Better be ready – of MA+RA+TH+ON preparation and gadgets that failed

Better be ready – of MA+RA+TH+ON preparation and gadgets that failed

There was nothing to celebrate during yesterday, Tuesday’s run, with corona infections having hit a new high of 164,994,625 and 3,421,329 deaths globally, and Kenyan numbers being 166,006 and 3,021 respectively.  I did not even feel like having this evening run in the first place.  What with the world and the country all gloomy with this COVID19 monster that was not being tamed anything soon?.  

Positive developments were nonetheless taking place.  Vaccines were starting to trickle through the world, though even our own second shot was now in doubt.  This was caused by the withholding of vaccine exports by India, the main manufacturer of vaccines that go to WHO’s COVAX (COVID19 Vaccines Global Access) scheme.  

India was having a surge in infections at their local level and were now prioritizing supplies to themselves first.  That second shot of the Covishield vaccine from Astra Zeneca was now being delayed from 8-weeks to 12-weeks since the first shot.  The certainty of even getting it in 12-weeks’ time was also in doubt.  With all these uncertainties, it was not a Tuesday that you would want to get out there and do your run…. but evening came and it was run time.

I was still feeling the pains of the last run of Sunday, hardly two days before, even as I setup to change into the run gear.  Nonetheless, a major international marathon relay in the name of MA+RA+TH+ON, was coming up.  This is a four-member team relay where each person contributes 10.5km to the team, to ultimately tally the total of 42km marathon distance.  I was already in a team and the event was beckoning.  The dates had already been cast in stone, being the weekend of May 22-23.  It was now a matter of making it count.

I would be using this Tuesday run as the last run before the weekend relay, while I also wanted to take advantage of the run to formulate a 10.5km route for the relay.  The challenge with our run routes from Uthiru is that none of them provides a flat terrain.  You are likely to encounter a hilly terrain anytime you run for over 1km in any direction from Uthiru.  Some hills are however worse, and you would want to avoid them when mapping an international competitive run on a 10.5km distance.  I was doing my mental calcs, but each span of 10.5km still ended up with over 3km of uphill somewhere along the route.

I had to accept the reality that I would have to run through some hills, and hence be forced into a reduced pace with would reduce my average speed, the very metric that really counted for the event.  I still wanted to scout the best of the existing bad options of run routes.  I then needed to take the five-day break after knowing my route, to then take a rest to enable me be at my peak strength come the weekend.  This Tuesday run was therefore a compulsory run, both to know a final route for the weekend and also to do a final run before the weekend.

I started the run at four, and carried with me one gadget with two timing apps – the Runkeeper that had now become the default since the collapse of Endomondo, and a second Strava app, being the official app for use during the weekend relay event.  I wanted to test Strava app in advance and confirm that it worked well and would be up to the task come the weekend.  You can imagine the frustration of trying an app that fails during an international event, where a team of another three rely on your contribution to relay and shall make the marathon successful.  It can be a disaster.

My plan was to start off on Runkeeper and have it time and map the whole run, from start to finish.  It always worked well and has hardly let me down (apart from the occasional incorrect starting point, which can easily be fixed by a simple editing of the saved map).  Then, I would start the Strava at some point on the route, for timing through the 10.5km section, then stop it after that section was recorded.  While Runkeeper is a faithful servant, Strava on the other hand is unforgiving in terms of mapping.  Unless you have the professional subscription version, you are stuck with a wrong map that cannot be edited.

I did not expect much in terms of differences on this run compared to my Sunday run.  I was still tired but my day’s run was mainly concerned about the 10.5km section that I had mapped in my mind.  Unfortunately, that 10.5km section meant that I had to still do the long run, and carve out a section of that long run.  I had to carefully figure out a section that was not as bad of the rest of the route, in terms of few hilly terrains.

I eventually started the Strava at Ndumbo, after having ran from Uthiru, crossing Waiyaki way and then running the length of the tarmac to Ndumbo market.  Instead of going down Kapenguria road as I would usually do, I decided to turn left onto Kanyariri road and kind of do a reverse of the usual run.  I usually avoid this reverse loop due to the Wangari Maathai hill that a runner has to face on their way back, when they are tired, as they climb it towards Ndumbo.  I would have to just face my avoidance on this Tuesday.

I started my Strava as I went down the hill after Ndumbo market.  I already knew that this downhill would soon come to an end, and I would then face the uphill section that first gets you to the ‘the tank’, then the mild uphill that goes as far as Kanyariri road shall take me.  Being psychologically prepared helped me out as I faced the hills.  The weather was a bit sunny, but not hot.  The road was fairly deserted, with the occasional one vehicle every kilometre or so.

I kept running and the pace felt comfortable enough.  Nothing out of the ordinary, just another evening run.  My plan was to try and avoid the sudden hill near ACK Kanyariri church as you head to the market.  Instead, I planned to turn right, and use this alternative road that eventually gets to Wangige road.  The last time I used this road must have been during the Divas International Marathon of early 2019.  I could hardly remember its ‘hilliness’, but I thought that it was a bit easier that the usual straight Kanyariri road to the Gitaru market.

My Strava was still on, so was Runkeeper, though I usually do not check on the gadgets when I run.  I use the gadgets to time my run.  I do not run to ‘please’ the gadgets.  I know of a colleague who worships his gadgets and control his every run.  He can even come to a stop if the gadgets say so.  Not me.  I already knew that they were working on the background of the phone that I carried with me, and I did not bother look at them at all.  The time to look at them would come, especially for the Strava timer that was on a mission for a specific distance.

My plan was to turn to the right at that junction, then go for about 5minutes, to any turning point, then start the run back.  And that is what I did.  I turned right and started running on that road.  It was also fairly deserted.  I was not looking at the gadgets, and my five-minute run was to be based on instinct.  I kept running, waiting for instinct to raise the alarm on the five minutes point.  I got to some shopping centre and felt shame-on-myself to just doing a U-turn in the crowds, and so I kept going and passed the crowd.  I just kept going waiting for an opportune time to do the U, but it never came.

Behold!  It came as a surprise when I started making out the new Wangige road flying over just ahead, about two-hundred metres from where I was!  This was not the plan.  I had not intended to hit this point.  I should have turned back before reaching this point.  It was not too late!  I just had to be ‘polite’ to go all the way to near the highway and do a U-turn at that point.  Why I had failed to get my initially intended U-turn point earlier on the run remains a mystery.  Sometimes instinct can go to sleep, just believe me.

This alternative right-turn road turned out not to be as mild as I thought.  It was still hilly, though the hilly sections were shorter.  The U-turn at the highway was quite a relief, since I now knew that I was on my way back home.  My timers were assumedly still working, and I did not make a check at them anyway.  I started running back on the hills and downhills until I rejoined Kanyariri road at the new centre at the crossroad, where we now have nyama choma fumes that knocks out even the most resilient of runners.  I quickly passed by the smoky roadside and started my way down Kanyariri road.

The relative downhill was smooth and I enjoyed this part of the run.  I would eventually get to ‘the tank’, where I had to turn left and join the route through the university farm.  It was also relatively downwards all the way.  My mental route calculation had convinced me that I would hit the 10.5km around the Kabete Children’s home on Kapenguria road once I turn right from Lower Kabete road.  I would by then be through with the uni farm and passed Mary Leakey school to emerge at Lower Kabete road.  However, with that extra distance that I had gone after missing my initially intended U-turn, I believed that the 10.5km mark should have been somewhere on the Lower Kabete road section, give or take.

I was therefore checking my Strava as I joined Lower Kabete road, expecting to see something like ten-point-something kilometres, when I saw an 11.5km.

“No way!,” I said loudly, reducing my pace in the process, as the evening business traffic saw lots of vehicles zoom on both directions of Lower Kabete road.  

It would surely be too soon to hit such a distance, in my view, but maybe my body clock was already improperly tuned on this day anyway!  I was however still convinced that Strava must have failed me for some reason.  I was nonetheless not waiting to find out what was going on.  I still had a run to finish, and that finish was still over 7km away.

I kept running and finally stopped the Strava timer at the river, past Kabete Children’s home.  That was the place I thought the 10.5km should have ended, based on initial calculations, disregarding that extra run past the initially intended U-turn.  I momentarily saw a distance of about 12.5km with an average pace of 4min 45sec per km.  I put Strava on stop mode and continued the uphill run on Kanyariri road, to eventually pass Wangari Maathai institute and then get back to Ndumbo.

From there I could see the end in sight, just on the other side of Waiyaki way.  And for sure the run would come to an end soon.  I was relatively well energized even after the run.  The Runkeeper kept a record of 24.5km, but the average pace is what I was not expecting – 4.59min per km.  That was the first under five that I was recording on this or any other route in over three months.  This run that I had done with a laissez-faire attitude is the one that actually turned out to be a record-breaking run.  I now really wished that the MA+RA+TH+ON was happening on this Tuesday!

I learnt the lesson that in running there was probably no ideal day.  You shall break records on the least expected of days.  Preparation remains key, but you never know for sure when you shall shatter your own ceiling.  Keep running with an open mind, knowing that anything was possible.  Talking of anything being possible, that Strava app would later in the day give me the dreaded ‘app has stopped working’ error with the only option being to close the app.  That closure of the app took with it my MA+RA+TH+ON mock time and distance.  I would never know for sure what Strava had in store for me.  Now I was happy that the MA+RA+TH+ON was not happening on this Tuesday!

WWB, the Coach, Nairobi, Kenya, May 19, 2021