Fifty is nifty

Posted on July 16, 2007 by threlkeld

I ran 50 miles this past week, capped with a 12 miler yesterday during which I felt very good and was actually sorry that I wasn’t scheduled to run farther.

This number is of note because it’s the most I’ve ever run in a single week. Aside from a twinge in my left achilles (which I’ve traced to a particular shoe), I’m having no problems (knock wood) with the increased mileage. I’m also getting faster at the same heart rate. Six weeks ago I was clocking 10:30 miles at 70% of maximum heart rate. Now I’m running 9:30 using the same number of heartbeats. I attribute at least some of that jump in cardio fitness to time on the exercise bike.

I’m backing off a little this week, since it was a fairly quick ramp up from ~35 to 50 miles. But I feel very good about my base building progress so far. Now I just need to settle on a training program for the fall and winter.

The Sept issue of Running Times (not yet online) has a good article by Greg McMillan on how not to fade in the final miles of the marathon. One of his secrets is to do longer “long” runs before even starting the actual marathon training phase. I’d previously planned on doing 14 miles as my longest run during this base building phase. But now I’m thinking of throwing in some 18-20 milers. In any case, the article was good food for thought.

I’ve also been working on leg turnover, which has proven to be difficult. I average around 180 steps per minute. I should be doing 190 steps per minute (if I want to run like the champs anyway). Recalibrating my brain to take slightly smaller, more frequent steps isn’t so easy. But I work on it every run now.

Running seems like such a simple thing: put one foot in front of the other; repeat. But it’s not simple and there’s always so much more to learn.

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Oh my, it’s hot

Posted on July 10, 2007 by threlkeld

We’re havin’ a heat wave…

Tropical heat wave…

But that has not stopped me from running. I ran 44.5 miles last week, just 1.5 miles shy of my goal. That included a 12 miler on Friday evening, 5 on Saturday afternoon, and 8 in the extreme heat of Sunday. Today was hot AND humid, and I managed to do 7 miles.

So I guess I’m getting acclimated. I no longer get the horrible headaches I used to get when I’d run in the heat. The heart rate training is a joke, though. I’m supposed to be at between 68-72% max heart rate for my base building. I’m lucky if I can keep it below 75% in this heat. So I go by pace, since I’d have to be crawling in this weather to keep it at 68%.

I do miss the winter, though. I love to run in the cold. I’m trying to change my attitude about hot weather running — by making a cold shower my reward. But it’s still pretty awful out there.

I’ve been running every day and this has, paradoxically, helped my legs. There seems to be a lot less soreness between runs. Either the shorter run days are serving as recovery days, or my legs are getting stronger. At any rate, they’re getting thinner. I can see actual muscles under the blubber at last. I knew they were in there somewhere.

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Reading: Peak Running Performance and Marathon & Beyond

Posted on July 1, 2007 by threlkeld

You know you’re a runner when…

…you have more running magazines than news magazines coming into your home.

I recently got an offer to subscribe to Peak Running Performance for a buck. I love a bargain, so I signed on. For a mere dollar, I get a PDF version of the magazine dumped into my email in box every two months.

The magazine is on the short side, but the articles are of fairly good quality and offer a variety of topics. And they have titles that make me laugh, reflecting subject matter that appeals to, shall we say, a “narrow audience”? How about this months’ feature, entitled “Say Goodbye to Your Gastrointestinal Discomfort!”

It’s a bit like a miniature version of Marathon & Beyond (yet another one I subscribe to). That publication is like a little book. It has subject matter similar to PRP, but with the addition of race reports, historical pieces, personal essays and human interest stories. PRP’s content tends to be more limited to the nuts and bolts of training, nutrition, racing strategy, and injury prevention and recovery.

Anyway, both rags make for good post-run bath reading.

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Reading: "Duel in the Sun"

Posted on June 23, 2007 by threlkeld

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but all is well. Just not all that interesting.

I’m finishing up week three of my 24 week base building program. I’ll run 40 miles this week and eventually work my way up to 65-70 miles per week by mid-November. I’m adding in the miles very gradually, with a “rest week,” in which I pull back the mileage by about 30%, every 3-4 weeks. I want to avoid injury at all costs so I can really train when the time comes. Training for five months with shin splints is not something I want to go through again.

I’m also doing time on the stationary bike — typically around 50 miles a week — primarily for the extra calorie burn, although the cardiovascular benefits are a nice bonus. I’ve managed to drop 15 pounds since mid-February, but it’s been very difficult. Amazing how much that weight wants to stay on. But I keep plugging away at it and am confident that I can get down to a good racing weight by the start of training.

I’ve yet to decide on a training program for the marathon, although I do know that it needs to be an 18 week program. I’m leaning toward one of the 18 week plans in Pete Pfitzinger’s Advanced Marathoning, but I’m not totally sold on it yet.

Nor do I know yet what finishing time I’ll be training for. My goal is to place in the top 10 of the More Marathon in 2008, which means running it in 3:45 or under (assuming the competition is similar to what it’s been in years past). But my dream is to run it under 3:30. That may take me more than a year to get to, if it’s even possible.

I’ll probably do a shorter race toward the end of my base building period to gauge my fitness and go from there. But I’ve got 21 weeks to figure all of this out.

This morning I finished John Brant’s book Duel in the Sun: Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, and America’s Greatest Marathon. It’s an account of the 1982 Boston Marathon, in which Salazar and Beardsley dominated the race, running as a twosome from mile 9 on and finishing two seconds apart. Yet it’s much more than a 250 page race piece. Structured in alternating chapters describing each man’s life leading up to and beyond that race, Brant weaves in biographies of two men with diametrically opposed personalities and motivations.

Every few chapters you’re returned to the race for a vivid blow-by-blow of the two men battling it out to the finish line. Even if you know the race’s outcome ahead of time it makes for suspenseful, compelling reading. And even if you have little interest in competitive running, the book is interesting in its portrait of two figures who were irrevocably damaged by this one event lasting just over two hours, yet who later found redemption, peace and a tentative friendship. Along the way there are recoveries from catastrophic accidents, seemingly intractable addiction and depression, and heartbreakingly naive attempts at finding miracles. Eventually, some real miracles are found in the form of modern psychiatric medicine and twelve step recovery, not to mention the wisdom of experience and the gift of perspective.

All in all a great story, well told.

Also on this summer’s reading list are…

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Dog of the South by Charles Portis
This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes
In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders

…but I’m saving those for an upcoming extended vacation, so I need to be very disciplined and not crack those spines.

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Marathon next weekend. In total denial.

Posted on May 21, 2007 by threlkeld

One reason I haven’t posted regulary is that I’ve been working so much. I’m nearing a major project milestone (launch of a Web site, and I’m managing all editorial content-related aspects). I clocked 68 hours last week. So I’ve been quite distracted, to say the least.

But I have gotten in some running. Last week was the second week of my pre-marathon taper. I ran 23 miles. This week I’ll probably only run about 10. They say that no conditioning you do in the two weeks before a marathon is going to help you; if anything, it will tire you out. So I plan to run today and tomorrow and then stay off my feet until Sunday.

Sunday.

I will be again racing 26.2 miles on Sunday. And I’ll be driving 7+ hours each way to do it.

I am in denial about this fact. And since this week promises to be as crazed as last week was workwise, I’ll continue to be in denial until I actually climb in the car on Saturday to make the trip north.

After this race, it will be a summer of base building. Lots of long, slow running to get myself up to a steady 50 miles a week. Then I’ll do the innaugural Hamptons Marathon, after which I’ll start training for next year’s More Marathon starting in early November. I haven’t mapped out my training plan yet. But what I am doing differently this time around is devoting several months (instead of several weeks) to base building, in hopes that this will help me avoid another shin-splint-filled training experience.

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Recovering nicely

Posted on March 28, 2007 by threlkeld

Well, my pulse returned to normal sometime overnight. It was elevated 10 beats per minute Monday and yesterday. This morning it was back to a healthy 44 BPM upon waking up.

I’m also almost walking normally again. Read that again. This is a hobby that I choose to do. Where I say things like, “I’m also almost walking normally again.”

I went out shopping yesterday, as we were having a Milk Crisis. That was sort of a mistake, as I obviously had trouble negotiating stairs and curbs, and wasn’t even walking that well. I’m sure people thought I had hemorrhoids or somesuch.

The high has lasted, although it’s fading. I’ve been pretty obnoxious, reporting on my race to anyone who looks in my direction. So much for keeping a low, humble profile.

But the next one‘s around the corner, and I need to start thinking of what my goal time for that race is. Plus I’ve the Lehigh Valley Half Marathon at the end of April. I’m practically blasé about it now: 13.1 miles? Easy peasy. A mere training run.

I can see how this is like heroin. The 5K is the gateway race. Before you know it, you’ve lost entire weeks and months to ultra marathoning with other addicts.

I did some reading today about Susan Loken, who won the More Marathon for the third year in a row. Here I’d thought she was another one of these lifelong runners, but in fact her running history is similar to mine (with the exception of running a marathon well over an hour faster than I can…heh heh): A non-athlete in her youth, a blob in her twenties and thirties, followed by a casual interest in “jogging,” all the way to qualifying for the 2008 Olympic Trials. Pretty impressive.

Tomorrow I’ll probably do some walking on the treadmill, and then try out a very short, very easy run on Friday to see how my legs feel.

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BQ or bust!

Posted on March 16, 2007 by threlkeld

I ran a seven mile marathon pace run yesterday morning. MPace is around 8:45 to make a time of 3:49:00. That would give me 1:59 to spare to make a Boston Qualifying (BQ) time to run Boston in 2008.

It was my last “hard” training run before the marathon, which is now nine days away (shiver). It’s all easy running at reduced mileage from now until race day.

The run went very well. I did a mile easy, two miles at MPace, a mile easy and another two at MPace followed by…yes…a mile easy. I found it a bit difficult to run slower during the rest mile inbetween the hard ones, which I took as a good sign. The pace felt natural and comfortably challenging, if that makes sense. I even deliberately did it in heavier shoes so I’ll feel like Tinkerbell come the 25th.

I still have no clue if I can hold that pace for 26+ miles, but I’m going to try. Now I just have to pray for a windless, rainless and heatless race day.

And if it doesn’t work out, I get another chance to try in late May in Burlington, Vermont.

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Absent but still running

Posted on February 2, 2007 by threlkeld

Haven’t posted much of late. It’s been very, very busy on the work front. I’ve been continuing to nurse my shin splint. I took four days off last week after limping through a mile.

During the hiatus I continued to ice, stretch and strengthen. It seems to have helped. On Wednesday morning I did the first of three 22 mile training runs. Inside on the treadmill, unfortunately. It snowed on already icy streets overnight on Tuesday. Thank god for podcasts, since I’d otherwise go insane running inside for close to four hours.

I finished up the last few miles of the run at my best attempt at marathon pace. I couldn’t hold that pace without going up to about 90% max heart rate, though, which worries me a bit. I need to be able to run that pace at around 86% consistently to be able to make it through 26 miles. So, while I know I’m becoming fitter in terms of my muscles, I’m still worried that I’m not fit enough in terms of lactate threshold to run the pace I want to in late March. I’ve got around seven weeks left until then, so I’ll keep at it.

I run a half marathon a week from tomorrow, which I’m really looking forward to. I’m not sure how I’ll run it yet. I may try to run the thing at marathon pace. Or I may try to race it, which would have me going about 20 seconds per mile fast than MP. What I want to run and what I can run are, unfortunately, two separate things. It may turn out that I’ll be lucky to run it at MP. We’ll see how I feel…

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The rocky road to healing

Posted on January 21, 2007 by threlkeld

So this morning was my experiment in trail running to help with my persistent shin splint. I went back to my local equestrian center, which is attached to a county park, and hit the trails for my first ever trail run.

After three days of total rest, icing and stretching I was finally able to run almost pain-free. My stabbing pain has been reduced to a very mild ache. By the end of the run it was gone. The leg still feels good about seven hours later.

I learned a few things today. For one thing, the trail where I ran must be quite muddy during other times of the year. Stretches of it consisted of heavily rutted frozen ground. I’m not sure I would want to come back and run it after a day or two of rain. Another thing I discovered is that you can’t go as fast. I covered 17 miles in 3:15. On our local paved path I can normally cover 20 miles in that time. I think you must work harder too, since I was wiped afterwards, and my watch says I burned 2000 calories, which is what it said I burned on my last 20 miler. I took a 1.5 hour nap when I got in too, which I don’t usually need to do.

I saw four or five other runners, including a kid in an Iona track suit who was flying along. Ah, to be 20 again…

And a few friendly walkers with friendly dogs. And one guy ambling along on a horse and wearing a huge white cowboy hat, which was Today’s Striking Image.

I really enjoyed the run and given the fact that for the first time in nearly three weeks I’m not aware of my right leg, I’d say the combination of semi-extended rest and a day on softish ground was a success. I’ll probably do my next long run there for good measure.

Since I’m a resource-a-holic, here’s a link to the American Trail Running Association’s Web site.

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Trail mix

Posted on January 20, 2007 by threlkeld

I went and checked out a local trail to run on earlier today. It’s actually an equestrian path (and it was full of horse shit, ha ha!), but I know at least one person runs on it because I could see his running shoe prints (or hers, if she’s an amazon) in the snow.

Apart from the heavily rutted bits, it’s an easy path as far as trails go. Not a lot of roots, rocks or other hazards. The weird thing is that it runs right along a major thruway — you can see cars whizzing by through the trees — yet it’s very quiet and peaceful. I even saw a curious deer about 20 feet away from me when I checked out the first half mile or so earlier. Best of all, it’s a five minute drive from my house.

I’m going to try running it tomorrow, since my I don’t want to take my leg out on 20 miles of pavement, nor can I stand the idea of spending several hours inside on the treadmill. The run can be two loops — one is about 1.5 miles, the other is about 4.5 miles. That’s certainly short enough to enable me to cut the run short if my leg is really bothering me again. And the ground is primarily dirt, grass, pine needles, gravel and other forgiving matter.

Full report on this grand experiment to follow.

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