Running is Simple: Saturday Night Bullet Points

 Of of the things I like about running is that it's simple. Why? Let's see how many ways come to mind in the twenty minutes I have allotted myself to do this post before I have to go rest up for my long run tomorrow. Go:

• All you really need is a pair of shorts and some sturdy shoes made for running. All the rest is icing on the cake.
• You don't have to drive hundreds of miles.
• You don't have to mount anything on a vehicle.
• You don't have to rent anything.
• You don't have to pack a lot of stuff into a bag or backpack (although some of us often do).
• Unless you own a pair of spikes, you don't need tools to maintain any of your gear.
• You don't have to reserve a tee time, a court, a lane, or a field.
• You don't need a team, a squad, a party, a foursome, or even a partner.
• You don't have to learn any plays.
• There are no barriers of entry to competition and no age ceiling at which one is expected to retire. You register, pay the fee, get your packet, show up, and run. That's all.

Time's up. I got ten, huh? Cool. Just goes to show how easy it is.

This wasn't the best morning for a long run. The temps were near freezing and a light frost covered the ground when I left the house this morning at 7:00, with the sky still dark and nothing yet stirring except the neighbors' restless dogs, my wife (who had gone out ahead of me to do her 19) and me.

Perhaps a little background would be helpful: somehow, at sometime late last year, my wife managed to talk me into doing the Nashville Marathon this April 28, despite my aversion to out-of-town marathons and a busy schedule of local races this Spring. Perhaps it was the holiday stress that caused me to cave; but tracing the source is kind of useless at this point, as we are already registered and have hotel rooms booked near the finish line. I have not had time to train sufficiently to meet the goal I would most likely set for myself in a marathon at this point, which is breaking four hours. This is only the first of two that I will be running this year -- the other is on Kiawah Island in December -- so I have no problem just running this one to finish. I have had little time to train for a time goal due to the aforementioned race schedule, which has already been altered substantially (I had to miss a 5k that I usually run Sat. in order to get my 18 in this morning, and will have to drop down to the 8k that accompanies a half-marathon that I usually run on Earth Day), so the modest goal that I have set for myself is to finish between 4:10 and 4:15. If I feel good, I may try for a sub-four; but I feel no pressure to do it, other than the knowledge that my time will be published in my local paper for all the other local runners to take not of my sluggishness. But that is a minor aggravation, insufficient to motivate me to risk injury and exhaustion to log a PR in my first out-of-town marathon, on a course that I have already been warned is hilly as hell.

So that's where I am now as a runner: distracted during the Spring running season by a marathon I didn't really want to do, and making plans for a Summer of base training, weightlifting, reflection, and preparation to come back stronger in the Fall.

Back to that marathon, the one that I didn't want to do: I got 18 miles in this morning, which means that I have done what I consider to be the basic preparation for doing the full 26.2. So far this year I have done several runs of 13 and over -- including a tough half-marathon, a 16, and today's 18. Plus, I have done one set of Yassos in each of the past 3 months -- the last one this past Wednesday -- and may do one or two more. My point -- to myself more than to anyone else -- is that even if I don't do any more long runs, I am OK to finish. That takes a lot of pressure off of me in the next three weeks, and allows me to do some more creative training, such as shorter (13-15 mi.) marathon-pace runs, long tempos, hill work, and track work. I am going to keep my miles up these next three weeks, regardless of how I run them, and I may well do another long run or two; but now that I have an 18 in the bag, I have that kind of flexibility, and that is a great source of relief.

Going Long

I don't remember when I last posted, and I don't think it wise to go back and look at my last entry now that I'm actually writing. It has been too long since I last had the time and mental energy to devote to this blog, as I am at the tail end of one of the busiest six-week periods I have experienced in some time. But things have eased up a bit this weekend, as I have neither a race nor a pressing deadline. I celebrated this morning by going for a 16-mile long run, from which I am presently recovering by putting back as much glycogen and water as I can.

It was a good day to run this morning, temps in the 50s and cloudy with no wind, comfortable enough that I wore a cotton t-shirt and didn't have to ditch it before I was done. I felt OK afterward, not wiped out like I am used to feeling after those long summer runs getting ready for a Fall marathon. Training for a marathon in the Spring is definitely different -- in a good way. There were many long runs last Summer that ended with me staggering into the house and lying on the cold floor for 5-10 min. before I could even stretch. It's hard to avoid the heat in South Carolina in the summertime, no matter how early you get up.

Yet since I last posted on this blog, I have endured some extreme weather of a different kind trying to get in workouts. There was the morning of Jan. 31, when I did a 20-min. tempo run on the track in zero-degree wind chill, a slushy 2 miles in the neighborhood the day after (cut short when my Mizuno Riders got hopelessly soaked in the puddles), and the set of Yasso 800s I ran in 25-degree weather on the same track in early February; and the numerous tempo runs, reps, and easy afternoon 4-milers in cold, driving arctic wind. The weather on race days, on the other hand, has been fantastic: sunny and around 40 for the Downtown 5k; unusually sunny and warm (mid 50s -- too warm for the shirt I wore) at the Green Valley 10-mile, and a windy but beautiful morning for the Reedy River 10k.

Things are looking really good for the next several weeks before Nashville. I'm going to skip one of the two 5ks that I normally do in March and April, and use the other for a time trial. I'm going to drop to the 8k that accompanies the Earth Day half-marathon I usually run, which will be one week before the marathon.  The rest of the time I can spend building up miles, stretching out the long runs to at least 18 and maybe 20, and getting in a good taper the last 3 weeks. This one will not be for time, as it is my first out-of-town marathon, I will not be properly trained for a fast race, I don't want to screw myself up for other races, and I would like to make the 5+-hour drive home the next day in a state somewhat resembling ambulatory so as not to invoke pity at the inevitable bathroom stops. 

Various body parts have been screaming at me off and on: left achilles and shin, right glute, right foot occasionally -- but nothing that can't be managed with a little ice or an IcyHot sleeve -- or an ice bath like the one I just barely endured this morning. Ouch.

So from now until the second week in April, the emphasis is on miles, mostly easy ones, to build endurance. I'll throw in some hills, strides, tempo, some Yassos, but only one of those once a week. It's time to get serious about this 26.2 crap.

Winter Training Sucks (But It's Better than Summer Training)

This morning I did a 14-mile long run in 30-degree weather, which was easy compared to some of the workouts I've done lately. Almost all of them have been done in uncomfortable conditions, some of them unseasonably so for this part of the world and this time of year. There was the morning track workout I did the Wednesday after the Downtown 5k, a 20-min. tempo run with warmup and cool-down in near-zero-degree wind chill. Then there was the two-mile jaunt on the slushy streets of my neighborhood the following Friday (which admittedly, was fun except for the puddles of ice water that soaked my shoes and prompted me to cut the run short). And the three other tempo runs done in whipping wind and temps hovering far south of comfortable. This winter, I've had more runs during which I was forced to wear hats and layered clothing than the other three winters in which I have been a runner put together.

Lately when we've gotten severe winter weather like this (and ours hasn't been nearly as severe as the weather in the northeast and midwest), some people have cited it as evidence that global warming is not real, when it is actually yet another symptom of global warming. What it seems like we have gotten this year is three months' worth of winter packed into a month, as the warm currents from the Pacific managed to keep all that arctic air bottled up for weeks on end, until finally the dam burst and it all came spilling south.

But enough amateur meteorology. Training in winter sucks, but I'll still take it over summer training anytime. I'd much rather deal with an itchy head under a wool cap, wrestling with the buttons on my GPS with gloved fingers, and downing cold gel packs left on my front porch to chafing, the sickening squish of sweat-soaked shoes, and that nasty woozy feeling at the end of an 18-mile run done in 80-degree weather despite getting up at dawn to escape the worst of the heat. No, this is better, hands down.

Stones in My Passway

I have found over the years that the only way to overcome writer’s block is to start writing – to get something, anything, down on the page and worry about cleaning it up (and making it make sense) later. So with no promises as to how diligently I will tackle the cleanup, I am now writing again; and although this is supposed to be a multi-topic blog, and the last several articles have focused upon running, running is what I feel like writing about now, and that’s what I will write about.

Much has taken place since my last entry. The 5k that I had hoped to PR two Saturdays ago didn’t turn out too well, at least not in terms of finishing time. The event drew around 1,600 runners and walkers this year, including many people who rarely or never enter races and thus know very little about race etiquette. Many walkers and slower runners were lining up toward the front of the pack, and efforts to direct people into the proper position for their expected pace were too little, too late. By the time we in position, I found myself about 50 feet behind the elites – not a good place to be in a race this size. Sure enough, the start was a creeping mass of humanity so dense that I would have expended as much energy trying to extricate myself from it early as I normally do in the entire first mile of a 5k. So I chose to cruise along with the crowd, picking my way through little by little until the pack opened up, and try to save up as much as possible for the latter half of the race. It took me a long way to get free – about half a mile, in fact, and as a result my first mile split was 8:19. I knew then that a PR would probably not be happening for me that morning, as it would have required 7-min. miles for the rest of the race, including the huge hill on Main St. in the last mile. So I adjusted, and set my sights on the secondary goal of 23:30.

I wasn’t exactly floating on air as I reached the halfway point, but I felt good enough, I thought, to beat that time. Then a couple of sharp turns and newly-installed street medians bottlenecked the pack of runners in front of me, forcing me to slow down and expend even more energy getting around them. I passed the 2-mile mark at just under 16 min. I can still beat last year’s abysmal time (23:55), I thought. At least my shoelaces had remained tied this year. Then I hit the hill, the only significant one in the race but a real killer, nearly a quarter-mile of moderately steep incline, that always left me tapped out at the finish. This year was no different in that regard. I brought myself back to a decent pace, about 7:25 according to my GPS, once I reached flat ground; but by that time, beating last year’s time would have required heroics that were beyond my capacity at that time. I crossed the mat at 24:15, muttering curses under my breath. On the positive side, I ran well. I’ve been working on my stride, and I could tell that it paid off, as I was nice and even until the hill wore me down. And while I was expecting to be faster after all that speedwork, upon checking my log afterward I realized that I may have done a little too much in too short a time.

 

But I have rambled too much about one race. It was a stumble, not a fall. As much as I hate excuses, I have to assign most of the blame for my slow time to the start, which was beyond my control. I ran well, but it wasn’t my day. At least it was fun, as such races almost always are. Plus, we got some nice long-sleeve tech shirts in our packets, and I’ve found that they do quite well in 45-degree weather. The bottom line is that this event, which started as a 10k and has seen an increase in participants each year since it became a 5k in 2002, has become more of a party than a race. And that’s fine. I have nothing against a good party, and there will be other chances to race.

More tomorrow. Maybe.

Track Work

I normally find track work relaxing in a weird sort of way. It's hard work, but there's something peaceful about getting out onto a soft surface of uniform distance & cutting loose.

Not today.

It was forty degrees by the time I got to the track at about 1:15 this afternoon. A hard rain had apparently fallen (I was out of town yesterday and this morning), and the inside lanes of the track were covered with little shallow puddles. A light mist still fell, but as I began the workout, I thought that I would get through it without too much weather-based discomfort.

I was wrong.

The workout was a mile breakdown, which I've read is a good one to do a week or so before a 5k. I started with a mile warmup (if you can call it that), during which I soon began splashing the extremely cold water onto my shoes, socks, and legs. It's OK, I thought; I can handle this for an hour or so. Then as the fourth lap ended, I hit the lap button and shifted gears. The first rep, a 1600, was over in 7:18. I kicked water further up my legs, and my shoes and socks were officially soaked. Then after a two-lap recovery jog, I did a 1200 -- intended to be at the same pace as the 1600 but actually a bit too fast at 5:24. Next was a one-lap recovery -- during which the rain restarted in earnest --  followed by an 800 at 3:36 (again, too fast), another recovery lap, then opening up a little for the final 400 at 1:38.

Meanwhile, it was still raining, so the planned mile cooldown and thorough stretching became a 600-meter cooldown and a quickie stretch at the gate leading to the parking lot. By that time I was soaked to the skin and quite cold. Then a dry shirt, heat on high in the truck, a short drive back to my house while peering though what little of my windshield was left unfogged by the hot air hitting my wet clothes, and a hot bath.

There are a lot of things that one can say about a workout like this, and some of them do not contain profanity. My legs were a bit tired afterward, but not as tired as they would have been after more extensive speedwork, as the 2.5 total miles of fast running required for this workout does not build up that much lactic acid in one's legs. I will only run easy this week, and barring illness (always a possibility when one runs in 40-degree rain), I should be fresh for the Downtown 5K this Saturday.

Geting Faster

This week was a good one for workouts -- seasonably cool at first and moderating toward the end of the week with no rain; a good week to work toward getting a little faster before the winter and spring races, which for me start with a 5k in downtown Greenville the last weekend of this month. The race is a large one, with anywhere between 700 and 1000 runners and walkers, so placing is not a possibility for me; still, it holds some significance for me because it is the first road race I ever ran in, in January 2004. I had been running less than two months then, and still thought that 5k was a long way to run at any pace faster than a jog. My goal was to finish in under 30 minutes, and I made it, at 27:37, in 30 degree weather, wearing full sweats and cross-trainers. It's easy to laugh now looking back on it, but it was a necessary step on the path to becoming a runner. The next year I came back as a runner, in shorts and Mizuno Riders, and clock what for me was then a 5k PR, 23:10. I didn't beat that last year because of a hectic schedule and a loose shoelace, so
I'm going to give it a shot again this year. It doesn't sound that tough, around 7:25 splits, but it's hard to get out of that mash of people at the start, and in order to get downtown to finish, one has to get up a huge hill. But it's doable, especially if I put in the work ahead of time. One thing I've discovered during the past 3+ years is that speed can be built up fairly quickly and in a relatively short amount of time, and usually atrophies just as quickly when one neglects it.

Anyway, I had three good workout this week geared toward building up speed, and it occurs to me that there a a lot of beginning and intermediate runners out there, and it is possible that one or two of them might actually stumble upon this site. If so, a brief description of the workouts I did this week -- essentially a beginning, intermediate, and a somewhat advanced workout -- might be helpful.

If you're a beginning runner who maybe has run a 5k or two, and you want to shave some time off your finish, a tempo workout is a good one to add to your weekly routine. A tempo run simply requires running at a comfortably hard pace for a set period of time to increase your lactate threshold, which is a measure of how fast your leg muscles get rid of lactic acid (the faster, the better). If you've run a 5k or other race before, simply calculate your pace per mile in your last 5k and plan on running your tempo workout about 30 seconds per mile slower (if you haven't run a 5k before, or haven't run one recently, do a time trial by running 3 miles at a hard pace and timing yourself, dividing your total time by 3). I usually begin with a slow warmup of 1.5 miles or so at an easy pace, then begin timing myself and turn my speed up to tempo pace. A beginner should probably try to hold this pace for about 10-12 minutes on the first workout, and then increase the length of the run by 1-2 minutes each week; more experienced runners can run longer at first, around 15-20 minutes. End the workout by cooling down for a mile or so at an easy pace. It'll teach your legs to hold a fast pace longer and function better when they're tired. My Tuesday tempo workout consisted of a 12-minute warmup followed by 22 minutes at tempo (run at a 7:40 pace, which admitedly was a little too fast) and a mile of cool-down.

The second hard workout I did this week was one that I had never done before. My wife, who coaches a middle-school running club, told me about a drill that she had read about in Runner's World which was supposed to increase stride frequency. Developed by running coach Greg McMillan, it consists of ten short, fast strides at 95% effort with 2 minutes of easy running in between. It sounds easy, but while it was not the hardest speed workout I have ever done, I was kind of happy when it was over. The strides whould be close to all-out, and you should keep moving between reps. The first time she did this workout with her students, they (not to mention the other coaches and volunteers) were wiped out, and talked about it at school the next day until it became the stuff of legend. Skeptical, I joined them for their second workout, which involved 20-second speed reps instead of the 15-second ones they had done the previous week. I found it tough on the lungs, but not as much so on the legs, which were not as tired as they normally would have been after a speed session. This would be a good alternative to standard speedwork for an intermediate runner -- especially if time is at a premium -- or an introduction to speedwork for a beginning runner.

My third hard workout of the week, done this morning, was more advanced, consisting of ten 800-meter reps on the track with 400-meter jogs in between. Normally I would do this workout in the manner suggested by longtime Runner's World conributor Bart Yasso, which involves doing the reps at around 10k pace. But since I'm training primarily for a 5k at present, I ran them a little faster, averaging around 3:37 per rep, or 10-15 seconds per mile faster than 5k pace. I try to do one or two sets of Yasso 800s a month no matter what I am training for, as they are good training for any race. I am convinced that they played a major role in helping me run my first sub-four-hour marathon this fall.

So what's next? The 5k is in 2 weeks, so unless I catch my wife's cold this week, I'm going to do another tempo either Tuesday or Wednesday, and on Friday I will tackle one of my customized workouts, ten .1-mile uphill reps at 95% up the street that comes out in front of my house. Sunday I will probably go to the track and do three 1600-meter reps with 800-meter recovery intervals. Then the week leading up to the race will be all easy running.

WTF?

I got this story in a newsletter today about an eminent historian who was busted for jaywalking at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Atlanta. Apparently the Atlanta Police had nothing better to do than to crack down upon jaywalkers near the convention site, conducting a vigorous multi-day campaign during which they verbally harangued numerous people and checked a few people's IDs, but apparently did not treat anyone with the roughness with which they treated this guy, who in defense of the eight officers surrounding him in the photo, DID look furrign. They then locked him in a cell for 8 hours, after which he was forced to post $1000 bond and pressured to take a plea bargain (he didn't) before embarrassment finally got the best of someone and he was released. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just another beautiful day in the "homeland." Don't you feel more secure now?

A Quick Note on the New Congress

I actually have little to say about this historic day, except to pass along a little something I ran across today while surfing the Web. Problem is, I was only one of millions of people to see this today, and it is indicative of the way the press -- even the Internet press -- has been trying to downplay the transition of Congress to the Democrats.

This was the list of headlines on Yahoo's home page 5 minutes ago:

• Bush talks about Iraq, Saddam execution
• Democrats take control of Congress
• Nuclear agency head dismissed for lapses
• Priests try to help find secret graves of IRA victims
• France to create 'legal right' to housing
• Calf with two faces born at Virginia farm
• Pennington named AP Comeback Player of Year

Wow. A wholesale transfer of power that gives America its first ever female Speaker of the House rates right between a lame duck president weighing in on a snuff video and a bureaucrat getting shit-canned, and four clicks above a two-faced calf.

Thanks for fulfilling your sacred duty to inform the public, assholes.

First Lessons of the New Year

I learned a couple of things this morning:

1) Although a GPS device is a wonderful training tool, a good old-fashioned stopwatch is still more practical for track interval workouts;

2 (and more importantly)) There is a big difference between taking 200-meter rests and 400-meter rests between 400s. After 8 repeats with 200-meter rest intervals, I was quite a bit more winded than I usually am after a similar workout with 400-meter rests, and my legs were sufficiently lactic that doing a few short strides during my cool-down was an effort.

I know what that means: 200-meter recovery intervals between 400-mter repeats from now on. I'll endure the added discomfort if it will make me faster.