What a Difference a Day Makes

I guess all I had to do was complain about the weather and it would break. After struggling through the first 3 days of this week, with temps and humidity both soaring to season highs, it suddenly cooled off on Wednesday night and hasn't gotten out of the 60's since. As expected, this has helped a lot with the runs.

I guess part of my problem is that I put way too much stock in every single run that I do. I see the average pace for a run in the 7:00's and start thinking that I've suddenly lost it. It's all downhill from here. I know that's not a smart, or even healthy, way to think, but it's how I tick. I can't just shut it off, so I have to deal with it somehow.

Yesterday was a 10 miler in the morning and right from the get-go things were feeling good. Actually, things were probably feeling a little too good, as I went out a little too ambitiously and paid the price from about miles 3-5 or so. For some reason after that rough patch, things started to come back around and I finished the run up averaging a 6:10 pace for the entire thing. Later that afternoon, I took my two boys out for a test stroll in the new jogging stroller that I got. It was Ryan's (my 7 month old)virgin run and he seemed to enjoy it for the most part. I'll admit I was a little nervous having Mikey and Ryan confined in the stroller for what turned into a 50 minute run. Mikey still hasn't really grasped the whole "gentle" thing with Ryan, so he tends to treat him like one of his spiderman dolls. However, they both came out of the experience mostly unscathed, so I'll call it a success.

Today was another 10 miles out on the lakefront and it was a great run. I felt really strong the entire run and wound up averaging 6:06 for the entire run. With about 3 miles to go, some young guys were out riding one of those goofy 4 man bikes that they let you rent at Navy Pier and then clog up the path on the lakefront. Normally, it's little kids and their parents manning the bikes, but this time it was a bunch of 20-something guys. They seemed to take exception to being passed by a runner, so they wanted to race me. Of course never one to back down from a challenge, I upped the pace a bit and they just couldn't respond. I could hear them yelling at me the rest of my run, which I'm sure helped bring down that pace a bit in those last few miles.

It's Getting Hot in Here

I kind of stumbled through this past weekend as the family was very busy with typical summer stuff and I was really lacking in motivation to get out there and run. I did getout for a quick 7 mile run on Saturday, but then did nothing on Sunday. It left me with a rather meager 64 miles for the week. Funny how your perspective changes over the years. Less than 2 years ago, I would have been absolutely thrilled with anything even approaching 60 miles for the week. Now, I sit here and wonder what went wrong. I'll just have to go with the standard, "the day off will do me good" and to be honest, I think it did. Things were beginning to hurt last week and that extra day off seemed to have calmed things down a bit, although my hamstring continues to give me problems. I think I probably have a low level strain in my left hamstring. For now I'm treating it with my own brand of RICE:

R - Rub it
I - Ignore it
C - Continue Running
E - Expect the worst

We'll see how that goes.

The past week has been extremely hot and humid in Chicago and I've really been feeling it on my runs. I've always thought of myself as something of a warm weather runner, but I think it might be time to rethink that theory. Actually it isn't so much the heat that has been bugging me as it is the humidity. I've been absolutely soaked to the bone after every single run this week. Things are supposed to cool off a bit starting tomorrow so hopefully I'll be able to get in a little bit more quality on the tail end of the week as opposed to the survival runs that have defined the week thus far.

Monday was 9 miles and yesterday was 14 miles. Yesterday was one of the first long runs in a long time where I was getting progressively slower as the run went on. I kept watching my average pace go higher and higher throughout the run and there was very little I could do to stop the bleeding. I was thinking of extending the run to 15 or 16 miles, but to be honest, it probably would have been counter-productive so I called it quits at 14. The afternoon was followed with some pretty intense cramping in the hamstring which I'm sure was brought on by dehydration (and the strain).

Today was an easy 9 miler and I hope to get out tonight for 7 more slowish miles before my 9:30 softball game. While I do like the late-night softball games since I can put the kids to bed and still make it to the game, it pretty much wipes out any hopes I have of an early morning run the next day, which is why I'd really like to get a short run in this evening. Of course that always easier said than done.

Cruisin'

While I have grown somewhat frustrated over the past couple of weeks with my weak attempts at speed work, the one thing that continues to keep my mood upbeat has been the longrun . Over the past year and a half, I have turned from a runner who hates long runs and struggles through every single one of them, to someone who still hates them, but can manage the 20 miler without too many problems. While I seemed to have lost that 4th gear (and possible the 3rd gear as well), I can usually cruise pretty efficiently right below that marathon race pace without too much difficulty.

Yesterday was a struggle to complete the 8 miler that I had scheduled. I had thoughts of doing two runs, but everything on me was hurting yesterday. My hip was aching, my right foot was hurting in about 3 different places and my hamstring was screaming at me as well. I'm a pretty stubborn person, but even I know that when that many things hurt, running twice in one day isn't the best medicine for it. So instead of going for evening run, I opted for a long slow stretching session, which really seemed to help. I don't stretch often. Hardly at all really, but usually when I'm feeling all knotted up like this, a stretch will help, especially in the hips and knees. I think the pain there is being caused by a tight IT Band, so stretching really seems to relieve it. I also took a couple of Ibuprofen before bed, to see if that would help as well. I try not to take to many pain relievers while training, just so that I don't fool myself into thinking I'm recovering when I'm really just masking it.

So I was pleasantly surprised that upon waking up this morning, a lot of the nagging pains weren't there. The plan was to do the 17 mile route that I have on the way into work. I must have run this route at least 25 times last year, but for whatever reason, I have done it zero times this year, so it was nice to get back out there and conquer. It seems the longer I stay away from some running routes, the more I try and avoid them (yes, I'm a headcase).

I had the Garmin on but something weird was going on with the lap pace, so I couldn't really tell what pace I was running at for most of the run. I think I set it to reset the lap pace every quarter mile for my Wednesday workout, so it was meaningless for a long run. Anyway, the entire run was just a cruise. I was in control the entire time and felt my best during the last few miles of the run. This was proven when looking at the splits after the fact as I ran my last 7 miles under a 6:20 pace, which brought the overall pace to around a 6:26. It was nice way to get reacquainted with what was my favorite route last year. Hopefully, it was the first of many more good runs on it.

Now I'm off to tailgate and watch the Cubs and Sox do battle at US Cellular Field. I almost ashamed to admit that I'm a diehard Cubs fans and I'm going with a nice mix of Sox and Cubs fans, so it should be a good time. I won't be counting how many beers I'm drinking, like Mike, and I won't be running fast tomorrow. It will be recovery pace in the truest sense of the word.

A Long Workout

Did 14 miles today with 4 miles in the middle done with alternating
quarters between 5K pace and Marathon pace. I guess the goal of the
workout is to recover from the hard 5K quarters while still running at
marathon pace. Just forsimplicity sake, I decided 5K pace should 1:15
and marathon pace should be 1:30. I have a hard time doing math once I
get fatigued and these seemed like nice round numbers which was my
reason for going with them.

I started the run out with about a 5
mile warm-up and then did the 4 mile workout portion of the run. The
splits went like this: 1:17, 1:25, 1:17, 1:30, 1:16, 1:32, 1:17, 1:35,
1:17, 1:38, 1:17, 1:30, 1:17, 1:40, 1:20, 1:47.

So as you can
see, the hardest part of the workout wasn't necessarily the hard
portions of the run. It was the recovery at marathon pace. What I was
really struggling with was when I would hear myGarmin beep letting me know that the end of a quarter had arrived, my first instinct was to slow waaaay
down. Of course with this workout, that can't really happen. You can
slow down, but not really all that much. As I got grew more fatigued,
the harder it was not to run those "slow" quarters at a true recovery
pace. The hard portions were difficult, but it was a little easier to
stay on pace for whatever reason.

So after that was over I got to run 5 more miles as a cooldown
and it wasn't really pretty. As I mentioned before, I'm still not used
to doing these faster workouts so I was really hurting. I just wanted
to lay down and go to sleep. To be honest, I'm thinking of just
abandoning this whole "take a shot at sub 16" thing. It is becoming
fairly obvious to me that I've lost quite a bit of foot speed over the
past year and I don't think it will be recovered in the next few weeks.
I guess that should be expected since I have been training almostexclusively for the long stuff. You cannot serve two masters, and I've chosen my master and it's the marathon.

America's Next Top Model?

So yesterday I got an email from the marathon, that went out to all registrants letting us know that there would be open auditions to be part of the Lasalle Bank Mural that they do every year in conjuction with the Chicago Marathon. The mural is on the side of a building that faces one of Chicago's busiest expressway's and it always draws a lot of attention when they change it. This year for the marathon, they want to incorporate actual marathon participants into the mural, thus the open auditions. On a whim, I sent an email to the place that was doing the shoot, and shortly thereafter, I got a phone call telling me show up in my running clothes at 11:50 AM today.

Now I'll admit, the draw here isn't to get my face blown up to 10X it's normal size and have it plastered on a wall for all of Chicago to see. No, the draw for me was the $750 that you get if you're selected for the daylong photo shoot. Just think of all the shoes and sunglasses $750 will buy! So after hemming and hawing about whether I should go with the singlet or the short sleeves (singlet) and making sure that my running shoes didn't stink too badly (they didn't) off I went to the auditions.

I jogged the mile over to the place where the "auditions" were at…you know, just to get into my role. Once there, I got carted off to a waiting room where there were about 10 other people all waiting for their big break. I think there were a couple of "real" actors in the bunch since they seemed to know each other and were talking about other auditions they had to go to later in the week. Everyone else was just frumpy runners like me.

The shoot went really fast. First he took a face shot of me smiling. Then he does a full body shot and says, "put your hand on your hip, and show me some attitude. Like you're telling everyone I can beat you in a marathon." So I show him some attitude (dear God, please don't let anyone I know ever see this picture).

Then he says jog in place. He says not like you would normally jog in place though. This time do long slow strides. I try and do it, but I just know I look like a goof. Finally he says, run in place like you normally would. Well, I normally would never run in place, but I play along and go to my regular stride. Finally, I felt comfortable. And then it was over. I'm not sure, but I think on the way out, I heard the guy say, "Don't call us, we'll call you kid." I guess I'll know if I made the cut later this week. I don't think I'll be holding my breath.

Did 10 miles this morning with strides thrown in at the end. My right hip feels very stiff lately. I'm not sure why, but this seems to come and go rather regularly, so I won't get too concerned with it yet. Actually the strides seems to have helped a little bit…maybe loosened it up a bit.

Fun in the Sun

It's been a strange year for me so far. It seems like everytime I start to get some momentum in the running dept. something comes along and derails me. Derails probably isn't the right word…slows me down maybe. This past week, I was on pace for my first 100 mile week of the year. With a (slow) 20 miler on Friday morning I was at 71 miles for the week and just had to squeeze another 29 miles in 3 runs on Saturday and Sunday.

Then on Friday, The Family took a trip up to Michigan for a weekend of fun in the sun and things got off track. Saturday was spent at Warren Dunes climbing sand mountains with Chloe and Mikey and then we moved the fun to the pool at the place we were staying at. The day just drifted away and before I knew it, it was getting dark and I still had a big fat zero for the day. Some days, you just have to go with it though and Saturday was one of those days. So I settled in for some more processed meat for dinner and wrote the day off.

I was able to manage 10 slow miles on Sunday, but the less than ideal diet apparently took it's toll on me, because it was not a fun run. My Garmin went out about a mile into the run and it seemed my energy was zapped right along with it. The temps have been hot lately, the hottest of the year so far, so I'm sure that tooks it toll as well. Overall though, I can't complain about the week as I did manage 81 miles for the week in 8 sessions with 2 runs of 18 miles or longer and an actual speed session. Hopefully I can build on that next week and not drop the ball once the weekend comes.

Today was 7 miles to just try and get back into the swing of things. For some reason, this weekend of fun and relaxation really left me wiped out.

Use It or Lose It

As I eluded to yesterday, my speed training has been pretty much non-existent for almost 2 years now. I've done some tempo runs but other than that, I can count on one hand the number of track workouts I've done since the beginning of 2006. The focus has been mainly on mileage and speed has taken a backseat. However, with two 5Ks coming up in July, I would like to take a shot at a sub 16 time, so I've decided to try and do at least one fast workout per week for the next 5-6 weeks to see if that helps. Today was the first one, and man, my rust showed.

The plan was to do as many 800 as I could in the time I had for lunch with a quarter mile rest interval in between each. With a busy afternoon at work ahead of me, the magic number turned out to be 7. I headed down to the lake with the Garmin programmed in for the workout and went to work. The goofy thing about going completely off the Garmin for a workout like this is that you don't know what kind of splits you're running any of the intervals in. It just shows you how much distance you have left in the segment that you are currently working on. When you complete the hard portion of the interval, it doesn't give you a time for it. It makes it kind of tough to make any sort of adjustments if you aren't hitting your target. I'm sure there is something I could input into the thing to get better feedback, but I haven't had the time or ambition to look into it.

So the workout wasn't too bad, although the first one felt unbelievably tough. After it was all said and done, my splits look like this: 2:48, 2:42, 2:33, 2:34, 2:31, 2:36, 2:36. Yeah I know. All over the place. Some of that is just me not being used to running fast, and some of it had to do with the conditions that the interval happened to coincide with. Since it was done on an out and back course on the lakefront, the first half of them were into the wind and the second half were with the wind at my back. The time pretty much prove that out. All in all, I guess I'm pleased with the workout, although I know the times need to be much faster if I want a legitimate shot at breaking 16 for a 5k. For now, I'm kind of writing them off to just lack of practice running at a near max effort. I guess next week will show if there's any validity in that theory.

Recovery Runs

The legs were not happy with me this morning. As I mentioned previously, the 18 miler went great yesterday, but today I had to pay the piper. The legs were rubbery for the 9 miles this morning, but it was just fatigue and I was able to work my through it. I felt like I was absolutely crawling for the entire run, but wound up averaging a 6:39 pace. I'm not sure what to think about that. While the pace is nice to look at it, I know that it was probably too fast for what should have been a recovery run. I'm just no good at recovery.

Part of the problem is that pretty much every run I ever do is against the clock. Not against the watch, where I'm trying to run at a certain pace, but against the clock. It's either hurry up and get home before the kids wake up, or hurry up and get back to work before lunch is over, or hurry and up and get to work so I'm not late. I can't remember the last time I've been able to run without somewhere to be immediately after. Now I'm not complaining. I know I can just wake up earlier and not have to race the clock, but I don't. In one sense, the structure saves me. I only have a few windows to run each day so I either take advantage or I don't run. Without that structure, I'd most likely be doing the same thing I did for most of early 20's. Put off running until the last possible minute of each day and hope that something comes up that will give me an excuse to skip it. That's not a good strategy for consistent training (or racing).

This afternoon I did 7 more miles without a watch and things felt much better than they did this morning. The legs were still a bit tight, but once they loosened up, all was well. Chicago is having some unbelievable weather lately so that makes the running much more enjoyable. By the lake, the temps have been in the 70's with no humidity almost everyday for the past week. Since I do my fair share of complaining about the weather, I figure I'd better acknowledge it when it does cooperate. Tomorrow I'm going to attempt some faster stuff which I've had very little luck with lately. Hopefully, that will change.

Would You look at All that Dust.

How exactly do you pick up a dormant blog and breathe new life into it? Well, I guess there are a few ways I could handle it. I could recap what I've been doing the past few months just go get everyone caught up. I could do that, but I don't think I'm going to. Instead, I think I'll just pick it up like I never left. I'm sure the suspense is just gonna kill so many of you. What has he been doing this year? Was he hurt? Did he lose motivation? No. I've been running, but just like anything, the enthusiasm has come and gone.

This past May was one of the more difficult months I've had from a running perspective. I had 2 marathons and a big relay race that I was trying to squeeze into a 5 week timeframe, and it was just too much for me. I was doing nothing but tapering, recovering, and racing. It ended on June 2nd, when I dropped out The Sunburst Marathon at mile 14. I don't know if it was the right decision or not. It's still something that I kind of question. However, what dropping out did was finally break the cycle. Since I did taper for a week prior to the marathon (not a full taper, but it was still something), and then only ran 14 semi-hard miles on race day, it only took a day or two to bounce back and finally get back into real training.

And that's where I am now. Yesterday was 8 miles at a slowish pace. Today was 18 miles. The goal was just to go out and run comfortably. I wore the Garmin, but I didn't want to check it very often, because, well, basically, I'm an idiot. I tend to race everything with that Garmin on. Somehow I need to check the ego and realize that there's nothing wrong with a 7 minute pace. Someday I'll figure it out…or I'll just leave the Garmin at home.

So today's 18 was a great run. It was an absolutely gorgeous day with temps in the 70s by the lake and a bright sun overhead. The wind was also perfect for me where I had a slight headwind for the first half of the run and got it at my back for the second half. That seems to work the best for me because the wind will keep me in check for the first half and then give me a hand for the second half. Anyway, the first 9 miles came and went very comfortably and I was shocked to look at my watch at the turnaround point and see that my average pace had dropped down to 6:26. By the end of the run the average pace had dropped all the way down to 6:12 with the last 5 of the last 7 miles under 6 minute pace. I'm not sure what got into me today. It was just one of those days I guess. Tomorrow will probably be a struggle to do anything at close to that pace. That's running. The lure of days like today is what keeps me coming back.

...and I promise to keep posting.