftit fih. Imma mil-lum 'il quddiem se ngħaqqad kollox hawn: atletika, politika, sports, ritratti, kummenti fuq aħbarijiet u ħsibijiet oħra ġeneralment strambi li jgħadduli minn moħħi. Il-problema tal-lingwa solvejtha. Nippreferi nikteb bil-Malti, u allura bil-Malti se nikteb. Jekk ikolli xi ispirazzjoni bl-Ingliż, l-Ingliż jifhmuh ħafna nies, u nwaddabha bl-Ingliż.

Semmejt tliet bloggs - it-tielet wieħed se jibqa' l-uniku wieħed tematiku, u hu għal qalbi ferm - dwar foresta ċkejkna fiċ-ċentru tal-univers li jisimgħa Lilliput. Naħseb Marisa Micallef kienet tkun kburija kieku ħolqot id-dinja tal-goblins li ġbart hemmhekk... Imma l-materjal għal hemm hu rari, u trid vera taħkimni l-ispirazzjoni biex nirrakkonta xi ġrajja li sseħħ f'Lilliput.

Dik hi mela, l-aħwa. Mil-lum 'il quddiem il-blogg tiegħi hu dan biss. Nispera li jogħġobkom. Sorry - nispera li jogħġbok (lill-uniku qarrej tal-blogg). Anzi, naħseb inkun aktar korrett jekk ngħid - nispera li jogħġobni!

Brussels marathon - 3h30:20

I have mixed feelings about this, my 11th marathon, that I ran today.

It's already a fine achievement, considering that the last three weeks have been disrupted by illness. As I waited to start, in fact, I would happily settle for simply completing the run, thereby adding another marathon to my collection. But the way it turned out I'm just a bit disappointed that I missed beating the 3h30 barrier by just 20 seconds, and more so considering what happened in the very final kilometre.

I started off well, as per plan, running at just under 5 minutes per kilometre, i.e. potentially sub-3h30. The cough that has been tormenting me for the past weeks was nowhere in evidence, and the only irritation was a large group of runners following the 3h30 pace-setter, who were often getting in the way in bottlenecks and especially at drinking stations. They would come marching past me, and then I would run past them. This happened several times throughout the marathon until eventually they took a commanding lead and left me alone. Tonight I'll probably dream of large yellow balloons...

The kilometre markers were erratic, but on average it was clear that I was gaining ground on my target time. Like in Malta last March I tried to avoid competing with other runners and concentrated on my own pace, but it was almost impossible to ignore the yellow balloons. As I approached the half way mark I started to lose ground on the 5min/km pace, but regained the pace up the hill towards Quatre Bras and then towards Tervuren Park. It really looked, then, that I was on my way to another memorable finishing time, similar to what I achieved in Malta (3h26).

Alas! Coming out of Tervuren, at around the 30km mark, I ran out of steam. Nothing too dramatic: I just couldn't run as fast as I had been running before. I looked forward to the long descent following the 32nd kilometre hoping to regain lost ground, which I didn't, and then I realised that I wouldn't be able to hold the initial pace until the finish.

So I decided to change tactics. At the foot of the downhill, at 35k, I decided to ignore the watch and just concentrated on reaching the end. This was at the beginning of a 2km long hill, at Woluwe park, where we were joined by the runners of the half marathon, and here I realised that I was running much faster than all these people who had run 21km less than me! This realisation gave me a strong morale boost, and I ran up this hill quite strongly, although I had now to take care to ward off a new peril - cramps - which I managed to (just) keep at bay by avoiding sudden movements and accelerations.

Beyond the Montgomery roundabout, into Cinquantenaire Park, with just 3km to go, I only had one thing in mind - to get to the finish, slightly disappointed at the loss of pace. The final stretch was Rue de la Loi, where I go to work everyday, and eventually descending into the centre of Brussels to finish at the Grand Place. 40km. 41km. With 1.2km to go I decided to look at the watch to get an estimate of my completion time. To my great surprise the watch said 3h24m and 5 seconds. I had a fighting chance of breaking 3h30 after all!

So here I threw all caution to the wind. The cramp had disappeared, I was still feeling strong, and I ran as fast as I could for the final 1.2km. A few hundred metres later there was an incident involving an ambulance, a man with a travelling case and several runners getting jammed up at a bottleneck, blocking my way and disrupting my mad rush to the finish. One lady runner became very angry indeed as I had to practically push her in the back while coming to an abrupt stop... In the end it didn't make a difference as it turned out that, yet again, the 41km marker had been placed too early and I was to miss the target by 20 seconds, a good deal more than the 2 seconds' delay caused by the blockage.

When you miss a target by a few seconds you tend to try to find where you could have done better. Could I have kept a better rhythm by looking at the watch at each of the final few kilometres? Maybe. Probably not. What I do know is that I achieved a first today - finishing a marathon at a sprint! It goes to show there's still a lot of power left in the good old legs... Ah yes, and another first - two marathons in the same calendar year.

The statistics are not bad looking at all:
400th place out of 1647 starters and 1569 finishers
65th male Over 45
Pace exactly 5 minutes per kilometre

And now, on to the 12th marathon!

P.S. After the finish, we had to limp on for a long, long walk (they said it's 800 metres, but it seemed much longer than that) to collect our bags from the Far Far Away Sports Hall. What a shame! It took me forever to get there. This, and the erratic kilometre markers marred an otherwise beautiful route. I'll probably look elsewhere for my future marathons.

Marathon weekend

Before I ran the Malta marathon last March, I had decided to dedicate this year following that event to shorter races instead of concentrating on another marathon. But I did so well in the Malta marathon, and enjoyed it so much, that I quickly found a way to include a training schedule for another one, tomorrow's Brussels marathon, along with the various races that I would do throughout the year.

The combined shorter races plus marathon schedule went extremely well, even during the three weeks in the peak of summer in Malta, when I managed two runs, each at 2h45m, very early on Sunday mornings. Those two runs were quite an adventure, and were chronicled in this blog last July. The build up also included a half marathon on 15 August, on a hot afternoon this time in Belgium, three 3hr runs and another 3h15m run, all according to schedule. I was quite confident of achieving a result comparable to the 3h26m marathon in Malta.

But on 13 September, the day after the longest run exactly three weeks before the event, I received a nasty birthday gift in the shape of a cold. I was lucky, in a way. Any earlier and I wouldn't have managed to complete the build-up. Any later and it would have been too late to recover in time. As it turned out, I barely managed to recover, and my carefully planned tapering phase was turned literally upside-down. I had to be very careful if I didn't want all the hard training and preparations to go to waste. If I waited until I was fully recovered, I would enter the marathon with barely any running at all in the previous three weeks, or with sore muscles due to having resumed running after a long break - not a good idea. On the other hand, if I trained too hard while still not recovered I would remain sick.

So I had to look for a compromise somewhere, and kicked off after one week without any running, a fortnight ago when the worst seemed to be over. A short easy 6k on Sunday (in the afternoon to avoid the chill air of the morning), then a 10k on Monday, and a long run of two hours in an extended mid-day break on Wednesday. This was another compromise between the originally planned 2h30m at minus 2 weeks and 1h30m one week before the marathon, the two long runs of the tapering phase rolled into one. I did suffer some consequences after this effort - sore muscles and renewed coughing - but it was necessary to prevent my leg muscles from becoming too lazy... Two days' complete rest after that, then easy 10k's on alternate days, with slow but sure improvement in fitness and a decreasing urge to cough.

I now estimate my fitness to be at 90% of the ideal. Will it be enough for tomorrow?

My forecast is this. I'll manage to complete my 11th marathon tomorrow, which is what really matters in the end. Any less would be a huge disappointment, but it certainly wouldn't be through any lack of effort of mine. I won't try to compete with anyone, although I hope I'll still manage to run at 5 minutes per kilometre to beat the 3h30m target. I also expect a tough final thirty minutes, probably involving cramps in one or both calves, due to the missing 10% from my ideal level of fitness.

Two years ago, I ran the Brussels marathon without expecting to finish it. I just hope that tomorrow it won't be the opposite case. Maybe one day I'll take part, and I won't get a cold just a few weeks before the event.

Tapering phase - major disruption

The last few weeks before a marathon are the most critical. It's so close to the event that you hardly have any time to get back on track if anything goes wrong. Which is why it's such a big blow if you get a simple common cold during this period.

You see, the final weeks of preparation are very definitely structured. At minus 3 weeks there's the biggest long run before the marathon. Any earlier would be too early, and the benefits would start to wear off by marathon day. Any later would be too close, and there wouldn't be enough time left to rest properly. So, there's hardly any chance of flexibility - 3 weeks before the marathon I have to do my longest run, 3h15m, period. This is followed by the tapering phase, a gradual decrease in training leading to the marathon. In the last few days before the marathon there's hardly any training at all.

This is all well and good, IF you don't fall prey to a silly ailment such as the common cold. As I said, since we're so close to the event there's no time left to allow for easing back into the routine. If you can't run at minus three weeks, then you'll have to do away with the longest long run, and the longest training run would be a shorter run, say 3hr, FOUR weeks before the event. So it's probably goodbye to any excellent performance in the marathon.

I've been lucky. I got my cold on the day exactly following my longest run. It was the best possible time to have a cold during the month preceding a marathon. One week without training, but enough time left to recover normal muscular fitness. Except that at the end of the one week I couldn't afford to remain sitting down any longer, and with the symptoms almost over I resumed on Sunday with a short run, followed by my standard easy 10k, a day off to allow the inevitable muscle soreness to go away, and today a midweek long run - duration exactly midway between what I was supposed to have done last Sunday (2h30) and what I would have done next Sunday (1h30) if things had gone according to schedule. So today I ran for 2 hours.

Now I'm walking a very fine balance between staying fit - running fit - and staying healthy, i.e. a full recovery from the cold. Not enough training, and the marathon becomes a very difficult enterprise. I got cramps today because of the one week layoff, so I still need to work to get my leg muscles used to the activity of running for a long distance. Too much training, and I get sick again, and the symptoms are taking a long time to go away...

I'm confident it will be alright on the day. From now on it's one and a half weeks of pampering and easy 10k's. I just have to take it easy and hope for the best.

Vossem 12km - 0h53:46

Vossem seems to me to be a quiet, sleepy village, surrounded by agricultural land and parks, close to the more famous Tervuren. Arriving here, I noticed two landmarks that were noteworthy. One is a large farm building, pictured above, quite striking as you're approaching the village centre. The other is the church dedicated to Saint Paul that dates back to the 12th century, with construction typical of very old structures, with bricks embedded in mortar, but very well kept. Pity I couldn't have a look inside, as I was dressed rather inappropriately in short shorts and running vest...

This weekend they had their Dorpsfeesten, whatever that is. The sleepy quiet character of the place was of course shattered on this occasion. There was a street market, a stage, someone shouting on a PA system, and lots of chips and beer stalls, always all too present in these races, without it being possible for me to buy anything since I don't carry any money with me during races!

Again, it was awfully hot today, as I embarked on my seventh race in the Watermolen Cup, which would ensure a placing in the final classification. Again, I had to drink lots of water before the race, and pour lots more on top of my head to cool down a little bit. And yet again I cursed the strange idea of race organisers in Belgium, who could easily schedule August races in the morning, or in the evening, so that participants might run in temperatures that are better suited for endurance events. But no! The races have to start in the hottest part of the day, in mid-afternoon.

Well, 10k is more achievable than 21k. But I made it a point to stick to a cautious pace, at least for the first third of the race. All this Watermolen Cup series has for me been a bit of a jump in the dark, since I have never done any one of the races, so I didn't know what to expect during the routes. So, again, today I didn't know if it was a single or a double loop, if it was a flat or a hilly race, or if we would be doing easy-going bicycle lanes and normal roads, or if we would be doing any treacherous forest paths that the Belgians seem to like so much.

For a couple of kilometres it was normal streets, going slightly uphill or downhill. There was a double kilometre marker after 2km, saying "2km 8km". How sweet of them, I thought, 2km gone, 8 to go. We entered a wood and the ground started to get rough. But I had settled into a good steady pace, even though the quality of the ground kept deteriorating. There were a couple of stretches of single file running. Luckily, it has only rained on rare occasions for the past few weeks, otherwise this would have been another mud feast. Instead it was bone dry and very dusty. It seemed as if I was running in Tunisia rather than in Belgium.

A second, cryptic kilometre marker: 4km 10km. What the hell? Did they mean the 4th kilometre of the 10km race? Maybe. Then an even stranger marker: 5km 11km. Never mind. But one question had been answered. It was not a double loop, since at the half-way point, i.e. 5km, we hadn't passed the starting point. Or so I thought. A few minutes later I started to hear shouting on a PA system, and suddenly it clicked and all the cryptic kilometre markers made utterly perfect sense: we were doing a double loop after all, the half-way mark being at 6km!

They had advertised a 10km race, but in actual fact it was going to be 12km long.

What a mean trick to play on a hot August afternoon. When I go out for a run, whether it's training or a race, I'm mentally prepared for the distance. When doing a 10k, at the end of that 10k I'm unable to contemplate any more, while two days later I would be quite capable of running 30km without any undue trouble. It's a psychological thing. But there's also the physical aspect. The pace of a 10k is faster than that of a 12k, and I had been running at the former pace, with consequent expenditure of energy. Now I had to keep going for an extra 2 kilometres, which was no joke in that heat. So, I switched to '12k mode', aiming to maintain the good position that I had achieved up till then.

Luckily, it was early enough for me to readjust and 'absorb' the additional distance into my race. I also happened to be in good shape, and it seems that I had hit on the optimum pace. Another advantage was that now, having done one loop, I knew what to expect, so I could prepare myself (mentally, again) for the hard parts, and again I overtook a good number of rivals even the second part. No stopping for drinks today - I reckoned I could survive the distance without having to stop to drink in the plastic cups provided, thanks to my extra pre-race hydration.

After the final bit of steep forest path I felt a bit groggy, but there were just two kilometres left to go, mostly downhill, and I quickly recovered a strong pace that took me beyond more rivals up to the finish.

It was a fantastic performance overall, one of my very best this year.