October 8, 2017
After what I thought was a PB at the Blue Nose, I continued into 2017 feeling confident and strong, back on track after a tough end to 2016. I was soon ready to train for another marathon, and had my sights on Valley Harvest.
Held in Wolfville on Thanksgiving weekend, the Valley Harvest is a classic fall race in a beautiful part of Nova Scotia. Autumn colours dot the rolling landscape, while busy farmers work their fields and visitors line up at local markets for fresh apples and other treasures of the season.
I’ve always enjoyed the valley, dating back to my childhood, when my dad worked the highways around the province, and we would camp in places like Middleton and New Minas. Marlene too has great memories of visiting family in Kentville, and still loves to get there any chance she gets.
Valley Harvest was always on my radar. I ran the 10K there in 2015 and had a good race, and also enjoyed being there as a spectator in 2016, watching Marlene and the kids run the 5K. I knew I would run the marathon there someday, and decided this would be the year.
Although happy with my Blue Nose race, I didn’t want to content myself with training the same program. I felt an urge to turn things up another notch, and decided to revisit the sub-3 hour program a friend had loaned me for my Maritime Race Weekend marathon the year before. It proved a bit too much for me then, but I was improved and in a better spot and ready to try again.
Feeling stronger and faster than ever, I tackled my workouts with renewed intensity. Because many of the days called for track workouts, and I had no access to such a facility, I improvised with what I had available. I chose the Shore Road in Diligent River, the longest flat stretch of road around, and made that my track, looping around through blueberry fields and back to the main road for what amounted to about a 6K loop.
Everything was going great until it wasn’t. I experienced a derailment in the middle of the summer.
It was the last weekend of July, and we were camping in Prince Edward Island. I had spent the morning in Cavendish, covering a local race for my new Maritime Runner website. When I got back to the campground, I had a pounding headache. It was a beautiful day, so I assumed I had gotten either too much sun or heat. I figured a good night’s sleep would be the cure.
I woke up, however, with my head pounding just as bad as it had been the day before. Strangely, I was also feeling small bumps in a few spots on my head, and showed them to Marlene.
With these symptoms persisting after we returned home, I quickly made a doctor’s appointment and the doctor confirmed what I was already starting to fear. I had shingles.
Caused by the same virus that brings us chickenpox as children, shingles is the nastier adult version. It is more common in older people, often causing a very painful rash. But I found out that it could also happen to younger people if their immune system gets worn down enough, and that symptoms could vary.
I could see why I had become a prime candidate. I had started the Maritime Runner website that year, a project I really enjoyed, but one that took a lot of time and work. I was also working my regular full-time job at the local newspaper, was putting in some intense training for this marathon, and was still trying to find time for my other passion – bird-watching. Add to that my duties as a husband and father, and something surely had to give. It turned out my body started to break under the strain.
I soon had blisters all over the top left quadrant of my head. One even grew on my eyelid, giving my left eye a swollen, attractive half-shut look. My rash was neither painful nor itchy, but I suffered from headaches and an overwhelming fatigue. I could barely muster enough energy to get off the couch.
The doctor took me off work for a week, and, needless to say, I also missed an entire week of training.
When I returned to my regular routine, I felt like my fitness was still there, and I got back to my training. Realizing I had to take it easier on myself, I returned to my less intense, more familiar program that I had trained for the Blue Nose. I didn’t like the idea of switching programs halfway through, but felt I had no choice.
What I hadn’t counted on was the after-effects of shingles, which turned out to be the worst part of it for me. I experienced something called post-herpetic neuralgia, which is caused by leftover nerve damage from the initial attack. It meant that I now had an itchy/tingly sensation in all the spots where the blisters had been, and was constantly rubbing my eye and scratching my head.
I mean constantly, and I’m not talking about a short time period. This lasted for months, throughout the rest of my training and beyond, to the point where I had my left eyebrow rubbed completely off, and was driven very close to insanity. I was on medication to keep it at bay, but it was a tough time. Eventually it faded, but never completely disappeared.
How does all of this relate to my running, you might ask? It’s hard to describe. I don’t think it affected my overall running fitness, which is based on heart rate more than anything else, but it was a constant distraction. I got all my workouts in, but it was impossible to stay mentally focused. Imagine trying to do effective interval training when your itchy head is driving you crazy. Imagine trying to get a good night’s sleep.
It wreaked havoc on my confidence, left me in uncharted territory, and I had no idea whether I was on track or not.
It was with this feeling that I headed to Saint John in mid-August to run the half marathon at Marathon by the Sea as a tester. I went into the race conservatively, feeling myself out, and it went surprisingly well. In fact, I must have took it too slow in the first half, because I had way more gas left in the tank than I should have for the second half, passing a bunch of runners on the Harbour Bridge on the way back. It wasn’t a well-executed race, but I left feeling encouraged. Maybe I would be OK for Valley Harvest. I ran Leg 7 at the Rum Runners Relay a week before the race, and had a blast, feeling great.
On race weekend, we were able to stay with Marlene’s cousin Cindy and her always-hospitable family in Kentville. I had a nice relaxing soak in the hot tub the night before, which is always nice. Fact: the only time my calves don’t ache is when they are in a hot tub. I still had a relatively sleepless night though. I don’t think there’s a cure for me there.
I arrived in Wolfville with Marlene early on race day, to meet up with my friends Todd and Kelly MacKinnon, who were running the half. I had picked up their race kits for them the day before. We also got to see Allison Linkletter and Faith Logan, two Parrsboro girls there for the run. The atmosphere at Acadia University’s Raymond Field was electric as always, and I like that the race starts and finishes on the track there.
What surprised me most about this day was how warm it was. At the 7:30 a.m. start time, it was already 17 degrees and muggy. This is not what I expect for Nova Scotia in October, even in the balmy valley. It sure wasn’t the crisp fall morning I had for the 10K in 2015.
I headed out with the rest of the pack, feeling reasonably good. One of the consequences of my post-shingles problems was that my head would itch like crazy if I tried to wear a hat, so I decided to do this one with my balding head unprotected from the sun. Fortunately, the skies stayed more hazy than sunny, although it continued to get warmer throughout the day.
The Valley Harvest course is not known to be friendly for those looking for a fast time, but it’s a nice run. It has not many big hills that I can recall, but plenty of rolling terrain. Lots of farm fields and pleasant communities between Wolfville, Port Williams and Canning. Vehicle traffic is low and the volunteers at the water stations are lively and friendly.
I kept mainly to myself, trying to stay in some sort of rhythm, loosely following the same strategy I had employed at the Blue Nose. Like with the Blue Nose, the terrain made it difficult to stick to a steady pace, but I did my best. I averaged a pace of around 4:45 for the first half, but something felt off about this race, almost right from the beginning. I could tell early on that I was going to have a long morning. I seemed to be expending way too much energy in the early part of the race.
One of the toughest moments on course that I remember was near the turnaround in Kingsport, where you go up a fairly sharp incline and do a little loop around a couple rough side roads. For some reason, this took a lot out of me, and the return trip to Wolfville was a really tough slog.
Never before had I been so zapped at the halfway mark. I struggled on but had to take several walking breaks along the way, a first for me in any marathon.
At the 35th kilometer, somewhere around Port Williams, the return route branches off to the right, and it was around here that my family and friends were waiting with some cheers. I tried to put on a brave face, and not let them see how much pain I was in.
At the 40th kilometer, I rounded the corner onto Highway 1, heading for the finish. I heard someone shout my name, and looked up to see Ava Czapalay waving from her car. Ava was the race director of the Age of Sail Marathon, and seeing her made me think of other tough marathon moments I had overcome. I fought on.
Heading into Wolfville, I came across Stan Sarty and a group of Mountain View Runners on the sidewalk, cheering runners on. I’m always impressed to see this kind of support at a race, and was proud to join the ranks of this amazing club later that year.
One of the young MVR guys, Jawad Naimat, joined me as I did the dead man’s shuffle up the street to Raymond Field for the finish. I still remember our conversation.
“Do you want to push it?” he asked me.
“This IS pushing it,” I answered, with a weary smile.
I did the final half-loop around the track with what felt like lead in my shoes, but a feeling of peace, knowing this difficult chapter of my running story was about to be behind me.
I remember looking up at the clock as I crossed the finish line and seeing a time of 3:13. For a fraction of a second, my heart leaped. Was my time better than I thought it would be? Was it possible I had a really good first half, to make up for the dismal second?
Then I realized the clock I was looking at was actually for the half marathoners, who had started a half hour after my group. I looked at the other clock and was quickly brought back to reality. I actually crossed the finish line at 3:43:51. It was my slowest finish since my second marathon back in 2013.
For reasons I’ve yet to convincingly nail down, Valley Harvest was the toughest marathon I ever ran. Was it the unexpected heat and humidity? Was it the challenges and disruptions I dealt with during training? Did I just have a bad day?
The answer probably lies in all of the above, but I don’t think I was the only one who struggled that day. I finished in 21st place and, of the 108 finishers, only winner Matthew White came in under the three-hour mark.
I decided soon afterwards to not spend too much time over-analyzing this one, and to just put it in the rearview mirror.
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