Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Double Running Goodness

Today calls for copious amounts of rain and this in and of itself is not a problem. But the prospect of running this evening while Owen is at basketball practice just didn't appeal to me and so I shook things up a bit.

Before work I was going to run no matter what the weather and, remarkably, as I set off at a little past 6am it was barely drizzling on me. I had a nice easy 5km run that seemed to (as usual) feel better with every kilometre.

Then, while at work, I sat there wondering just how tough it would be to get myself out the door for another run should the forecast prove true and the rains came. Well, I think my mind was influenced by the fact that I got soaked on my way to work while biking and was not in the mood for more potential sogginess. Therefore, instead of doing a 40 minute abdominal routine at the gym (my shoulder and neck are still all funked up and I am continuing to avoid upper body weight training at the moment) I decided to jump on the old treadmill yet again.

To make things interesting I decided to see what would happen if I pushed the pace a bit past my BQ pace of 8.1mph (or 7:26/mile in runner speak). Since the whole HTML table things is working for me here's what happened:

DurationSpeedPace (miles)Pace (km)
5:006.2mph9:39/mile6:00/km
5:007.5mph7:59/mile4:58/km
5:008.5mph7:03/mile4:22/km
4:007.5mph7:59/mile4:58/km
4:008.5mph7:03/mile4:22/km
3:007.5mph7:59/mile4:58/km
3:008.5mph7:03/mile4:22/km
2:007.5mph7:59/mile4:58/km
2:008.5mph7:03/mile4:22/km
1:007.5mph7:59/mile4:58/km
1:008.5mph7:03/mile4:22/km
4:386.2mph9:39/mile6:00/km
39:387.6mph7:56/mile4:56/km

Not bad, eh?! The total distance was 8km and I was quite pleased with both the distance and the intensity of the workout. Clearly I have a long way to go, but these types of efforts can only help in my quest to qualify for Boston next year.

And since today is the last day of the month and I am not planning on running a third time I can now summarize my running for November thusly:


So, there it is. A decent month of running. I'm especially happy to see the average speed move up a bit from October (where it sat at a paltry 9.8km/h!). Although my average heart rate is up I am not concerned with that. I figure that running a whole year at low heart rates is enough and it's time to start slowly moving on up. Still in the aerobic range, but no longer moving like a snail. (More like a frightened sloth...)

And lastly, since I am short on time I will not post it here, but in the next couple of days I would like to share a very interesting and important article about the physiology of running that my Dad alerted me to (thanks Tata!). Every would be and seasoned marathoner would be well served to read it. Stay tuned!

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Monday, November 29, 2010

Finally A Little Distance!

How do you judge the difference between a "run" and a "long run"? For the past year my threshold has been fifteen kilometres, but there's something nice and definite about a "10 miler" and so I now am of the opinion that sixteen kilometres will be my barometer for long run distance. Of course this means that since the marathon I have not had a single "long run", and that is rather disturbing.

Yesterday I guess I finally made it. Although my shoulder is still on the mend and I have to give it more time to heal before getting back into upper body weights, and the kink in my neck/upper back on the right side is still with me, my running has been getting better. The faster cadence that I've been practicing is producing faster training paces and I have even started to practice my planned marathon pace for my attempt at a BQ at some point in 2011 (if all goes well). With all that in mind I really wanted to keep things nice and easy and just make it through 16km this weekend. I had planned on this distance last weekend, but my body had other plans and I failed miserably. This time I made it!

It was a chilly run and perhaps not as easy as I would have liked it to be, but physically it definitely was not very taxing. I ran into the wind heading West and for the first half of the run it was all about just putting one foot in front of the other, enjoying the music on the iPod (which I've dug out recently for the first time in a very long time), and seeing the world glide by. On the way back things went a bit faster with the wind now at my back, but I had a small scare at about the 11.5km mark. My left calf all of a sudden felt like it would cramp up. I tried to run through it for about a hundred metres, but then thought better of it and stopped to stretch it out a bit. I figured that it was mush smarter to stop, realize things weren't going to improve, and then walk home than risk a torn muscle. For a few minutes I stretched and thought about what I should do. Then I decided to try and jog and set off at an easy pace. The calf thing did not return, mercifully, and I was able to finish the run at the same pace or better although that first kilometre after starting back up was by far the slowest of the second half of the run at 5:27.

Ultimately I finished the 10 miler with a decent pace (5:19/km, 8:34/mile) and the week's mileage ended up at 46km (28.5 miles). I am now at 165km for the month and am planning on at least one more run tomorrow and might even do the usual double that's been happening on Tuesdays in the recent past if the predicted rain isn't as heavy as they say it will be.

Good times!

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Friday, November 26, 2010

Pimpin'

Although my shoulder is still bugging me, and my neck is still kinked so that it hurts to look forward while biking and is nearly impossible to turn my head to the right, things are looking pretty good on the treadmill. Of all things this is a particular surprise, but I'm really trying to make things interesting while on the go-nowhere machine and, as a result, have discovered that it makes the time go faster. I don't wear headphones, I don't watch TV, and I don't try and distract myself from the effort in any other way (though I can't think of any other way that I COULD ever try to use as a form of distraction at the moment). What I am trying to do is to make my BQ marathon pace (or the pace at which I will have to run to qualify for Boston until I turn 40) as easy as possible.

My plan? To use the treadmill for this very purpose. Today was another bit of a test and, like Wednesday's effort, it is encapsulated in all its glory within the following crappy HTML table because cut-and-paste is a wonderful thing...

DurationSpeedPace (miles)Pace (km)
5:006.2mph9:39/mile6:00/km
5:007.5mph7:59/mile4:58/km
20:008.1mph7:24/mile4:36/km
5:007.5mph7:59/mile4:58/km
5:116.2mph9:39/mile6:00/km
40:117.5mph8:02/mile5:00/km

Yes, the total was 8km of running at a decent pace for yours truly, and twenty minutes were run at my PMP (which I'm sure is pronounced "Pimp"). That means I was Pimpin' for twenty minutes straight!

Awesome...

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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Kinked and Tready

This morning I awoke with the absolute WORST kink in my neck! I haven't felt this bad since I had whiplash for the better part of a year following a car crash in my teens. Anyway, the situation is shitty, but I was not going to let it deter me from my plan to (begrudgingly) run on the treadmill at lunchtime...

Yes, the wife and youngest loin-fruit are away and so I am alone with the first-born. He's still too young to leave alone at home and, therefore, I have to fit my running into slots when he is being supervised by other "adults". Case in point, last night while he was at basketball practice I took to the streets and ran a decent 6km in the cold and windy conditions. Given how cold it was and the fact that we were using our bikes to get around (see above re: wife and loin-fruit being away and assume that they have the car) I wonder if my neck kinking was as a result of this mode of travel...

Anyway, this morning on the way to work I could barely look up and definitely could not do a shoulder check to the right. Thank goodness I don't live in England and that the left side is much more important for such checking than the right!

Anyway, I went to the gym partly to run and partly to stand under the hot water of a nice shower afterwards. Yesterday the water in the showers was not hot and I was really hoping that this would not be a repeat occurrence. Luckily, as I found out, the water was hot, but my neck remained as kinked as ever.

Anyway for the second time, my run was done in a decent fashion, all things considered, and I even tested out my planned marathon pace for a spell. Since my neck is hurting me, and I wanted to refresh my memory on creating tables in HTML, here is the summary of my 6km (3.71mile) run:

DurationSpeedPace (miles)Pace (km)
5:006.2mph9:39/mile6:00/km
5:007.0mph8:32/mile5:18/km
5:007.5mph7:59/mile4:58/km
12:008.1mph7:24/mile4:36/km
3:336.2mph9:39/mile6:00/km
30:337.3mph8:11/mile5:05/km

So, there you have it in all its crappy HTML table glory. Apparently if I am kinked I can still run, though I don't have to like the experience, especially if it's on the human hamster wheel (and to add insult to injury one that measures things in American units!).

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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Nickel and Dime

Ran another 5km this morning. It seems that I also tend to follow the exact same route on all of my morning runs, and although it hasn't gotten to me yet this can't be good for the long haul. I've also been thinking that all this nickel and diming stuff (and by that I mean that all I seem to be doing these days is running a lot of 5k's and 10k's) can't be good for the soul. It also can't be all that good for my endurance. Although I'd like to put in some variety into my training it seems that my body has other ideas and I suppose I should just be happy to be running at all.

Argh!

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Sunday, November 21, 2010

Getting Old Sucks

The past couple of weeks have been somewhat humbling in the getting old department. First my right shoulder gave out while doing bench presses (and likely caused by throwing a football around with Owen the night before), and now my right leg feels like an old brick that's been sitting out in the desert for too long. In short, it's crumbling...

I've stopped upper body weights for the entire week and have been doing lots of core and leg training, and perhaps that is why I feel this way south of the equator. But it makes it no less frustrating, and no less painful. I was still running fine throughout the week, but this morning's "long" run became a rather pedestrian and wonky 10km effort that is best forgotten (it was supposed to have been a 16km run). In fact I wonder if I should have been running at all. My ankle and Achilles is definitely off, and now to add insult to injury my right knee feels stiff and my right hip is not much better.

I've been pretty bad at stretching in the evenings and absolutely must get back to that routine or things are bound to get worse before they get better. Also, I think a down week is in the offing despite the fact that my weekly mileage cannot be described as anything other than pathetic given that I've only hit 40km twice since the end of September.

I suppose it's still better than not being able to run at all...

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Sunday, November 14, 2010

Lesson Learned, Many More To Come, and Hitting 2000km

I have been running slow and steady for just over a year now, and things have gone well all things considered. I have not missed many training runs due to injury, but I haven't exactly gone very fast when it came to the two races that I did enter in 2010 (not including the one I ran with Owen, which was the most fun, but not exactly a goal race).My goal was to stay healthy, and this mission has been accomplished. But a secondary purpose behind all that slow plodding was to go into 2011 strong enough to pick up the pace in training and, hopefully, see a nice big fat BQ at the end of it all.

With all that being said I did not exactly know how to do it. I was basically just going to start running at a faster pace. Easier said than done...

So it came as a surprise, and not without a sense of irony, that a painful ankle revealed to me the wonders of stride rate. This week that is what I focused on and the results have been amazing. My short runs averaged 5:07/km, 5:09/km, and 5:09/km for pace (5km, 5.5km, and 6km respectively, done on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday).

Then the magnificent "Tah-Dah!" moment came yesterday when I ventured out for what turned out to be my long run for the week. The weather forecast called for rain on Sunday and so I decided that I would do my longest run of the week a day early. I went out in the early afternoon and the weather was perfect: Sunny, not too cold, not windy at all. As in the first three runs of the week I just focused on my stride rate and tried to hit 90 steps with each foot per minute (for the optimum rate of 180 steps per minute total). Although I am still not hitting that number I am able to average 85 steps per minute. I have much to learn, mind you, and a long way to go to improve my form and breathing to match the new faster turnover, but I can't argue with the results.

The long run ended up being 15km and my average pace was 4:55/km! For me that's pretty much my half-marathon race pace, and it certainly did NOT feel like I was racing. Until I hit the hills coming out of the Don Valley I was averaging 4:51/km and holding it quite comfortably despite a slightly elevated heart rate. To be able to run that fast on a training run of that distance felt very rewarding indeed.

Also, with that long run my annual mileage passed the 2000km mark!

Today I went out for a short 5km jog in the rain, though it was quite dry while I was running. It was much slower than the other runs this week, on purpose. It was still faster than what has been my "normal", but I was able to hold back a bit by slowing down my stride rate to about 80 steps per minute.

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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Cadence?

Last night I went out for a hesitant run because my right ankle had been feeling particularly wonky. Truth be told I had doubts about my ability to run at all. But as the saying goes, in every grey cloud there is a silver lining, and mine came in the form of a lesson on cadence.

As I started out on my jog (having dropped the boys off at Beavers and basketball practice, and therefore giving myself just enough time for a quick 5km run) I was by no means in my happy place. My ankle felt like Cleveland after "The Decision", though I knew I'd get over it much faster than Cavs fans ever will. As a result I was forced to take smaller steps to limit the amount of work my ankle had to do. Also, because I was in a bit of a time crunch I was also forced to pick up the pace in order to complete my run in time to shower and get back to picking up the boys from their activities.

Then I had one of those zen moments and decided to count how many steps I was taking in a minute. More accurately, I decided to see how many steps I COULD take in a minute. In the back of my mind I had the knowledge that the best cadence is somewhere around 90 steps per minute per foot (full rotations) and I wanted to see if what felt like a fast turnover for me would approach that number.

My first test ended up at 86 steps with the right foot, and I though this wasn't too bad. It didn't feel entirely comfortable, but it didn't feel like I was trying that hard either. Without knowing it my pace had increased significantly! Buoyed by this I decided to try and maintain a high cadence for the rest of the run, testing myself again a couple of kilometres later. The second test came in the second to last kilometre and I managed 85 steps, this time counting the left foot (not that it matters). You can see by my splits that the more I concentrated on cadence the better things got as far as my pace splits went:

1. 6:10 (9:56/mile)
2. 5:12 (8:23/mile)
3. 5:03 (8:08/mile)
4. 4:41 (7:32/mile)
5. 4:28 (7:11/mile)

Looks like I will be concentrating on cadence from now on since I found this to be a very good and rewarding exercise. Something else to focus on, and with seemingly terrific results on overall speed.

In other completely unrelated news I want to direct your attention to the story of Canadian Simon Bairu, who ran and had to drop out of his first ever marathon over the weekend in a little known event called the New York City Marathon. After hitting the wall pretty hard he went through an ordeal that I would not have expected at a "world class" event, and especially given that he is an Elite athlete and was in the lead pack until being forced to stop as his legs and body gave out. The thing that got me the most is that the paramedics told him they were NOT ALLOWED to give him any food!!! What the hell is up with that?!

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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Deed is Done!

I have registered for both the Around the Bay 30k (at the end of March) and the Toronto Waterfront Marathon (next October). Yup, the dye has been cast and I now have those two goal races to look forward to. Others may or may not come up, but these two are definitely my focus. I am thinking that either a full or half-marathon in the Spring is also a definite possibility, but I may even decide to race a couple of shorter distances to see how my speed is coming along. After all, if things go well my goal will be to make an attempt at a Boston Qualifying standard next Fall.

I am a bit disappointed, however, to find out that despite qualifying (should that come to pass) it may be too late to register for Boston by then given how quickly this thing sells out nowadays! I think next year's race sold out in a matter of hours - likely less time than it would take to qualify for the damned thing in the first place. Perhaps this will lead to even more stringent qualifying standards, but for me the times are difficult enough to achieve as they are. In fact, I may never get there so if they are made faster my chances will go from slim to none...

Nevertheless, at least I have two races to look forward to in 2011.

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Monday, November 8, 2010

Into the Disco Era

Yesterday I finished off my highest mileage week since I ran the marathon back in September with a rather painful 16km jaunt up to Edwards Gardens through the trail system that is found in the many ravines running through the city. It was painful in that my right ankle has been rather wonky lately and I am hoping to just run through it, though I am thinking a bit of a break may be warranted.

My mileage for the week became a decent 46.5km and I am now into the Disco Era for yearly mileage, sitting at 1977.75km. I think that would put me exactly at October 1st, 1977 and got me thinking about what happened on that particular day in history. Hmmm...

Well, apparently Pele played his last professional game of football for the New York Cosmos on that day. The retirement theme is interesting given what happened at the NYC Marathon yesterday with the great Haile Gebrselassie. The end of an era (perhaps). As others have proven, retirements are made to be broken, especially those made in haste while suffering is still fresh on the mind. And sometimes they never seem to take...

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Friday, November 5, 2010

Short and Sweet?

My hip flexors are so sore
I can't balance anymore


Ran 5km this morning in the cold rain. It was slow on account of the sore hip flexors, which are sore as a result of the weight training I did yesterday. Upping the weight on the Adductor and Abductor machine sure had the desired effect! That and more weight on lunges, dead lifts, back extensions.

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Tuesday, November 2, 2010

October 2010 Numbers

My running at the moment can only be described as "plodding". I am still waiting for that magical moment when I finally break out of the post-marathon funk, but given that I'm hitting the weights pretty hard these days the running is almost (almost) secondary at the moment so I can wait a bit (but just a bit) longer.

Over the weekend I finished off the month of October with my longest run since the marathon. I secretly wanted to run ten miles, but settled for a nice 15km jaunt down to the Beaches and to the end of the boardwalk and then back home. It was blah, but at least it was...

I haven't been too motivated to write down much of my running-related thoughts on this blog recently, but I thought it would be nice to summarize October. Given my lack of motivation I have decided to simply pull the stats off of Garmin's website and post it here in all its JPEG glory:


This morning I ran a chilly 6.2km in below-freezing temperatures. Not too much fun going out early when it is dark and cold, but so far I've been able to do it consistently. Although my runs are all pretty short these days I think it's still worth it to keep up with the pattern and run before work during the week. I am starting to entertain thoughts of starting to commute on foot again, but I am not quite ready for that much running at the moment.

With the above run my mileage for 2010 is well into the Great Depression and currently sits at 1937.45km. I guess the ".45" would put me in June, 1937, to be exact...

Next up? WWII.

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