Running Against Time

The Cut that Won't Go Away

2009-11-30T13:28:00.001-08:00

The one area that continues to cause me some grief as I continue my recovery is the place where they cut the skin. It is just a tough area of the body to get healed I guess. Applying Neosporin whenever I have the chance seems to help as does keeping it unwrapped and exposed to air whenever I don't have to wear a shoe. During the day, I've been wrapping it in 4 inch gauze and tape, however last night I got some of those oversized band-aids which seems to cover the wound pretty good and is a little less of a pain to apply. It still doesn't look all that pretty, but there are no signs of infection and it is improving, so I guess I'll take that for now.

The flexibility of the joint is improving as well. I can now confidently say that I have better range of motion post-surgery than I did prior to the surgery. Prior to surgery, if I used all my physical and mental strength, I could lift my big toe high enough to slide a piece of paper under it. Maybe two pieces on a good day. Today, I could probably slide a 300 page book under there. Soft cover. While that may sound impressive (or it may not, I have no idea), there is still work to be done with my toe exercises. The doctor said that you basically have 6 weeks post-op to get as much range of motion back as you can. After that, you're not going to improve much. So I'm trying to stay diligent with them, which isn't always easy.

As far as running goes, I didn't run at all since Thanksgiving until today when I did 5 miles on the treadmill. The toe joint felt the best that it has in a long time...probably even before the surgery. There was absolutely no pain in there for the entire run. However, when I finished, I did have a strange pain behind my knee, which could have possibly been caused by some over-compensation that I didn't realize I was doing. It subsided after a little stretching, but it is something I need to keep an eye on.

So for now, things continue to progress. If you'd have told me that I'd be running pain free only 3 1/2 weeks after the surgery, I would have been thrilled. The goal is still to be able to handle a marathon build up by the 1st of the year, so everything I do between now and then is in preparation for that. I need to keep reminding myself of that though so I don't overdo things. I have a tendency to do that.

Happy Thanksgiving - Day 20 Post-Op

2009-11-26T06:20:00.000-08:00

I'm extremely thankful for the 3 miles I was able to slog through this morning. It was my first run outside (on concrete) since the surgery, and while I still have a ways to go to be able to handle a true marathon build, I'm gaining confidence that in another month I'll be there.

I'm continuing to work on my toe exercises, which are just range of motion of bending of the toe. It isn't too painful and I actually have better ROM now that I did prior to the surgery, which is encouraging. If there is one nagging thing it is the incision, which continues to be a pain in my, err, foot. While it has improved, it continues to annoy me when pretty much anything rubs up against it. That's OK during the day, but at night, I've been waking up far too often as I bang or rub it against the bed throughout the night. I never even considered that the incision would be a consideration in the recovery process, but it is definitely proving to be the biggest area of concern.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Pictures, Neosporin, and Turkey Trots - Day 17 Post Op

2009-11-23T11:20:00.001-08:00

I had somewhat of a set-back on Friday night. I unwrapped my foot when I got home from work and was kind of alarmed at the condition of the incision. It was oozing some liquid and it was discolored and generally disgusting looking. Well, I mentioned earlier that I might post some pictures, so this seems as good a time as any.

Yeah, not pretty. So after getting some expert opinion on how to care for the foot, I pretty much ignored it all and just went to bed. The next morning, after seeing no improvement, I started putting some Neosporin on the cut prior to wrapping. I was told this wasn’t the best idea as it can cause allergic reactions in deep cuts, but I’m too big of a wimp to even think about alcohol swabs. The Neosporin did seem to help, so I’ve continued to apply Neosporin and change the wrap about twice a day since then. It has greatly improved and seems to be healing much nicer now. However, because of the bad condition of the foot, I decided not to press my luck and did no running or any real form of exercise all weekend long.

Then today, I decided I needed to sweat, so I went to my gym at lunch and remembered that they were having a “turkey trot” today. Basically, what it consisted of was running 3.1 miles on the treadmill and one of the trainers recorded your time. Fastest time of the day wins a prize. No mention of what the prize is, but I’d imagine it’s something I can’t live without, like a cheap cotton t-shirt and some energy drink mix.

Anyway, I really wasn’t planning on doing it, but once I got into the gym area, there was a big sign up that said “BEST TIME OF THE DAY: 18:19.” Then the ego took over. I went over and asked about it, got the run down on the finer details from the instructor and climbed on a treadmill. The instructor punched in the workout and said, start whenever you’re ready. Well, I was at least expecting a warm-up, but figured, I’m not here to kill myself, so mile 1 will be my warm-up. I started at 10MPH and slowly crept up throughout the first mile and finished in 5:50. I was feeling fine cardiovascularly and the foot was holding up great, so I pushed a little on the next mile and did mile 2 in 5:20. The foot was still fine, but I’ll admit that my breathing was getting a bit labored. I have run exactly 3 miles in the past 20 days so I guess it should have been expected. However, I decided no guts, no glory and continued to push the pace finishing with a 5:12 mile and a 17:01 overall run.

Most importantly, the foot held up fine. It was a little sore after I showered and but it has since calmed down and feels good now. The cut area also held up fine with no additional bleeding from the hard running. Overall it was a success. Now I just have to sweat out the next 10 hours to see if a 17:01 will hold up, allowing me to claim the lucrative prizes. I’ll keep you posted.

My First Run in 2 Weeks

2009-11-20T13:00:00.000-08:00

I actually got up my nerve today and climbed on the treadmill for 3 miles of running around a 7 minute pace. The results were pretty encouraging. The toe joint itself held up just fine. My biggest concern and biggest source of discomfort is the place where they made the incision on the side of my foot. That area is still very tender and I'm a little nervous about splitting it back open. However, it held up fine today, which is encouraging. Hopefully as the air continues to get at it, it will toughen up and speed up the healing process.

I'm still having problems walking without a limp, again due to the discomfort around the incision. However, for whatever reason, things feel a bit more natural when running. I do have to keep a watch out for weird sore spots though, as the fear of over-compensation is always there. I'd hate to hurt a hip by pushing things too quickly.

If you would have told me that I'd be able to run for 20 minutes only 2 weeks removed from surgery, I probably would have done this a long time ago. I know I'm not all the way back yet, but so far things continue to progress about as well as I could expect them to.

Day 13 - Phase 2 Begins

2009-11-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

I handle pain pretty well. What I don't handle all the great is the anticipation of pain. I get nervous when I need to get a shot. I get nervous before I have to do a hard workout. Heck, I get nervous before I jump into cold water. So, I'll admit that I was looking forward to, and dreading, today's visit the doctor, where I was scheduled to get the stitches removed.

Of course, the actual removal turned out to be no big deal. It didn't hurt at all, except for a few little tugs and it was over in about 2 minutes. I still managed to work up a pretty good sweat as I was sure that as each new stitch got cut, the student assigned to the task would surely lop off half my toe.

After that was done, the doctors came in to give me some instructions for the next few weeks. They said I can start wearing a normal shoe immediately, and as far as everyday activities, let pain be my guide. They said I do need to be careful, as there is some healing that still needs to be done to the underlying tissue, but didn't give me any hard restrictions.

They also said now is the time to really start working the toe. They didn't give me a script for physical therapy yet, but said if they don't see progress when they see me next (in 3 weeks), they will have send me at that point. For now, I'm on my own though, which I like. With 4 kids at home, making time for PT would be difficult. Again, they said let pain be my guide with the toe exercises as well, but in this case, I want it to hurt. The doctor actually said "no pain, no gain" so hopefully I can make it hurt. We'll see.

As soon as I got back to my desk at work, I quickly took the boot off and put my shoe on. I'll admit it felt weird. After having no pressure on the top of my foot for almost 2 week, it was a new sensation to now actually feel something up there. However, despite being pretty tentative, there is no real pain when walking in a regular shoe, which is encouraging. I think I mainly need to gain some confidence for a day or two and then things will be close to normal. At the very least, there are no more bag foot showers, which is definitely a gigantic step in the right direction.

10 days Post Op

2009-11-16T13:08:00.000-08:00

Another encouraging couple of days as the comeback is definitely on at this point. I spent most of Saturday on my feet (and on a ladder) painting the front entrance to my house and the foot held up fine. My 6 year old daughter called me nuts a few times, but other than that things went off without a hitch. I have now completely weaned myself off of the painkillers. During my check-up last Thursday, the doctor mentioned that I had a lot of bruising around my heel and she said it was most likely due to me taking Ibuprofen and elevating my foot. So in an effort to get rid of that (and since there is no noticeable swelling in the foot anymore), I’ve decided to just try and stay away from Ibuprofen for the time being. Probably not coincidentally, the bruising has also gone away.

If it wasn’t for the stitches in my foot, I’d probably be tempted to go out for a run at this point. That’s easy for me to say, as I know it isn’t an option since I cannot get out of the walking boot until the stitches are removed, but at the very least it doesn’t seem like crazy talk. That’s a start. As an alternative, I went to the gym today and did 5 minutes on the bike and couldn’t take it anymore so I moved over to the elliptical for a half hour. While it’s definitely not the same as running, at least I was standing and moving my legs. I really felt it in my quads more than I ever have running so I know it’s working different muscles, but it’s probably a little more specific than biking was. I’ve also realized that between my fashionable walking boot on the elliptical and then plastic bags that I have to wrap my foot in for the shower afterwards, I’ve pretty much lost all self-esteem. Oh well. Easy come, easy go.

I noticed today at my gym that they are having an indoor “Turkey Trot” next Monday. It’s basically consists of running a 5k on the treadmill and then reporting your time to a trainer when you’re done. Top runner gets some sort of prize. While I realize it’s probably pushing things and not very smart, I’m tempted to target it. Luckily, I don’t have to decide anything right now. I have a few more milestones before next Monday. Like the stitches coming out on Thursday and possibly wearing two matching shoes for the first time in a couple weeks. Thank God for life’s little joys.

One week later

2009-11-13T13:32:00.000-08:00

Things continue to move in the right direction. Wednesday was my first day back in office, and I was a bit nervous about the long walk from the train to my building. It took a long time, (25 minute walk instead of the usual 15 minutes), but I made it. My foot was sore when I finally got into the office, but it wasn't so much from the surgery but more from the overcompensation. My ankle and knee actually hurt worse than the toe. The walk back to the train was a bit of a pain as well, but I made it.

Thursday was more of the same, but the walk was much better and if I didn't have a gigantic boot on my foot, you probably wouldn't even know that I had surgery 6 days ago. The limp was almost completely gone and other some occasional shoots of pain, things felt good.

I then had a check-up around noon to get the dressing changed and I had my first look at the scar on my foot. It wasn't pretty. It's about 3 inches long and all discolored and scary looking. I should have brought a camera to take a picture of it. A medical student was the first one to look at it and he said it looks healed and I think we'll take the stitches out today. Now if this thing was healed, I hate to see what it looks like when it's not healed. Luckily the doctor could come in before he could get his scissors out and put a stop to this crazy talk. The stitches will come out in one more week.

They took xrays and compared them to last time and things look good. It's a little weird seeing a staple in the middle of my toe, but it's small and hopefully I'll never know it's there. They rewrapped everything and sent me on my way, and for some reason, my foot hurt like crazy the rest of the day. Maybe it was just the exposure to air or something.

Today things continue to improve and when I realized I was late for the train this moring, I actually ran, with my boot on and all) the half mile to the train. The people on the street probably thought I was a bit nuts, but it didn't really hurt. Then at lunch, I hit the gym for a 30 minute ride on the stationary bike. It was the first physical activity I've done since the surgery and it felt great to finally sweat. Again the foot held up fine. I'm hopeful that in one more week, once the stitches come out, I'll be ready to do some easy running on this thing. So far, things are going great.

Day 4 - Post Op

2009-11-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

Not a whole lot of new stuff to report today. The foot continues to improve although there are still times where there is a shooting pain in the joint. I can tell that the foot is quite bruised up as I can see a lot of discoloration right at the edges of the bandages that is covering the foot. I have my first follow-up appointment with the doctor on Thursday so that will be my first chance to see how the foot looks in all it's glory. Right now, the really ugly stuff is mostly covered. They'll also take some fresh x-rays at that point so we'll be able to get an idea of how the healing is coming along.

I'm trying to stay patient and to not push things too much, but as my walking continues to improve, I just can't help but spend more time on my feet. I'm an antsy person by nature. Tomorrow will be my first day in the office (I've been working from home the past 2 days), so that will be another test. I have close to a mile walk from the train station to my office. I'm a little nervous about it, but if things continue to progress, I'm hoping it should go OK.

Today was the first day we're I actually feel like I have realistic shot at running again this year. Up until now, the thought of running on my foot kind of made me sick to my stomach, but today for whatever reason, I have a bit more confidence. Hopefully that confidence will continue to improve as well.

Day 3 Post-Op

2009-11-09T06:12:00.001-08:00

Phew! Yesterday was a real test of the foot. As I mentioned, it was my son's 3 year old birthday party yesterday, and while my wife tried to make it as painless on me as possible, there was still a lot of activity going on. I can only watch for so long before I have to jump into the mix. So I spent a good portion of the day on my feet, cooking, socializing, and chasing kids around.

Finally, when everyone left around 8PM or so, I sat down on the couch and realized that my foot had swelled up quite a bit. It didn't really hurt that much, but it was big. So I followed the basic RICE recipe of icing, elevation, and some ibuprofen and called it a night around 10PM.

I've been sleeping with my foot elevated on a couple of pillows all night, and I slept great again last night without any pain until about 5AM, when I woke up to a shooting pain right in the big toe joint. I went down stairs and took some of the prescribed vicoden, which at least helped me sleep until the kids woke up around 6:30.

This morning, most of the swelling from yesterday has gone away and the shooting pain that I had in the toe earlier this morning is only there when my foot is elevated. I think that is a little strange. From what I've read, people usually get relief from the pain by elevating their foot. For me, the pain is at it worst when I elevate the foot. If I'm walking around or even sitting it's much more manageable.

I took today off of work, and tomorrow I'm working from home. I'm still targeting Wednesday as my first day in the office which will be a challenge. I have about a quarter mile walk to the train station from my house, then a 45 minute train ride and then a mile walk from the train station downtown to my office. If I had to do it today, I probably could, so hopefully with two more days of healing it will be even more manageable. If not, I'll have to buck my cheapo ways and pay for a cab for a few days. Ugh. For a cheapskate like me, that's really painful.

48 Hours Later

2009-11-08T06:25:00.000-08:00

You'll have to excuse the frequent postings. As I mentioned in the first entry, the main purpose of this blog, at least for the short-term, is to document my recovery from my Hallux Rigidus surgery. I know it's probably not the most interesting thing to read about for those of you who have no experience with it, but my hope is that this can be used as a resource for other runners as they contemplate moving forward with a similiar procedure. I know I had a hard time finding a lot of information, from a runner's perspective, on recovery from this surgery.

So as of right now, I am 48 hours removed from surgery. Yesterday, around 2PM, I decided to try and move around without the crutches. At first I was extremely tentative and didn't think it was going to work. I didn't have a lot of confidence in the foot holding up to my full weight. However, once I figured out how to do it (lead with the heal and keep the weight off the toes), it became much easier, and within about an hour, I was pretty much done with the crutches. Thank God, because my underarms were getting quite annoyed with those things.

Pain has been manageable and I've pretty much stopped taking the pain medication on any sort of regular schedule. Going forward, I'll just take it on an as needed basis. It feels like I have a foot bruise right now, with an occasional shooting pain through the toe. I have iced it a few times over the past day and that does seem to help if the bruise feeling starts to become annoying. Last night I slept the best I have in a long time, although after 10 hours of no pain medication, the foot was a bit sore when I woke up.

Overall, I think things are going about as good as could be expected. The past 24 hours have been extremely encouraging, and hopefully things will continue to improve. Today's main objective is to survive my son's 3 year old birthday party. I was able to make the chili last night and chicken wings are going on the grill shortly. Hey, I'm not running for the foreseeable future. I can eat chicken wings and chili if I want to.

24 hours later

2009-11-07T06:30:00.000-08:00

Last night around 7PM, the nerve block officially ended and I was greeted with some pretty intense pain in the foot. I was pretty much expecting it to happen, but man oh man it hurt. The pain was really two-fold. There was a lot of pressure in the entire foot, which I'd imagine was from a tight wrap around the foot coupled with the swelling in the foot. Then there was a burning pain right in the toe, where the operation actually took place. I couldn't say which one was worse though as they both were pretty bad, and when combined it was close to unbearable. OK. I'm a wimp.

I was taking the maximum dosage of the painkillers (Hydrocodone & Acetamenaphine combo), but it really didn't seem to help at all. So I sat and tried to get all "embrace the pain" with it. That worked for about 2 minutes, but the rest of night was pretty ugly. Finally, at 1AM I was so wiped out that I was able to fall asleep and slept pretty decently all things considered.

This morning, I woke up to the same burning pain in the toe, but the throbbing pain from the swelling seems to have eased up a little. I have absolutely no appetite, which is causing some nausea, but things are definitely better. It is now 5 hours since my last painkiller and things are tolerable. The nurse told me I wouldn't have to use the crutches today, but that just seems completely insane to me. If I tried to put any weight on the foot, I think I'd fall on my face. So another day of crutches and another day of laying around on the couch. For now, I think I'm just in survival mode for a few days until things start to stabilize.

My wife, Kelly, continues to save my butt by pretty much taking care of everything for me, which isn't easy with the 4 kids and a crippled dad. I'm a lucky guy.

Surgery Done

2009-11-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

Well I am now 5 hours post-op. Both the Cheilectomy and Akin osteomoty were required, which means I now am the proud owner of a staple in my right toe. Hopefully it's small enough where I won't be setting of metal detectors for the rest of my life.

No problems thus far, although I still have no feeling below my knee yet, so I guess that should be expected. I assume the real test will be in a few more hours when the nerve block wears off.

Keeping my fingers crossed (not my toes though as that just ain't happenin' today).

Three Days To Go. I'm Getting Nervous.

2009-11-03T13:30:00.000-08:00

Ok. Somebody needs to turn off my internet. As the surgery day approaches, I’ll admit that I have officially gone into full-blown panic mode. There are times that I wonder if I should just cancel the whole surgery and just deal with the pain that I have. As they say, better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

So in an attempt to calm my nerves, I usually wind up turning to Google to try and find some examples of people who recovered quickly from this type of surgery. What I usually find are cases filled with people who experience longer than expected recovery times and complaints of intense pain for the first few days following the surgery. However, even in these “worse case” scenarios things seems to eventually calm down though, and when there is an update a year post-op, it usually is the person happy with the final outcome and willing to do the surgery again.

But a year later? I don’t have a year. I’ll be lucky if I don’t go crazy after 3 or 4 weeks of no running. But I do need to smart about this. Setting artificial milestones (like be able to fully train for a marathon by Jan 1, 2010) is probably not a great attitude to have. That will be exactly 8 weeks post surgery, and while I hope that I will be able to handle some running at that point, it’s probably more realistic to figure out a 3 to 4 day a week cross-training program to supplement my running.

If there’s one thing I learned from marathon running, whether it be rehab or racing, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.

A New Journey

2009-10-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

Wow. It’s been a long time. I haven’t stopped running, I just stopped writing about it. As a matter of fact, just this past October, I was able to PR at the Chicago Marathon with a time of 2:35:05. The race was one of those races you hope for, where things just clicked right from the beginning. The kind of day you dream of when you’re out there pounding the pavement every day wondering if it’s all worth it.

However, while I was out there “pounding the pavement” this summer, things became very difficult for me. What started out as stiffness in my big toe nearly 4 years ago(as described here), slowly evolved into constant pain, causing me to question if I would even make it to the starting line at Chicago. Somewhere in June, I made a promise to myself that if I was able to make it through this training cycle, I would get the foot taken care of over the winter months. So just a few days before the Chicago marathon, I made my way to the Midwest Orthopedics at Rush to get their diagnosis and opinion of the toe.

The diagnosis wasn’t all that surprising: Hallux Limitus/Rigidus in the big toe, which basically is arthritis. They gave me several options for treatment. I could go conservative with some orthotics and maybe a turf toe strap or plate. I could try a cortisone injection in the joint to see if that relieved some of the symptoms or I could opt for surgery. To be honest, I went into that office with a single goal in mind and that was to leave with an appointment for surgery, and that’s what I got.

So the surgery is set for 11/6/2009. They are going to do a hallux dorsal cheilectomy, with a possible akins osteotomy. What’s that? Well, basically the cheilectomy is just shaving off a lot of the debridement that has formed over the joint at the base of my toe. Right now that is quite a lump there, which shows up as the definitive shark fin on the xray) and wearing anything but the widest of shoes causes me lots of pain. Getting that taken care of should provide quite a bit of relief, along with a lot better flexibility in the toe joint as well. At this point, I’m not able to bend my toe upwards at all.

The second procedure that may or may not need to be done is the osteotomy. What this basically entails is cutting out a wedge from the big toe bone and then pinning it back together so the toe straightens out. The hope is by straightening the toe, it will relieve some of the pressure on the joint, to slow the arithitis that is present in the joint down a little. There is a possibility, I guess, that when they do the first procedure, the toe will straighten out naturally which would make the second procedure unnecessary.

That’s my hack understanding of all of it anyway. I’m sure I got some of the technical stuff wrong, but I think I’m at least on the right track. The cheilectomy doesn’t scare me a whole lot. I know there will be associated swelling and some pain with it, but since no bones are really be modified, the recovery shouldn’t be too bad. The osteotomy is a little scarier. Basically, it’s breaking a bone and pinning it back together. Now I’ve have a few broken bones in my toes before and have actually been able to run through it for the most part, but that was a minor fracture. This is an actual break and then having a pin (or staple) taking up permanent residence in my toe. The research I’ve done on the procedure have been scary with people complaining about residual pain and swelling for months and months following the procedure. Foot surgery just seems to be a very tough type of surgery to predict. While I do want to get this taken care of, there is a temptation to opt out of the osteotomy unless there is no other option.

Which is why I started back up this blog. From a runners perspective, getting your foot operated on is a pretty scary proposition. What makes it even scarier is that it’s hard to find a lot of information about the recovery process, especially for someone who’s main goal is to get back to running as soon as possible. I’m starting this back up to document the journey, from 1 week pre-surgery (today) all the way through the recovery process. I’ll take some pictures of the toe as warranted (along with proper warning as I’d imagine the pictures could be somewhat nasty).

The good news is that once I get the all clear from the doctor, which could come as soon as 2 weeks post-surgery, although 4-6 is probably more realistic, I can pretty much do whatever I can tolerate from a pain perspective. I’ve always considered myself to have a pretty high pain tolerance so I’m hoping by the beginning of 2010, I’ll be ready to start training in earnest again for a spring marathon.

A long shot? Maybe. But I’ve always had a thing for long shots. And for those wondering what exactly a cheilectomy entails…here ya go. Hope you weren’t eating anything.

What's Next?

2008-10-20T09:03:00.001-07:00

Recovery from the marathon is moving along slowly. The urge to run struck me on Wednesday which I didn't fight and it passed after 3 mostly slow miles. I followed that up with 4 miles on Thursday and things actually felt normal (for the most part). However, since then I've fallen off the wagon and haven't run since. It was my son's 1 year birthday party this past weekend, so that was pretty much all-consuming. I must admit, while the itch (urge?, nag?, compulsion?)to run did surface a few times, it was nice to just be able to blow it off and not feel guilty about it.

I'm going to take this week easy as well, just to make sure that my recovery is as complete as possible and then start gearing up for The Tecumseh Trail Marathon on December 6th. After reading my last race report, I decided that I needed to run a fun marathon, assuming such a thing even exists. The Tecumseh Marathon is an unbelievably tough marathon that really runs more like an ultra event than a competitive marathon. With it's relentlessly hilly terrain you can pretty much throw time out the window.

Hills, mud, water, downed trees, switchbacks...not exactly the type of course this flatlander is used to, which is exactly why I'm running it. I did do it once before in 2005 and came away promising myself that I would do it again one of these years. This year seemed as good a time as any, so I took the plunge. Now the question becomes, how do you train for something like this:

when you live around a course like this (FYI: Chicago Marathon Course Profile):

Chicago Marathon Race Report

2008-10-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Marathon has been my goal race every year for the past 11 years. This year was no different. Pretty much every run I went on this year was done with an eye towards Chicago. The "putting all your eggs in one basket" approach has worked for me in years past and I was confident it would work again this year. I got the starting line healthy and rested, and with the training I did over the summer, I thought that would be enough for a PR. Unfortunately, things don't always turn out as they should.

For some reason, I was just flat coming into this race. Maybe it was a sign of overtraining. Maybe I left my best runs out there somewhere in the weeks leading up to the race. Maybe it was just a bad day. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t feeling confident in the starting corral before the race. I was trying to convince myself that things would be OK. Just wait for the gun to go off, and everything will fall into place. You've felt like this before and run good races. You can do it again. And I actually started believing it myself.

The gun went off and settled into a nice but conservative pace just under 6 min per mile. The plan was to run the first 6 miles with Dave, and then see what I felt like at that point. I can't say I felt great at any point during the race, but I didn't feel bad either, and I was trying to convince myself that maybe this is how you have a good race. Don't feel great at the beginning and just kind of let it come to you. I saw my wife and sister waiting around mile 8 or so and I was able to confidently give them a thumbs up.

But then somewhere soon thereafter, some doubt started to creep in. Now, this was my 20th marathon, and I don't think there have been more than 2 or 3 races where there hasn't been some doubt at some point in the race. However, this time the doubt came pretty early on and probably more importantly, I didn't have the will to even try and fight it. When faced with it, I could do one of two things, either fight through it, or give in to it and slow down. I chose the latter, as my splits show. Why? I wish I had the answer. I'm sure it was a combination of many things. Wrong day? Maybe. Cumulative mental fatigue of 20 pretty hard lifetime marathons? Possibly. Weather? Might have had something to do with it. I'd like to think that it wasn't my training, but who knows. I'll look at all of it.

So the last 13 miles were pretty much just one foot in front of the other. With a 1:18 half split, I pretty much knew a PR wasn't happening today. The thought of dropping out crossed my mind a few times, but I was at least able to keep those thoughts at bay. I can't call a Sunday a crash and burn. Instead it was just a slow fade. On a different day, maybe I would have had the intestinal fortitude to fight through it, but not on Sunday.

During the race, thoughts entered my mind like maybe my best days were behind me. With the benefit of a few days to think about it, I don't think that's the case. I still enjoy running and I still enjoy pushing myself. I do think I can do things a bit smarter next year with my training, possibly incorporating a little more rest into the scheduled so I can hit my workouts a little more consistently throughout the cycles. I also think that maybe I would have benefited from racing a bit more over the summer. With only 2 races heading into the marathon since May, the race readiness might not have been where it needed to be. Like I said, I'll look at all of it.

So while Sunday may not have been what I hoped for, I'm still enjoying a nice year of running. With PRs in the marathon (earlier in the spring), 5K, and 8K so far this year I still feel confident that I'm headed in the right direction. At 35 years old, I think I can still improve for a few more years. Thanks to all for your encouragement throughout the year. Below are the not so pretty splits:

Distance Overall Split Pace
5K: 0:18:28 5:56
10K: 0:36:54 0:18:26 5:55
15K: 0:55:17 0:18:23 5:55
20K: 1:13:58 0:18:41 6:00
HALF: 1:18:05 0:04:07
25K: 1:32:58 0:19:00 6:06
30K: 1:52:27 0:19:29 6:16
35K: 2:12:17 0:19:50 6:23
40K: 2:32:34 0:20:17 6:31

FINISH: 2:41:25 6:09 Overall pace

Done.

2008-10-12T17:56:00.000-07:00

2:41:25 112th place overall.

I never seemed to get in a good rhythm out there today and then I slowed down. Not exactly the recipe for a PR. I think I need a night to sleep on this one to see if there is a positive spin I can put on it.

Healed and Ready to Go

2008-10-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

The hard work is over. Last week I was still nervous about the knee, but knew at some point I was going to have to test it. I didn't feel too good about going into the marathon not knowing if the knee was vunerable if I ran too fast. Chances are, it wouldn't come into play during the marathon, but there are enough things to worry about during the marathon. My knee didn't need to be one of them.

So on Wednesday, I decided I would try to do a 4 mile tempo run. I wanted to ease into it and if I felt any discomfort in the knee, I would bail. After about a half mile thing felt stable and I was able to do the rest of the run pretty much worry free. I finished the 4 miles at an average pace of 5:28 and it felt pretty good. The knee held up and the pace felt tough, but manageable.

But the 5:00 pace still loomed out there. Finally on Saturday I decided I would give the final workout on my schedule a go. It was 3 X mile with a 400 meter rest interval. I did this with the same thinking as I did the tempo. Ease into the first one, and stop immediately if anything felt weird. Thankfully, things felt good and I would up running the 3 miles in 4:58, 4:58, and 4:59. Ahh….fresh legs! This workout kind of blew me away. I've never run a sub 5 minute mile in training, so to run 3 back to back to back with only a 400 rest was a nice confidence booster.

Not much else to do this week except rest up, run a little, and worry about the weather. Actually, that's plenty to do. Checking the weather alone can take up hours everyday, if done properly.

Taper Drama

2008-09-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

My little knee problem that I casually mentioned in my last blog entry might have been a little more serious that I was letting on. Actually it had me quite worried last week. The pain was coming from the inside of the knee on top of the knee cap. Actually if you look at the picture below it was right where the Vastus Medialis connects into the knee cap. It was a burning sensation that got really screamed at me anytime I tried to do anything near the top of end of my speed range.

After the failed 800's on Tuesday, I was able to do two runs of 9 & 6 on Wednesday, but there was a lot of discomfort on both runs, especially in the first few miles of each one. Then on Thrusday, things started to improve, so rather stupidly, I tried to do the 800's again. Within a tenth of a mile, the burning sensation came back and I had to call it quits. Since I was still about 3 miles from home at that point, I had to try and jog/limp home, which really caused some bad pain in upper quad area.

I iced the heck out of it all night and by Friday morning, it seemed to be doing better. The run turned out to be the best I've had all week as far as comfort was concerned and I was able to run 12 miles with a few near marathon pace without any discomfort. That afternoon I visited a physical therapist who confirmed nothing structural was wrong and then proceeded to stretch and rub and poke at it until I couldn't feel anything.

That all set me up for Sunday's final longish run of 15 miles. I wanted to do the first half of the run at a nice steady pace and then slowly move into marathon pace for the second half. I wasn't sure if the knee would hold up when the pace increased, but I figured it's best to find this stuff out now, 2 weeks before marathon day than a few days before. The run went about as good as could be expected with the first half clocking in at a 6:19 pace and the second half coming in at 5:51 pace. The legs felt great throughout and the knee never really gave me any trouble. There were a few times where I felt like if the pace got any faster I might have some problems, but things felt pretty stable at marathon pace, which I'm happy with.

I don't know if it's worth the risk to try and do anything faster than marathon pace between now and the marathon. On the one hand, I don't know how comfortable I am not knowing what the "breaking point" is for when the pain comes back. The downside is that once the pain does come back, it's comes back hard and it doesn't subside right away, meaning it could last for miles. I'm considering trying to some graduated strides tomorrow just to test it out with some short controlled speed, but even that kind of scares me. I'm going back to the physical therapist on Wednesday, so I'd like to be able to say if I'm still having trouble or not though. I guess I'll make that decision tomorrow. This is how last week went down:

Mon: 10 Miles Easy
Tues: 4 Miles (aborted 800's because of knee)
WedAM: 9 Miles @ 6:19 Pace
WedPM: 6 Miles Easy
Thurs: 7 Miles (Aborted 800's again because of knee)
FriAM: 12 Miles @ 6:11 Pace
FriPM: 5 Miles Easy
Sat: 6 Miles @ 7:20 Pace
Sun: 15 Miles @ 6:06 Pace W/ 7.5 @ 5:51

Total: 74 Miles

Three Weeks to Go!

2008-09-23T13:57:00.000-07:00

For the most part, the hardest of the work is over now. This weekend marked the 17th week from when I started training in earnest for Chicago. For the most part, training could not have gone much better. I managed to stay mostly injury free and logged my most consistent mileage ever. For the 9 weeks stretching from 6/2 - 8/3, I logged over 100 miles every week. From 8/3 - 9/21, the mileage dropped to around 90 miles a week, but the intensity increased. Overall from the beginning of June until now, I averaged 92.6 miles, which is by far the most I've ever averaged. Additionally, many of those miles were done at an intensity that I haven't done in the past. Overall, I'm very pleased with where I'm at right now.

Of course, I wouldn't be me, if I there still wasn't a certain amount of doubt heading into this weekend's long run. Ever since I struggled home on the half marathon over labor day, I've been a little hesitant to proclaim myself to be in the shape of my life, although the numbers seem to indicate that. I really needed a strong final 20 miler to give myself a good feeling heading into the taper. Luckily, things fell into place Sunday morning and things went very well. I ran it with my friend Dave, which was fitting since we've been pretty much doing the same training program since June. He finished the 17 weeks with a 92.5 average so we were pretty much identical in terms of mileage and intensity.

We thought about going 23 miles, but we both talked ourselevs out of that on Sunday, reasoning that a strong 20 miler would be more important than a 23 miles, with the risk of some struggling in the last 2 miles. Overall we averaged a pretty easy 6:34 pace for the whole thing. As we came down to the final 2 miles, I think we were both pretty jacked up about we accomplished over the summer and the 19th mile came in at 6:07 as we subconsciencly started to turn the screws. Once we saw the 19th mile split, we decided we couldn’t slow down on the last mile so we turned it on a little more and clocked a 5:51 for the final long run mile until race day. What was encouraging was that we were talking most of the way on that last mile. It was comfortable.

This was how the week went down:

Mon: 7 with 10 x 400's @ 76
Tues: 10 with 3 x 2 mile at lunch (10:47, 10:46, 10:45)
Wed: 9 easy in the am, 6 easy in the pm
Thurs: 12, with 10 @ 5:43 pace
Fri: 10 easy in the am, 7 easy in the pm
Sat: 8 easy
Sun: 20 @ 6:34 pace

Week: 90

On Monday I went to go get my marathon shoes during lunch. I ran 5 miles out to the running store, picked up a pair of Saucony Fastwitch Endurance. At about 8oz, these aren't the lightest trainers out there, but for a marathon I think they give me a pretty good blend of support at a nice weight. I ran home in them and they felt great. I'll probably put about 30 miles on them before race day which should work out nicely. Today was an extremely easy 4 miles. I was planning on doing 800's today, but was experiencing some IT Band pain this morning so I decided to keep things conservative and just take it easy. This knee has popped up a few times in the past few weeks, and usually if I give it a day to relax, it goes away pretty quickly. I'm hoping today is no different.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

2008-09-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

This has been another tough week of training, but thankfully, the end is in sight. I think I may be butting up close to the edge of overtraining, and if this Sunday wasn't the three-weeks-until-Chicago mark, I'd probably back off things a bit. However, with the taper quickly approaching, I know recovery is on the horizon.

After coming off the marathon paced long run on Sunday, my legs weren't feeling too good on Monday. The schedule called for 10 X 400 in 80 seconds each with a 200 recovery. As much as I wasn't looking forward to fast running, I wasn't really looking forward to slow running either and the change of pace that goes along with intervals seemed to agree with me today. So after another morning of scrubbing the basement and finishing the clean-up, I did the 10 reps in an average of 76 and left feeling better than when I got there. Not a normal recovery day for sure, but it seemed to do the trick.

On Tuesday the schedule called for my 3rd hard day in a row with 3 X 2 mile in 11:00 each. Now, I've done a variation of this workout once before and it was only 2 X 2 mile and it was in 11:20. That workout came a few weeks before my goal spring Marathon and it was a tougher workout than I was expecting. I struggled to hit the pace on both reps, but did finish both in a few seconds under 11:20 each. With this workout adding a rep and paced at 10 seconds per mile faster, I wasn't sure what to expect. Oh yeah, and those legs are still just dragging.

My mind was quickly set at ease as I got through the first mile of the rep. The time said 5:22 and I wasn't working hard at all. I was able to cruise comfortably through the finish of that one and clocked a rather easy 10:47. That was followed with a half mile jog and then I got to work on the second rep. Again, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy the pace felt and again finished in a comfortable 10:46. However, I could tell following the second one that the recovery wasn't going as quickly. I could have used another few minutes to recovery before starting on the final rep, but I stuck to the workout and started up again after a half mile recovery. The last rep was not as comfortable as the first two, but it wasn't bad either. The legs started screaming a bit with 800 to go, but with a half mile to go of a 6 mile workout, that's something I can deal with. I came through the final rep in 10:45. I was pleased with the workout.

Wednesday was a recovery day with runs of 9 and 7 miles at an easy pace. That led up to another tough on Thursday. The plan was to do 10 miles at 102% of race pace. If I calculate race pace out to 5:50 (did I just say that?), that means that 102% of that would be 5:43 or so. Early on Thursday I had thoughts of pushing this workout out one day to give myself an extra day of recovery. I went back and forth about the benefits of doing it today or Friday and hadn't really decided until about 200 meters before it was time to start tempoing (is that a word). I decided I'd give it a go, but call it after 2 miles if things weren't going good. By mile 2, I wasn't fully convinvced that this was gonna be a great run, but I felt good enough to continue so it was on. Splits went like this:

5:48
5:51
5:42
5:41
5:41
5:43
5:47
5:45
5:43
5:30

Overall I was happy with the effort. I am dragging a bit this weekend, as I expected I would be, so I'm happy to be almost done with the hard stuff. Today was two easy runs of 10 and 7. That leaves an easy day tomorrow, and then the final 20+ miler on Sunday. I'm hoping that as the miles start to slowly come down over the next three weeks, the pop will return to my legs. I almost forgot what it feels like to run on fresh legs.

Keeping my Head Above Water (Ha Ha)

2008-09-17T14:04:00.000-07:00

It's been a pretty grueling stretch for me since I last updated this thing. On Friday I did 15 miles at a relaxed pace, which turned out to be a 6:39 pace. Coming off a fast 6 mile tempo run the day before, I was pretty happy with how easy this run felt once I got into a rhythm. Everything is so much easier once you get that rhythmic running back.

Then the fun started. Friday night the Chicago area started getting hammered with rain. At about 2:30AM on Saturday morning, I got up and decided to check to see how the basement was holding up. It wasn't. Within a few minutes of me getting into the basement, the sump pump became overwhelmed with water and started overflowing. Kelly and I started working feverishly to get everything out of the basement and onto higher ground. While we were successful in that regard, it was still a frustrating couple of hours as I sat and waited for Home Depot to open as I watched helplessly as my basement filled with water. Luckily I was the first person in line at Home Depot to rent an industrial strength sump pump and by about 8AM the water had been pumped out of the basement. However, since we were forecasted to get rain for the rest of the weekend, the struggles continued to stay on top of everything. At one point, we had 5 sump pumps running in the basement trying to keep the water from overwhelming us. It worked, but it wasn't easy.

Through all that I did get in an easy 10 miler on Saturday. The plan for the weekend was to rest up and do a long run with at least 10 miles at Marathon Pace on Sunday. I was thinking of incorporating Sunday's workout into the Chicago Half Marathon, as it seems much easier to run at MP in a race setting, but with all the excitement on Friday Night/Saturday, I was too tired to even think about going to a race.

So Sunday arrived and I had no option but to try and tackle the run by myself. Since most of the trails around my house were flooded, I had only option for this run and that was to do it on the roads 5 times around a 3.65 mile loop. I did one warmup loop and then tried to settle into marathon pace. It just wasn't happening though. I came through the first fast loop around 5:55 pace. The winds had picked up at this point in the day so I was stuck with about a mile and a half with the wind at my back and then the same distance with the wind in my face. I tried to increase the pace on the second loop, but again, it just wasn't happening. The pace on the Garmin stayed stuck right at 5:55. For some reason, I just couldn't bring it down. Finally on the last loop, I decided to just go as hard as I could for the first mile and see if I could move off of the 5:55 overall pace. It seemed to work as I was able to bring the pace down without working too much harder. I pushed as hard as I could on those last 3.65 mile and finally brought the overall pace down to 5:48 when I hit 11 miles.

I know this isn't the ideal way that this workout should have been done, but after an exhausting couple of days, it was all I could do. I must admit, I've never incoporated marathon pace into my long runs before. To be honest, having done it a few times now during this build-up, I'm not a big fan of it. It's a very difficult workout for me from a mental perspective and I just don't know if the physical benefits are that great. I feel like I could get very similar results from doing a hard tempo run on a Saturday followed by a nicely paced long run on Sunday. Anyway, I'm committed to the program, so I'll continue to do these, including the dreaded 23 miler this weekend with the last 4 at MP. Ugh.

Here's how the week went down:

Mon: 6 Easy miles
Tues: Pyramid Workout Around 5:07 pace for everything 200-400-800-1200-1600 up and down
WedAM: 10 @ 6:52 pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 10 W/6 @ 5:34
Fri: 15 @ 6:39
Sat: 10 @ 7:05
Sun: 18 W/ 11 @ 5:47 pace

Total: 87 Miles

The Need to Cruise

2008-09-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday consisted of a two nice and easy runs of 10 and 7 miles. One way that I can tell when I'm in decent shape is when my second runs of the day are easy. In the beginning of a cycle, when I first start incorporating doubles into my routine, I usually struggle mightily on the second run for the day. Part of that is because I don't have a ton of recovery between my first and second run. I usually finish up my first run by about 8AM and am back out there for the second one around noon. That's probably not the ideal way to do it, but with 4 kids, I kind of like to be done with the running by the time I get home from work. This is the only way to do it.

Today was a 6 mile tempo run and while I was hoping the legs would feel great, they were still a bit fatigued. I eased into the tempo with the first two miles coming in at 5:37 and then start getting into a groove with the next 2 miles clocking in at 5:26. With the second half of the run heading into a headwind, it was tough to make up time and actually I was working pretty hard just to maintain the pace and finished out with two more miles at 5:37. Overall pace for the run was a pretty comfortable 5:34.

This was a nice confidence booster. While I can't say the top gear is there right now, I was in a pretty decent cruise gear that felt comfortable. Regular tempo runs are really something I need to do be doing all the time, regardless of what phase of training I am currently in. Putting aside the physiological benefits of the run, I need to be doing these because of the boost in confidence they give me. For some reason, I just don't get the same boost from hammering out repeats.

Could be Worse

2008-09-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

After a pretty rough week of running through a cold, I had a fun but tough race to close out the week. Dances with Dirt is a 60 mile off-road relay race that is split up between 5 team members. I was assigned 3 legs of distances at 7, 4.5, and 4.25. All legs were moderately hilly, with the second leg having a water crossing and about a half mile of running through mud pits that could suck you in chest deep. Big fun. I managed a 6:13 pace on leg1, and a 6:33 pace on leg 3. Leg 4 was untimed since I didn't dare wear the Garmin through the mudpits. Our team managed a 10th place finish overall(out of about 400 teams) which was great, considering we went into the race with no expectations of being anywhere near the front of the pack.

Sunday left me sore and tired, so I took the day off. Yesterday was a slow recovery and that left me with my choice of a workout to do today. I have a 6 mile tempo and a pyramid workout scheduled for the weekdays this week and then a long marathon paced run for the weekend. With the marathon less than 5 weeks ago, I'm at the point in my training, where I need to be nailing my tempo runs. Tempo runs give me a lot of confidence, and for me they seem to bring my fitness together. With that in mind, I opted to do the pyramid workout today, thinking that if the legs weren't fully recovered from the schock and awe of Dances with Dirt, I'd rather tank on the pyramid than the tempo run.

The workout was 200-400-800-1200-1600, 1600-1200-800-400-200. Things stayed together pretty good on the way up with times of 34 (200), 72(400), 2:28 (800), 3:47 (1200), 5:06 (1600), but things got noticably more difficult on the way down. The legs were pretty much gone. If I can take comfort in anything, it was that the lungs weren't in too much distress it was just the legs weren't there. Coming down the times went like this: 5:12 (1600), 3:55 (1200), 2:36 (800), 76 (400), 34 (200). Not horrible, but definitely some fading going on there. Overall the average for the 5 miles of repeats (excluding the 200s which were really done more as a warmup and cooldown) was 5:06. While I'd have liked to be stronger during that second half, sometimes you just need to survive workouts like this. Hopefully with an easy day tomorrow, I can come back strong for the tempo run on Thursday.

Slowly coming around

2008-09-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

After Sunday's tough race, I felt like death warmed over on Monday so I took the day off. By Tuesday things started to improve enough where I was able to do two runs of 6 and 7 miles. I wouldn't have done the 7 miler except I had about an hour to kill between work and the Cubs game (they lost), so I figured might as well give it a go. The second run of the day felt much better than the first.

Yesterday was supposed to be 6X1200's in 3:45. I did one and started coughing so bad, I had to call it quits. I wound up just doing 10 miles easy. Today was a double of 10 mile and 7 miles. Both runs felt pretty good but at this point, I'm not pushing things. This weekend I have a cross country relay race that usually leaves me feeling pretty wiped out afterwards, so I'd like to go into as fresh as possible.

I guess the best I can really hope for for this week is a punt. That's not what I wanted 6 weeks out from the marathon, but maybe it will wind up being a blessing in disguise. If this down week allows to me finish strong over the next month and a half, it will definitely be worth the frustration.

Not What I had in Mind

2008-08-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

This week seemed to set-up beautifully for a good half marathon. After two nice speed workouts early in the week, things lightened up nicely near the end of the week so I could go into the race feeling somewhat fresh and still get about 90 miles for the week. The weather looked good for the race as well, as temps looked like they would be in the low 60's on race day with low humidity. I was excited.

Then Friday came and I felt the tickle in my throat. By Saturday, the tickle had turned to a full-blown cold with a slight fever. I went to bed Saturday night hoping for a miraculous recovery, but unfortunately, it didn't happen. I figured since the race was paid for I might as well show up and see what happens. Maybe I'd pull a rabbit out of my hat.

No rabbit. I went out at regular pace and by mile 5, I was in decent shape right around 5:38 pace. From there, things got tougher and I quickly started fading badly. I was working as hard as I could but was just barely holding 6 minute pace. To be honest, the only thing keeping me going was that I was in 3rd place and there was some cash for the top 3 runners. I told myself at mile 8, as soon as I drop into 4th place I'm dropping out, but I refuse to hand the guy the money.

That probably isn't the best mindset to have while racing, but I was not feeling good. Mile 9 came and I could hear the cheers for Bronco getting closer. Apparently the 4th place runner was a local favorite with the nickname of Bronco. Mile 10, he was right on my butt and I was praying he would just surge and make it painless, er, less painful. By mile 11, we were running stride for stride, and I had committed to at least finishing at that point.

Finally, we came through mile 12, and I tried to put a surge on. I figured there is no way this guy should be beating me, so if I could just feel good for a few minutes, I could still steal 3rd place. It wasn't meant to be. My surge lasted all of about 25 yards and I realized I was in no position to be surging. He quickly passed me back up and put a little gap on me that I just couldn't respond to. It was frustrating. Here we were, running 6 minute miles and I couldn't respond. I finished around 1:17:20 or so, which wasn't what I had in mind for the day, but it was the best could I do with what I had. Mercifully, I forgot to charge my Garmin yesterday so it fritzed out somewhere around mile 3, so no splits. I just know from mile 5 on, I was around 6 minute miles.

While this is frustrating, I think I can write this off to being sick on the wrong day. I know from past experience that running while congested gives me some problems, especially when I try and go at tempo pace. While that makes it a little easier to stomach, I'm still annoyed that I couldn't conjure up some strength on that last half mile. Oh well. I'd rather get this out of the way in August instead of October. I'm still glad I did the race, despite the results. I know there is no way I would have been able to approach a 5:54 pace for even 6 miles, let alone 13, if it wasn't in a race setting.

Hopefully, recovery will be swift. I don't feel sore right now, just achy all over. I'm hoping as the cold goes away, so will the achiness.

Not Bad

2008-08-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

I was under the assumption that after yesterday's two easy runs, I would wake up this morning feeling great with tons of energy and a spring in my step. As you can probably guess by now, it didn't happen. As I was walking to the train this morning, I could tell that the legs just weren't right. I've never really been one to experience the delayed soreness from a workout, so since I didn't feel much of anything yesterday from my mile repeat workout, I was surprised to feel it today. Regardless the schedule called for 12 w/6 @ 36:00 so I was gonna give it a go. It wasn't the most daunting workout in the world and with a half marathon coming up on Sunday I really wanted to have two easy days before it to give the legs as much of a break as possible.

I have a route from work that is about 12 miles with a nice 8 miles on the lakefront path. I've been doing most of my longer tempo runs on that route so I decided this would be a good one to do this run on as well. It's kind of my "tough it up" route, where I kind of equate it with being in some discomfort. I really wanted to stick as close to 6 minute pace as possible on this run though. No sense making things harder than they needed to be. So I hit the first mile dead on 6 minutes. During the two mile mark I go under a bridge and I lost the Garmin reception. When the reception came back it showed me at 12:15 at mile 2. I sped up to try and get back on track and when I came through at mile 3, the Garmin had corrected itself (without telling me), so the 5:37 split for mile 3 wasn't completely necessary (mile 2 wound up being dead on 12:00 I found out after the fact).

After that most of the splits were around 5:55. I just don't have enough confidence in my pacing ability to stick that close to my goal pace. I need some cushion. After 6 miles, I was still feeling relatively good, so I just took the tempo portion out to 8 miles and cruised home. The pace for the 8 miles was 5:54 which wouldn't have been as fast without the quick mile 3, so I'll say mission accomplished.

Now the goal for tomorrow and Saturday is recovery and rest. I'm not sure what to expect on Sunday for the half marathon, but I'd love to give myself a little confidence booster heading into the final 6 weeks before Chicago.

Recovery

2008-08-27T14:10:00.001-07:00

The goal today was to recover from the previous two days of speed workouts. Last week I made the mistake of running my "recovery" run at a 6:29 pace. While I was able to still get in a couple of decent workouts later in the week, I know that doing that on a regular basis is a recipe for distaster. Well, disaster might be a bit of an overstatement, but you get my point.

So the goal of today was to do both runs at a pace above 7 min/mile. I'm not sure why, but keeping the pace down on my recovery has been a bit of a challenge lately. When I was doing pure base building, I had no problem doing some of my easier runs at 7:30 pace. You'd think that with the increase in intensity I'd have an easier time taking it easy on the easy days, but that hasn't been the case. I think the cooler weather that we've had lately plays a part in it. It's comforting to see how easy it is to run when the temps are in the low 60's as opposed to the 80's with humidity. It gives me hope.

Anyway, the morning 10 miler was done right at 7:00 minute/mile pace. I had the wind at my back so the effort was definitely easier than a normal 7 minute pace. The afternoon was another 7 miles at an easy pace. I came out of both runs feeling pretty good. With a half marathon coming up on Sunday I have a pretty easy schedule for the rest of the week so I'm hoping to really be able to nail the half.

What I've been Doing

2008-08-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

I probably should give a little background on what I've been doing over the summer. Over June and July I was able to log at least 100 miles per week every week. In total I did 9 consecutive 100 mile weeks. Most weeks consisted of a tempo run of about 6-8 miles depending on how I was feeling and what the weather was like. The rest of the runs were done at a recovery pace or just a general areobic pace. I tried to run at least one run per week in the 15 mile range and one run around 20 miles. For the most part, that was my June and July.

Then in the beginning of August I switched gears to more of a race preperation program. Late last year, my training partner Dave and I stumbled on a book called the Self Coached Runner, which was published sometime in the early 80's. For the most part, the programs in there are very speed intensive and little light on the mileage. I followed the program pretty much line for line for my fall marathon and wound up with a PR. While I didn't think the program was perfect, it got me back to the track for the first time since I started doing higher mileage, and the benefits showed in most of my spring race performances.

For the Fall marathon, Dave took the 10 week Self-Coached Runner program and added some elements that we felt were missing from the program. Basically this was tempo runs, marathon paced runs, and just some extra mileage. We stole a lot of the new workouts from a thread on LetsRun that was called 5 Key Marathon Workouts. This left us with an aggressive 10 week program that we felt will allow us to capitalize on the great base we built over the summer (Dave had a similar June and July as I did). So since the first week in August, this is how the weeks have gone:

8/4/2008 - 8/10/2008
Mon: Off
Tues: Off
Wed: 9 Miles with 10 X 400 in 74 Avg
ThursAM: 10 @ 6:35 Pace
ThursPM: 7 easy
FriAM: 9 Miles wth 3 X Mile in 5:09 Avg.
FriPM: 6 Miles
Sat: 20 Miles @ 6:38 Pace
Sun: 10 Miles Slow
71 Miles

8/11/2008-8/17/2008
Mon: 9 @ 6:23 Pace
Tues: 12 W/ 4 Mile 200 fartlek in 5:54 avg. 6:19 overall
WedAM: 9 Miles in 7:00
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 11 Miles with 6 @ 5:34 Pace
Fri: 24 Miles @ 6:28 Pace
Sat: 10 @ 7:14
Sun: 8 Total w/ 4.5 X 800 in 2:33...not good. Stopped after 4 (and a half). Just didn't have it
90 Miles

8/18/2008-8/24/2008
Mon: 7 Miles Easy
Tues: 14 Miles w/ 2 X 3 Miles in 16:54 & 16:58
WedAM: 10 Miles @ 6:29 Pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 10 Miles w Pyramid workout of 200 (33)-400(70)-800(2:28)-1200(3:47)-1600 (5:06), 1600 (5:03)-1200(3:49)-800(2:31)-400 (71)-200(33). Good tough workout
Fri: 19 miles w/ 9 @ 5:53 Pace. Humid and dead legs.
Sat: 9 Miles @ 7:39 Pace
Sun: 15 Miles @ 6:34 Pace
91 Miles

Today was 6 X 1 Mile at 110% of marathon pace with a 400 meter interval between each. For now, I'm saying marathon pace is 5:50, which means the target for these miles repeats would be 5:15. This workout was a little intimidating as I have never done more than 5 mile repeats in a workout and I have never averaged faster than a 5:17 pace for the 5. However, based on some recent workouts, the 5:15 seemed attainable so I decided to go with the recent history and assume I could do this.

The miles wound up going down like this: 5:13, 5:13, 5:09, 5:12, 5:13, 5:13. For the most part, I was in control throughout the workout. If I had to, I felt like I could do two more of these without too much trouble. Of course that’s not to say I could have done all 6 of these faster than what I did. I think I found a comfort zone around 5:13 and was able to cruise with it. When I accidentally let that 3rd repeat go a little fast, I felt it on the next repeat. Also, on the last repeat, I gave myself permission to go as fast as possible, which still turned out to 5:13 so I'd say the pace was about right.

Good Week

2008-08-25T12:47:00.001-07:00

Last week was probably one of the better weeks of running I've had in a while...possibly ever. With about 7 weeks until the Chicago marathon, I like where I'm at right now. Last week went down like this:

Mon: 7 Miles Easy
Tues: 14 Miles w/ 2 X 3 Miles in 16:54 & 16:58
WedAM: 10 Miles @ 6:29 Pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 10 Miles w Pyramid workout of 200 (33)-400(70)-800(2:28)-1200(3:47)-1600 (5:06), 1600 (5:03)-1200(3:49)-800(2:31)-400 (71)-200(33). Good tough workout
Fri: 19 miles w/ 9 @ 5:53 Pace. Humid and dead legs.
Sat: 9 Miles @ 7:39 Pace
Sun: 15 Miles @ 6:34 Pace

Tuesdays 2 X 3 mile at a 5:40 pace was surprisingly difficult. For some reason I have problems with the repeat tempo runs. Once I finish that first one, my body just doesn't want to restart for the second one. Plus it was a hot and humid day, which didn't really help things.

Thursday's pyramid workout was a really good workout for me. I was able to keep most of the repeats down around 5 minute pace and finished feeling tired, but not wiped out like I was really expecting.

Friday's marathon paced run was what was really worrying me all week. It's not that I don't think I can hold a 5:50 pace for the marathon, because to be honest, I'm pretty sure that I can. However, after yesterday's tough workout and the brutal humidity that was in the area on that day, I had my doubts about doing it on that day. The workout proved much tougher than it probably should have been, but I was able to tough it out. It would have been ideal to do this workout with a rest day the day before and to have nicer weather, but do to some scheduling constraints, I had to do it Friday. If nothing else, it gave me some confidence that if I can handle the last 9 miles of a 20 miler at 5:53 in the heat and humidity, that's at least the low point for my marathon pace (which would still be a PR).

Today was 16 X 400 in 80 seconds each with a 200 interval at a decent jog in between. This is a nice workout as it's fast enough to get your heart rate up, but not fast enough where your legs are ever in that heavy lactic acid accumulating stage (or whatever it's called). I wound up averaging 77 per 400 for the workout, which was a little fast, but it felt very comfortable. I think some of it had to do with the cooler temps that hit the area yesterday.

2008-08-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

7/7/2008-7/13/2008

Struggle of a week. Nothing with any real speed, but I got the miles in...somehow.

Mon: OFF
Tues: 11 Miles @ 6:48 Pace
WedAM: 15 miles @ 6:34 Pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 12 Miles @ 6:35 Pace W 10 Strides at the end
FriAM: 10 Miles @ 7:05 Pace
FriPM: 6 Miles Easy
Sat: 20 Miles @ 6:49 Pace
SunAM: 13 Miles @ 7:15 Pace w/ 10 Strides at the end
SunPM: 6 Miles Easy

100 Miles

7/14/2008-7/20/2008

Really limped home on this one. The humidity really starting getting to me near the end of the week, and I had very little left by the weekend.

Mon: 11 Miles w/ 8 @ 5:46
TuesAM: 10 @ 7:01
TuesPM: 8 Miles Easy
Wed: 11 @ 6:44 pace
ThursAM: 10 @ 6:35
ThursPM: 7 Miles Easy
Fri: 20 Miles no watch, but very slow (7+ pace probably)
Sat: 9 Miles easy
Sun: 14 Miles

100 Miles

7/21/2008-7/27/2008

Two hardish workouts and a race. I'm getting sick of base building. Just one week left and then I'm shifting gears to more race prep work. Thank God

Mon: 11 Miles w/ 7 @ MP 5:52
Tues: 10 Miles w/ 6 miles alternating between 79 and 96 second quarters (5:51 overall pace)
WedAM: 9 Miles @ 6:45 pace
WedPM: 7 Miles easy
Thurs: 8 Miles Easy
FriAM: 9 Miles @ 6:45 Paec
FriPM: 6 Miles Easy
Sat: 21 Miles w/ 10 Mile race in 57: 45 (5:45 pace)
SunAM: 13 miles @ 7:18 Pace
SunPM: 7 Miles Easy

Total: 101 Miles

2008-07-07T08:39:00.000-07:00

6/23/2008 - 6/29/2008
Mon: 6 Miles Easy
Tues: 7 Miles Easy
Wed: 16 Miles 3 X 2 Miles @ 5:50 pace. 6:31 Overall
ThursAM: 8 Miles Easy
ThursPM: 7 Miles Easy
FriAM: 10 Miles With Strides
FriPM: 6 Miles
Sat: 20 Miles @ 6:39
SunAM: 13 Miles @ 7:25 with Strides
SunPM: 7 Mile Fartlek

Total 100 Miles

6/30/2008 - 7/6/2008
Mon: 7 Miles
Tues: 10 Miles w 7 @ 5:46
Wed: 17 Miles @ 6:52
ThursAM: 10 @ 6:57, 10 Strides at the end
ThursPM: 9 @ 6:16
Fri: 20 @ 6:35
SatAM: 10 @ 7:15
SatPM: 6 Miles Easy
Sun: 11 Miles @ 6:54

Total: 100 Miles

Solid, if unspectacular, training the past two weeks. The grind of base building is still there, but luckily I can see the finish line for this phase in my training. Of course with that finish line, comes the starting line for some really tough training, but the change will do me good. I hope.

But that's still a few weeks off. For now, I'll just keep on keeping on.

Week in Review

2008-06-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

Mon: 12 Miles
TuesAM: 10 Miles w/ 10 Strides
TuesPM: 6 Miles Easy
Wed: 11 Miles w 8 @ 5:41
Thurs: 14 Miles
FriAM: 10 w/ 10 Strides
FriPM: 6 Miles Easy
Sat: 13 Miles with 5K @ 16:25
Sun: 20 Miles @ 6:31

Total: 102 Miles

Did a 5K on Saturday that was probably a tad long due to a misplaced turn-around cone at mile 2. Splits were 5:05, 5:40 (long?), 5:10 for a finishing time of 16:25. With the high mileage lately and lack of real speedwork, I wasn't expecting much out of this race, so I was actually pleasantly surprised with what I had. I was probably a bit obsessive about getting in some supplemental mileage before and after the race, but hey, sometimes obsessive is good. Sunday's 20 miler was probably the easiest time I've had with a 20 miler in years. It just felt great from the first step. Too bad they can't all be like that.

I'm pretty happy with how this week turned out. With only 9 runs for the week I was able to log 90 miles in singles and then an addition 12 miles with 2 doubles of 6 miles each. I still feel like this is the way to go (loading up on the one primary run and the supplementing that with a couple of easy 2nd runs), but from a time perspective it isn't always possible. This week the cards fell right.

Grinding it Out

2008-06-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

For some reason, the miles seem to be getting to me this week. I guess you could call it the dog days of summer, even though summer hasn't officially started yet. Grinding out 100 mile weeks without any real validation that what you're doing is actually working is kind of tough and the monotony of it can sometimes get to you. That's where I'm right now. However, I've dealt with this in the past and usually the way to get through it is to just continue to pile on the miles.

It seems that every week is a battle in itself. On Monday, the realization comes to me that last weeks mileage doesn't mean anything anymore and it's time to start over. By Wednesday, I'm usually sitting on a decent two days of running, but the hard work is still ahead with a tempo run and long run combo on the horizon. By the weekend, if all goes according to plan, the hardest of the work for the week is behind me and I can kind of coast to 100 miles. And then it's Monday again. Like I said…it's a grind.

I'm not sure that I've mentioned it on here before, but the plan right now is to maintain these 100 weeks through July with a few tempo runs mixed in. Then, come August, I'm going to switch over to the program that I used for my spring marathon, which is extremely heavy on speedwork. While I'd like to keep my mileage in the 100/week range, the goal really is to nail the workouts, so if I have to drop the mileage a little during those 2 months prior to Chicago, I will. My friend Dave is going to do the program with me and he has made a few modifications to it, most notably to incorporate some more tempo runs and marathon paced work into the 10 week program. Looking at the program, I'm fairly confident that if I can come into August with a nice base, the speed will take care of itself.

So Monday was a 12 mile run somewhere in the 6:30 - 6:40 range. I'm sure the mileage is correct, but I didn't have my watch with me, so I'm not sure of the exact pace. It really took me a long time to get loose during the run, and I didn't really feel comfortable until about half-way through it. Finally once I turned around, things started to click and I felt good. On Tuesday it was more of the same. I was just extremely dead during my morning run. Finally after about 8 miles, I stopped at a nice grassy field and did 10 strides. I'm trying to focus on doing strides more, as I can really tell that I am losing a lot of the speed that I was able to gain over the winter. I wish I could say the strides felt great, but they didn't. It felt like it was the first time I've run fast in, well, ever. The good news is that after I finished the strides the rest of the run felt much better. Maybe I loosened something up with the strides. Later in the day I did 6 miles at a nice and easy pace.

Today I decided to revisit the tempo run that I kind of blew up on last week. I got my new Garmin in the mail yesterday so I was ready. I decided to wear the heart rate monitor just to get some idea of what my heart was up to on these runs. I've never worn a heart rate monitor before so I had no idea what to expect. I think the numbers look OK, but without having a real accurate idea of what my Max HR is I guess I can't draw too many conclusions from the data. Anyway, the run went much better than last week with an average pace of 5:41 and a average HR of 168 for the 8 mile tempo portion of the run. The mile paces went like this:

Pace - HR
5:45 - 158
5:51 - 162
5:34 - 166
5:38 - 168
5:38 - 169
5:47 - 172
5:36 - 173
5:41 - 174

Any HR experts out there that can tell me if that kind of drifting upwards is normal? It doesn't seem to drastic to this untrained eye.

Continue to Build

2008-06-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

Mon: 14 miles @ 6:30
TuesAM: 9 Miles @ 6:36
TuesPM: 6 Miles Easy
Wed: 11 w 8 @ 5:55 pace...fell apart at the end
ThursAM: 17 Miles 6:28 Pace
ThursPM: 6 Miles Easy
Fri: 10 Miles Easy w/ 10 Strides
Sat: 10 Miles 6:40 pace
SunAM: 10 Miles Easy W/ 10 Strides
SunPM: 7 Miles Fartlek

Weekly Total: 100 Miles

The weekend was a busy one, but I was able to get in the minimum amount of running to get to the week's goal. Luckily I had the Father's Day card to play on Sunday, which allowed me to get out a little later than usual for the morning run and then get out again in the early evening for a nice fartlek run. Waking up early on Sunday to try and fit in a run before the kids woke was not going to be option as the graduation party that we hosted on Saturday stretched into the wee hours of the night.

I've never been a big fan of fartleks as it's pretty hard to quantify the run, but without the Garmin and no really great marked path around my house, that's about all I could do. The 305 has been ordered and should arrive tomorrow (Thanks Mom-in-Law!!!!!), so very soon I'll have to find something new to whine about. Based on past history, that shouldn't be a problem.

A Tale of Two Runs

2008-06-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

If the Garmin is going to die, it's probably best that it happened now, only a few days before Fathers Day and my Birthday. I mean really…is $160 too much to spend on your father/husband? Kelly? Are you listening?

OK…enough grovelling. Yesterday was an 11 mile run with 8 miles at tempo pace, which has been working out lately to be in the mid to low 5:40 range. I really like this run, because it's below marathon pace but still easy enough where I can get into a groove and cruise through it. I think it's a good strength workout, which is what I'm after in this point in my training. I wish I could say I flew the run and felt great afterwards, but unfortunately, the run didn't go well at all. I went out at a comfortable pace and felt good through 4 miles. At that point, my pace was 5:46 for the run. I knew I had a wind at my back for that first portion, but wind doesn't seem as important in summer running as it is in the winter in Chicago. While it's nice to have it at your back, it's also nice to have it in your face when it's hot out to cool you down a little. So I was hopeful that the second half would be OK.

It wasn't. Since I don’t have the Garmin right now, I can't say exactly where things fell apart, but I think I was on pace through 6 miles, but then things fell apart quickly after that. I wound up coming in at a 5:55 pace for the entire run, which makes those last two miles…well, ugly. I don't even want to think about what the pace was. What was the problem? Not sure. Probably a variety of factors like heat, humidity, wind, fatigue. I'm really just looking at it as coming up 2 miles short, not as 10 seconds per mile slow. There were thoughts of cutting the run short at 6 miles, but sometimes it's best just to battle through this stuff. Quitting can be a tough habit to break.

Today was my long run for the week. With runs of 20 and 24 miles the last two weeks, I decided I was gonna make this week a little bit of a step back for my long run and went with 17 miles. I wasn't sure what to expect from the legs coming off of yesterday's crash, but they felt surprisingly good. I can't get into specifics about pace since, again, no Garmin, but I think I was around 6:35 pace through the first 8 miles and finished with a 6:28 pace. Since I've done this run many times with the Garmin, I know the distanc is accurate, and my $10 fill-in K-Mart watch seems to be doing an adequate job of keeping time, so I think that's pretty accurate. It was nice to have a nice bounce back run today after yesterday's not so great run.

I ran with the Brooks Burn today and they felt great. I might have bought these shoes a half size too big, but I don't think I'll go through the hassle of returning them. I'd rather have them be too big than too small and the only time I really noticed the extra room was when I was going down a steep hill and I noticed my foot sliding forward in the shoe. No big deal.

It's nice to get both of my longer runs for the week out of the way by Thursday (14 and 17 miler). I have kind of a crazy weekend coming up with a graduation party that we're hosting on Saturday and then some more festivities on Sunday. I didn't want to risk dragging all day long by trying to do my long run on either of those days. Hopefully I'll get some quality speedwork done on Saturday and then have a nice easy day on Sunday to get over 100 miles again for the week. I know this 100 miles per week is a bit of an abritrary goal, but it keeps me motivated and sometimes that's just what you gotta do.

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

2008-06-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

Sad sad news to report today. It looks like my Garmin has died. On Saturday I was out for a run and tornado sirens started blaring in all directions. It then started raining hard, but I was still about 20 minutes from home. So by the time I got home I was soaking wet and sweaty. I quickly jumped in the pool to try and cool off, and in the process forgot to take off my Garmin. The stupid thing wasn't in the pool for more than 5 seconds. I quickly turned it off and didn't wear again until monday.

Then on Monday as I was heading out for a 14 miler, I tried turning it on, but all it would do was flash on and off. I tried doing the hard reset but that didn't do anything but erase my history. So it spent the night in a bowl of rice (I've heard that will help with drying out process) and I tried it again this morning, but unfortunately, no luck this far. I guess I'll give it a few more days to dry out and if no improvement is shown, I'll give it a proper burial. How sad.

Yesterday was a nice 14 miler, which I have no official time for because of the aforementioned Garmin troubles. If I had to guess based on the time on the big clock by my gym, I'd say the pace was somewhere in the 6:30-6:40 range. It felt pretty good. Today was a 9 miler in the morning around a 6:40 pace (I had my regular watch for that run) and a 6 miler in the afternoon at a nice slow recovery pace.

I got some new shoes last night which are very welcome. I got the New Balance 903s and a the Brooks Burn. I've been trying to get a pair of the Brooks Burn for a while now, but since they've been discontinued I could never find them in my size. Finally I found some at EasyBay in teh clearance bin and will be trying them out tomorrow. If they feel anywhere near as good as the New Balance that I wore today, I'll be a happy camper.

Week in Review

2008-06-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

Not feeling too descriptive today so just the facts. 101 miles last week, with no real speed work to speak of. That's OK though. I just want to log some miles right now.

Mon: 14 miles @ 6:22 pace
TuesAM: 9 Miles @ 7:08 Pace
TuesPM: 6 Miles Easy
WedAM: 10 miles @ 6:27 Pace
WedPM: 4 Miles Easy
Thurs: 10 Miles...tried to do tempo run, but too humid. Quit after 1.5 miles and just ran easy.
Fri: 24 miles @ 6:48 pace (Western Run) - 85 and humid when I finished. Summer is here.
SatAM: 10 Miles with Jack in Jogging Stroller - Slow
SatPM: 7 Miles with Tornado sirens going off all around me
Sun: 7 slow miles

Total: 101 Miles

I guess It's Summer

2008-06-06T11:37:00.001-07:00

24 miles this morning in some pretty disgusting weather. Actually I had a few flashbacks to Chicago '07. I started the run at about 5:30AM and I could tell right away this was going to be a challenge. The humidity was high even at that point. By the time I was finished, the temps were in the mid 80's and the humidity wasn't far behind. One of the challenges for me when I do this run into work is to be able to get fluids throughout the run. This was definitely important on a day like today. Last time I did this route, it was cold and rainy and dark for much of the run so the need to drink wasn't as important as it was today.

So my question is, what happened to all the water fountains? I must have run past at least 5 or 6 ball parks and playgrounds today and not one of them had a drinking fountain. You'd think at least some of them would. Has the bottled water craze trickled down to the 5-12 year old demographic as well? Finally after about 17 miles of running I ducked into a gas station and got some water. I probably should have stopped a lot sooner to get something, but I really hate breaking up my long run rhythm with a lot of stops…and when stop at a gas station to buy something, it does turn into a 2 or 3 minute process. Plus, I was disgustingly sweaty, so the thought of standing in line wasn't all that appealing to me.

Anyway, the run went pretty good with a 6:48 average pace and all miles except for the first one coming in under 7 min/miles. I haven't been too concerned with times and workouts this week as I just want to top 100 miles for the first time in a few months. You gotta start somewhere, and hopefully, this week will be the start of a bunch of 100 miles strung together. That is what I did in 2006 and I still think that was the strongest I have ever been for a marathon. Now if I'm able to combine that with some speedwork and tempo runs, I feel like I should be able to have a really nice race come October.

Fresh Start

2008-06-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

Last week was a decent week for me as I topped the week of at 85 miles. I was going to do a half marathon on Saturday as my final good bye to my spring peak, but I've slowly come to realize that the peak was gone and continuing to race was really doing nothing for me, except delaying the beginning of my summer base-building. With that in mind, I bailed on the race. I did a 20 miler on Saturday instead and it went pretty good. Dave and I coasted through the 20 at an average pace of 6:41. I was fighting some back problems over the last few miles, but hopefully that was just a fluke thing and not a sign of bad things to come.

Yesterday consisted of a nice quick 14 miler. I tried to run at a fast but comfortable pace without looking at the garmin except at the halfway point and at the finish. I was surprised to see the pace at 6:30 at the 7 mile turnaround and by the time I finished it had crept down to 6:24. While I was tired at the end, the effort level was still very manageable.

However today I guess I paid the price for that. I had two very easy recovery runs on tap, which was a good thing, because I needed. The legs just had absolutely no snap in them today. My morning run of 9 miles was a drag the entire time and I kept it slow with the pace coming in at 7:15. The afternoon I felt a little better, but still kept things slow, but I didn't have a watch, so I can't say exactly how slow.

Overall, I'm pretty excited with how I feel right now. From a fitness standpoint, I feel like I should really be able to put in some good training this summer as I'm already coming into a little ahead of where I was at over previous summers. The only thing that is sort of worrying me is the continuing pain I feel in my hip/butt/back area. When I look at the symptoms, it seems to be sciatica related, which would be nice. If it's just pain, I can deal with that. I just don't want it to be anything else. For now, I'll just continue to monitor and hope it goes away. It would make it a lot easier on all of us if it did.

The Memorial Day Local 5K

2008-05-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

Ran the local 5K yesterday just to give myself a shot at breaking 16 minutes for the 5K before I get into base building again for the marathon in October. I feel like since peaking for the marathon a few weeks ago, I definitely lost some of the edge that I had. I've backed off of most really fast speedwork lately and have just not felt real sharp.

Anyway, Saturday morning I woke up and didn't feel great, but that seems to be pretty typical for me on race morning. I think I let my nerves get the best of me sometimes. This is a very small race, but sampling the crowd before the race there did seem to be some fairly fast looking guys warming up, so I was hopeful there would be someone to push me in those early miles.

Little did I know that I would come out of the gate completely flat. The goal for the race was to come through mile 1 as close to 5 minutes as possible. For some reason, I was really struggling right from the gun on this race and came through mile 1 in 5:10 and probably more worrisome, I was really working hard. At this point in the race, it was just me and one other guy by ourselves. I didn't recognize him and had no idea if he would be with me the whole race or not. He had about a 10 yard lead on me at mile 1.

Finally around 1.5 miles, I passed the guy and with that pass, finally, things started to click. I started feeling good again and things seemed like they were clicking. Even with the renewed confidence, mile 2 passed in a rather pedestrian 5:20 which gave me 5:30 to cover the remaining 1.1 miles. I knew the chances weren't good, but I also knew that I was feeling pretty good at that point.

I hit that last mile hard, thinking back to all the hard intervals I put in, in preparation for the marathon. Because of the sluggish first 2 miles, I was feeling strong at this point in the race and was really hammering now. As I approached the finish line I strained to see the clock and could 15:50...15:51. I sprinted as hard as I could for the tape and came in right at 16:00 flat.

Grrr....

so I'm mildly dissapointed but it's still a 23 second PR and I did run that last mile in 5 flat, so I know I can faster with a little bit better preparation. All in all, I'll take it.

Still Here, Sort of

2008-05-21T13:56:00.000-07:00

Slightly burnt out right now, as May historically has proven to be a tough month for me. The marathon, DWD, and one last half marathon scheduled for next weekend has left me somewhat stale and just barely hanging on. I suspect I'll be back to normal soon enough, but for now, I just don't have any desire to blog.

See ya June, if not sooner!

Keep on Keepin' on.

2008-05-07T14:37:00.001-07:00

I was doing so good updating this thing and then I stopped. Grr.

Did the standard recovery double of 9 miles in the morning and 6 miles at lunch on Friday. Things felt OK. Followed that up with 20 miles on Saturday morning at a 6:52 pace. This is the second consecutive early morning long run that I've done where I just didn't have it. It's not like I felt bad, I just had zero zip in my step. At this point, I'm not really running these long runs for speed so it's OK. Also, I've been doing some nicely paced 15-16 milers lately, so I guess it's OK if these are a little slow, but it's still a big perplexing. The run was pretty uneventful until the very end when the mayors dog, who often is out on the trail with me in the morning, ran up to me and BIT ME on the thigh. I didn't really hurt, but it did leave a mark and was kind of shocking. Anyway, my mouth hasn't started foaming yet, so I think I'm OK. Plus, it gave me a little adrenaline boost for the final 2 miles, which was kind of nice.

This week I've been trying to focus on getting healthy and strong. This weekend is Dances with Dirt - Gnawbone which is a 60ish mile 5 man relay race. It typically works out to around 10-15 miles per runner, broken up into 3 different segments. For the most part, the focus is on fun, but we should be pretty competitive this year, so I want to make sure that I can carry my weight. So I've been taking it somewhat easy this week.

Monday was a nicely paced 10 miler in 6:19. I didn't really have much in the way of expectations for this run, but I also wasn't going to hold myself back if I felt good, so I pretty much just cruised the whole way. It was a great day outside which helped. Tuesday was another general aerobic run totaling 9 miles at a 6:29 pace. Today I wanted to do one last fast workout before the weekend so I opted for the same 4 mile tempo run that I did last week. This week things were much more consistent than last week and I managed mile splits of 5:29, 5:32, 5:29, 5:24. Things started to get a little uncomfortable during that last mile, but that probably had something to do with the subconcious increase in pace more than anything. Anyway, with an overall average pace of 5:28, I'm pretty happy with the run. I think this is where I should be for this particular workout right now.

Concentration...Or lack thereof

2008-05-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a recovery day with runs of 9 miles in the morning and 6 in the afternoon. The morning run felt pretty good, and I actually ran it a little faster than I should have with the Garmin showing a 6:51 pace, but it felt relaxed anyway. I had a decent tailwind for the entire run, so I think that made me run faster than the perceived effort. The 6 miler in the afternoon was done at a very slow pace and there were a couple of miles, probably miles 3 & 4, that just felt terrible. I think it was just severe glycogen depletion as I had that nauseous feeling that usually accompanies it. I was glad to be done.

Today was a 9 miler with 4 miles at tempo pace. I wanted to do a shorter tempo run today for a couple of reasons. First, it isn't often that I get a chance to run in the 5:30-5:40 range in training. I do longer tempo runs, usually between 5:40-5:50. I do shorter intervals usually around 5:00-5:20 pace, but that 5:30-5:40 pace usually gets neglected. Since I do plan on trying to run a fast half marathon at the end of May right in that range, it seemed like a good idea to get used to what that feels like. Also, since I am theoretically still recovering from the marathon, it just seems smarter to limit myself to these shorter workouts. It seems that things start to break down the longer the workout goes. So anyway, the tempo portion went OK, not great.

First mile came in at 5:28 and I thought I was in great shape for a sub 5:30 pace. Then the second mile came along, and it was just bad, clocking in at 5:43. I wish I knew what happened there. I think I just kind of lost concentration, and when that happens, I usually wind up drifting to my long tempo pace. It happens in races too. I guess that's part of the point of these shorter ones. After the second mile, I hit the turnaround and with it came renewed concentration. I rebounded with a 5:33 and 5:29 to finish up with a 5:33 overall pace for the 4 miles. If it wasn't for that weak second mile, I probably would have been thrilled with the run. Oh well. There will be time to work on these things.

Almost There

2008-04-29T14:26:00.001-07:00

Recovery seems to be almost complete from the marathon with the exception of the continuing nagging of my right hip. I'm not sure what to make of it really. It doesn't seem to be anything structural, it's more of just a nagging pain in my hip/butt area. Actually I don't even know if I want to call it a pain. It's really more of just a general feeling of weakness in the area. My gut tells me that I can run through this and as I continue to add mileage it will eventually dull and become a non-issue. That's the way these things usually work with me. However, I'll continue to monitor (and probably wine about it) over the next few days to see if it worsens at all.

Today was a nice 16 miler on the Chicago Lakefront. I tried not to look at my pace too much during the run as I just wanted to run by feel, but when I got to the turn-around point and saw it was hovering around 6:30, I knew I was in for a good day. I ran comfortably for the remainder of the run and finished in 6:23 average. The hip (I refuse to say I have a butt injury) was manageable and the legs and general breathing felt great. For the first time since the marathon, I actually felt like a runner again. Nice.

Lots of Recovery

2008-04-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

Last week was filled with lots of recovery. I got out the door on most days and things started to slowly feel better as the week wore on. I'm not sure why, but after my last two marathons I have felt completely beat up. That's not to say that after other marathons I felt great, but the last two have been noticably worse. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it probably has to do with the shift to wearing racing flats. The legs just take a lot more pounding than they do with the trainers that I have worn in past marathons. I guess that's the price you pay for ensuring that the only thing that will slow you down is your own poor pacing/fueling decisions/incomplete training/etc.

Today I decided that I wanted to do something that would be up-tempo to see how everything responded so I set out on some quarters. The plan was to do them until I got tired which I was hoping would be at least 12, but after 8 I started feeling that old marathon fatigue starting to creep back into my body and decided to call it quits right there. There will be time to tough out workouts, but this week doesn't seem like the time to do it. I did manage to keep the average pace for the eight 400s right at 75 seconds each with about a 55 second rest interval between each hard effort. It turned out to be a nice little workout. Hopefully this will be the springboard that gets me back into training.

EC Trail Marathon

2008-04-23T08:56:00.001-07:00

I've always had a thing for 6 minute miles. When I was a freshman in high school, I remember thinking it was a big accomplishment when I ran my first sub 6 minute mile. Then sophomore year, the goal became to run 3 miles at a 6 minute per mile pace. Through the years, the distances have changed, but the goal has always remained pretty much the same…get under 6 minute miles. Sometimes that goal seemed ridiculous. If you'd have asked me 4 years ago if I thought I could run a marathon in sub 6, I'd have laughed at you. Other times it seemed attainable, but it was always out there, motivating me. For the most part, I've accomplished the goal with PRs well under 6 at most distances, but the one distance that had eluded me so far was the marathon with a best of 6:02 per mile. Finally, on Sunday I was able to reach that goal.

The EC Trail Marathon is a (very) small marathon that is run in northwest suburbs of Chicago. The normal route for the race is to do about a 5 mile loop on an asphalt running path, then head out onto a limestone path for a 10.5 mile out and back course. The course is flat and the limestone is pretty forgiving on the legs. It's a nice low key spring marathon. However, this year, due to some flooding on the path, they changed the course so that we would do two identical 13.1 mile loops, with about 2/3rds of it being on the road.

Going into the race I felt pretty good. I didn't do a full taper going into the marathon, but I did cut back my miles on race week which left me feeling pretty fresh. I was a little concerned about some lingering soreness in my right hip and left hamstring, but it has been nothing that stopped me from training, so I was hoping both things would hold out during the race. The hamstring was a complete a non-issue during the race. The hip let me know it wasn't thrilled with me a few times, but it eventually realized that it would less painful for all of us if it just fell in line.

Race morning was perfect weather with temps in the lowers 50's and clear skies. There was a little wind, but for the most part it was a pretty calm day. After Chicago last year, I really couldn’t ask for anything better. The gun went off and so was I. I knew going in that this would most likely be a solo effort as there just aren't a lot of people in this race, and it became pretty clear that it was gonna be just me staring at the back of a bike for 2 and half hours. As usual, those first few miles passed by way too fast as I finished that first 5 mile loop in 29:02. At that point I tried hard to just settle into a nice 6 minute pace and I did finally find a nice little groove.

After the initial 5 mile loop, we headed out on the roads and I was a little taken aback by the fact that these were not the pancake roads that this flatlander is used to. Now don't get me wrong. These weren't huge mountains or anything, it just wasn't what I was expecting. I guess you could call them gently rolling. We did a 6 mile out and back on the road and then headed back to the trail for a short 2 mile out and back on the limestone path. The limestone path was a nice break during the race and gave the legs a little bit of a breather.

I came through the half way point right around 1:17:30 and things seemed to be on track for a PR, if I could just not blow up. Mentally I felt like this course was nice because it was easy to break the run up into nice manageable chunks. There was the 5 mile loop, the 6 mile road out and back, and the 2 mile trail out and back. Then you do it again. Once I hit the second 5 mile loop, I was feeling pretty confident that if I could just make it out of there feeling decent, I would be through 18 miles and be in good shape. Some doubts started to creep in during this loop, but nothing too bad. It was also right around this point that I started to pass half marathoners who had started a half hour after us. They were very supportive and it was nice to have people cheering you on at this point in the race.

Once I hit 20 miles, I was feeling pretty confident that today was going to be a PR day, but staying focused was becoming more and more difficult. I was passing half marathoners all over the place and it was kind of easy to let your pace slip and still feel like you're moving fast because I was passing slower runners. I tried to stay focused and for the most part succeeded, although my splits did slip a bit over the last few miles. While I'd love to blame that on lack of concentration, it probably had more to do with fatigue.

The end of the race is a nice long downhill section that really lets you turn it on and finish looking good. When I came through the finish chute the timing was still set to the half-marathon time, so I wasn't sure of my official time, but I was later informed it was 2:36:13….a 2 minute 23 second PR. I was happy…or maybe relieved. I feel like I had a marathon PR for a while now, but it has been about and a year half since I broke 2:40 for the distance. I was hoping that eventually training and opportunity would cross paths and I would improve my marathon time eventually, but at 34 years old, I also realize nothing is a given. For a day, it was nice to run 26.2 miles faster than I ever have before. Oh yeah, and it was nice to look at my Garmin afterwards and see avg pace…5:57.

Here are the splits...

Mile Pace
1 5:44
2 5:41
3 5:48
4 5:52
5 5:58
6 6:03
7 6:03
8 5:58
9 6:02
10 5:52
11 5:49
12 6:02
13 5:59
14 5:52
15 5:56
16 5:58
17 6:00
18 6:00
19 5:59
20 6:02
21 6:09
22 6:11
23 6:01
24 6:08
25 6:11
26 6:07
26.2 5:53

A New PR...

2008-04-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

More to come later (when I have access to my Garmin), but finally broke the 6 minute/mile barrier in the marathon this weekend with a 2:36:13. Was fairly comfortable the entire way, but am really sore this morning.

I'll write up a full report tomorrow.

Spring Training?

2008-04-07T08:02:00.000-07:00

So far this winter I've been putting in some pretty good training, although the mileage has consistently been a little light. I've had several excuses for that. First it's been a brutal winter in Chicago, with it either snowing or absolutely freezing for what seems like every day since January. Secondly, my home treadmill broke in early January and getting a warranty repair on it has been, well, slow. Finally, baby Jack just hasn't been sleeping that great at night, so that little voice in my head has won the internal battle more than a few times when it was time to wake up for the run at 5AM.

Now, that's not to say my mileage has been horrible. For the most part, I've been between 70 and 85 miles every week this year. The thing that has been lacking are those easy supplemental runs that boost your weekly mileage and, in my opinion, add strength to your training. So finally this week, the perfect storm arrived. Jack started sleeping through the night late last week. The weather finally broke and temps started consistently hitting 40's and 50's pretty much every day. Finally, my new treadmill arrived on Tuesday. No more excuses.

So with no fall back, I really had no choice but to do the runs. And I did. Finally. The week went down like this:

Mon: 15 miles @ 6:40 Pace. This was a tough run as it came just 24 hours after the Shamrock Shuffle 8K. This is the second time this year I've done a 15 miler the day after a race. While the run itself isn't that much fun, it is nice to get it out of the way and get back to recovering. I know. That makes no sense.
TuesAM: 9 Miles @ 6:48 pace
TuesPM: 6 Slow Miles
WedAM: 11 miles w/ 8 @ 5:50 pace I did this same exact run last week and averaged a comfortable 5:48 pace. This week was equally comfortable, but I didn't have the advantage of my Garmin to dictate my pace to me. The battery died out around mile 1 so I ran the next 7 miles blindly (how did they EVER do that in the olden days?). Then right when I was finishing up, I turned the Garmin back on and started back up the timing and then stopped it, hoping I would have a run start and finish time registered. I could then calculate my own pace. And hey…it actually worked. So that's my public service message for today.
WedPM: 6 miles @ 7:02 pace
Thurs: 9 miles w/ 12 X 400 in 75 sec avg. I had some problems getting going on this one, but once I did things started to smooth out. The splits were 78, 79, 74, 74, 75, 74, 75, 74, 75, 73, 74, 73 with a 200 meter jog in between each. Again, not a killer workout, but it was nice to get in some work around 5 minute pace without killing myself.
Fri: 24 miles @ 7:06 pace I've written about the Halsted run on here before, and to be honest, in my old age, I don't know that I'll ever do it again. It's just not worth the risk. Instead, today I did….The Western Run! It's pretty much the same as the Halsted Run, except I'm running on a street about 2 miles west of it. What a difference 2 miles make. My life didn't feel in danger once the entire run. It isn't a perfect run, as the first 5 miles are run on the shoulder of a busy street (in the dark), but it's much better than the alternative. The pace was slow for this one because, well, it's 24 miles and secondly, I had a nasty headwind the entire way. I think it might have been enjoyable if not for the stupid headwind.
SatAM: 10 miles SLOW This hurt. I havent run 24 miles since October of last year. It felt like it today.
SatPM: 6 miles @ 7:03 pace This actually felt much better than the morning run. I did it on the (new) treadmill as the wife was out on the town and the kids were all sleeping upstairs. NCAA tourney on TV.
Sun: 10 miles with 2 X 2 miles in 11:20 & 11:17. I'm not sure what to make of this run. I'm really just following the schedule when it calls for 2 X 2 mile in 11:20 with an 800 meter rest in between. It would seem that a simple 4 mile tempo run @ 5:40 would make more sense, but I was pretty wiped out from the week, so I took the easier option of the two. I'm probably lucky that I did, as I had a harder time with this than I thought. Right from the get-go I knew that things didn't feel great as I was struggling during the warm-up to even get the pace under 7 min/miles. Finally once I started up the first 2 mile section, I got into what I thought was a 5:40 pace and tried to get comfortable. I came through the first half mile in 2:55 and realized that I need to pick it up to come in at pace. I slowly worked it down over the next mile and a half and came in right at 11:20. After a very short half mile break I started on the second tempo section and things felt much better (after I got over that first quarter mile of my body screaming at me to stop). This felt more like I was expecting it to and I was able to cruise through to an 11:17.

Weekly mileage: 106 Miles
YTD Milage: 1018 Miles

Now the challenge is to follow this week up with another solid week. With my spring marathon plans kind of up in the air, I don't know when I'll be racing next. I guess the goal right now is to just make sure I'm ready for whenever that might be.

Shamrock Shuffle

2008-04-03T08:08:00.001-07:00

This past weekend marked the beginning of the spring running season in Chicago as the shamrock shuffle was run. Overall it was a really good race for me. I finished in 26:17 which is a 40 second PR over last year's time. Also the pace of 5:17 per mile is the same per mile pace as my 5K PR, which is also encouraging. They did have a marker at 5K in this race and I came through it in 16:10 which would be a 12 second PR if I would have stopped there. Sub 16 seems very doable.

Of course the real drama in the race was the finish. My friend Dave and I were both shooting for a sub 26:30 and our training over the winter has been remarkably similar. I knew we'd be finishing very close to each other, but even I wasn't expecting this finish:

So while it appears that he got me by a foot, the official results show me as coming in a second ahead of him. After way too much analysis on the finishing photo, it has been determined that it came down to chip placement. I led with the chip foot, he didn't. Better luck next time Dave. I'll just chalk this one up to veteran savvy.

March Madness Half Marathon

2008-03-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was what is affectionately referred to in the Chicago running circles as "The hilly half-marathon." Flatlanders that we are, we just don't get many hilly races, so this is the one chance that many of us get to stretch those hill climbing muscles.

Leading up to the race I was thinking that I had a shot at breaking 1:13, which would put me right in the PR range. The goal was to go out hard and try and bank some time early as the hills during the last 3 miles really make this a hard course to run hard late. When the gun went off, I was greeted with a pretty stiff head wind though and the first mile came in at a sluggish 5:42. I tried to bare down on the next two miles and it seemed to work as I clocked in a couple of sub 5:30 miles, but for some reason, I just didn't have it mentally this race. I continually found my mind drifting off during the race and usually as my mind would drift off, so would my splits. I was out there running, running pretty hard too, but I wasn't racing. I guess I'm just not in racing form yet.

That's not to say that I had a bad race. I did beat my time from last year by about 30 seconds and at no point did I feel like I was running over my head. The hills from miles 10-12 didn't really seem to bother me like they did last year and I was even able to run one of my faster splits on the last mile. As far as placement, I was completely by myself from about mile 1 through the end of the race. The winner came in about 5 minutes ahead of me (!) and the 3rd place guy was about 30 seconds behind me. It was pretty much a supported time trial.

It was great to meet up with so many friends before and after the race. Special thanks to Lisa V. (Leather) who went through the hassle of getting her bib transferred over to me so I could run this race. I truly appreciate it!

Here are the splits for the day:

1 - 5:42
2 - 5:26
3 - 5:28
4 - 5:40
5 - 5:38
6 - 5:43
7 - 5:49
8 - 5:40
9 - 5:25
10 - 5:49
11 - 5:47
12 - 5:49
13 - 5:32
13.19 - 1:00

Finish Time: 1:14:27

A Slow Burn

2008-03-03T13:49:00.001-08:00

Another decent if unspectacular week in the books.

Mon: 9 at 6:40 Pace
TuesAM: 9 at 6:20 w/ 10 strides at the end
TuesPM: 6 Miles very Easy
Wed: 8 Boring miles
Thurs: Sick...took Off
Fri: 21 Miles with 3 miles @ 5:39 Pace...still feeling sick
Sat: 9 Miles w 1200 in 3:40, 800 in 2:28, 400 in 69 and 200 in 31
Sun: 10 Miles Easy

Total: 73 Miles
YTD: 629 Miles

Thursday was a family sick day as pretty much everyone in the house except for those 1 and under fell ill to a nasty 24 hour stomach virus. While I got lucky and got the mild version of it, I didn't get a chance to get out for a run, which I didn't really mind to be honest. Friday I was still feeling a little woozy, but decided I was going to try and get the workout in. The long run called for 2 X 3 Miles @ 5:39 pace, but after doing it the first time, I knew my stomach couldn't handle another spin at it, so I just settled into a comfortable pace and finished the run. Saturday called for a pure speed workout. The mileage for the intervals was laughable at about a mile and a half, but the goal times really scared me. In the end, I was a few seconds off on every single one, but since I had to do these on an icy somewhat hilly .4 mile loop (well hillier than a track at least), I wasn't too upset about it. I think I got the desired result out of the workout, was to get some time running at top speed. I was actually sore later on that night.

Today's workout was another interesting one. It called for 16 X 400 in 82 seconds each with a 200 recovery. Again I decided to do this one on the treadmill since the roads are still pretty icy right now and just aren't conducive to fast running (plus I hate doing speedwork with layers of clothes on). Now when I saw this workout, I'll admit that I probably underestimated it. 82 second quarters equate out to a 5:28 pace per mile, so I figured with a rest in between each, it would be a pretty easy workout. To compensate for that, I decided I would keep the recovery at a decent pace of 7:30 per mile, which worked out to about 50 seconds of a rest recovery. By the end of the workout, those recovery intervals seemed like 5 seconds instead of 50 though. In the end, I see the value of a workout like this and actually kind of enjoyed it, although it was much harder than I thought it would be going in.

Good Week

2008-02-26T12:18:00.001-08:00

Finished up last week with a nice easy recovery run on Saturday and then a 20 miler on Sunday. The 20 miler was probably one of the best 20 milers I've had in a long time. Things warmed up a bit by Sunday morning so the temps were at least in the 20's, maybe even 30's for this run. However, the biggest factor in this run was that there was no wind. Cold can be dealt with, but when the wind starts whipping, it can get painful.

I ran this one with my friend Dave and we were both feeling pretty good from the get go. We got to the turn-around point with the overall pace at 6:51 and slowly brought it down on the second half of the run. I think most of our splits for the last ten miles were in the 6:35-6:38 range, and when we finished, the overall pace was down to 6:44. So this is how last week went down:

Mon: 8 Miles with 12 X 400 @ 76 each with 200 Rest Interval
Tues: 8 Miles with 4 @ 5:39 pace
WedAM: 9 Miles @ 6:35 pace
WedPM: 6 Miles @ 7 Pace
Thurs: 14 miles @ 6:40 Pace
Fri: 8 Miles with 6 X 800 @ 2:30 each with 500 rest Interval
Sat: 7 Miles @ 7:10 Pace
Sun: 20 Miles @ 6:44 Pace
Weekly Mileage: 79 Miles
YTD Mileage: 557 Miles

So overall I'm very pleased with how I'm feeling right now and the amount of intensity that I've been able to handle so far. I'd still like to figure out how to add in some more mileage to the schedule, but so far it hasn't been possible. I'm hoping that as things beging to thaw out around here, those second runs won't become as difficult to fit in and some of those 8 mile runs will become 10 mile runs.

Rather oddly, this weeks calls for a lot of easy running. The only real workout that I have is a 15 miler with 2 X 3 mile @ 5:39 pace. That should be tough, but hopefully with some fresh legs it shouldn't be too much of a problem. And yes, the legs were feeling pretty dead coming out of last week. However, after a couple of easy 9 mile runs yesterday and today things are starting to feel back to normal.

Hanging in There

2008-02-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

The training continues. This is definitely the most intense training I've ever done and it has left me feeling very unmotivated to write about it. Apparently exhaustion and creativity do not go together. Not that this the writing here was ever all that creative, but you get the idea.

2/18 - 8 Miles w/ 12 X 400 @ 76 seconds with a 200 rest interval in between
2/19 - 8 miles with 4 @ 5:39 Pace
2/20 - 9 miles @ 6:35 pace AM, 5 Miles @ 7 Min Pace PM.
2/21 - 14 miles @ 6:40 pace.
2/22 - 8 Miles with 6 X 800 @ 2:30 with 500 rest interval in between

The hardest part of the week is over, with just a long run left to do this week. Next week there is very little speed work on the agenda, so I hope to put in a nice week of big mileage, just like the old days.

The Great Outdoors

2008-02-14T14:28:00.000-08:00

Last night I convinced myself that I had to get outside today to knock out the 17 miler on the schedule. I haven't done a long run entirely outside in a few weeks, and I really didn't want to continue to put it off. The forecast was for temps to be in the in the teens in the midmorning, but not a ton of wind which would at least prevent the wind chills from dipping below 0. The other added bonus was that whatever wind that would be out would be blowing from the south which means it would be at my back for most of the run. Cold weather isn't so bad, as long as you don't have a nasty wind whipping through you the whole time. That can get painful.

Overall the run went pretty good. Since I run the first half of this run on city streets, the footing was a little tough at times, as there were long stretches of non-shoveled sidewalks, but once I hit the lake front path it was pretty smooth sailing the rest of the way. My overall pace was 6:41 and I finished feeling tired but not wiped out. My splits were pretty much all over the place for the first half since a lot of it depended on the footing, but for the second half I was pretty consistently in the mid 6:30s.

Normally if I put in a nice long marathon paced run, a interval session, and a 17 miler I'd be thinking that I finished off a pretty good week. However, with this crazy schedule, I still have some mile repeats and another long run on tap. Peaking ahead at the weeks coming up in the schedule I must say I'm a bit confused. I really don’t see any other weeks that have the kind of stacked up workouts as this first week. There are some tough workouts coming up, but nothing consistently tough as this week has been. That at least gives me some hope that if I can survive week 1, the rest of the schedule will be doable.

A New Direction

2008-02-13T13:40:00.001-08:00

The frustration level continued to grow over the weekend, as this weather just isn't conducive to good training. It's seems that every day is either freezing temps, snowing, or both. What makes it so frustrating, is that right now, I don't really have a plan. I know I want to run a marathon in late April, but I wasn't really focusing my training. I basically had the philosophy that I would try and run as many miles as possible until then. However, when the weather is like that, running tons of miles just isn't all that fun. So finally on Sunday night, I decided to sit and see what I could do about it.

I realized that I was exactly 10 weeks out from my goal spring marathon. I then went and looked at an old book that I recently found called "The Self-Coached Runner." In it they have some pretty aggressive training programs for distances from the 5K up to the marathon. It is heavy on speedwork and probably a little lighter than I'm used to on the mileage end. I wanted to give it a try at some point, so I figured now would probably be as good a time as any to give it a shot. If I tank in my spring marathon, at least I'll know that this kind of training isn't for me.

So with that, I set off on the prescribed workout for Monday which was 10 X 400 @ 76 seconds each. I haven't done quarters in years, so I had no idea if my legs would be able to handle it, but for the most part, it went pretty good. Since we got another dusting of snow, it made doing these outside nearly impossible, so I did them on the treadmill, set at 11.8MPH and the incline at 1%. Just to keep things simple, I did a .15 mile recovery interval between each rep with the speed varying from 7-8MPH, depending on how I was feeling. With warmup and cooldown the run was 8 miles and I left feeling pretty good.

The next day I wasn't sure how I was going to be feeling since I haven't run that fast in a workout in a long time. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good, which was a good thing considering what the schedule held for today. "12 Miles of easy running, incorporating 10 miles in 60:00." Hmmm. Talk about a contradiction. Easy running and 10 miles in 60 minutes certainly don't go together. Due to a time crunch, I didn't have time to fit in all 12 miles, so I opted for 10 miles of "easy running" incorporating 9 miles in 54:00. Again this was done on the treadmill with the incline at 1% and again, I felt surprisingly good for this run. I say it was suprising because I usually have a hard time maintaining 6 min/mile pace on the treadmill, mostly due to the sheer boredom of it all (at least that's what I tell myself).

Afterwards I could feel that there was going to be some soreness in my quads from the back to back tough workouts, but nothing too bad. Today was an easy day and I needed it. I did 9 miles right around a 7 minute pace. It felt good to do something nice and slow today after the first two tough days this week. The next two days call for a 17 mile run and then mile repeats the following day. Not much of a break for the weary there. I have no idea if I'll hold up under the demands of this schedule, but it's time to see if I can. As they say, No Risk, No Reward.

Treamill Overdose

2008-02-08T14:20:00.000-08:00

The motivation is low right now, which I think is directly attributable to the crappy weather that we've been having. I'll just admit that I'm not a tough a runner when it comes to cold weather. I hate it. I'm sure that says something about my intestinal fortitude, but I don't care.

So I've been on the treadmill a lot lately, and that is just bad for motivation. This morning was 14 miles on the treadmill until I finally just had enough. I went and changed into my cotton sweatshirt and jogging pants that I had at the gym and ran the final 4 miles outside. I felt like Rocky Balboa with my hood up and my hands tucked safely in my shirt sleeves.

Anyway, I'm surviving, and this weather can't last forever. I know there are probably better ways to cope with it (like growing a pair and going outside), but hey. I am what I am.

More Like It

2008-01-31T14:09:00.000-08:00

And just like that, things are back to normal. Yesterday I set off on a 14 mile run and within about 10 minutes, I started to feel what has become an all too familiar feeling of just general fatigue. I had no desire to be running 1 more mile, let alone another 13. However, after continuing to struggle for a while longer, I eventually got into groove and was able to cruise for most of the run finishing at a 6:40 pace. The last hour of the run was probably the best I've felt in over a week. The lungs were relatively clear and the legs continue to feel unbelievably strong. Sometimes you just need to push through the fatigue on these runs, and thankfully, this was one of those days.

Today I wanted to test out that 3rd gear (OK, maybe 4th gear) that I've had so much trouble finding as of late. Since it has been snowing and windy for pretty much the whole day, I was confined to the treadmill, which makes running fast particularly difficult. I just hate doing tempo runs on the treadmill. It turns into an exercise of figuring out how I can keep my sweat contained to my little rectangle, and then how long I can keep my eyes occupied so I don't peak down at the time and mileage every 10 seconds. It's maddening really. However, today was one of the better ones. I did a 2 mile warm-up and then cranked it up to 10.5 MPH at 1% incline for the next 4 miles and just cruised. I won't be so cocky as to say it was easy, but I have definitely had much more difficult treadmill tempo runs. Finished things up with a nice 2 mile cooldown for a total of 8 miles.

Overall I'm happy with how January has gone. I've gotten in 308 miles for the month which is a new record for me and January. January is usually one of my more difficult months when it comes to training. I'm dealing with cold weather and then for the last two years, I've been trying to figure out exactly how to fit in the miles with a new addition to the family. Luckily baby Jack has just recently figured out this whole "living" thing and has become quite the joy to have around, as you can see. You'll have to excuse the shoddy camera work. I'm new at this.

Cough Hack Cough

2008-01-29T13:08:00.001-08:00

It's so easy to get frustrated with this running thing. For the most part, things have been going pretty good this year, but all it takes is a couple of bad runs and the next thing you know, you're questioning all of it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, everyone in the house has been sick over the past 2 weeks or so, and I was unable to escape the wrath of the virus. While I didn't get the throw-up version of it, I did get a good congestion going on and a nice on again/off again fever.

While this hasn't stopped me from running completely, it has made some of the runs much more difficult than they should be. If I go back through my logs, I can see that this is just how I react when I get congested lungs. The runs suffer. It's like 1st gear is OK, 2nd gear is not too bad, but anything higher than that, and I really struggle. Oh yeah, and the gas mileage starts to suffer a bit as well. I just get extremely fatigued much quicker than I normally should. OK. I think I probably took that analogy a little bit too far. It won't happen again.

So last week on Friday I did manage 17 miles on the treadmill, but unlike the previous weeks run, this run left me feeling weak and, well, sick. Saturday and Sunday I managed ugly runs of 7 miles each, which was much less than I wanted to do over the weekend, but based on how I was feeling, it was probably more than I should have been doing. By the time Sunday night rolled around, I felt like a 50 year old menopausal women..hot flashes one second, followed quickly by the cold shivers. Luckily, I got a great nights sleep and woke up on Monday feeling pretty good.

Monday's 9 mile run was nothing to write home about though. It actually was just more of the same. Started out feeling OK, but just got extremely gassed after about 5 miles. I forced myself through the 9, but it was not enjoyable. Today was probably my best run in a while with 9 miles in the morning at a 6:24 pace, but things returned to form in the afternoon with a miserable 7 miler.

I realize that the smart thing to do now would be to back off a little and let things return to normal, but that probably isn't going to happen. The legs feel great and all the little nagging injuries that were bothering me so much a few weeks ago, have just gone away as I start to get back into the routine. Since all I'm doing is base-building at this point, I feel like suffering through a few runs right now isn't the worst thing in the world. It will just make next week, when I'm back to being healthy, that much easier. That's the plan anyway.

Here's last week:

Mon: 9 Miles @ 6:20 pace
Tues: 12 Miles @ 6:40 Pace
Wed: 10 Miles on highschool indoor track - starting to feel sick
Thurs: 8 Miles
Fri: 17 Miles @ 6:40 Pace
Sat: 7 Miles
Sun: 7 Miles

Weekly Total: 70 Miles
YTD Total: 261 Miles

Who's the Baby?

2008-01-22T14:39:00.000-08:00

***** Whining alert. Whining alert. Whining alert. *****

I realize that it's only my 3rd entry of the year, so I really shouldn't resort to the complaining post quite yet. I understand I need to build up some goodwill and then maybe after a few months I can go to the whining and the poor me stuff. Too bad. My blog. My rules. I feel like whining today.

January running in Chicago, with 4 kids/germ collectors, is just tough. This weekend was freezing, and of course my treadmill at home decided to stop working, so I was forced to the outdoors. Saturday run of 11 miles was pretty traumatic as the windchill was somewhere south of 0 and I just couldn't bare to head back out for very long on Sunday. I did make it out for a quick 5 miler to bring my total for the week to 76 miles. I was hoping for more, but sometimes you just have to play the hand your dealt.

Saturday night we were awoken by my daughter in the middle of the night, complaining that she had a tummy ache. Being the nice daddy that I am, I let her climb into bed with me, which she graciously accepted and then proceeded to throw up all over my pillow. I guess we need to work on our please and thank-yous. Luckily, she's the tough one of the bunch and she handled it like a champ that night and the next day and was almost back to normal by Monday. I did manage a decent 9 mile run at 6:20 overall pace during lunch.

Then last night, my oldest son, awoke us in the middle of the night with the same tummy ache complaints. Having learned my lesson, we headed straight to the bathroom, but he threw up before we could make it. After a quick clean-up and some more puking everyone was back sleeping, but I just didn't have the heart to duck out of the house early for my run, leaving my wife with one and a half sick kids. The boy doesn't handle sickness quite as good as his sister, so this could be challenging. Luckily things fell into place this afternoon where I was able to squeeze in a nicely paced 12 miler on the treadmill around 6:35 pace. I'm still holding out hope I'll have the energy to get out for a short run this evening, once the kids are sleeping. We'll see how that goes.

I'm sure this little bug will make it's way through the rest of the house in due time. So I'll just keep surviving. I have a feeling that might become a them this year. I am trying to become more stubborn about not skipping runs this year. Missing runs can turn into a slippery slope so I'd prefer to just not let it happen. We'll see if the kids cooperate. Scary. I know.

This ends today's whining session. Please carry-on with whatever you were doing prior to reading this.

Here's last weeks runs…for prosperity sake:

Monday: 8 w/ 6 @ 6 Min/Mile
Tues: 9 Morning, 6 Evening
Wed: 7
Thurs: 9 Morning, 6 Evening
Fri: 16
Sat: 11
Sun: 5
Total: 77 Miles
YTD: 191 Miles

Getting Into the Flow

2008-01-18T13:34:00.001-08:00

I can honestly say that I'm please with how things have progressed so far this year. The first two weeks of the year had mileage in the 60's, with most of it being slowish paced, probably right around the 7 min/mile pace. Maybe occasionally a bit faster than that, but not too often. As I mentioned in the previous post, the real point right now is to get my legs back under me and to get my body used to training again.

With the increased workload has come the normal aches and pains. My right hip has given me some problems, but I've actually found a few pilates stretches that really seem to help, and since incorporating them into my nightly routine a few times a week, I've seen great improvement. Probably the most troubling thing right now is my right big toe. I believe I have a pretty bad case of Hallux Limitus/Rigidus, which is basically arthritis of the big toe. While it doesn't give me too much trouble while I'm running, I'm usually forced to limp for about 5 minutes immediately following every run. After that it seems to calm back down and is back to normal. I've seen a doctor about it last year and for the most part, the general consensus is that as long as I can deal with the pain, it's OK to keep running. Now I have to decide if this is something I can deal with for an entire year. The long-term solution is to get surgery to fix it. I'm hesitant to do that though, because from what I can tell, recovery is slow and uncertain. I'd hate to give up a year of peak running to get a surgery that I could live without right now. Hopefully as the weather warms, the stiffness will decrease and I can at least make it through October with things as they are.

Speaking of the weather, things are getting frigid around here lately. Temps today were in the single digits when I awoke at 5AM, so of course I did what any hearty Midwesterner would do. I bundled up and headed out the door…and made a beeline straight for the health club treadmill. The thought of doing a long run in the cold windy weather was even less appealing than doing it on the treadmill. Overall it went OK, with all 16 miles done at 9MPH. Just a few more months of this nonsense and then things should start to warm up. I truly cannot wait.

New Beginnings

2008-01-17T14:45:00.000-08:00

I have never been one of those guys that can train non-stop all year long. I can usually stay pretty strong from January - October when I run my fall marathon. After the marathon, I can sometimes extend things for maybe a month or two, but at some point I need to just stop. I need to reacquaint myself with David Letterman and other late night TV viewing. Well, OK. Maybe not David Letterman, but at least the 10 o'clock news. I need to wake up at 7AM and not worry about the fact that my window to run for the day has probably already closed. I need to eat a normal lunch at work and not worry about hurrying off to the gym. I have to be normal. At least for 1 month out of the year I have to be.

And then, when that month or so is over, I need to start running even more than I needed to stop running a few weeks back. The drive returns. The drive to wake up and feel like I am accomplishing something, or at least working towards something. The desire to feel lean and fit. And fast.

This will be my third year following a higher mileage plan. During the first year, I was basically just surviving the mileage. Despite that survival mode, I PRed in every distance that I raced that first year, which showed me that this high mileage stuff really does work. The second year, I feel like I was really able to do high mileage AND train, which wasn't always the case that first year. I was able to PR in 5K, 8K, 10K, and Half-Marathon. Unfortunately, there was no marathon PR last year, which really leaves me itching to get one this year. So that's the goal this year.

I feel like there are definitely things I need to improve on if I want to accomplish the goals. First off, I need to be more consistent. Two years ago when I started this blog, I was close to fanatical about getting the mileage in. I simply wouldn't miss my mileage goal for the week. This created some rather lopsided weeks of running where I was chasing miles throughout the week. While that may not seem like the brightest thing in the world to do, it worked for me, because it kept me working towards a tangible short-term goal.

Last year, I was a little more realistic about my running, and allowed myself to back-off every now and then if things were getting too much to handle. This worked OK most of the time, but I'll admit this approach does scare me. It's a slippery slope when you start to give yourself breaks. A day off here, leads to an easy week there, which leads to lower mileage, which kills PRs. At least for me it does. I need to keep piling it on to keep myself moving forward.

So this year I want to more consistent with my mileage, but I also want to be more focused on my runs. I think I sometimes get a little rudderless when it comes to training. I need to make more of a deviation between recovery runs and training runs. Everything should have a purpose. Including this blog. If you see something that doesn't seem right to you, call me on it. I won't be offended. I value the feedback. My intentions here are purely selfish. It's to make myself a better runner.

I won't bore you with what I've been up to so far this year. It has been mostly just getting my legs back under me. I think that has been accomplished. The fun stuff is to follow.

PS...I'm glad to get this first post out of the way. I hate the "I'm back" post. Hopefully this is the only one I'll have to write this year.

You can't always get what you want...

2007-10-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you, uh deserve.

No PR this weekend at the Chicago Lakefront Ultra (and last minute Marathon). I ran a 2:45, which was the best I could hope for for the day. I had to deal with the some nagging hip pain from about 10 miles on, and was seriously considering not heading back out for the last loop of what was a three loop course. Having dropped out of a marathon earlier this year (In June), I decided this quitting thing could be a hard habit to break so I forced myself out to at least run the entire distance. Now with some time to think about it, I'm glad I did.

However, the real highlight of the weekend was the next day on Sunday, as my sister Becky ran her first race ever at the Gargoyle Gallop 8K and finished much faster than she was hoping for. I was trying to explain to her beforehand about race day magic, but I don't think she really understood it. That is until she came through mile 1 (and 2, 3, 4 & 5) and was amazed at how easy the faster than normal pace felt. I could tell she was hooked afterwards as she started telling me about all the races she wanted to do in the not to distant future. Great job Booga!

They also had a kids race after the 8K so the next generation of Castady's got their first shot at this running thing. As the got their final instructions from the race director, I could tell they both were plotting out their last minute strategies for tackling the daunting 1/4 mile distance.

And finally, the gun went off and it was all flying arms and pigtails. Chloe and Micheal were both running neck and neck, but finally somewhere just past the 1/8 turnaround point, Chloe realized that she didn't have to run with Micheal anymore and put a little surge in, and put some distance between her and her main rival.

Micheal, not to be discouraged by his OLDER sister, realized that he was still probably going to win the elusive 3 year old age group title and pushed it in hard to finish strong.

The rest of the morning was spent with the racers basking in the afterglow of races well run. Just a fun fun day. The kind of day that makes you realize how lucky you are to be a runner (and father) (and brother) (not in that order).

Almost Here...

2007-10-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

Ready or not, here it comes. Marathon - Take 2 is on for this weekend. I can't say that my training in the 3 weeks that were sandwiched between LBCM and this race were ideal, but hey, at least I'm well rested. Actually, with the baby coming last weekend, running time has been pretty precious, so when I have been able to hit the roads, it's been quality stuff, but the mileage hasn't gotten out of the 30's in any of the weeks since LBCM.

Having said that, I think physically, 6 minute pace is still something I can handle on race day if the conditions are OK. Now when I say conditions, the only thing that is really going to matter is the wind. Since this race is run entirely on the lakefront, the wind will be a factor, but hopefully it will be manageable. Also, since it's a 3 loop course, any time I spend with the wind in my face will eventually be repaid with a tail wind. However, windy days don't make for even splits, so I'd just assume that there isn't much of it. However, as we saw a few weeks ago, there isn't much you can do about race day weather.

Mentally, I'm a little worried. Not because I'm lacking confidence. I'm confident enough that I can run a solid race. What I'm most worried about is what's gonna happen at mile 23, when I'm beat, and all I have to go on is that mental toughness? There is a feeling that I get at the end of nearly every marathon. One where every fiber in your body is telling you to stop, but you have to keep going. That marathon fatigue is the one thing that I feel like takes the longest to truly recover from. Maybe it won't come to that. Maybe this will be one of those races, where I just cruise the whole time. A boy can dream.

and I just have to show the course map for this race. This is kind of the Anti-Lasalle Bank Chicago Marathon. No high tech website, no 10,000 of runners, no half mile water stops. Oh yeah, and no 85 degree temperatures either. YES.

Jack Connor

2007-10-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the world Jack Connor Castady.

Glutton for Punishment

2007-10-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

For better or worse, I'm gonna give the marathon another shot in a few weeks. I was alerted this morning that the Chicago ultra 50/50 has decided to extend their usual race offerings to include a certified marathon distance along with the usual 50K and 50 mile races. The race is 3 loops around a stretch of the Lakefront path that I am very familiar with running, so it should be a pretty nice run for me. Additionally, having volunteered at this race a few years ago, I know it is very well run. Also I just couldn't pass up the $28 entry fee. Whatta deal.

So now that the decision has been made, I need to come up with a way to recover properly from Chicago and still stay sharp enough to run fast in 2 weeks. I think I'll dedicate this week to recovery with shorter slow runs, and then next week I'll try and incorporate some race pace and track work into the plan. The final week will be an easy taper. I'm trying to treat this race as a bonus race and put no real pressure on myself to PR. I'll even give myself the option to bail entirely if I feel like I haven't recovered enough by race day. However based on how I feel today, I think I should be good to go.

LBCM Race Report

2007-10-08T20:14:00.000-07:00

Leading up to the what was to become my 10th Chicago Marathon, I must admit, I was getting a little psyched out. All anyone was talking about was the weather. They were saying it was going to be hot. They were saying it was going to be humid. Records would fall and PRs wouldn't. I tried to stay calm early in the week. Forecasts change. I know if I was planning an outdoor party for Sunday October 7th, I would be sure that no matter what the forecasts said on Mon-Fri, there surely would be a cold front coming through on Sunday morning. That's the way my parties typically go.

But the forecats never did change. So finally, on Friday I decided that it was time to stop hoping for something that I can't control and start figuring out what I was gonna do on Sunday. I had a race to run on Sunday and nothing was gonna get me out of that. Well, that's not entirely true. I did have the option of slipping some Pitocin into Kelly's drinking water on Saturday night to send into her labor and giving myself a free pass, but something just seemed wrong about that, so I resisted the temptation. Well, that's not entirely true. The truth is, I couldn't find any Petocin at Walgreens.

So the plan was to run the first half of the race in 1:20 and then see what I had left. I figured that if I was feeling great at the midway point, I would always have the option of picking it up and if I could negative split, a PR would still be in play. More realistically, I figured that would at least ensure that I could go relatively slow in the second half of the race and still be able to run a decent time. Once I decided on the strategy, I started to feel a little bit better about the day, but I was still edgy for the few days leading up to the race. I just had a feeling it was going to painful.

So by now everyone knows how hot it was in Chicago on race day, so I won't belabor that point too much. It was hot and I had a nice sweat going in the starting corral before the gun even went off. I met up with my friend Dave in the corral and we went over our final race strategies and basically tried to convince ourselves that the weather wasn't sooo bad. Finally the gun went off and within 23 seconds I was off and running.

I'm always surprised at just how many people I pass in that first mile of any large race. For the most part, self-seeding works pretty good, but there are always the people who just want to get way up front. In a 5K I could understand the thinking, but in a marathon, it just doesn't make sense. Especially in a marathon like today, where everyone knows they need to run slower than they are truly capable of. But it happens every year and it happened again. A 1:20 half would have me coming through each mile in about 6:07, so of course I came through that first mile at 6:00 flat and was feeling great.

I've never been one to write my strategy in pen. I like to be flexible on race day to allow for whatever might come up so I can adjust to how I feel. When can I say. It's a gift. Do you believe that? Yeah, me neither. When it comes to pacing, I have the discipline of a 3 year old (not my 3 year old. He's perfectly disciplined. cough cough). So when I came through that first mile feeling so good, I completely dropped the 1:20 nonsense, and just decided to run. I felt absolutely great. I was running solid 6 minute miles and was hardly even breathing. I was a machine. I couldn't be stopped.

I saw my aunts on the course and high-fived them. I saw my wife and joked with her that she can't go into labor for a few more hours because I was on fire. Heat? Humidity? I mock you. I kept thinking just get to Addison (the northern most point of course) and then once you turn around, you'll have a nice breeze in your face and things will be cooler. And it seemed to work too. I was cool. I was drinking. I was strategizing. I was doing it.

Through the downtown and the through the halfway point at 1:18:32. Still feeling great. I came up on mile 14, and saw some friends working the water stop and veered to the other side of the street just to get water from them, because I could. I could do anything. I was still feeling great. But it was getting hot. And sunny. Oh that sun. I saw my wife again somewhere around mile 15 and she asked if I was feeling good. I said…"We'll see." We'll see? What happened? Where was that unshakable confidence? I'm melting.

But I can get it back. A gel around mile 17 and my first dousing of water. Up to this point, I was trying to keep as much water off of me as possible. But now, desperate times call for desperate measures. And suddenly I was desperate. I poured water down my back and in my face. It felt great. I felt rejuvenated. I passed the woman runner that I was trading spots with for the past few miles. But this stupid fool on his bike with course marshal jacket, who is stalking the woman runner is driving me crazy. Why do I feel like I'm racing this bike? Get away from me bike. I hate this bike. I want to tackle this bike. What do I need to do to get rid of this bike!!! Then the woman and her bike were gone. And so were my 6 minute miles.

It was at mile 18 that I realized this wasn't going to be a PR day. It was going to be a survival day. It was tough to keep going as I saw my pace slip further and further from 6 flat and closer and closer to 7. I broke the race down and just started taking it in 2 mile chunks. Get to 20. Get to 22. Get to 24. Get to the finish. It helped me. But something else was helping me. Something was different about this race. Even though I was fading bad, I was also passing people. It's not often that you can drop 40 seconds from your pace and still pass people this late in a race, but it was happening. It kept me going. I started to race for place instead of for time. It kept a challenge out there. It gave me something to focus on.

But something else was different too. People were cheering for me. I mean not just cheering like they do in every marathon. People were looking me in the eye and talking to me. They were cheering for ME. At first I thought well, I do have a pretty good tan this year and I am in Pilsen. I can play that role. Viva La Mexico! But then it happened in Chinatown too. That's a stretch. And down the final stretch on Michigan. Hmmm. I finally came to realize, that I was pretty much running by myself. There was 1 or 2 people about 100 yards in front of me, and no one close behind me. People came out to cheer and if I was the only thing they had to cheer for, so be it. It was strange, but great.

I saw my wife one final time around mile 23 and she asked how I was feeling. I though the answer was pretty obvious based on how I felt, but I still was able to mutter something along the lines of, "I'll finish." And I finally did in 2:44:02, good for 76th place, about 5 and 1/2 minutes slower than last year, but almost 175 places higher.

While I'm happy with the effort, I must say that there is still a sense of incompleteness to this marathon season. The one thing I love about the Chicago marathon is that for the past 9 years, it always allowed me to go out and race the marathon and see where I stood for the year. It gave me tangible proof that this year was a success. There was no "if I taper" or "if it wasn't so hilly" or "if I had better weather." It was a time that I could compare to last year's race and compare apples to apples. There's definitely no comparing this race to anything. It was definitely, hmmm, unique. I feel like this year was a PR effort, just not PR results.

Today, I feel like I was hit by a cement truck. My quads, hips, calves, and even upper back are all killing me. I truly haven't felt this sore after a marathon since I ran my first one 10 years ago. It could have been the racing flats that I wore, or it could have been the fact that I ran the last 9 miles or so on severely cashed out legs, but I've decided that I'm going to blame that stupid bike. I hate that bike.

Here are the splits:

I Survived!

2007-10-07T16:42:00.001-07:00

Chip Time: 2:44:02
75th Overall

The last 10 miles were tough, as I'm sure my splits will show, but I survived, which on day like today is sometimes all you can ask for.

More details to follow.

This should be the easy Part...Right?

2007-10-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth, there just hasn't been much to write about lately on the running front. I had a good taper with some decent workouts mixed in with some light and easy running. If it wasn't for the weather, I'd be stepping to the line ultra-confident that a PR will be coming. Unfortunately, the weather does look like it is going to play a part in Sunday's effort.

Right now, the forecast calls for temps in the 70's and humid. As I've pointed out many times in this blog, I don't like humidity. At this point, the plan is not change strategies. I still think that I can run my race despite the warmer than normal conditions. If I can't, I guess I'll say that I gave it a good shot.

Of course all this internal debating could become a mute point, if baby #4 decides to make an appearance on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Last Saturday, Kelly went in for a routine 36 week check-up and without getting too much into the nitty gritty details, the doctor told her that she shouldn't stray too far from home in the next week or two...baby is coming. Soon. So we'll see how that goes.

So lots to think about, and not a lot I can do about either one. That's the marathon for you.

Cal City Half Marathon

2007-09-24T08:10:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years I've developed a routine for the Chicago Marathon. Three weeks out from the marathon, I try and pretend that it is just a regular training week. I try and convince myself that I'm not tapering for anything, and then at the end of the week, I run a small half-marathon by my house. Usually, about halfway through the week, I get lazy and decide that I really should be tapering and it's more important to get a good confidence boost from the half in a few days, so I start slacking off. This year was no exception.

For some reason , there is always someone at this race who is faster than me. When I was running a 1:21, there was some guy who would run a 1:17. When I got down to 1:17, there was a 1:14 guy there. When I got down to 1:14, the 1:12 guy started showing up. This year, I didn't know what I was capable of, and I really didn't recognize anyone who I knew could beat me. I mean it looked like there was a decent pack of fast looking guys, but no one who I knew that would beat me.

So the gun went off, with little to no warning, and we were off. My friend Dave's, pre-game pick for the winner, was out like a shot and quickly opened a nice little lead on me. I really wanted to go out slow on that first mile, but with this guy going out so hard, I lost all perspective on a decent pace, and hit the first mile in 5:13. Yikes. I'm gonna pay for that.

At that point, I knew that this guy was out of my league, and besides the goal of this race was to run strong, not win, so I from here I wanted to just settle into a nice pace and not worry about place. Not that it mattered. I was cemented in second place. I was able to get into a nice rhythm right around a 5:30 for the next bunch of miles though and was actually surprised at how fast the miles were flying by.

However, due to my completely self-defeating attitude, I kept waiting for the bonk to happen. I was pretty much in unchartered territory for the entire race. I was really closer to my historical 5K race pace than my historical half marathon race pace, so I really was unsure if I could maintain it. At every mile split, I just kept thinking, OK, if I do 6 min/miles from here on in, could I still PR? Finally around mile 7 or 8, it actually became possible to do 6 min/miles and still PR. For whatever reason that gave me some confidence, since I knew I could probably limp home and still come away with a decent time.

I can't say I ever really struggled during the race though, although miles 8-11 were the only ones that I let myself drift into the 5:40+ range. I say drift, because it was during those miles, where I just kept telling myself to get to mile 11, and then you can push as hard as you want. So I guess subconsciously, I took things easy and let the pace drift a little. Or maybe I was just tired.

I was able to recover at 11 though and got back under 5:40 for the 12th mile and ran my second fastest mile of the day (behind the insanely fast opening mile) for my last mile. I came across the line in 1:12:13, which is a PR almost 2:30. However, after checking my Garmin and many other Garmins at the race, the course was short by .15 miles. So for PR purposes, I took my average pace for the run, which was 5:34, and extrapolate (thank-you. Didn't even have to look that word up) that out to the full 13.1 miles which gives me a PR of 1:12:58. Also, my 10K & 10 mile split both blew away my previous PRs at those distances, but I guess I'll wait for a real race to update those PRs.

Here are the splits from the race:

I'll Take It

2007-09-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

Not a bad week, but nothing too great either. Recovery from Dances with Dirt was the main goal early on in the week and then the latter part of the week was spent trying to fit in some runs around an out of town wedding. I got the miles in which is all you can ask for sometimes. This is how last week went down:

Mon: 7 Miles Recovery from DWD
TuesAM: 9 Miles 6:38 Pace
TuesPM: 7 Miles
Wed: 17 Miles 6:21 Pace (last 8 around 6 pace)
Thur: 7 Miles
Fri: 21 Miles 6:41 pace
SatAM: 12 Miles 7:30 pace
SatPM: 10 Miles
Sun: 10 Miles Wedding Recovery Pace (Read: SLOW)

Total: 100 Miles in 9 Runs

Over the weekend, I took a look at my shoes and noticed that the bottoms were completely worn down to the point where there is hardly any tread left on them. That made me start thinking about how long I've had this current pair of shoes. I racked my brain and realized that my wife bought them for me as an early fathers day present, and that I actually wore these shoes for the Sunburst Marathon (which I dropped out of half-way through due to bad pacing).

So today I went back and looked at my log and realized that I've run over 1200 miles since then, and all but probably 30 of those miles were done in these shoes. Yikes. No wonder I've been noticing more and more pebbles during my runs. I can actually feel them through the shoe. I think now would probably be a good time to make that last marathon race day shoe purchase.

Catching Up

2007-09-12T09:22:00.001-07:00

The Dances with Dirt race was a blast this past weekend. I ran 3 legs of 6, 4.5, and 4 miles each. The first and last legs were on good trail with lots and lots of hills. The middle had some nice trails for the first 3 miles and then river crossings and mud jumping the for the last 1.5 miles. The middle leg was definitely the most fun I've had running in a long time. I was literally covered from head to toe in mud when I finished. When else does a grown man get to cover himself in mud and run around a forest in broad daylight? For me, this is my only chance at it.

Surprisingly, I recovered pretty quickly from the race. I was able to do 7 slow miles on Sunday to finish out the week and while my quads and hamstrings were sore, it wasn't the deep soreness that you usually feel after a marathon. I was fairly confident that if I took it easy the next few days, things would be back to normal by Tuesday or Wednesday. Monday was another slow 7 miler followed by a Cubs game in the afternoon. Miracles of miracles, they actually routed the Cardinals in the game and retook first place in the weak central division. Unfortunately, that first place standing didn't last very long, but I digress.

Yesterday I was thinking I was going to do 17 miles, but I woke up in the morning still feeling a little sore and very tired, so I decided to postpone the 17 one more day. Since this will be one of the last 17 milers I do before the marathon, I really wanted to nail it, so I wanted to make sure I didn't have any excuses if I struggled on it. So instead I did a 9 miler in the morning at a comfortable 6:38 pace and another 7 miles in the afternoon.

That left me with the 17 miler this morning. I woke up this morning to unseasonably cool weather. I think it was in the 40's when I started running and probably warmed up to the mid 50's by the time I was done. This weather is crazy. Last week I was complaining about how humid it was, and now I'm running in long sleeves and gloves OK, maybe the long-sleeves was a bit of overkill, but hey, I was cold when I headed out the door. I was feeling pretty good for the first half of the run, and was somewhat surprised to see the overall pace at 6:43. To be honest I thought it would be faster than that. However, I comforted myself with the fact that I was feeling very comfortable and the second half of the run is done almost entirely on the lakefront path where it's easier to run fast than it is on the city streets.

Once I hit that lakefront path, I seemed to hit a second gear. The last half of the run had mile splits as follows: 6:04, 6:08, 6:03, 5:58, 5:57, 6:02, 5:58, 5:58. Surprisingly, I was feeling pretty comfortable the entire time too, although I really do think that 5:53's may be a bit ambitious for marathon pace. To be honest, I would be thrilled with anything under 6. To say that I ran a marathon at a sub 6 pace would be pretty awesome, and something that I never thought I'd be able to achieve as recently as 2 years ago. Oh man. Am I starting with the contingency goals already? I usually am able to hold off on that stuff until at least the taper.

Last week by the numbers:

Mon: Off
Tues: 7 Miles (failed tempo run)
WedAM: 8 Miles
WedPM: 7 Miles
ThursAM: 9 Miles w 4 @ 5:53
ThursPM: 7 Miles
Fri: 13 miles @ 6:48 pace
Sat: Dances With Dirt Race, 18 Miles total
Sun: 7 Miles

Total: 76 Miles in 8 runs

Refreshing

2007-09-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

Now that I know Mike is watching my post titles, I figured I'd better make this one a positive one. No actually, this was one of the easier runs I've had in a while. It was 13 miles starting out slow and gradually increasing the pace. I had to meet one of my relay teammates to drop off some registration paperwork for the big race tomorrow, and he came with me for the first 3+ miles of the run.

It was nice to have some company for the run and the first few miles flew by around a 7:30 pace. Once he turned around to head back home, I was by myself and while I didn't feel like I was picking up the pace, the pace slowly headed down towards 7 min mile and when I finished the 13, it had come all the way down to 6:48. I finished feeling as fresh as I have all week. It was exactly what I needed today.

Tomorrow is Dances With Dirt, which is sort of a Woodstock for runners. There are 300+ 5 member teams and the running is just insane. Hills, Water, and Mud is pretty par for the course, no matter which legs you run. Now if I could just stay on the course this year instead of running 10 miles off of it, I will be just fine.

What Happened?

2007-09-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

I'll admit, I'm a bit torn about what I should do next. This week has been a struggle right from the start. On Monday, despite having the day off from work for Labor Day, was just a complete waste of a day as far as running was concerned. My wife was gone for most of the day at an art fair, and mercifully, I got to stay home with the kids. As the day wore on, a general weariness just continued to overtake my body and by the time my wife got home, I was in no mood for a run or much of anything, so I took the day off.

On Tuesday, I tried to do my regular 11 mile run with 8 miles at marathon pace, but quit after a mile and half at pace. I was having a real hard time keeping my breathing under control and was working entirely too hard to maintain even a 6 min pace. Yesterday I started to feel a little better, but decided not to push it and did two easy runs of 8 and 7 miles. Finally today, I did a 9 mile run in the morning with 4 miles at marathon pace of 5:53. It felt OK, but again, not as easy as it should have. The afternoon run of 7 miles was about as good as I've felt in some time.

At this point, I'm not sure what the problem is. I had a good week of training last week, so I'm not sure where this inability to run at a sub 6 pace really came from. I'm hoping it just has to do with the heat that has been back this week. To top things off, I have a 5 man relay race that I'm running on Saturday that usually leaves me pretty wiped out for a few days afterwards. With only 4 weeks until the marathon, I really can't afford to have 2 off weeks in a row, so I'm hoping that this general fatigue will pass as quickly as it arrived. At this point, I don't think I'm going to back off the miles too much. Hopefully, this week of shorter runs will allow me to bounce back quickly. However, if things continue like they have for the past few days, I may have no choice but to back off even more.

And A Child Shall Lead You...

2007-09-03T08:52:00.001-07:00

I must admit, on Friday morning I was really feeling the hard effort from Thursday morning. The legs were sore, particularly in the quad area. I took the morning run pretty slow clocking the 9 miles at a 6:55 pace. The afternoon run of 7 miles was somewhat rushed and while I didn't have a watch on to time it, it felt quicker than the morning run. We got out of work at 2PM in preparation for the Labor Day weekend, which turned out to be a good thing, since by the time I got home I was absolutely wiped out. I'm not sure why fatigue decided to overtake me today, but it did. I spent the rest of the day trying to be productive, but in reality I spent the better part of the afternoon curled up on the couch.

Saturday morning I was supposed to meet my friend Dave out at the lake front for 20 miles with 15 of them at his planned race pace of 6:07. Unfortunately, I found out early Saturday morning that he was coming down with the flu so the tandem run was canceled. I found this out at about 6:15AM and the smart thing to do would have been to head out right then to knock out the 20 miler, but I'm not a smart man. Instead, I headed right back upstairs to try and catch a few more minutes of sleep until Ryan woke up. Once the kids were up, I went with Chloe to her first soccer practice (she was by the far the most talented 4 year old on the field - and yes I'm VERY biased) and finally got back home with Ryan around 11AM. Kelly was going to be gone with the other two kids for at least another hour, so I decided I would head out for at least the first couple of miles with Ryan in the jogging stroller and then drop him off at the house when I knew Kelly would be home.

So I did my normal 7 mile loop, but then when I was just completing the loop, I looked in the stroller and Ryan was sleeping. OK, I'll do another loop. So I did. The another. And another. Next thing I knew, I was coming up on 13 miles and Ryan was dozing in and out, but enjoying himself the whole time. At that point, I decided to just finish the thing out and did one more loop which brought me back to my house at 18 miles. I'll admit, I was wiped out. I've never gone more than 10 miles with the jogging stroller, and it was definitely working the quads more a regular long run would. Plus, since I was planning on being back at the house after the initial 7 miles, I didn't have any water with me so I was a pretty dehydrated.

I did a quick drop of the babe and finished up with a quick 2 miles to bring the total for the day to 20 miles. I averaged a 7:02 pace for the exercise, but it was a well-earned 7:02. Most of the run was done on single track trail and manuevering that jogging stroller was not easy for a lot of it. In looking at my splits when I finished up, the more technical trail parts were done in the mid 7's while the straight miles were done closer to the mid 6's. While I probably would have been better served to do the planned 20 miles with 15 at 6:07 pace, I'm not unhappy with how things turned out. If nothing else, I think I got a little stronger with this run.

When I headed out on Sunday for a planned 10 miler, I noticed right from the beginning that the legs just weren't there. I quickly realized that I did absolutely nothing to restore the undoubtedly depleted glycogen stores after yesterday's long run. I had a salad and a hamburger for dinner, and very little on Sunday morning prior to the run. I made the decision to cut the run short at 7 miles and did wind up averaging 6:38. All in all, it was a pretty good week:

Monday: 11 Miles with 8 @ 5:53 pace
Tues: 15 Miles @ 6:39 pace
WedAM: 9 Miles 7:09 Pace
WedPM: 7 Miles
ThursAM: 9 Miles w 5 X 1mile (5:18, 5:15, 5:17, 5:17, 5:18)
ThursPM: 7 Miles
FriAM: 9 Miles @ 6:55 Pace
FriPM: 7 Miles
Sat: 20 Miles @ 7:03 Pace (18 with Jogging Stroller in tow)
Sun: 7 Miles @ 6:38 Pace
Total: 101 Miles in 10 runs

Heading to the Track

2007-08-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't even looked at a track all year long. I've done a few interval sessions, but these were all done on the lakefront path and they were really just kind of thrown together at the last minute. Maybe due to the lack of races that I've done lately, I've been itching to get out on the track and do something fast and measured to see where I'm at. My staple track workout has always been 5X1 Mile with a quarter mile jog recovery. It's the only track workout that I have some historical data to compare against. So I decided that would be my inaugural track workout this year.

When I got outside this morning, the humidity that has been in the air the past week or so was gone. It was sunny but cool, with a nice breeze…really perfect conditions for running fast. I did the mile jog out to the track and then did some strides on the infield. Things seemed to be feeling pretty good. When I headed out on the first mile, my legs felt really stiff for the first quarter mile or so. It's was weird. For every single mile that I did, it seemed like the burden was on my legs for the first quarter mile, I cruised for the next half mile, and then the burden was on my lungs for last quarter mile. I guess going from a 10 min/mile recovery jog down to a 5 min/mile can stress the legs a little.

Anway, the repeats went fine. The splits were 5:18, 5:15, 5:17, 5:17, & 5:18. For the most part, I was pretty close to fully recovered after each of the quarter mile jogs between each mile. I've never done this workout and been able to run all the repeats under 5:20 so this was a nice surprise. Perhaps the nicest thing was that I really wasn't killing myself to hit the times, although I don't think I could have done them much faster. It was the right pace for the workout I think.

The legs have definitely realized that something different happened this morning. They were screaming a little bit early on in the afternoon run, but once they loosened up, I made it through 7 mostly uneventful miles. The quads are a little more sore than usual, but it's a good sore. A sore that only comes with the knowledge that you worked hard this morning.

A Good Start

2007-08-29T13:47:00.001-07:00

Things have been off to a little bit better of a start this week. Monday started with the standard longer tempo run. I extended this one out to 8 miles and was able to maintain the 5:53 pace that I've been trying to hone in on during these runs. While I was entirely pleased at the amount of effort that it took to maintain that 5:53 pace near the end of the run, at some point, I guess you just have to take the results and not analyze them too much.

Yesterday was a 15 mile run and my main goal for this one was pretty simple: Finish feeling good. After last weeks bad 17 miler, I really wanted to back up yesterday's tough effort with a solid longish run. I think I met my goal as I averaged a 6:39 pace for the 15 miles and felt pretty good at the end. I've been feeling pretty beat up lately, so I took the day off of work(mental health day), and didn’t actually get outside until about 12:30 when the temps were supposedly in the 90's. It really didn't feel that hot though, as there was a decent wind and there wasn't a ton of humidity.

This morning was a pretty tough recovery 9 miler. Not so much that the run was tough, as I took it extremely slow (7:15 pace). I was just hot, tired, and sore. We had another one of those dreaded 9:30 softball games last night, and I didn't get to bed until almost midnight. We didn't turn the air conditioning in the house last night, which turned out to be a mistake, as I never slept for more than an hour at a time without waking up. I hate sleeping in hot weather. Since I was running into work, I got to sleep until 6AM, but it still felt way too early. The afternoon run of 7 miles felt much better and hopefully with a good nights sleep tonight(The air is already on), I'll be rested and ready to give my first track workout of the year a shot tomorrow morning. I haven't decided exactly what it's going to consist of, but I am kind of looking forward to the break in the routine.

Surviving

2007-08-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

The miles will either build you up or tear you down. I don't know were I saw this little phrase, but for some reason it stuck with me. Two weeks ago, the miles were really building me up. I felt like I was getting stronger as the week wore on. Then this past week, something happened, and it seemed the miles were tearing me down. The week wasn't really bad now that I look back on it, but something was just off for most of my runs.

On Saturday I had a full day of bachelor party activities for my cousin who is getting married in a few weeks. That meant that I had to wake up extra early to fit in my 20 miler that I had planned. I had a rough time falling asleep and when I rolled over and saw 4:30 on the alarm clock, I really didn't feel like getting out of bed. Looking out the window into complete darkness and hearing the splashes of another steady rainfall certainly didn't do much for motivation either.

However, I also knew that if I didn't get out there, right now, there would be no running today. With 18 holes of golf starting at 9:30 and no break after that, this was my time to run. So I dragged myself out of bed and forced myself out the door. This was definitely a run of isolation. It was raining pretty good when I got out there and there was nobody out on the roads. While I felt a little sluggish for the first half of the run, something seemed to click in to place once I hit that halfway mark, and I finished the run feeling the best I've felt all week, which really isn't saying much. I didn't bring the Garmin with me again, because of the rain, but looking at the time when I left and finished I think I ran it somewhere in the 6:40-6:50 range. The one thing I kept thinking as I was running in the steady rainfall, is that at least golf will probably be cancelled. There's no way we can play in this mess (I'm not a big golfer really). Of course right as I got to my doorstep, the rain stopped and the sun started to peak through the clouds. Grrr...

I've never thought of golf as a physical activity. I always kind of chuckled when I would hear people talk about their 18 holes of "exercise" that they got in this morning. However, by about hole #13, I was spent. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not a very good golfer. Breaking 100 for 18 holes is quite an accomplishment for me. However, today I was ready to be done after 9 holes and those last few holes were just plain ugly. Well all 18 holes were pretty ugly, but those ones were REALLY ugly. Fatigue definitely was playing a part.

I somehow survived the full day of activities and got to bed very late on Saturday night (ok, Sunday morning). I was just too exhausted to do much of anything for most of the day, but finally got out for a slow 10 miler around 5PM with Ryan in the jogging stroller. This was the first time I've taken Ryan out for a solo run(he's been in the double stroller a few times), and he seemed to enjoy it. The bad news is that my favorite trail that I run on is pretty much washed out in several section which means that my tempo run loop is no longer available until it dries up. I need to find a new route.

So I survived the week, hit 100 miles again and actually just looking at the numbers, it doesn't look that bad. It sure didn't feel good though.

Mon: 10 miles w/7 @5:52 pace
Tues: 17 Miles @ 6:50 pace
WedAM: 10 Miles
WedPM: 7 Miles
ThursAM: 9 Miles 6:51 Pace
ThursPM: 6 Miles
FriAM: 9 Miles w 5 @ 5:45 Pace
FriPM: 7 Miles
Sat: 20 Miles
Sun: 10 Miles

Total: 105 Miles

It's a Struggle

2007-08-24T14:41:00.001-07:00

It's been a pretty rough week so far. Following Tuesday's sub-par run, I woke up feeling pretty fresh on Wednesday. While this was a good sign, I kind of blew it because I wound up running my recovery run too fast. I ran twice on Wednesday, both without a watch, but the morning run was way too fast. The afternoon was at a more relaxed pace, but I was still feeling tired by the end of the day. To top things off, I had a 9:30 softball game on Wednesday that turned into a marathon due to the wind suddenly whipping up at gametime and blowing straight out. 45 runs later (26-19 final score), my legs hurt.

I woke up Thursday morning in no mood for a tempo run, so I ran a proper recovery run this time, clocking in at an average of 6:50 for the morning run and 7:00 minutes per mile for the 6 mile afternoon run. This was more of what I should have done on Wednesday. That left me with the option of doing a 5 mile tempo run this morning. I decided to kind of just get out there and see how I felt. When I saw the first mile pass in an effortless 6:40, I knew it was game on. I wound up averaging 5:45 for the tempo portion of the run and 6:01 total for the entire 9 miles. It was a nice lift to what has been a pretty bad week of running.

Part of it was probably caused by residual fatigue from last week, but I really don't think that was the major factor. I just really think that I don't get a long with humidity. The temps haven't been too bad the past two days, but the dewpoints are still climbing over 70 every day, turning every run into a steam bath. So for now, I'll just continue to push through the fatigue and deal with a bad run here or there. Hopefully I'll come out the other side a stronger runner.

Meltdown

2007-08-21T12:52:00.001-07:00

Yesterday's 10 mile with 7 at marathon pace went fine with the average of the run clocking in at 5:52 pace. I think I'm starting to hone in on a goal pace for Chicago and I think it's name is 5:52. I need to start extending this Monday run in the next few weeks as I build towards Chicago.

After being somewhat encouraged by yesterday's showing, it all came crashing back to earth during my planned 17 miler today. For whatever reason, I just didn't have it today. I wasn't feeling especially good even as early as mile 2, and perhaps I let some of those negative creep into my psyche and ruin this run for me. Last week I wined and complained about the rain that came during this run. Today there wasn't any rain, but you couldn't tell it by looking at me. It looks like the humidity is back in Chicago. I was a mess. The shoes were squishy by about mile 10 and everything was squishy well before that.

At the halfway point, I finally got the courage to look at my pace and found it be 6:50. At that point, if it was at all possible, I probably would have bailed on the rest of the run because I was feeling horrible. One of the pluses (or minuses) of a point to point run like my runs into work, is that there is no option to bail on a run. Once that trains drops you off, you're on your own. So with that knowledge I pressed on and somehow, I really have no idea how, maintained that 6:50 the rest of the run. I say that because it felt like I was absolutely crawling for the last 5 miles of this run.

So while I don't exactly what caused today's problems, I am not completely discouraged by it. It is somewhat encouraging that despite being off today, I was still able to maintain what ultimately was a sub 3 hour marathon pace for 17 miles. A few years ago, I would have killed for a good run like this. Now, all I can say, is that they all aren't going to pretty, and hopefully, they won't often be this ugly either.

The Week that Was

2007-08-20T07:17:00.001-07:00

This week was probably my best training week of the year, and not coincidentally, it happened when I recommitted myself to the early morning routine. Thursday was a solid tempo run followed by a short recovery run in the afternoon. On Wednesday Ryan mentioned that he thought my recovery pace was a little too fast, and kind of defeating the purpose of what a recovery run should be. I completely agreed with him and in case I needed further proof, I just had to look at Thursday 5 mile tempo, where I was really struggling to keep the pace down and wound up averaging 5:44 for the entire run. This workout should really be done at or below 5:40, so I think if I take my recovery Wednesday a little more serious, the times will take care of itself.

On Friday I did a 9 miler, with a real focus on keeping the pace over 7 min/miles. I was going fine until about mile 7 when something must have clicked and I wound up taking the pace down to a 6:58 for the run. Close but no cigar. I will admit though that I felt absolutely great following the run, so I think that slower pace did help. I did do another run in the afternoon and felt so good I through in some strides at the end just to keep the legs sharp.

Saturday was a 23 miler scheduled with Dave, an occasional commenter of this blog. It isn't often that I get to do long runs with someone so when I get the chance I usually will jump at it. Also, since 23 miles is the longest I have run since April of this year, having someone there to fight the boredom, and keep my pace in check was definitely a big plus. The temps plummeted on Friday and Saturday morning there was almost a chill in the year. I think it was probably around 60 when we started and never got over 70 the entire run. It was definitely a nice break from the summer heat.

Regardless the first 5 miles or so things were just off. My breathing was labored despite the pace being around 7 min/miles, and I could hardly even carry on a conversation. Thankfully, that passed after about mile 6 and things finally started to click. The run was going so good that I was getting a little nervous as we approached the turnaround point at 11.5 miles. Often when running on the lake, your aided by a tailwind without even knowing it and then are in for a rude awakening when you turn around. Not today though. While there was a slight wind in our face heading home, it was nothing that would slow us down and actually probably helped to keep things cooled off. The only real challenge on the return trip was the air and water show spectator traffic, which was all over the north end of the running path. We clocked the entire run at a 6:38 pace, and other than those first 5 miles or so, I felt great the entire time. It was definitely a nice confidence booster.

Sunday was just a general aerobic 10 miler in the pouring rain. I left the garmin at home because I didn't want to risk taking it out in the rain.

It looks like rain is going to be all over the place for the next several days so it will be challenge to motivate myself to crawl out of bed in the morning. Here is the week that was:

Mon: 10 miles with 7 at 5:50 pace
Tues: 17 miles @ 6:28 Pace
WedAM: 9 miles @ 6:40 Pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Untimed
ThursAM: 10 Miles with 5 @ 5:44 Pace
ThursPM: 6 Miles Slow
FriAM: 9 Miles @ 6:58 Pace
FriPM: 6 Miles slow with strides at the end
Sat: 23 miles @ 6:38 Pace
Sun: 10 Miles

Total: 107 Miles in 10 Runs

So while this was a nice week, the real challenge is to start stacking these weeks on top of each other. I have 5 more training weeks until taper for Chicago. I hope to make them all top quality.

Oh, the pain

2007-08-15T14:58:00.001-07:00

I was feeling pretty beat up this morning and really was glad to be done with the 9 mile recovery run I had planned (6:40 pace). It was another humid morning, which makes these recovery runs a little less pleasant than they normally would be. Right now I'm dealing with a pretty painful right hip. It seems to respond to IT Band stretching, so that is what I've been focusing on…and by respond, I mean it really hurts when I do those stretches, so it must be working. I have problems with my IT Band in the past, although the pain has always been in my knee and not in my hip. I know that the ligament does run all the way up to the hip though so I'm hoping it's just that.

This afternoon I was able to sneak out for a quick 7 miler as well and things felt surprisingly good. I left the watch at home and just ran relaxed. The hip felt fine for the most part, but my right foot decided to act up. It was actually a little strange. There wasn't any pain really, it just felt weak. It's never happened before, so I'm not going to make a big deal out of it yet. Isn't that just a typical recovery day for you? Everything hurts. Good to get that out of the way on an easy day.

A Wet One

2007-08-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning and looked outside and thought…hmm. 5:30 and it still pitch black out. That seems a little odd, but you know, I'm still getting reacquainted with the early morning runs, so maybe this is normal for mid-August around here. Got up and got ready for the run, and remembered that I left my shoes outside after yesterday's run. Luckily they were under a big table umbrella, so they didn't get all dewey or anything. As I headed back inside, I felt a drop of rain on my face. Great. I hate running in the rain. But maybe, just maybe it will hold off until I'm finished. No such luck. By the time I was ready to head out the door, that drop of rain had progressed into a full-bore storm with thunder and lightning and everything. I'll admit the thought crossed my mind to bag the whole thing, but Tuesday's are usually my swing day for the week. If I have a good run on Tuesday, things usually go good for the rest of the week. If I screw it up, it usually spells doom for that week.

With that stuck in my head, I headed out the door to jump on the train which drops me off exactly 17 miles from work. When I arrived at my drop point, the rain had turned into a downpour but what could I do? After about 10 minutes of slogging through the puddles, I put the garmin away in my plastic baggie with the rest of my valuables (train pass, gym ID, work ID, money), because I just don't trust the Garmin definition of water proof. Once the initial shock of being rained on wore off, the run was kind of fun. After a while, I just stopped trying to avoid puddles and just ran right through them. It's not like I could get any wetter. Also, the neighborhood that I have to run the first half of this run through is not very good. With the rain coming down in buckets, it pretty much emptied the streets and sidewalks, so I was left alone the entire run. That very rarely happens on this route. Usually the comments are good natured enough, but it still makes me feel uneasy.

Finally after about 13 miles, the rain sudsided and things started to brighten up. At that point, I was on the lakefront path nd with a slight breeze at my back,I was able to enjoy things for a bit. I finally pulled the Garmin out of the valuable repository (my baggie), and saw that I was averaging a 6:34 pace for the run. Now with no rain and wind atmy back, I could tell that the pace had quickened, and I just let it go. If Mike can run back to back tough workouts I can follow up a hard effort with a moderately paced longish run. By the time I made it to the gym I was at a 6:28 pace, and feeling pretty good. Well feeling good from a running standpoint. I'll admit that the rain did cause one problem. Chafing. Yikes.

Marathon Pace (I Hope)

2007-08-13T14:05:00.001-07:00

So this past weekend was the Chicago Distance Classic in, as the name hints at, Chicago! Last year, I feel like this race was the pinnacle of my training for the year. I trained all summer putting in lots of hundred mile weeks, but didn't really race anything over a 5K until this race. At this race, I ran a 1:14:41, which was a PR by about 3 minutes. A few weeks prior to this race, my mom was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer (it still hurts to write that), which pretty much sent my training into the crapper, and I feel like every race after this one was done on just pure residual effect from the great training I was able to do up to this point. But for this one race last year, I was in top form.

This year, things are different. While I wouldn't call my summer exactly stellar, it hasn't been bad. Even with last weeks meager totals, I'm still averaging 70 miles per week for the year (70.2 actually, but who's counting), while last year I think I was closer to 80 miles per week. There is probably a little more quality to the miles I'm doing this year as well, which definitely counts for something. I also think that since this is the second year of running higher mileage, the cumulative effect of all those miles is still paying dividends for me. So I still think I have a great opportunity to run a great race in the marathon this year. What I need to do to make that happen is to focus on these next 8 weeks to make sure that I put myself in the best position to succeed. Switching back to morning runs is one step in that process.

This morning was my longer tempo run where I try and run around marathon pace. This is the third week that I've been incorporating this run into my schedule and I think I'm starting to get some idea of what a 5:50-5:55 pace should feel like. I still hesitate to say that is what my marathon pace is going to be (it sounds a little intimidating at this point), but I guess at some point you need to pick a time and go with it. The way this run works is I do about a 2 mile warm-up and then I start with about a half mile of winding trails that lead me to a two mile loop that I do 3 times and then head back on the half mile trail. The run is done exclusively on a gravel path, so while I do save a little pounding on the legs, I really don't like running fast on gravel. It gets in my shoes and I just don’t feel fast on it. There. My daily wine is out of the way.

The run went good today. I try not to check my watch too often during my runs so I can get some sort of self-pacing going on. For the first loop of this run, I was really just focusing on staying comfortable. I seemed to hit this goal and still came through the 2.5 mile mark at a 5:55 overall pace. My breathing became a little more labored as I went to work on the second loop. I wasn't sure if this was because I was subconsciencly upping the pace, or if the 5:55 was getting to me. However, when I came to the end of loop 2, I had worked the pace down to 5:50, which confirmed that the increase in effort did coincide with an increase in pace as well. The last lap I kept that overall pace at 5:50, and that's also where I wound up at the end of the 7 miles. The last half mile was tough, probably more because mentally, I was thinking of the run as 3 loops, so when I completed the 3rd loop, I wanted to be done! I finished the run with a slow mile back to my house for 10 miles total for the day.

I was hoping to get out for a slow 7 miler at lunch today, but the boss had other plans, so I'll probably just bag it. With 17 on tap for tomorrow morning, I don't want to jeopardize the quality of that run for a recovery run.

At Least It's Over

2007-08-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm glad that's over. Last week just turned into a total waste of a week running wise. I totaled 47 miles and none of them were anything to write home about. I wish I could say I was nursing an injury or tapering for a race, but I have nothing really to blame it on except for my own laziness. I got into a bad rhythm to start the week and never really got the ship righted. I'm almost embarrassed to put my week down, but here it is:

Mon: 8 Miles 6:20 pace
Tues: Off
Wed: 12 miles
Thur: 7 miles w/ 20 min @ 5:45 pace
Fri: 10 miles easy
Sat: Off
Sun: 10 miles easy
47 miles total

I've developed a bad habit over the past few months where I have been relying on getting in the bulk of my mileage during my lunch break at work. While this has been working out OK for the most part, it definitely is not without problems.

First of all, when you factor in changing and showering time, most of my runs don't really fit into the generally accepted hour lunch. However, for the most part, my work is pretty flexible with things so I come in a little earlier than everyone and everyone seems to just look the other way if I take an extra 15-20 minutes during lunch (OK, maybe a little more than that on some occasions). The second problem, is that stuff comes up. I wrote about this last year, but I'll just reiterate it one more time. For me, the only time I can guarantee to get a run in is if I do it first thing in the morning. If I count on running at lunch, things came come up that will cause me to miss it. If I count on running when I get home from work, I have to wait until the kids are in bed, which usually is around 8:30 and that's just a lot of time to talk myself out of running. So the morning's are the time to do it. Finally, it gets hot at noon during the summer in Chicago. Not only does this make the run unpleasant, it also makes it much harder to accomplish what you're trying to do for the day. It's much harder to go sustain LT pace when the temps are in the 90's as opposed to the 60's and 70's that you deal with in the morning.

So it's time to rededicate myself to the morning routine. I started getting into the lunchtime habit, because Ryan, our 9 month old son, was waking up every morning around 5:30 - 6 which is right around the time that I would usually be heading out the door to run. So the choice was either run anyway, and let my wife deal with the baby, or give her an hour break and put off the run until the afternoon. I usually chose the latter. However, now that Ryan is finally sleeping somewhat consistently until about 7AM each morning, I feel a little less guilty about not being around if/when he wakes up.

So with 8 weeks until Chicago, I think it's time to switch things up and go back to what I know works…morning running. Hopefully, this will result in more consistent, quality runs. I'm not going to totally abandon my lunchtime runs, but hopefully these will be only shorter recovery runs. The work will happen in the morning. Things started out OK this morning but I'll leave that for another post. See, I want to bury this week as quickly as possible, and I think the best way to do that is to make this it's own post, and then later today I'll write about today's stuff. Yeah, it's cheap, but it's my blog, my rules.

A Bad Week

2007-08-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I just start a week on a down note and it goes downhill from there. This week is just one of those weeks. The mileage is down, the intesity is down, and the motivation is way down. In the past when this strikes, I usually just go with it, let myself take an easy week and vow to come back strong the following week. I guess that's my plan right now. I realize that it's rather convenient that this down week comes during the hottest and most humid week of the year so far in Chicago. Pure coincidence. I swear.

Today I tried to give myself a break and run indoors at the gym. Somehow my body just knows that it disgustingly humid outside though. I tried to do a 5 mile tempo run at 5:45 pace, and while everything felt OK for the run, I just felt horrible for the two poor souls who were stuck running next to me on the treadmills. I was sweating like a pig and was having a very difficult time containing it to my little 4X10 treadmill area. I stopped after 20 minutes of tempo running because I was grossing myself out.

So I'll limp through the rest of this week and start fresh on monday. While this week hasn't been a total wash, it certainly isn't anything to write home about. Doing this for one week will be fine, but it has to stop after this.

Overdoing It

2007-08-03T08:52:00.001-07:00

Wednesday was an easy day with two runs of 8 and 7 miles. Somehow the morning run wound up being done at a 6:20 pace, although it didn't feel that fast. I think I had a nice breeze at my back that helped push along the pace a little bit. Also, I was running late for work due to some train gaffes, so I might have been subcounciously pushing things trying to make up time. The 7 miles in the afternoon were done at a very pedestrian pace, and went much better than the last time I did a double.

On Thursday, I was planning on doing my usual Thursday tempo run of 5 miles, but due to a late night softball game on Wednesday I didn't get out in the morning for a run. I was then going to knock it out at lunchtime, but things got really crazy at work so that was shot down as well. Normally, those are my only two real windows for running as the rest of the day is reserved for work and family stuff, but today the family was spending the night in Michigan so I had the night pretty much freed up. So in a last minute decision, I decided to swap out the tempo run for a longrun along the lakefront.

When I headed out at about 5:45PM, the temps were in the high 80's and it was pretty humid. I was seriously questioning the wisdom of attempting to run 20 miles, but I had nothing else to do for the night, so I figured I might as well take advantage of it. I took things very slowly for the first half of the run and things actually weren't too bad. There was a decent breeze blowing by the lake and while I was sweating pretty badly, I felt good for the most of the run. I did the first half at a 6:58 pace and did 6:36 for the second half. Things started to get a little hairy around mile 17 or so and by 19 miles I was at a spot where I could either call it a day or do a little mile loop to make it an even 20. I opted for the easy way out and stopped at 19.

While I tried to drink as much as possible during the run, I was pretty dehydrated by the end and my stomach was a mess. I showered and got some water for the ride home, but was pretty miserable the entire time. By the time I got home, I was in pretty bad shape. I was getting the chills and was feeling nauseous anytime I tried to do anything other than lay down. Finally, I got up to try and get some water, and wound up throwing up all the liquid that I've drank up to that point. I wound up throwing up 3 times during the night and had the chills and cold sweats as well. Finally around 2AM, I woke up and was able to eat something and get some fluids in me. Oopsy. Lesson learned.

Not sure what the plans for today are. I still feel a little weak, and the thought of actually running in hot temps again makes me feel sick all over again. I'll probably do the smart thing and take a day off, although a nice easy 7 miler may tempt me later on. We'll see if I can withstand that urge.

Never Leave a Paper Trail

2007-07-31T11:47:00.001-07:00

14 miles this morning in an unknown amount of time. I have this thing where I hate to look at my Garmin too often, because really no good can come of it. There are really only two possible outcomes from looking at it:

1. I'll get frustrated at how hard everything seems for a pace of
OR
2. I'll be amazed at how easy this pace is, and decide that I want to negative split the run.

Now, I guess there's a time for both of these reactions, but on just your standard everyday, training run, there is no need for either of them. So to try and avoid them, I simply don't look down. Usually this works out pretty good for me, but today I must have forgotten to hit the start button when I took off, because when I returned home to see the results, the watch relayed the following information for me:

Distance: 0.00
Time: 0:00:00
Pace __:__

So either I imagined the entire run or I forgot to hit the start button. My legs (and appettite) are telling me that it was no imaginary run, so I must have forgotten to start the darn thing. Oh well.

For the most part, I went from feeling nauseous and achy to feeling great, alternating about every half mile or so. The right hip continues to remind me that it's there. Usuallly the first mile and anything over about 12 miles is where I notice it most. I really do think that if I stretch it out for a few days it would just go away, but I have all the discipline of a 5 year old when it comes to stretching, so that is harder than it sounds.

I Wish I Could Bottle It

2007-07-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was a tale of two runs. I normally do my long runs on Friday so I don't have to worry about it over the weekend, but I was feeling a little beat up on Thursday so I decided to flip flop Friday and Saturday to give my legs a little break. So Friday called for two runs of 9 and 7 miles. I was actually very surprised that the morning run went by without a hitch. For some reason, there was some spring in my step and I completed the run at a 6:30 pace. However, things came crashing back down to earth in the afternoon for what should have been a very easy 7 miler. To say I struggles on this run would be an understatement. It was pretty humid out, which I've beginning to figure out is my Kryptonite, and the entire run was all about survival. I didn't bring the Garmin with me, so I can't say precisely how ugly it was, so you'll just have to take my word for it. It was ugly.

On Saturday I spent the morning painting kids rooms, which always takes longer than I expect it to, and didn't wind up heading out for an 18 miler until about 1:30PM. Luckily, the temps weren't too bad on Saturday, although that humidity always seems to get me, regardless of air temperature. I was cooked by the end and was glad to be done with an overall pace of 6:49. The hamstring and hips really were giving me problems from mile 10 on during this run. I'm hoping it was just from being on my feet all morning painting and then going straight into the run. I'm not used to manual labor, and I'm not proud of that.

Sunday we made a last minute decision to take a day trip out to Michigan City, IN to visit the zoo and the beach. I brought my running shoes but never got a chance to get out for a run during the day. By the time we got home, I was tired, hungry, and in no mood for a run, so I skipped it. So that brought my total for the week to 82 miles in 8 runs. While my mileage is not quite where it was last year, when I was consistently at 100 miles for most of June and July, I feel like I'm putting in more quality miles this time around, so hopefully that tradeoff will work out for me come racing season.

For the week the schedule looked like this:

Mon: 9 miles with 7 @ 5:53
Tues: 14 miles
WedAM: 9 Miles @ 6:37
WedPM: 7 Miles
Thur: 9 miles with 5 @ 5:41
FriAM: 9 Miles @ 6:30
FriPM: 7 Miles (Ugly)
Sat: 18 Miles @ 6:49
Sun: Nothing

Total: 82 Miles in 8 Runs.

Today was 9 miles with 7 of them at a relaxed tempo pace. What I've decided to do this year, is to do a 7-10 mile tempoish run on Monday's where the pace will be somewhere around marathon pace and then a 5 miles tempo run on Thursday's at a faster pace, probably closer to half-marathon pace. Of course these paces are more minimum guidelines. If I were to run slower than this, I would consider the workout a failure.

Today I headed out for 7 miles around marathon pace, but something was just off right from the get-go. Not off in a good way, off in a weird way. Like my legs just wanted to move, and my lungs agreed. I wish I could bottle it and save it for a race day, because I felt like I could have run forever today. The temps were warm when I was out there, mid 80's probably, but there was no humidity in the air, which I'm sure helped the cause. Anyway, when I started out, my main thoughts were to just stay relaxed, and I thought I was, but I came through the first mile in 5:26 and thought for sure I'd be paying the price later. I tried to slow down, but the next mile was an identical 5:26. At this point, I knew that this was way too fast for me to be doing on a Monday so I forced myself to slow down and finally started to find an acceptable pace in the mid to low 5:40s for the rest of the run.

This run just breezed by and I wish I had the answer why. Maybe it was the day off yesterday or maybe it was the break in humidity, or maybe it was a fluke. I'll take it though. Days like this don't come too often so when they do, I'll gladly accept them, no questions asked. For the day I did 9 miles with 7 @ 5:39 and finished feeling fresh. Strange indeed.

The Same, But Different

2007-07-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

This is the problem with comparing one run to another from week to week. Last Thursday, I did a 5 mile tempo run ending with an average pace of 5:40. Today, I did the same exact 5 mile tempo run, ending with an average pace of 5:41. So, at first glance, you could say that I'm the most consistent tempo runner in the world and that I have this workout mastered. Of course you'd be wrong.

The devil is in the details and really these were two very different runs. Last week the wind played a big part in the run, with a headwind for the first half of the run and then a tailwind for the second half. If you look at those splits from last week, it really was more of a progression run, with a 5:25 last mile bringing the overall pace down to 5:40.

Today was warm, sunny, and calm with no real wind to speak of. That helped keep things a bit more consistent, with all the splits within 10 seconds of each other (not perfect, but better). I finished feeling strong, although not particularly fluid or anything. Probably due to a late night softball game yesterday, I was pretty stiff for the entire run. The splits for the day were 5:42, 5:46, 5:43, 5:36, 5:40 with 9 miles total.

That’s running on the Chicago lakefront though. You really never know what you're gonna get until you get out there. Some day's the wind feels like it's gonna push you backwards and other days you hardly notice it. Small price to pay for what has to be one of the best running set-ups that any big city can offer.

I guess that's why the pay me

2007-07-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

Things have really started to heat up at work lately, so running has definitely been difficult so far this week. Yesterday the plan was to get in a medium distance run and I tried to squeeze it in, but all I could manage was 14 miles at a probably too fast pace of 6:20. Like I said as I was in a huge hurry to get back to work, so I was pushing the pace as much as I comfortably could. For some reason, both of my hamstrings were cramping up pretty badly near the end of the run, but once I stopped and rehydrated, they seemed fine.

This morning was 9 miles at a relaxed 6:40 pace. I had planned to venture out at lunch for another 7 miler, but I've been to busy to do much of anything today so the run will have to wait until (hopefully) later tonight. I'm pretty lucky in that most days at work I have enough to keep me busy, but not too much where it's overwhelming. However, every once in a while, things can get a little hectic. I kind of like it…as long as it doesn't become a habit!

Lake Geneva

2007-07-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

This past weekend my wife planned an impromptu family trip up Lake Geneva on Friday, which just so happened to coincide with the day I was planning on knocking out a 20 mile run. My original plan was to try and squeeze it in before driving up there, but after doing some research on the area, I found what appeared to be a perfect alternative. While the details were somewhat sketchy, there were many references to a 21 mile lakeshore walking path that ran along the entire perimeter of Geneva Lake. I couldn't find a map of it or details on what exactly this path consisted of, but it seemed to exist, so I decided to give it a try.

We got there around midday, and soon after that I headed out to find the trail. The path started out innocently enough in downtown Lake Geneva. You start on a sidewalk, which leads you to a paved waterfront path. However, from there, you are completely at the mercy of each individual homeowner as to what the path will be made of. Some used cobblestone to pave their path, some used wood planks, some used nothing at all. The run turned into a 22 mile survival march, with really cool scenery. Since the entire run took place running through people backyards, you did get to see some pretty impressive houses. All I kept thinking was how much it must cost to maintain these places on a monthly basis. I mean landscaping alone must run into the $1000's. Maybe someday. The run definitely wasn't blazing fast, but since I forgot my Garmin at work, I don't really have specifics. It took me about 2:35 to go what was about 22 mile though. I've heard they have what they call a euro marathon that follows this same "path," that is run in the late spring. I might have to give it a go next year.

After the run, my right foot was really hurting me. I have quite a few minor problems with this foot and they all were screaming at me. I think it probably had something to do with the 2 and a half hours of running on uneven surfaces. There was definitely a little more twisting and turning going on down there than usual.

The next day, was filled with swimming, and traveling back home, and then birthday parties, and sadly, no running. On Sunday I did 2 runs of 12 and 7 miles with one set of 10 striders. Both runs were done at a relaxed pace and the foot gave me no problems. For the week I did the following:

Mon: 8 Miles
Tues: 16 Miles @ 6:26
WedAM: 9 Miles @ 6:46
WedPM: 7 Miles relaxed
Thurs: 9 Miles W/5 @ 5:40 Pace
Fri: 22 Miles
Sat: Nothing
SunAM: 12 Miles with 10 strides
SunPM: 7 Miles Relaxed
90 miles for the week

Today I went out with the thought that I would do whatever my legs would let me. I'd like to consistenly run two tempo runs per week along with one medium run and one long run per week. In order to accomplish this, Monday becomes a pretty key day for me. I was hoping they wouldn't feel too beat up from last week today so I could do a longer tempo run (7 Miles) at around race pace (6 min/mile). After a 2 mile warmup, I still wasn't convinced that I'd be able to do anything up-tempo, but decided that I'd give it a shot and see what happens. The legs felt like they were working hard during those first two miles, but my breathing was easy and I had a feeling I wasn't moving nearly as fast as I thought I was. This was confirmed when I finally allowed myself to look down at my pace after 2.5 miles and I saw that my pace was at 6:19. Shortly after that though, something seemed to click into place and I started to find my groove. The pace dropped considerably at that point as the run slowly morphed into a progression run. The splits for the 7 miles were as follows: 6:17, 6:23, 6:03, 5:49, 5:43, 5:51, 5:40.

Turning the Screw

2007-07-19T14:05:00.000-07:00

I might have overdone things a bit on Tuesday as the legs were not very happy with me on Wednesday morning. I let myself go as slow as I wanted to on the morning run and ran the first few miles at 7+ but slowly worked the pace down to a 6:46 by the end of the 9 miles. The afternoon run was more of the same with 7 easy miles. The legs and stomach were both knotted up until about mile 4 and then suddenly things started to click. It's been a humid couple of days in Chicago lately, and I think that I might finally be getting used to it. I was really struggling with it earlier in the season.

Today called for a 5 mile tempo run and to say that I was not looking forward to it would be an understatement. I spent the morning trying to talk myself out of it, and almost did on several occasions. However, once lunchtime rolled around, I found myself almost subconsciously, packing up my running stuff and heading over to the gym to change. Things felt sluggish during my two mile warm-up and I still had my doubts about whether I was up for a tempo run today, but finally I talked myself into giving it a go and seeing what happens. Sometimes you just have to force the body to run hard even on days that you don't feel like it. You can't reschedule a race if you don't feel like it.

I intentionally started out a little slower than normal to allow the body to get used to the effort and to try and deal with the humidity, which once again was crazy today. I came through mile 1 in 5:49 and with the wind in my face, I was feeling pretty relaxed. The wind helped keep me somewhat cool, although you couldn't tell it by looking at me as my shoes became squishy somewhere between mile 1 and 2. The wind became more intense as I neared the turnaround point of the run and was howling when I finally reached the turnaround point with a 5:48 overall pace.

Usually there is some relief when I turn around after running into the wind, and while it was nice to not have the wind howling in my face, I quickly realized that these next 2.5 miles were going to get hot. Without the wind to keep me cool, the body started to heat up quickly, however, my I still felt relaxed at the pace I was running and other than being drenched with sweat, things were going good. I finished the run up with my fastest mile of the day, which brought the overall pace for the 5 miles down to 5:40 (5:49, 5:48, 5:47, 5:33, 5:25). It was probably one of the better tempo efforts that I've had this year.

A New Toy

2007-07-17T14:23:00.000-07:00

Maybe I haven't been running these 5K right, because after this last one, the legs were really creaky for two straight days. Usually, I don't even feel like I raced the day after a 5K. I think it's easy for the body and mind to kind of go into marathon mode during these races and not let you go too far over the redline in order to save something for later in the race. The problem is that in a 5K, there really is no later. You need to go hard from the gun to the end. I don't think I do a good job of that.

Monday the legs were still very creaky so I did a very easy 8 miler. I think part of the problem was that the race was at 6PM, and the legs didn't really get a good chance to shake out after the race. Normally after a hard effort like that, I have the rest of the day to walk around and get everything back to normal. That didn't happen Saturday night. I slept poorly that night as well because the legs were so stiff.

When I got home from work yesterday I had a "present" (as the kids were calling it) waiting for me. I had a Visa Giftcard burning a hole in my pocket that I got for my birthday a few weeks back and decided that I would see if I could a cheap mp3 player to use occasionally while running. I certainly didn't want to invest a lot of money in this thing as I have tried to run with headphones in the past and have never had much success. They seem to throw off my running rhythm and just generally annoy me. However, technology has come a long way since the days of the walkman, so I figured it might just be worth giving it another try. So off I went to search for a cheap mp3. When I stumbled on the 1Gb sunglasses/mp3 player, I was sold. Even if they were horrible, it was worth the price just to see exactly what 25 bucks plus free shipping would get me. Well, to say this thing came on a slow boat from China really isn't much of an exaggeration. It took almost 3 weeks to get here from Hong Kong.

I must say, I was initial impression when I opened the package was a good one. I guess I was expecting the worst, but the glasses seemed sturdy and pretty light as well. The only thing that seemed odd, was that I couldn't see out of the lenses. I'd put them on, and everything was distorted and fuzzy and dark. I thought to myself (OK, it wasn't to myself, I complained to my wife), the easiest thing to make on this thing had to be the sunglasses. How could they possibly screw that up? Finally I figured out that they had some protective sheets on the lenses to guard them against scratches. Once I peeled those off, all was well with the world. As an added bonus, the mp3 player came preloaded with 2 Britney Spears songs! Whatta deal!

The plan was to try them out today on my 16 miler, so I spent the night loading it up with songs (once I figured out how to "rip" them off of my CDs…I'm telling ya, I'm old school) and charging the battery (and deleting the Britney Spears songs of course). I was still expecting them to be horrible once I tried running with them on, but I must say that the thing performed admirably. They were lightweight, yet didn't move around at all while I was running, which I was kind of afraid of. The sunglasses didn't even fog up much, and it was pretty steamy out when I went for my run. The ear pieces don't actually go all the way in your ears..they just kind of sit next to your ear. I liked that, but that also makes it a little hard to hear if there's a lot of background noise. For the most part, that wasn't really an issue. There's no volume on the things that I can find (although I didn't read the manual, so there might be a way to do it), and there are only 3 buttons: stop/play, forward track, backward track.

Ah yes…the run. It went great. I pretty much just cruised the whole thing. I was surprised to see my pace at 6:29 at the turnaround point and finished with a 6:26 for the 16 miles. I must admit, it was kind of nice during those last few miles to be able to say only 6 more songs and I'm done, instead of counting down the miles (or the steps as it sometimes goes). I don't know if I'm quite a mp3 player convert, but for today, I liked it.

A Tale of Two Races

2007-07-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

Since I've last updated this thing, I have pretty much completed my 5K
racing season for the year. While I didn't break 16 minutes this "season" I did lower my PR by a few seconds, which at least shows me that I haven't completely lost my speed. I do still feel that I could break 16 if I were to dedicate myself to it for a few months, but it isn't something that I really enjoy doing so I'll probably skip that. As I mentioned a few times on Saturday before, after, and possibly even
during the race, 5Ks hurt and I hate them. Yeah, I know. Nice attitude.

On the 4th of July I ran my first 5K this year and finished in a disappointing time of 16:46. I did win the race and justified the time with the excuse that there wasn't anyone who really challenged me at all during the race after the first mile. My splits were 5:15, 5:30, and 5:30(ish), so overall it was just a sluggish performance. My legs felt really heavy for about the first mile and I never really felt like I was
running smooth the whole race. I'm not sure why this was surprising to me, as I have done very little fast training lately, but the confidence was still a little shaken, and thoughts of being washed up were slowly creeping into my psyche.

Despite the negative thoughts, I was able to get in a good week of training after the 4th of July race. While I didn't do any runs that would translate to 5k specific training, I did make it a point to incorporate strides into my post run routine a few times during the week. One thing that really stuck with me after the first race was how heavy my legs felt during that first mile. I think it was related to the fact that they just aren't used to running that fast. I wanted to make sure that the same thing wouldn't happen again the next time.

So this past weekend was my town's annual festival where they block off the downtown area and have all the food booths, beer tents, carnival rides, etc. It's a nice little event really. As part of the festivities, they added a Twilight 5K to the mix 4 years ago. Since then I have been able to win it all 3 years with times of 17:56, 16:53, and 16:43. I realize that there is nothing spectacular about any of those times, but it is a small race so that has been good enough for the win each year. For some reason this year, I was expecting a faster crowd and my hunch was quickly confirmed when I arrived at the registration table on race day. There was a local runner who I've raced many times throughout the years in various races throughout the region. While I usually can take him in the longer races he has me in the speed department so I knew that if I wanted to extend the streak I would have my work cut out for me. While I'd like to say that this is a friendly rivalry it really isn't. I've tried to strike up a conversation with this guy a few times in the past, and he wants nothing to do with me. Plus, he has nipple rings. To be honest, that annoys me.

The race starts out on about a half mile downhill slope and I knew that if I wanted any chance of a decent time I would have to go out hard, as this same hill comes into play in the last half mile of the race as well. It was a pack of 3 throughout the first mile, (the guy I knew about, a younger kid, and me) and we came through mile 1 in 5:03. Things felt much better than last week and while my breathing was heavier than I would have liked, the legs felt fine. Since that first mile is almost completely downhill followed by 2 miles of mostly uphill running ("hill" being a relative term of course), 5:00 was just about right on target. Shortly after mile 1, we dropped the high school kid (a nice kid, who wound up finishing 3rd and is on his way to Holy Cross for Cross Country season in a few weeks…I think I'll have to worry about him next year), and the other guy put a surge in and put about 10 yards between him and me.

Things stayed that way through mile 2, which I came through in 10:23 and I was really starting to feel it at this point. The guy in front of me was showing no signs of letting up and I didn't reallydidn ’t think I had another gear to go get him. It was all I could do to just keep the gap at 10 yards and give myself a chance at the end. At about 2 and a quarter miles, we took a turn where we had about a quarter mile of a slight downhill slope. For some reason, coming off of the corner, the leader took a really wide turn, while I cut it hard and I pulled even with him. We ran together until we made the final turn and headed up the biggest hill on the course, that pretty much lasts the entire last half mile. At this point, I figured if I wanted to have a shot at the win, I needed to push now. This guy has about 4 inches on me in the height dept. and I think if it came down to a sprint, he would beat me pretty handily. So I charged up the final hill trying to put as much distance between him as possible.

My legs were hurting in a whole different way during this last half mile. My quads were screaming at me and my lungs were on fire. I just kept thinking that any second now, this guy was gonna come up on my shoulder for one last push before the finish line. Even as I came through the 3 mile mark, I still didn't feel secure that I was going to win. Finally the finish line came and I could look back to see how close the race actually was. Once we made that final turn and headed up the hill, the guy must have just died, because somehow we went from being in a dead heat, to him finishing 28 seconds behind me. My final time according to my watch was 16:18, although the official timer got me at 16:22, a new PR either way.

Due to the course layout, this isn't a particularly fast course and with the late start, temps are never really optimal so it does give me hope that there is still room for improvement. Also, and this is just a gut feel, somehow I think I might have broken through some mental barrier during that last half mile. I was hurting like I never had before in a short race and somehow managed to push through it. My last mile was only a 5:30 or so but since most of that was uphill it was a well-earned 5:30. I'm still not a great 5K runner and I doubt I ever will be. But maybe, just maybe, I'm learning to not hate them anymore. Of course that's easy to say now, since I won't have to run another one for another year or so.

Eating Like a Champ

2007-07-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

It seemed like the legs were coming around near the end of last week and there was proof of that as I coasted through 20 miles on Saturday morning at a pace of 6:40. I ran with my friend Dave, who just recently completed The Boston Marathon in 2:48 and change despite the crazy weather they got there this year. It was nice to have company for the 20 miler and it made things really fly by. I think the unbelievable weather that we had on Saturday morning probably helped as well. Temps were in the high 60s to low 70s for the run and the sky was spectacularly clear. Chicago is bidding to become the host of 2016 Olympics and I think if there would have been members of the IOC in town this weekend, we'd be a shoe-in for selection.

On Sunday was an extremely slow 11 miles. The legs just did not snap back like I hoped they would after yesterday's 20 miler, but I'd have to say it was directly related to my post run meals. I might have over-indulged a bit on the junk food on Saturday with meals of hot dogs, with salsa and chips for lunch, and Spicy Buffalo Wings for Dinner…and these weren't exactly small portions either. Not exactly what the dietician would have ordered to replenish those depleted glycogen stores.

For the week I ran 90 miles in 8 sessions with a 14 and a 20 miler. While a lot of the runs were done at a slowish pace I think overall it was a decent week. While I still feel the hamstring scream at me every once in a while, everything else seems to be holding up pretty well.

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson and ate smarter on Sunday but I didn't. Ribs on the grill was the meat of the day and once again I paid the price with a sluggish run of 7 miles on Monday. Actually I was feeling pretty sick all day on Monday so just the fact that I got out there and did anything was a small victory. Hopefully now that I'm back at work, I'll get back into my normal eating patterns and things will return to normal.

This morning I did manage an 8 miler at a 6:07 pace, which was probably a little too aggressive, but it felt comfortable. I'll go out for another short run this afternoon, just to shake the legs out in preparation for my first 5K of the year tomorrow. Last year, I did this race in my PR time of 16:26, so this year I'd like to at least be flirting with 16:00. I have no idea how realistic that is, but I guess I'll be finding out tomorrow.

What a Difference a Day Makes

2007-06-29T14:54:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-27T12:52:00.001-07:00

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'

2007-06-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-20T13:46:00.001-07:00

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.