Park Forest 5mi

I haven't raced much in the last several months, since I've been building my mileage back up. The Woodsmen's 10.?K a few weeks back was the ice breaker, and really just a tempo on hills. Over Labor Day weekend, I ran the Park Forest Scenic 5 Miler.

I went into Park Forest thinking it would a glorified tempo, but unlikely anything all-in. I wound up running a very steady and controlled race.

It was a stacked race w/ some prize money. Something like 9 Kenyans showed up for a 300 person race! Also had a number of guys vying for top seats in the CARA standings. Weather was decent, however, winds were generally tails for miles 1 and 3, and heads on 2, 4, and 5.

Mile 1... Slightly down hill with a tail wind. Pretty much guaranteed to be the fastest mile. Several runners pushed ahead of me. Since I had no idea what I was actually going to wind up running, I just let it unfold. Everything felt good. A group of college / high school kids rolled by me. For a moment, I was impressed with how easy they were jamming. 5:27.

Mile 2... Blew by the kids. I thought they were going to suck on me as we turned into some head winds for about 1/2 mile. They weren't ever a threat. Dumb kids. I was no longer impressed. However, Felipe Lopez passed me (he'd be the last). Up in the distance were Steve Breeze and Mike Egle. All race hogs. Felipe and Steve are in my age group for the CARA Circuit, and they're generally slower than I am. I haven't seen them in a year, so this created a good measure for myself... They shouldn't blow me away. If they did, then I'd really need to start questioning my training. Felipe quickly put 20+ meters on me, and he still had another 20+ before Steve and Egle. 5:38.

Mile 3... Settled into auto pilot now. I still felt good, but didn't know how long that might last. I was slowly getting dropped by Felipe as he pushed to catch Steve and Egle. Maybe 50 meters between us now. Then all of a sudden, it was as if someone pulled in the train. We approached a few turns on the course, and I gained significant ground on their pack. I passed a few other guys that started to fade. 5:37.

Mile 4... I sat on Steve, Mike, and Felipe for a minute now. We turned a corner into the wind, and I immediately dropped them. No body challenged me. Somewhat surprising that Egle didn't step up. He's typically more aggressive than that. Either he had his own agenda, or he's starting to show his age. From here on, I was pretty much alone - one runner in the distance... easily another 100m up. I still felt strong, so I put a little more distance on the pack as I headed into a slight wind. 5:34.

Mile 5... Now straight into head winds, which were very steady and relentless. I still had plenty of gas, but the wind definitely made the final mile a challenge. At some points I was crawling. Other times, I was hammering. I mainly didn't want to get caught by my former road kills, so I just kept pressing. The runner in front of me was initially an after thought, but he started to show pain as the mile progressed. I could see him looking back and gauging me. We hit a quarter-mile long incline, and I started to reel him in. By the final 200m, he became my bitch. I buried him. An unimpressive 5:35 for the 5th mile, but given the evil headwinds, I'll take it. 27:53 overall.

First age for Circuit purposes... 14th over all... loaded w/ 9 Kenyans.

Split recap: 5:27, 5:38, 5:37, 5:34, 5:35... 27:53.

For comparative purposes: Back in the spring, my Shamrock 8k was 28:05 (also treated as a fast tempo versus all-in race). 8k is fractionally shorter than 5 miles. On an 8k basis, I could possibly shave another 8-10 seconds off the Park Forest time. Considering I didn't feel extremely taxed, I would say this was a nice test race.

Adirondacks

Two weeks at the cabin in the Adirondacks. I had the pleasure of spending the time with 5 dogs, 4 nieces, 3 sisters, 3 brother in laws, Mom and Dad, and The Most Interesting Man in the World. I can't really say that the trip was all that relaxing - but it was some much needed family time.

Clearly a whole ton of activities: rappelling off the cliffs from the falls, water skiing, swimming, hiking, 4-wheeling, boating, etc... and of course, my running...

Prior to getting up there, my left calf was starting to nag me. Once again, my age old fight with shin splints was on. They seem to go into hibernation, but never just die away. I took 3 days in a row off to chill things out and recover. (Probably much needed given the heat exhaustion/dehydration I've been experiencing in Chicago too). It would be one of my last opportunities to do this for quite some time. In the process, I loaded up on some anti-inflammatories, and started to stretch the hell out of my big toe (more so than ever before). And in the end I was running splint free by mid-week at the cabin. To note: all but 1 of my runs were in racing flats or VFFs.

I logged an 85 mile week and a 76 mile week. The 76 week was cut short because of a day trip to Old Forge. Every single run was on hills. Weather was very accommodating! Mostly in the low 70s for my runs, and only a couple soggy days. Importantly, no major injuries.

Adirondack Training Circuit:

Most was done on the 8 mile Soft Maple stretch between Effely Falls Road and the No. 4 Road (out and backs for 16). I also added a hill run to Stillwater, a tempo down to Croghan... and for the first time I ran the Woodsmen's Field Days 10k.

Croghan to Stillwater is a 2,000 foot climb, net 3,150 elevation change. My typical 16 mile loop is an 1,100 climb, net 2,100 change.

Workouts included:

16 mile progression run MGP (not so easy given the hills!!)

Woodsmen 10K: Hilly and clearly long by about 0.1mi. I went into it planning on doing a workout and going 35-36 depending on the hills. Sub-37 typically wins this thing. After I saw the first several runners bolt out of the gate (2 clearly belonged in front of me) - I stuck to the workout plan. Splits were 5:34, 5:38, 6:18 (hill+long!!), 5:47 (hill), 5:53 (hill), 5:34, 1:27.

11 miles to Croghan w/ 7 at roughly MGP (most of the MGP was rolling, w/o net elevation change).

20 miles w/ 7 at 6:35 on the hills.

The Chicago Steamer

Word on the street is that this summer is the WETTEST in history for Chicago. Combine that with steady 80-90+ degrees on a daily basis, and you get steam.

It's extremely uncomfortable and flat out sucks for training conditions. If by some miracle it's not ultra humid, then it's unbearably hot. It is impossible to run in this shit. It is also impossible to maintain any sort of hydration. At this point, I'm yearning for those frigid 0 degree days.... (though I know I'll regret that statement soon enough).

In spite of the weather, the last couple weeks' tempo runs have gone well. 6 miles for each of them, averaging low 5:40's. Last week wasn't 88 degrees, so I went marginally slower yesterday.

On the other hand, last Wednesday's track workout was a shit show. It was like 99.9999% humidity and 85 degrees. My 16x400's were at a sloppy 76-77 pace. Pathetic compared to what I should be able to run them in, and pathetic compared to the fact I basically ran the 400's at my 800's pace. I'm a whiny bitch... but it's justified because I haven't had a single decent track workout in this round of training. Each of my 5 workouts have been altered due to the weather.

I only have a few more days to deal with this though, as I'm leaving for the cabin on Friday. It'll definitely be cooler up there, though not necessarily less humid. I'll have 2 weeks in the Adirondack Mountains. When I get back, things should be more bearable and I'll be in much better shape to tear it up.

Hills, Hills, and more Hills.

Quote of the day courtesy of Erik:

"King of the Hills = PR."

I spent another weekend up in Wisconsin... and in between surviving on only the finest foods to be found at a gas station, including drinking enough beer to kill a dairy cow... I managed to run 27 miles... all on the hills in the beautiful country side.

6 miles w/ the guy on Friday. 21 alone on Saturday.

My 21 miler included a whopping 2280 feet of climbing and 4572 feet of elevation change:

http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=383577

2 WI weekends, + I'm guessing at least 1 or 2 long runs in Barrington, + spending 2 weeks in the Adirondacks, + at least another weekend up in Wisconsin...
= King of the hills = PR.

If I get through all of this... the next time I see 5th Ave, I'm gonna torch it.

Hitting a Wall

Pulling the plug on tonight's run. My running has been going well lately, but mentally I've hit a wall:

I've been getting my ass completely handed to me at work. I can't stop losing money. Today was another doozie. Market goes down, I lose money. Market goes up, I lose money. If the market goes down and then up in any given day, I lose even more money. Shorts are killing me, longs are killing me. It makes absolutely no sense. In theory, I should be slaying it with my bets, yet for some fucking reasons beyond my control (too many to potential to list here), I'm stuck in a horribly perfect storm working against me... The world fucking hates me, and it's been steadily getting worse for the last month and a half. I've had like 8 up days out of the last 32 trading days. Pathetic. Depressing. I feel like there's no cure. It's wearing on me.

Up until now, I've been able to ignore it and run through it. Today I can't. All I can do is hope that tomorrow I can cope with it better.

I've had total garbage for sleep lately. 6 hours a night for the last week+, and it's clearly catching up with me. It's making me even more cranky from work.

Lack of sleep and uber stress with work has my body literally feeling sore and bloated today. This is a wall that I can't run through... at least not today. The last thing I need is to disappoint myself with a shitty tempo run.

My solution: spend the evening with Sarah, make dinner, watch TV, totally vege out, and kill my $100 bottle of Del Dotto 2005 Napa Cabernet. Try again tomorrow.

Tempo

Last night... on a hot and humid evening, after a long day of work, and after running 26 miles of brutal hills in Wisconsin over the weekend... I ran 5 miles of tempo.

5:50, 5:42, 5:44, 5:39, 5:38.

I didn't smash any records, but it was a very respectable run with a nice negative split. I rolled at a good clip, and did it without dying or begging myself to end the run. I actually finished wanting more. Complete satisfaction.

A runner's high.

Summer Runnin'

In general, just lots of easy / steady runs lately. That's gradually changing though...

I'm above 50 for the last couple weeks (actually 69 for the last 7 days). All in all, I feel pretty decent. No significant pains anywhere. All systems "go" to continue rolling up.

Most notable over the last couple weeks:

First ever run totally barefoot!! Very cool! It was a couple miles on some mixed terrain w/ Chris Woods. We went to see Barefoot Ken Bob host a fun run out in Woodstock, IL. He's a totally off the wall, California-hippy that could pass as Jerry Garcia's stunt double... only BFKB's addicted to barefoot running (no need to speculate on any of his other vices). Anyway, BFKB's been 100% barefoot for the last couple decades, and completed something like 75 marathons and countless other races.... and in respectable times too! Let's just say that if anyone knows anything about barefoot running, then it's Barefoot Ken Bob. He started blogging his running back in the late '90s to document his work and hopefully help other runners make the switch.

It was interesting to hear BFKB talk about where people often go wrong when running without shoes. He made some very good points about how the foot strike and lift off can especially lead to injury... and not just about stepping on something sharp either. Toeing off too much or landing too far up on the ball will ultimately produce nasty blisters and potentially stress fractures down the road (yes, I know the feeling). Also, he is fairly convinced that when starting off barefoot, you must run purely barefoot as opposed to in VFFs... VFFs ironically still provide a lot of protection to our feet.

When it comes to running in general, everything's all about reducing impact forces and improving efficiency. Barefoot running takes that to the 1,000,000th degree. I'm slowly learning that these are things I can't naturally feel unless I totally lose protection on my feet. Its very easy to see how your body naturally straightens up, and your stride improves when running barefoot (as opposed to strapping pillows under your feet). It is an awesome learning tool... and cheaper than any coach or expensive running shoe.

So, the bug is back... I ran in my Vibram Five Fingers twice last week. It was awesome! The closest thing to being barefoot without actually being barefoot. It sounds cheesy, but running like this is such a great feeling of freedom. Once you do it a few times, you'll only want more of it. As excited as I am though, I still have to remind myself of the consequences of doing too much too soon. The last thing I want to do is risk another stress fracture. I'm saying no more than 2 runs a week in my VFFs (max of 5 miles each), and maybe a mile or two sans-everything.

Spent this past weekend up at Erik's place in Wisconsin. We went up to watch Myra slug it out with a disgusting 50 miler Dances with Dirt. Huge congrats to her for finishing that damn thing! - It was a ridiculously difficult course on an extremely hot day. That must have been brutal both physically and mentally.

Anyway, over the weekend I ran a 16 miler on Saturday and a 10 miler on Sunday. Both runs were on some rolling hills... OK, so 1,250ft of climbing and 2,500ft of total elevation change on the 10 miler alone. I guess a little more than "just" rolling? I'll be back up there in a couple more weeks for round 2. Hills like that are going to turn me into a monster...

Mid-Year Update

Silly McHair has inspired me to do some math:

It's June 30th. Half way. After this evening, I'll be at roughly 1,000 miles for the year.... or roughly 38 miles per week average.

A year ago, I was at around 1,225... or roughly 47 miles per week average. I rounded out last year with a total of 2280 in 10 months, then 2 months of absolute downtime due to the SFX.

Sadly, I'm embarrassed to say I've only run 1,000 miles this year. I'm 18% under where I was a year ago, and a lot of this year's mileage has been concentrated in only a very short period of time.


YTD:

- I was basically handicapped for the first month of training this year, which delayed any decent mileage until March...

- Then I crammed for London... which included many shin splits.

- Then took a couple weeks of down time or lower volume to recover...

- Then paced 20 miles of the Green Bay Marathon with Claudia and Jason, which GB+London took a far greater toll on me than I anticipated...

- So I then took even more down time for a few more weeks...

- Then when I was finally ready to start bumping my miles on June 1st, I basically broke ANOTHER toe at a street fest by massively stubbing it, and was forced to delay any sort of roll up in mileage....

- Which brings me to now: I finally hit 40 miles last week. Not quite where I'd like to be, but not horrible. I only feel mildly disgusting... but at least I'm healthy.


Going forward: I'm only signed up for 2 races at this moment... the Chicago Half Marathon in September and the New York City Marathon in November.

Any racing leading up to NYC will be a function of training for a PR in NYC - which won't be easy, since its a very difficult course.

Training basically began for NYC last week - with my whopping 40 miles (gotta start some where). I had 1 workout last week: a 4 mile tempo run. I'll have 1 workout this week: mile repeats tonight. Next week, I start kicking it into gear.

My basic stratergy: I'll make a steady climb up towards ~75 miles/week, hang on to that for 3 or 4 weeks, then push to 100 for a month, then come back down.

The key will be remaining injury free and trying to stay as "fresh" as possible.

Since London

Miles have been easy, and few and far between. But plenty of good times in the last month and a half....


London:

Paris:

Strasbourg (Straßburg):

My "new" 1986 Porsche 911 Carerra Targa: Frau Sandy Sarable. Drove from Utah to Chicago to pick her up... (then Chicago to Green Bay, then Chicago to Buffalo):

Memorial Day Gluttony w/ Humes:

Thumper gets married:

I moved in with this PYT:

Maifest mit keiner Lederhosen :(


...I later smashed and potentially broke my middle toe on my left foot at the fest... fortunately I was only forced to take a handful of days off.

Hawks win the Cup!!

My 5th Major: The London Marathon

Alright, this is long over due!! It's a month late. I've been very lazy about updating this blog as I've been preoccupied by traveling across Europe, then traveling across the country and getting a car, then Green Bay, then moving, blah blah blah. So, better late than never...


The London Marathon - April 25, 2010


All things considered, it went extremely well. I say all things considered because... 1) I didn't know if I was gonna even be able to get out of the country due to that freak'n volcano... 2) I had a bad case of insomnia for several days leading up to the trip... 3) I then had jet lag and barely slept the night before... 4) I had to stand outside in the cold rain for 2+ hours while waiting forever for the gun... 5) I had a horrible seed at the start, which made the first couple miles very difficult... Oh and 6) Let's not forget that I had a stress fracture 5 months earlier and had to force a crash course training schedule.

Not that I'm making excuses for anything, but I'm just pointing out that I had a lot stacked against me going into the race. That said, I exceeded my expectations of "low-2:40's", so I am very pleased. I ran a great 24 mile race... the last 2 miles, not so much... but everything was going so incredibly well for so long that I just had to go for broke.

The weather was a comfortable cool, but in typical London fashion we had to deal with rain in the morning, which made for a very annoying start. As the rain cleared up, it was replaced by a slight head wind while we ran mostly into the west.

The course was a point to point run that started in the south east part of the city, snaked, and finished to the north west. It reminded me of an inverted "S". Other than that, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I've heard the course was flat. It wasn't. We started on some high ground, so the first 1/2 was mostly rolling down. We crossed Tower Bridge at the split, then stayed north of the Thames. I thought the 2nd half would've been flatter... I was again wrong. We continued downhill for another several miles, but then we had to basically retrace those down hills, and then roll to the finish.

This was important, because ultimately I ran the course the way that it wanted me to run it... I hit the gas on the downs, then recouped on the flats/ups. The slight downs and rolling persisted through about 20 miles, then a number of steady ups were 21-24, then rolling through 26.

Unfortunately, I started the race behind like 1000 people who had no business being in front of me..... The first mile was entirely spent scrambling and jockeying for some breathing room. By that point, anyone going my pace was long in front of me and I essentially ran the entire marathon alone, while steadily passing people.

After a few miles, I was so amazed with how fresh and strong I felt. So in spite of what I might have thought prior to the gun, I was getting all green lights to go for it. And that I did. I started hitting numerous sub-6 miles. They just melted away as I kept rolling.

Not in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be able to PR this thing. Yet as I had crossed the half at blazing 1:19:08, I started to wonder how long I could maintain. I knew eventually we'd have to go up hill somewhere... London wasn't a bottomless pit (though some might argue this). Per the results, I split the race in about 410th place, but finished in 172!!... I mean I passed hundreds, if not a thousand runners in the first 13 miles. I don't recall getting passed by a single person - until the 25 or 26th mile.

Ultimately, I couldn't maintain. As I expected, I gave time back on the up hill portion of the race between 21-24. A PR was still in the bag though.... Until... in the 25th mile I fell asleep. 6:44! All I had to do for something fantastic was maintain 6:15's. I have no idea what happened, but I went bust. I totally ran out of gas. No strength left whatsoever. 26 was a struggle to salvage any self-honor as I choked out that last 6:27.

Maybe it would've been different if I didn't press so hard so early? Or if I had a few more weeks of training? Or if I had more sleep? Regardless, there wasn't much I could do about it. I felt good, I committed to an aggressive race, I went for broke, and I knew I'd eventually have to pay some time back while going up hill later.

I wouldn't have changed a thing about it! I had to see if I could do it. And hey, it wasn't all that bad! It was a sloppy positive split, but from what I saw in the results - EVERYONE, with the exception of very very few people around my finishing time posted a mildly flat split, let alone negative. Chalk it up as experience for an experienced marathoner.

First half - 1:19:08, 410th
Second half - 1:20:45, 172th
Final - 2:39:53, 172th Overall, 2nd American


I now own 2 sub-2:40 marathons, all 5 World Marathon Majors, and 11 marathons total.

Mile splits:
1 - 6:19
2 - 6:02
3 - 5:47
4 - 6:02
5 - 5:57
6 - 6:13
7 - 6:09
8 - 6:05
9 - 6:02
10 - 5:57
11 - 6:01
12 - 5:57
13 - 5:56
14 - 5:54
15 - 5:57
16 - 5:58
17 - 5:57
18 - 5:50
19 - 6:10

20 - 6:05
21 - 6:14
22 - 6:17
23 - 6:16
24 - 6:15
25 - 6:44
26 - 6:27
.2 - 1:23

5K splits:
5 - 18:45 / 6:02
10 - 18:54 / 06:05
15 - 18:51 / 06:04
20 - 18:39 / 6:00
25 - 18:19 / 05:54
30 - 18:35 / 05:59
35 - 19:11 / 06:11
40 - 19:54 / 06:24
2.212 - 08:45 / 06:22