Green shoots in late September

Slowly starting to get myself back in to shape. I now have 2 weeks of 50 miles underneath me, I'll be mid-60's this week. Nothing to brag about by any means, but I have to start somewhere and I'm hoping that my longer-term base will help me to bounce back pretty quick.

Speed still sucks, but at least I'm feeling more comfortable with distance now.

Last night, I did a fartlek with Jason, going 1 minute, 2 minute, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... with the same minutes recovery in between each interval. He buried me by the end of it, but I at least kinda held on ok. Good enough for my first speed workout in months. More entertaining though, we ran it in Lincoln Park, taking completely random routes for each interval. It was actually a pretty cool idea. A workout like that will come in handy in a few months, when nobody wants to go to the track.

Monday, I did a double - 5 miles early, then 11 miles with 6 of it being tempo. I started out around a 6:25ish pace, dropped it to 6:15 for the 2nd and 3rd miles, then dropped it to 5:50ish for 4-6 miles. Averaged about 6ish. It wasn't easy, but again it was a start.

Chicago Marathon is in 1 week. Kinda bummed that I won't be racing it, but I'm still planning on doing half of it as a tempo run / marathon paced run. That'll be a true test to see how much work I have ahead of me. If I can survive 13 miles at 6-flat, then I'll feel better about rolling up for CIM.

It's amazing how quickly you can lose your conditioning... Rotterdam seems like a completely distant memory by now.

CIM is 10 weeks away. Yikes!

Back to the drawing board

I took over 6 weeks hiatus, lost most of my conditioning, fattened up a bit, cleared up 50% of my troubles (foot, not hip)... and now, I'm starting to run again.

After some solid winter training and 2 big PRs in the spring (here and here), I muddled along for three months without recovering. Lingering soreness and botched training forced me to re-think my summer and fall racing plans. Throw a market crash on top of it, and it made August training virtually impossible. Ramping up to 100 miles a week was just not feasible. The plug had to be pulled.

It's incredibly annoying to go from primo shape, to giving it all back, and now having to start from square 1 again... Regardless, I have to start from somewhere.

I'd like to say that I'm 100% healthy now, but I'm not. My foot is finally better. But I'm still experiencing hamstring/glute/hip troubles. Recently, I've had some success with some extremely aggressive massage therapy though. Fingers crossed that I'm close to getting this resolved in the next couple weeks... or at least to a point where I can train more comfortably + still work with the massages.

As of now, I have 2 straight weeks of about 30 miles under me, and feel that I can continue to run with at least that sort of volume. Yesterday I ran the Chicago Half Marathon strictly as a training run and finished at 1:24:56 (Thanks to Ryan Curry and Ken Fandell for keeping me motivated!).

None of this is coming easy, and I have a long way to go.... but it's a start. If I can pull it together, then I am registered for the California International Marathon, on December 4th. That's cutting it extremely close with my lack of recent running. I've been here before. Heaven forbid I get a full training session!

Stalled

I'm coming to the end of my line.

My 2 lingering injuries are on the brink of shutting down my Chicago Marathon.

1) Left hip/glute/hamstring
2) Right cuboid/fifth metatarsal

My left glute continues to be constantly sore. It feels like there's a big knot somewhere holding it hostage. As a result, I'm lacking in any fire power. For the last several weeks, I cannot extend my left leg straight out in front of me, or bend over and touch my toes. I fear that I may have tore something.

My right foot has started to improve (kinda). It feels fine when I'm not running, but once I ask it to go over 5 miles, it starts putting up a fuss. Something eventually falls out of place, and becomes an aching mess until I snap it back into place. It's then sore for the rest of the day, and if I'm lucky it recovers by the next morning.

So, same story as it was a couple weeks ago and without any significant improvement in spite of taking numerous days off and skipping ALL normal workouts.

Instead of building my training to 70 miles a week in the last month, I've stalled.

Unless something changes this week, I'm pulling the plug on the marathon. There's almost no way that I can get back to PR... let alone sub 2:40 shape in under 10 weeks.

Getting old

On this eve of my 34th birthday, I can't help but feel like I'm getting old.

The last 2 weeks have been above 50 miles, but it hasn't come easy.

I'm having some chronic soreness in my left glute/hip/hamstring/whatever it is... I've seen like 6 different people in the last 6 months, and nobody can tell me what's causing the pain... aside from "you're weak". I've technically been dealing wtih this pain since around Boston-2009.

Likewise, my good ol' friend Mr. Cuboid is back in town! Just when I've been starting to miss him, too. ...Two weeks ago, the chiropractor gave me a good yank on my foot. A couple days later and it was clear that my right cuboid had become subluxed. Maybe there's more to it than just the cuboid, but I've had this problem before and it certainly feels like it. Nothing like trying to run with a dislodged bone in your foot! I can get it to pop back in, unfortunately, it won't stay back in position.

Good news though: no more shin splints! That's probably a result of running the past couple of months almost entirely in my Vibram Five Fingers, New Balance MT10's, or my Mizuno Universe's. All are ultra-minimalist shoes. (I would say that none have caused the problems above... since the hip was there to begin with and my cuboid was just a strain from getting yanked).

SO... here I am turning another year, getting into marathon training... and I have a bum rear end on the left side and a flat tire on the right side. This needs to get fixed soon, or it's gonna be a long 3-4 months.

Time to get involved

My running's been crap lately. I haven't strung together a week over 40 miles in the past month. I feel fat and out of shape.

I'll admit though, my legs are at least feeling refreshed. Hip/Glute has some linger soreness from my winter/spring training, otherwise everything else feels excellent. Now I just need to get the cardio back and onto a more normal diet.

Chicago Marathon is 16 weeks away. I need to make that shift from running to when I want to, to actually training.

Thus, summer training officially just kicked off a few minutes ago... I pushed myself back in by signing up for 4 on the 4th. It'll just be a tempo run, but this is my excuse to start running on a more steady basis. The race is in a little over a week, so I have no choice but to get back to work.

The following week, the city celebrates my day of birth with the Bastille Day 5K. Naturally, I must be there for all the people to honor me.

Game on.

Not much running, but a long awaited homecoming!

Not a whole a lot of training right now... I'm sticking to my guns and taking some downtime for a couple weeks. Nothing but garbage miles right now. I'll keep this up through next week, and then start to get back towards base mileage.

In other news:
I FINALLY got Sandy back!! Six long months after "The Crime of the Century", and she's finally home. It took forever for the shop to pull her back together. I still haven't seen a final report of everything that they did to her. A lot of parts getting shipped from Germany and possibly some unmotivated mechanics... but she's back nonetheless. Unfortunately, I feel like they missed a few things. I may wind up having to stick her back into the shop to pull together the loose ends.

SF10 - DNF

It's official - I've had my very first DNF in a race.

That's quite the honor!

Here's the thing: I went into SF10 expecting to have some fantastic race. I knew I was gonna PR that thing, since my 10 mile PR is inside of half marathon(s).

Two week earlier, my first 10 of the Green Bay Half was 57:09... and that was during freakin gale-force winds, and on a mildly hilly course. SF is a flat course, and winds were beneficial for a wisely-run negative split race. I felt like I should've been able to at least muster up a sub-57, or ideally closer to 56:30 (= 5:40 pace). GB should've just been a warm up for SF10.

Anything worse than Green Bay's 10mi split would've been tragic.

There was a head wind through 5, and I found myself running alone for about 3 of those miles. I first got dropped by faster runners (as expected), and then I gradually got swallowed by a small pack of 4 runners.

In my mind, that pack shouldn't have been near me and it initially bothered me. But, they were working together and that proved to be a much better strategy, so I accepted it.

As we turned at 5 and gained a tailwind, I realized that I was working waaaay too hard to hang on to that pack. The 6th mile was 5:38 and it felt like I blazed a 5:20. I couldn't fathom hanging onto that pace for any longer, in spite of having that tail wind. And then I got dropped. Passed 7 at 5:49. I was disgusted that I was blowing up.

I thought no way in hell was I going to be able to maintain that for another 3 miles. Everything collapsed so quickly. Like I hit a wall, but only after 7 miles... and 7 miles slower than what I ran at GB! I knew it was over. I didn't have to think twice about it. I immediately pulled the plug.

So there you have it. I turned the corner, expecting to get this big ol' boost from some wind at my back... and even get the favor of running with a few guys..., and instead I got dropped on my "out of shape" ass. I was damned if I was going to run slower than my 10 miles at Green Bay, let alone start choking out some marathon paced miles in a 10 miler. And damned I was!

For the second race in a row I had negative, self-destructing thoughts dictate how I raced... or lack there of.

I'm OK with it too. It's clear now that I did too much. With in about 2 months, I ran Cary 1/2, PR'd Oak Park 5k, PR'd Rotterdam, slugged my way though Green Bay, and then attempted SF10. That's a lot of hard running! My eyes were bigger than my stomach.

SF10 probably would've gone much better if I had been more aggressive with my training in the past few weeks - but honestly, I didn't feel like it. I've been running on empty since Green Bay. I lost the motivation. I didn't want to bother with the track or a couple mid-week longer runs. I got lazy and paid for it. It should've been either GB or SF... not both.

I need to recovery before I can do much more. I'll do a little running this week... only enough to possibly choke out the Roselle 5K... if I even bother... then 2 weeks of heavily reducing miles.

I need to get feeling fresh again before I can think about the Chicago Half and Chicago Marathon.
Split recap:
1- 5:36
2- 5:42
3- 5:45
4- 5:44
5- 5:45
6- 5:38
7- 5:49
A waaay too difficult 7 mile average of 5:42.7.
Note, I went through GB mile 8 with a 5:39 average, before getting slammed by the wind.

A really fun run!

I have only one way to describe my run today:

FUN!

That's seriously for a lack of better terms too. All I could think when I finished was... "Wow, that was really fun!"

I'm alone in the office today. I decided to duck out for an 8 mile run on the lakefront. The weather was probably the best it's been in weeks... 60 degrees, minimal wind. I ran in my newly acquired New Balance Minimus MT10's. I've run a handful of times in them, though I haven't really pushed them until today.

Obviously the name suggests that they're a minimalist shoe. Technically they're dubbed as a trail shoe, though they're far different than any trail shoe I've ever seen or felt... very light weight, very flexible, very thin sole, a slightly heel-to-toe drop (hardly noticeable), and extremely comfortable. Truly a minimalist shoe. I had no trouble wanting to run on pavement with these. A close second to the Vibram Five Fingers.

Anyway... my "8 miles easy" turned into a 10 mile progression run, where I started to push about a 6:00 pace towards the end. I didn't mean to run that fast, it just happened. It sounds kinda stupid too, but I'm pretty sure I had a smile on my face the entire way.

I felt great. My feet loved every moment of it. No pain in my shins or calves, or anywhere else. Just like effortlessly floating along for an hour.

That's the joy of running in a minimalist shoe... the stride becomes so much more natural that it no longer feels like work. Total entertainment and enjoyment.

A runners high taken to a whole new level!

Good Riddance Green Bay!

I became a big fat pussy and cry baby during the Green Bay 13.3 Half Marathon. Prior knowledge of an incorrectly mapped course plus some serious winds eventually got the better of me...

The day before the race, we drove the course. It was very clearly marked on the ground with spay paint, and very easy to follow. They put a lot of thought into this! That's great and all, but the course was also very clearly MARKED INCORRECTLY!! Mile 4 was blatantly long, and mile 12 might be debatable. The published and certified course maps were inconsistent with the spray paint.

Bottom line: We went into the race knowing that it was going to be long by at least 0.15 mile. After driving it, we mapped it out 5 different ways on Google, and it just didn't add up. We consistently showed it being over 13.3 miles. As it turns out, after the race, officials later confirmed the course as being 13.25 due to mile 4. I still think that it might be off at mile 12 as well, but that's splitting hairs at this point.

To top it off, we ran the race while dealing with gale-force winds... SOLID 20-30 mph, with gusts in excess of 40mph. Granted, there were times that the wind helped... but trying to hammer a mile into that shit ain't easy.

So there you have it. It got the better of me late in the race.

I put in a solid effort for a while. I ran through mile 8 right at a 5:40 average pace (I'm adjusting that average for the long mile 4... and assuming my pace in that mile was a 5:45 instead of a 7:02). I did screw up in mile 5, which included some wind and a messed up pace by running with a few other people... I ran a 5:55. Not sure what exactly happened there. I eventually dropped some guys that were clearly slowing up, and then faced a nasty 1/2 mile stretch into the wind. This was a screw up, but not a deal breaker. Again, avg pace through 8 was about 5:40... 5:39 if I skip mile 4 altogether.

Mile 9 hurt. It included some uphill, but more importantly it was directly into some horrendous wind... seriously, it was near unbearable. I had caught a couple other guys and tried to work with them, but ultimately I became their work horse for most of that mile. One did jump in front of me late, but the damage was already done... 5:55. We split up and I ran alone from there. I slipped... Mile 10: 5:50, Mile 11: 5:45. Both 10 and 11 had wind hitting me from the sides. You'd think that shouldn't be a big deal, but it mentally effected me.

Mile 12 was the bitch that end my race for all practical purposes. I was all alone, and turned directly into what seemed to be a tornado's path. Seriously, I felt like I was dealing with 50 mph steady winds. I remember seeing shit fly at me and along the sides of the road... like a seen from Twister or something! After dealing with that for all too long, I thew in the towel and just tried to run comfortably though it.... I recall thinking of how pissed I was to be there... how I bothered to drive up nearly 4 hours, only to run a long course during a fucking tornado. Why did I subject myself to that?? I somehow managed to slug out a 6:15 mile. A far cry from my early 5:40 pace.

And to boot, after I passed the 12th marker and turned out of the wind, one of the guys that I dropped 4 miles earlier had caught back up to me and drafted off me through the worst of the worst. I had no idea. He then passed me. I didn't care. In my mind, my race was over. I cruised 13 at a 5:48 pace...

I was angry by the time I hit mile 12, and that wind broke me. Mentally I had checked out of the race. I'm ok with it. I'll just have to roll the SF10.


Splits:
1- 5:35 (aggressive, but felt it was necessary to fight the wind by drafting)
2- 5:29
3- 5:33
4.2- 7:02 (probably a 5:50 equivalent?)
5- 5:55 (Wind, plus ??... I think I fell asleep?)
6- 5:48
7- 5:37
8- 5:37
9- 5:55 (up hill + monster wind)
10- 5:50
11- 5:45
12.05- 6:15 (HORRIBLE wind, seems long, I totally threw in the towel here)
13- 5:48 (basically just rolled my pussy to the finish)
.1- 0:35
13.1- 1:16:45, 17th Place.

Afterwords, the race officials adjusted our times by a multiple of 0.9886 to compensate for their error. Simply applying that multiple gives me a 1:15:51 result. I don't think that's correct in my case, as I ran faster earlier and quit late. - If I smooth out my 3rd and 5th miles (which would still be slower than a simple average of my 1-8 miles), I come up with something like a 5:45-50 pace for mile 4.
That translates to about a 1:15:30 race, in spite of the wind. My second fastest 1/2 marathon.

Needless to say, I'm done with Green Bay. I won't be back.

I can tempo, but can I race?

It's been almost a month since my marathon, and I'm gradually getting my stride back.

Last week I hit 72 miles. It all felt pretty decent too. I even threw in a few core workouts, which I'm trying to do more regularly now.

Last night I rolled a tempo run (2 weeks in a row now).
My goal was to hit some sort of half marathon'esq pace. I did that and then some... 6 miles at 5:47, 5:45, 5:44, 5:40, 5:38, 5:30... a 5:40.7 average. I gradually just pulled the trigger, getting faster and faster. It might've even been a tempo-paced PR for me...? I don't typically go that fast. A slight headwind in the second half made that final mile hurt. It definitely wasn't as easy as I wanted.

This all leads me to the question:

What the hell am I going to run in Green Bay???

I'm just starting to get the mileage back up after a handful of lame weeks. Plus I still haven't been to the track yet! I do feel alright, but I don't think I'm ready to hammer this thing.

My PR set last year was 1:14:50 = 5:42.5 pace. ...The thought of running what I did last night, and then tacking on another 7 miles makes me sick!