Live on tape

I’ve iced, ibuprofened, stretched, massaged, and taped. That should clear up the plantar fasciitis in no time, right? Right? I’ve added taping to my regimen since someone in my running group last night suggested it and showed me how she does it. The tape certainly changes the way it feels; for good or bad I can’t say.

Six slow miles last night, my first run this week. The heat (high 80s) and humitidy were a bit brutal.

My name is Scott and I have plantar fasciitis

Admitting that my struggles with a chronic injury have gotten to (or past) the point where I really need to do something about it is hard. I feel like an alcoholic, hiding my condition from the world as I go on bender after bender, week after week. No longer: I clearly have plantar fasciitis in my right foot, it’s not getting better on its own, and I need to address it. If that means I reduce or quit running for a while, so be it. If that means I withdraw from the McKenzie River Trail Run, I’ll have to grin and bear it. (Note to self: if I withdraw before July 31st, I get a partial refund.)

This started sometime during my training for the Eugene marathon. I’d wake up with some heel or arch pain that would go away pretty quickly. A while later, I started feeling it after long periods sitting at my desk, too. In May, I was running a lot less but walking a lot more and I continued to feel it, and more often during the day as well. This was never a severe pain at all. Just a little thing. Exactly the sort of pain that fools you into thinking you don’t need to do anything about it. Especially because it goes away while running.

As I ramped up my mileage after getting back from Europe, I kept feeling it. In the last month, it’s changed, too, from a painful sensation to a burning one. It’s become a little more localized too, maybe. It’s on the inside edge of the bottom of my right foot, where the heel meets the arch. At virtually the same time that it turned from a painful to  burning, I started feeling it pretty much all day, whenever I would walk.

That’s where it stands now. It’s still a mild sensation, not debilitating in any way… yet. But it’s getting worse and worse and I need to do something. My first order of business: for two weeks, reduce my mileage by 50% or so, stick to flat courses, ice my foot a lot, and take two ibuprofen a day. If I don’t see improvement after that, I’ll see a doctor.

Feeling a bit rough

I’ve been feeling wiped out this weekend. I guess it started before Saturday morning’s run, probably Friday night, when I had trouble getting to sleep. But it was going to be in the high 90s that day, so I couldn’t really sleep in: I needed to get the run in while the morning was still cool. Cooler, anyway. It was still in the high sixties or low seventies, hotter than I like it.

The run itself was 18 miles, up and down Leif Erikson. It took me 2:54:30, so that’s an average pace of 9:42/mile… a pace I’m happy with over that distance on that terrain. It was an unremarkable training run, really. Maybe I felt a bit more out of breath by the end than I should have, and maybe my foot bothered me a little more than it usually does, but all in all, no problem.

I came home, ate, and napped for a long while, like I had planned to ever since I had trouble getting to sleep. When I woke up, I felt dragged-out, tired, and sore all over, and that kept up the rest of the weekend.  Maybe I’m a little under the weather, maybe I’m having a couple bad days… don’t know. I’ll try to take it easier this week and hope my body recovers some.

Goose

I scrambled to Goose Hollow yesterday after work to barely make it in time for the Red Lizards’ Thursday night “Goose” run, which goes from 19th and Madison through Washington Park and up to Pittock Mansion.

The last time I showed up for this run was more than a year ago. (So much for what I said then: “I’m going to start keeping my Thursday evenings free for The Goose“!) Stronger now, and very familiar with the hills in that area, I was able to keep to a run or jog the whole way… but it was still a challenge. An “oh god is it over yet can I stop to breathe yet?” kind of challenge. Downhill, of course, was more fun. I’ll just give my average pace for the seven miles: 9:45.

Nearby Wildfires Prompt Cancellation Of Western States 100

Wow. America’s best-known hundred mile trail race is off for 2008.

It is with deep regret that we announce today that the 35th running of the Western States 100-mile Endurance Run has been cancelled, due to the unprecedented amount of wildfires that have struck northern California in recent days and the health risks that have been associated with these wildfires. The Board of Trustees of the Western States Endurance Run has consulted with many of our local and state race partners, including the U.S. Forest Service and the Placer County Air Pollution Control District, in coming to this decision. We apologize to our runners for any inconvenience this decision has created.

The race’s organizers are currently working on a revised schedule of runner activities for Thursday and Friday in Squaw Valley, and these details will be made available soon. Although there will be no race for the first time in our 35-year history, we still wish to make this experience as meaningful as possible for our runners. Activities will include annual events such as runner check-in for goodie bag pickup on Friday morning, the pre-race briefing and raffle on Friday afternoon, the showing of Western States documentaries on Friday night, and a special gathering of runners commemorating the race’s start on Saturday.

Monday Run

The Monday-night group run at the Beaverton branch of the Portland Running Company is a great bunch of people, but lately it seems everybody there runs too fast (7:30s) or too slow (9:30s) for me. Well, some days I want to run 9:30s, true, but more often I’d rather be between eight and nine minutes a mile. Yesterday the one other guy who sometimes likes to run in that range showed up, and so we ran together, me pushing his pace pretty hard. He’s a newer runner, but he’s got a good streak of crazy in him — he’s already done a 50K trail race for instance.  He hung in there well and we ended up averaging 8:11 over six miles, with the first mile-and-a-half at 7:50/mile and the last mile at 7:45. I felt good and I could have gone a bit faster. My scabbed-up knee (from Saturday’s fall) didn’t bother me too much either.

Have a nice fall

Around mile six of Saturday’s fourteen hilly trail miles, I tripped on an invisible rock and went down hard. The fall went pretty well; I briefly touched with my hands then rolled onto my shoulder. As it turned out, I was fine, but had a nice scrape on my knee. All the dirt and blood made the rest of the run more fun.

I ran the fourteen miles (from the Zoo to mile seven of Wildwood and back) in 2:35:02, which means I only averaged 11 minutes a mile or so. Although that needs to be adjusted down a little: I spent five or ten minutes, clock running, staunching a bloody nose, and another five minutes or so helping some people figure out how to get to Pittock Mansion from the arboretum. So it might be closer to 10 minutes a mile. Either way, those hills in there are tough. I’m happy enough that I didn’t have to stop to walk up any of them.

Ups and Downs

My Wednesday evening run felt slow and bad, so I decided to take both Thursday and Friday off — though I did do day two of the hundred push ups training program, which I read about on Get Fit Slowly. I did enough push ups in my “initial test” that I’m over in the third column of the training schedule, which means more push ups. My arms and chest are a little sore; I suppose that’s a good thing.

Tomorrow I’m running 14 miles on Wildwood, a seven-mile out and back starting at mile zero near the zoo. This will take me twice up and down the two longest hills on the trail, the one Pittock Mansion is on and the one on the northwest side of Balch creek.

More track work

I had another easy Monday night run, so once more I headed down to the Jackson Middle School track for some intervals. Tonight it was four repeats of 1600 meters each. (1600 meters is 0.994 miles.) I didn’t push it as hard as last week, but it was still grueling, especially after the sweat started getting into my eyes; now why did I forget to wear a cap?

4×1600: 7:39 7:31 7:32 7:18 (7:30 average)

Pictures of me from the Eugene Marathon

I’m a month and a half late getting to this. But is it ever really too late to save cherished memories like these, memories of looking like a complete tool?

This first one shows me hanging out with the people wearing red. I, for once, am wearing white. But what’s with the face? I guess this is around mile eight. Tool factor: 9/10.

This next one is along the Willamette somewhere, which means we can safely place it between miles, oh, 12 and 26 or so. Except for my freakishly high forehead, this one isn’t bad at all — it almost looks like I’m running, not just walking or striking a pose. Tool factor: a mere 3/10.

I believe this is with 0.2 miles left to go. I’m no longer running at this point; I’m dancing. The Electric Slide or something. You can see that I’m snapping to the beat with my right hand, while my legs make like Elaine’s on Seinfeld. Tool factor: 9.8/10.

I’m not sure where this next one was. Maybe it was near the finish. Though if so, I’d expect my mouth to be open wider, scooping in air, flying sweat droplets, and bugs. Must have caught me at a lucky moment. Tool factor: a generous 5/10.

Across the finish. To be fair, I’m a little tired at this point. I should judge not, lest I judge myself. Wait, I am judging myself! So OK then, I judge my tool factor here to be 10/10. Although I should get some credit for having both feet off the ground.

Saturday’s Run

Went as planned. I ran in a new pair of Salomons, my first pair of bona-fide trail shoes. They seemed to work out pretty well; I was nervous because, like almost all trail shoes, they aren’t built to provide motion control against my over-pronation. Why not? The theory is that every footfall on a trail is a bit different anyway, so you don’t need the kind of protection against repetitive-motion stresses that stability footwear provides. Or so I’ve read. I’m not sure though… groomed trails offer plenty of similar footfalls, if you ask me. Then again, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe my very supportive motion control road shoes might be harming me more than helping. During my month in Europe, I didn’t run that much. But my right foot remained a little sore. Could it have been because I also walked a lot, in the same pair of motion-control shoes?

Anyway. The run was 15 miles in Forest Park, five of them on the (relatively) flat Leif Erikson and ten on other, usually more hilly, trails. For two or three miles of it I ran with someone I met out on the trail, but eventually I had to let him go: too fast. He pulled me along at a rapid clip while it lasted, though, and the whole exercise penciled out to be easily my fastest run to date on those trails: 15 miles in 2:18, for an average pace of around 9:15/mile.

Tomorrow’s Route

I’ve got a 15-mile Forest Park trail run planned for tomorrow; here’s the route. It’s basically a figure eight on Wildwood and Leif Erikson.

Start: Germantown Road Leif Erikson parking lot
Up Cannon Trail to Wildwood, 0.32 miles
South on Wildwood to Hardesty Trail, 2.93 miles
Down Hardesty to Leif, 0.27 miles
South on Leif to Saltzman Rd, 2.8 miles
Up Saltzman Rd to Wildwood, 0.5 miles
North on Wildwood to Hardesty, 5.65 miles
Down Hardesty to Leif (again), 0.27 miles
North on Leif back to start, 2.22 miles

Total: 14.96 miles.

Running Streaks

I ran six miles last night at a fast pace (7:55 average) and four more miles today at lunch at a slow one (10:17). That makes four days in a row of running, which I’m pretty sure is a new record longest streak for me. The United States Running Streak Association tracks these kinds of things (”A running streak is defined by USRSA as running at least one continuous mile within each calendar day under one’s own body power…”). You can see from their current active list that the longest current streak (through 3/1/08) is 39 years and 222 days. I am .028% of the way there! Only, I don’t plan on running tomorrow.

800-meter intervals

Yesterday’s run turned out to be a really easy five miles, so today seemed like a good time to try to get in some “quality” speed work. I headed over to the Jackson Middle School track, and, dodging all the walkers and soccer players, ground out ten 800-meter repeats, with snail-slow 400-meter recoveries in between. This was only the second time I’ve attempted 800-meter intervals (or “Yassos”), and last time I stopped at six.

Since I’ve been feeling slow, I probably put some extra effort into it. I worked hard tonight, but the results were gratifying: not only did I do the full set of 10 repeats, but they averaged 12 seconds faster than in April.

10×800: 3:27 3:23 3:25 3:30 3:28 3:34 3:27 3:30 3:27 3:20 (3:27 average).

With the warm-up, recoveries, and cool-down, it came out to 8.6 miles of running, which might be the most I’ve ever run on a mid-week day.

12 miles on Leif

Yesterday I ran twelve miles, six up and six down Leif Erickson. (Thursday, the day I got back, I ran six miles, up to Council Crest.) This twelve-miler was twice as long as I’ve ran in over a month, and I felt it. My legs felt strong enough, but my lungs were lagging behind, and my core muscles were aching a bit. Worse yet, my upper body — shoulders, neck, and upper back — just wouldn’t relax at all. The tension up there was tiresome.

Still, I finished, averaging about 9:30 miles, which isn’t too awful considering the terrain.

Sachertorte and Soccertorte

Of course they call it “football”. (Or fussball, in German.) But if they’d just loosen up for a moment and admit that they know we call it “soccer” than this bakery/cafe could use the same ingenious wordplay I did in the title. Yes, those really are sachertortes on the right.

(We enjoyed some sachertorte in this charming Viennese cafe, in fact. And probably an Einspanner : espresso with whip cream. All part of the weight-loss plan!)

(Yes, I fell off the no-caffeine wagon over there. I’m trying to climb back on now.)

Seen in Austria

This is, I swear, a real Austrian product. It’s a chocolate-coated marshmallow thing.

Make your own joke.

Last Month in Running

…And I’m back. It turns out I just don’t have what it takes to both travel and blog, simultaneously: the notion of blogging just seemed impossible during the trip. Traveling uses up all of my energy, leaving nothing left for such luxuries as stringing together two sentences coherently.

Did I run in Europe? Yeah, a little, but not as much as I’d hoped. I managed to run about two or three times a week, each time for about six miles (or as the Europeans so quaintly put it with their olde-worlde charm, “10K”). One of my favorites was a jog through the gardens at Schönbrunn, Vienna’s sublimely beautiful palace. (Is it a better visit than Versailles? Yes.) Click the satellite view for a full look at it in Google Maps. The grounds don’t seem quite as large when you’re running, so I had to do a number of loops to get six miles in. It was a cold and rainy day so the park was practically empty: perfect.

Other than a couple of runs through Valencia’s Turia park, most of my others were through the countryside outside one village or another in Austria and Germany, ranging from the flat farmlands east of Vienna (full of rabbits and deer) to the brutal forested hills west of Frankfurt. Running in the countryside in these countries is amazing. Why? The land-use laws. Farmers aren’t allowed to enclose their fields with fences and the public always has the right to walk or run (and usually bike, I think) on the farm access roads. Thus, the entire countryside is one giant interconnected set of recreational paths. The difference between that and the situation back home here is stunning.

So how am I doing after a month with relatively little running and relatively high consumption rates for pastry and preserved meats? Well, my speed and endurance both seem to have taken some hits, but I’m sure they’ll be back. My weight, oddly, seems to be down two pounds - WTF?

I’m glad to be back.

Still Alive

Sorry about the password-protected image dump in the previous post… no time to edit the images down to those I’d want to show here. We’re in Valencia, Spain, after having visited Madrid. My biggest complaint about Spain? No street food whatsoever. What?! Why?! I’ve only gotten two runs in so far, Saturday and Sunday mornings, both about six miles in the Turia, Valencia’s long linear park, formerly a river.

So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, goodbye

I’ll be in Europe in a few hours. Blogging will be sporadic if anything.

My legs recovered amazingly well from the marathon. I ran three miles comfortably last night.

Race Report: 2008 Eugene Marathon

So here we go, Eugene Marathon 2008: marathon number two. (Yeah, I ran a 50K too… that was a little more laid back, in its own way, if possibly more terrifying.) The goal: keep running, don’t hit the wall, break four hours. The plan: Run 8:50 miles until at least 23.5 miles in, then keep up that pace or faster. Eat a bunch of fun-sized Milky Ways in the first eight miles.

I got up about six am and around 6:30 we drove the couple of miles over to the starting line. I waited in line to pee one last time (lesson learned from marathon #1!) and lined up just a little ahead of the nine minutes per mile spot. This was a lot smaller that the Portland Marathon (just 1741 finishers in the full marathon) so getting a spot in the starting group was a lot easier and once the gun went off, we were over the line pretty quickly.

The marathon course is pretty nice, going through the University and south Eugene for it’s first nine miles, then staying mostly to bike paths along the Willamette. The paths are pretty and just this side of dead flat. (Yes there are a few brief rollers.) But they do present two problems… a little crowding (which is going to get an awful lot worse if the field grows and they don’t change the course) and a lot of concrete. I’m a skeptic when it comes to the idea that running on concrete is more jarring than running on asphalt, but I know there are an awful lot of believers and it is definitely something to consider. One other issue I had is that either they didn’t try to close down the paths or they failed… there was definitely still some non-marathon bike and foot traffic trying to get through.

Back to my actual run. I was nervous during the first miles and focusing hard on conserving energy and not doing anything stupid. All the hills were in the first eight miles, though nothing was what you’d call a monster. Here’s an elevation profile of the path recorded by my Garmin Forerunner during my run:

I went through my collection of candy bars and drank either Gleukos sports drink or water at every aid station… I’m finally getting better at the pinch-the cup and suck-through-the-corner technique that can actually get the contents of a paper cup full of liquid down your throat while you run. (Though I did stop to walk at two of the aid stations early on, maybe miles six and seven.) During the first ten miles, I felt like I wasn’t putting much effort in, which I guess is how you need to feel if you are going to be feeling good enough to keep it up after mile 20. My mantra during the first 10 was “this mile doesn’t count… this mile doesn’t count”… I was going to run each early mile carefully enough and replace enough calories to start the second half of the race relatively fresh. And avoid the dread wall. I got a lift after the biggest hill when Sweetie and my Mom cheered me from the side of the road. High-five!

Miles 1-10 splits: 8:44 8:49 8:52 8:50 8:51 8:48 8:50 8:48 8:57 8:46. I used my Forerunner religiously to keep the even pace. I probably looked at it once a minute. The main data field I focus on is “Average Lap Pace” — my average pace (per mile) during the current mile. The 8:57 in mile nine happened because the aid station fell right at the end of it, and I got caught up in the aid station traffic.

As planned, I eased up on the eating in miles 10-20. Just as well, because keeping up the 8:50 pace no longer felt like child’s play; now it felt like a brisk training run. I got Gleukos at most of the aid stations to get at least a little carb input during this part, and also had a Cliff Shot. All in all, running still felt comfortable. Around mile 10 we got to see some of the lead marathoners go whizzing by, returning from the loop through Springfield. How do they do it? Around mile 16 I saw my two-person cheering crew again… they made up for their small numbers with enthusiasm! Splits for miles 11-20: 8:47 8:48 8:47 8:47 8:50 8:49 8:50 8:51 8:49 8:44. Looking back, I guess I was still having trouble really nailing 8:50… psychologically it’s very hard for me not to try to beat the goal, even if it’s only by a few seconds like that. Can a difference of a few seconds matter that much? I’m guessing probably not, at my level.

At mile 20, I still felt OK, although various leg muscles were making themselves quietly heard. Let’s see… the very fronts of my thighs hurt a bit, and during mile 19 I thought my left hip flexor might be in the early stages of cramping (though it never did). My feet, ankles and calves all felt OK. One more weird thing I noticed, that I’d actually been experiencing for a lot of the race — at times I felt asymmetric. It’s hard to describe. I felt like I was running asymmetrically (I probably do at least a bit) and I also felt like I couldn’t tell if I was leaning left or right or not at all. Then it would pass. Odd.

Miles 20 through 24 were all about hanging in there. At 23.5 I was giving myself permission to speed up a little if I could, but I didn’t speed up much at that point. I felt I had to save that for the final push and that wasn’t going to last more than a couple of miles. But the thing about maintaining your pace at the end of a marathon is that a lot of people running around you can’t, so you end up surging ahead quite a bit. I think it’s a psychological trick I don’t completely have the hang of to view passing so many people with excitement. Instead I’m tempted to feel bad for them or, worse, jealous that they are getting a rest! My splits here were 8:47 8:47 8:48 and 8:44.

So I made it to mile 24 and I could still run. Time to start gasping hard for air and seeing what I could do. In the grand scheme of things the seconds I gained might not have made much difference — I would have to have been hit by a truck to not have broken four hours at this point — but finishing as strong as I could was still important to me. Sucking air and ignoring the uncomfortable feeling that you get when running long distances that some people call “pain” even though it isn’t really pain but your body kind of just pleading with you to knock it off, I cruised through 25 and 26 in 8:39 and 8:23.

My cheering section was ready for me near the finish line, with 0.2 miles or less to go. Sweetie ran out and paced me and told me to sprint! I was almost there! Go go! My brain had of course shut down ages ago and I mumbled something about how she shouldn’t be on the course… which I know now was pretty silly. OK, OK, time to run. There was this one woman I had been pacing near to since at least mile 19, and earlier I think, who had re-passed me with about half a mile to go. I made it my business to catch up to her. We actually ran stride for stride for a while as we headed for the tape, but once I gave up on breathing and just ran without air I had a bit more left in my legs and edged her out. According to my GPS, my pace after mile 26 was 6:54/mile, but that should be taken with a grain of salt.

Immediately after, my legs were in plenty of pain (the feeling once you stop is definitely pure and simple “pain”) but not even in the same neighborhood as the pain after marathon #1. I walked around a bit trying to find my cheering section, which was probably good. A little while later, we got my traditional hamburger. I also got a Manhattan, which is a good drink because it is pretty much straight liquor with a Maraschino cherry in it.

Since then, my legs have recovered shockingly well. I walked around the mall this evening; stairs aren’t a big deal (yeah, I don’t look perfect going down them, ok), and I believe I could even jog a little. I’m happy!

The Big Numbers:

Total Time (official): 3:50:28 (PR by 19 minutes!) Average pace (official): 8:48.
First half/second half: 1:55:29/1:54:59 (30 second negative split!)

Flying to Europe? Boy, Will My Legs Be Tired!

This is one crazy weekend. Not only are we traveling the 100 miles to Eugene tomorrow, and running the marathon on Sunday, but then Tuesday we’re getting on a plane to Frankfurt for a vacation in Europe. That’s a full metric assload of planning and packing and driving and running and aching and flying! We’re headed to Spain first: a couple days in Madrid then a longer stay in Valencia.

I’ve been boring everybody I meet talking about the Spanish version of the beverage horchata, popular in Valencia, made from something called the chufa or “tiger nut”. It’s not a true nut but rather the underground tuber of Cyperus esculentus, or the tigernut sedge. I guess horchata is made in a similar manner as almond milk — here’s a recipe. Horchata is often accompanied by sweets called fartons… make your own third-grade joke.

Anyway, I wouldn’t be boring people talking about a little-known-here beverage if I weren’t getting quite excited about the trip. I haven’t traveled much lately. I haven’t so much as been on a plane since the year 2000. It wasn’t a 9/11 thing, it was an I-had-no-money thing. Getting over the feeling that travel was an unacceptable luxury that was a struggle; it’s taken me some time to accept that I can afford to do this kind of thing now. At this moment, though, my mind is pleasantly vacillating between looking forward to the marathon and looking forward to the vacation.

Eugene Marathon Weather

The weather forecast for Sunday in Eugene is starting to look a little warm… they are now saying mostly sunny with a high of 72. I know it won’t reach the high before afternoon, but with the sun out, it still might be hotter than we’d all like for a marathon. Warm temperatures slow you down every bit as much as hills, but they can be even worse psychologically, since a lot of runners don’t adjust their goal pace for the heat and try to just tough it out instead.

I did six miles at marathon pace yesterday, which seemed to take somewhat more effort than it should, except that I was also talking up a storm (droning on about the history of black pepper and related spices — yes, I’m exciting) so that was making me somewhat out of breath.

I’ll do one more little jog before Sunday’s Eugene Marathon, just two miles or so on Friday.

Plans

Five slow group-run miles last night (9:40 average pace).

It is about four days and seventeen hours until the start of the Eugene Marathon, and I guess I am about ready. Looking back, I’m happy with how my training went… except for a couple weeks with a bad cold, I’ve been on-schedule and uninjured. I think you always wish you had time to get more long runs in, but my 24-miler should be enough.

After Eugene I’ll be taking a month off of work and off of any kind of focused training. (My blogging might be minimal or nonexistent too.) I’m going to be doing short runs only, probably six miles or so at most. I’m thinking I will try to go to five days a week of running instead of my current four… I believe my body is ready for it, and switching to a five-day schedule during my break from long runs seems right.

My bathroom scale is a liar

My bathroom scale cheats to make it seem more accurate than it actually is. It’s a digital scale. And I recently found out that if you weigh yourself, then shortly after weigh yourself again, it will always show the exact same weight… even if you carry an extra five pound weight during the first weigh.

It other words, it caches the last displayed weight for some amount of time (about a minute?), and if the difference between the current weight and the cached one is small enough (less than a value we’ll call Φ), then the scale shows you the cached weight. I don’t know exactly what Φ is, but I know it is at least five pounds.

I have found some complaints on the internet about Weight Watchers brand scales doing the same thing. (Mine isn’t a Weight Watchers brand.)

There’s only one reason they would do this. It has to be because the scale is inaccurate enough (or sensitive enough to where you put your feet or how you lean) to routinely have an error rate approaching ±Φ. And they don’t want you to think that. So they put in this hack, this cheat, this evil thing, just to trick people like me, who sometimes do weigh themselves a few times in different spots on the floor or trying to step more evenly on the scale. Well done.

The trick really worked on me. I was convinced that the scale had very good repeatable accuracy.  Grrrrrr.

Taper Saturday

Just eight miles today! I ran it from home, to the north and east, so that meant big hills. I took it slow… really slow. (10:20 average pace I think?) It felt as easy as it sounds. Just one week until the Eugene marathon…

I hope I don’t pay for this later

The plan was to run two miles mostly uphill, taking it fairly easy, and two miles back, fast. Call it a “downhill session” — something to remind the legs what fast running feels like, without over-stressing the other systems. “Fast” here was intended to be a little under eight minutes a mile.

My mile splits were 9:07 8:53 7:09 6:51. Er. Hmm. It’s fair to say I was stressing more than just the legs there. I have no excuse for running that fast on the way back other than that it was fun. (But why else do I run?) Should I avoid setting new PRs for the mile (even if downhill) while in my marathon taper? I ask the question rhetorically.

Well, my legs haven’t fallen off yet.

“Even has a clip-on ketchup cup!”

You need this automobile French fry holder. No. You do.

Boring training report, marathon strategy

I ran six miles at lunch today, three largely uphill (a net gain of about 235 feet over three miles, with some downhill segments too) followed by three largely down. I tried to keep an even 8:30 pace, but it’s hard for me to not try to “beat” my goal pace, mostly because I feel uncomfortable without a little buffer. This is something I may want to work on before the marathon, actually. Anyway, my splits were 8:22, 8:32, 8:22, 8:24, 8:25, 8:24. The uphill miles were hard work and the downhill ones an easy cruise.

Some strategy thoughts regarding the Eugene Marathon:

• My goal pace is 8:50/mile. That would get me 3:51:26. The extra 8:34 before 4:00:00 is all the buffer I should need; I shouldn’t try to build up any more buffer by actually running 8:45s!
• I liked the nutritional strategy I used during my 24-miler. I ate a lot (a fun-size candy bar every 15-20 minutes) during the first third of the run, and tapered off the eating after that. My theory is that by taking it nice and easy to start and by taking in as many calories as practical during that time, that those early miles “don’t count” as far as carb depletion goes, and thus I push off the wall past mile 26. Besides, it takes some time to digest food: anything I eat in the last few miles probably won’t effect me until after the finish.  So I’m going to stick with that idea and snack a lot during the first miles. Of course that means I need to drink a lot during that time as well.
• If, somehow, I’m still feeling strong by mile N, for some value of N, then and only then will I throw away the goal pace and just run. Most likely this won’t happen. But just in case it does, I should decide what N is. It’s got to be somewhere between 22 and 25.5, I think… Let’s say 23.5.

Slippery When Wet

The weather in Portland has been uncooperative lately; after a glimpse of warm springtime a couple weeks ago, we’ve had rain, hail and temperatures in the low 40s since. Last night I felt cold and bundled up to run, with gloves, my jacket, and shorts-over-tights. (The last of which I was told was “not the style”. Style, schmyle.)

There’s this one part of our run, right after a wooden bridge, where the path is still made of wood (kind of a boardwalk), and where it takes a 90 degree turn to the left. I slipped and fell there a few weeks ago when it was wet, so yesterday, it being wet again, I approached the spot with extra caution. I slowed down. I watched my footsteps. I felt for traction. I eased into the turn.

I went down like a ton of bricks, of course.

This time I scraped up my knee a bit. The scrape is small and minor, but it’s an aggravation.

18 miles on the Columbia’s north bank

Saturday morning I woke up pretty late for me, then spent a few hours on hands and knees putting down paper and padding for laminate flooring. Once I had my legs all sore from that, I decided to go running. (Actually we’d reached a point in the flooring process where I didn’t seem to be of all that much use, so it seemed like a good time.) I’m in my first week of taper, but before that I was somehow managing to run forty miles a week or more, so my taper week was still about 35 miles, and my long run yesterday morning still 18. When I scheduled this out, I kind of felt like a full three weeks of taper might be a little much, so I scheduled this week as a “soft landing” of sorts, to gradually get me down to a bit less running. Of course, after you’ve been crawling around wrestling with flooring products, 18 miles still feels like an awful lot.

I ran from Vancouver’s Fisher’s Landing neighborhood, down 164th to Evergreen Highway, then west on Evergreen for a long ways. I took a path I scoped out on Google Maps, down Chelsea Road, across the railroad tracks, around a wall, and into Wintler Park. From there I tried to recreate part of the route we took during our 30K Portland FIt benchmark last year, but I got a little lost and ended up at this dead end where there was this very busy boat ramp into the Columbia, and this wooden viewpoint tower. I ran up the tower just to punish my legs a little more. Masochist.

Then back. There were more steep uphills coming back, so it was a little harder, but really it wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t trying to run my hardest, of course, but just to maintain a decent long-run pace… I ended up averaging 9:25 per mile. I didn’t do any more flooring work that day, but we crawled around again today, and I must say that just sitting down is starting to hurt. Oh well, I’ll get over it.

Why are some runs so hard?

Running is so weird. I can plug my way through 24 miles one day and have a great time, and then a few workouts later I can go out for an easy five or six mile run and just struggle. I have a theory. Beyond whatever fatigue I may be experiencing from Tuesday’s 800 meter repeats, beyond whatever other physical problems I might have had (am I sick? I don’t think so), beyond all that –

I can’t let my body know I’m thinking about having an easy run.

I need a little fear, a little bravado, a little eye-of-the-tiger, a little panic, a little something to get some adrenaline or whatever flowing through my body and especially to tell my legs that, yes, I really need them to wake up and get working. Otherwise they drift along, lazily wondering what the big hurry is and — ow — why are we trying to move so fast? Couldn’t we just walk?

Anyway, I ran 5.2 miles at lunch today, hitting something near my desired 9:30/mile pace, and it sucked.

Yassos

I imagine there comes a time in every running blog when a post titled just “Yassos” is written. This is mine. Yassos, or Yasso 800s, are just 800-meter track repeats. They are named after Bart Yasso, and I guess they were immortalized in this Runner’s World article. Run 10 800-meter intervals, with recovery jogs in-between, and your average 800 time in minutes and seconds is supposed to predict your marathon time in hours and minutes. As with everything in running, some people disagree. Don’t look at me to render an opinion; I just felt perversely like going down to the local school track tonight, and 800 meter repeats sounded as good as any other option. I didn’t run 10 of them — I didn’t want that much mileage tonight — but I got through six of them in pretty good shape: 3:48 3:34 3:39 3:39 3:38 3:33. That’s a 3:39 average. Does that mean I think I’m going to run a 3:39:00 marathon? Well, I guess not. But it’s nice to imagine that I could.

Update

My calves were pretty tight for three days after Saturday’s 24-miler. It seems like when I do long hilly trail runs, my quads and hams get beat up, but when I do long flat work like Saturday, I take it all in my calves. I remember I got pretty used to having tight calves when I was training for Portland last year. Still, I do feel like my legs are a lot stronger now than then. I’m not sure if I have more muscle mass, or if I’ve gotten more efficient, but I think there’s more fuel in my leg tanks now one way or another.

I ran six miles last night with the Portland Running Company group and that went some way toward loosening the legs up. I usually decide what to wear when I’m driving home. At 5:00, starting the drive, it was 56 degrees and sunny. Ten minutes later it was hailing, rainy, and 46. Geez! What to wear? In the end I gambled that the storm was short-lived and went with short sleeves and shorts. It worked out; the weather was sunny for the run.

Oh, I received official notice that my entry has been accepted for the McKenzie River 50K! Looking forward to a fun weekend in September; I’ve booked a room up there near McKenzie Bridge for the night before and after.

Twenty-four miles

This was a great, confidence-building longest long run, on a bright sunny and pleasantly warm day in Eugene. Twenty-four miles without slowing down, without shot legs, and without meeting Mean Mister Wall.

(Click the map for full resolution)

I planned a route that let me check out almost all of the marathon course (with the exception being a few very familiar miles in South Eugene) and return to my parked car after each of three 7-9 miles loops. I used the car as an aid station, refilling my water bottle and grabbing more fun-sized Milky Way bars or Clif Shot Bloks.

The first loop was south, through the U of O and adjoining neighborhoods. I warmed up very cautiously, starting with a 10:27 mile, then 9:51, 9:04, 9:14, 9:55, 10:19,and 9:27. (Some of the all-over-the map times here are due to traffic lights.) I made an effort to both run easily and eat a lot during this first seven miles, in hopes of pushing the wall further off later on. I had an espresso-flavored caramel filled chocolate bar that my Mom gave me, and a few 75-calorie Milky Way bars. I’m trying the fun-sized bars as a much cheaper substitute for the Gu’s or Clif shots. (Seemed to work.) Virtually all the hills in the Eugene Marathon are in this first section, with a few ups and downs of 75 or 100 feet over the course of a few miles… nothing serious.

Once back to the car, I shed my gloves and was now running in shorts, a tech tee, and a light vest (worn mostly because it had pockets). The next loop was out to Springfield, on the north side of the Willamette River. This was the section I was least familiar with, never having had cause to bike out to Springfield when I was a lad in Eugene. (I’m not sure which of these paths were around then either.) The paths along the river were nice; the road sections not as scenic, but still very flat. I continued to take it easy, still eating candy bars, though not as frequently. My mile splits for this eight-mile leg were 9:35, 9:29 , 9:35, 9:27, 9:34, 9:15, 9:18, and 9:33.

My pit stop at the car was a little longer this time… I also used the park restroom.  With the day getting warmer, I left behind my vest and cap. I grabbed a bag of Clif Shot Bloks (freebies from the Race for the Roses) and stuffed them into the the strap of my hand-held water bottle. This last loop, nine miles, goes along the north (and east) bank of the Willamette way out to a footbridge — the Owosso Bridge? — then back along the west (and south) bank, past Skinner’s Butte Park, past the Ferry Street Bridge, then back to the Autzen footbridge. The actual marathon heads a bit north from there and finishes at Autzen stadium; I was veering west and back to my car.

I held up really well during this last lap. I tried to settle into a 9:20 pace — 30 seconds slower than my marathon pace goal — and did pretty well there. My first mile splits were 9:17, 9:25, 9:22, and 9:16. Running was definitely becoming more work, don’t get my wrong. I spent a lot of time fiddling with my MP3 player, trying to find the right music or radio station to keep me moving. It would have been nice to have some people running around me to key off of. Mile 20 was 8:58. I’m not sure why I sped up there; I imagine that I crossed the bridge and turned back toward the finish in there, and maybe that spurred me on. I certainly recall that I was continuing to struggle a little bit to keep running strong. I was back to my goal pace the next mile, with a 9:19.

Twenty-one miles down and three to go. I was back into the familiar paths of Skinner’s Butte park, and had a good feel for how far I had to go. Suddenly I felt pretty good. I leaned forward and pushed it a bit, taking more forceful if less efficient strides. It felt good — maybe I was working different muscles. Some runner’s high kicked in. I powered home the last three miles in 8:39, 8:25, and 8:32. Never hit any wall. Felt great! I did a cool-down jog for the remaining third of a mile back to the car.

Totals: 24.3 miles, average pace of 9:26/mile.

Weekly mileage, going up…

So far this week I’ve logged 30.7 miles. Saturday I plan on attempting 24 more — I’m headed down to Eugene to get a look at most of the marathon route during my last and longest long run before the actual event. Now, to be fair, 13.1 miles of the 30.7 was Sunday morning’s half marathon, which really should count as part of last week… but the inflexible running miles logging system I’m using counts it as this week’s. But either way, assuming I make it, that’s going to be almost 55 miles run over seven days! I’m looking forward to the taper already. (No I’m not. I think I hate the taper.)

Achoo, redux

Another cold! I’m fervently hoping this one won’t be the killer that the one last month was. So far it doesn’t seem too bad. I was able to run last night, no problem, taking it easy to run with a newcomer to the group… 8:54/mile for six miles. The new guy’s getting (back) into running because he’s in the middle of getting divorced. Exercise is therapy. He wants to run a marathon this year. I told him he could do it, no problem, if he found the time to train regularly. I had it a lot easier than him there, though — he has kids to worry about too. Hopefully we’ll see him again on Mondays.

What a weird feeling it is giving advice as the “experienced” marathon runner! “If you want to run a four hour nine minute marathon, listen to me!”

Race Report: 2008 Race For The Roses half marathon

I got to the convention center around 6am and found some on-street parking two blocks away, then picked up my packet and went back to the car to stash the tee shirt and other race swag. It was 44 degrees and drizzling on and off. I wore shorts, a long-sleeve shirt, and gloves. I had half a bagel at home, a Clif Shot 20 minutes before, and Gleukos energy drink on the course.

The course for this half marathon seemed to, I dunno, lack a certain artistry. Rather than sweeping out in some grand design, it veered back and forth across the west side. It also covered a lot of the same territory that the Portland Marathon does. Starting at the convention center, the course goes across the Broadway Bridge, then south on Front until it terminates at Barbur, the last mile or so of that noticeably uphill. Back north then, first downhill on Barbur, then (after an uphill jog on Harrison) down Broadway. A zigzag through the Pearl and farther NW neighborhoods takes it out on the northern industrial section of Front, which it takes north for maybe a mile before a turnaround. Back south on front for several miles, until yet another turnaround, near the Hawthorne Bridge. Finally the course staggers back north, crosses the Steel Bridge (getting up onto it is the race’s steepest hill) and finishes where it started.

I’ve run almost every inch of this course at least one or two times before, so there wasn’t a lot of novelty. At the same time, that seemed to make the whole thing fly by quicker. Or maybe I just never really woke up. Why do they have to start these races so early? Anyway. I ran faster than I planned and it never seemed too difficult. The course was flat enough for the most part, which certainly helped. The most memorable leg of the race for me started as I approached the northern turnaround on Front Avenue and saw, having already rounded the turnaround, the pace runner holding the “1:50″ sign. I spent the next three miles or so slowly catching up… looks like I was hitting sub-8:00 miles all through there. (After the race I happened to see the woman holding the pace sign. I told her she would have been a lot easier to catch up to if she’d just run slower.)

The starting corral was in a kind of urban canyon, with the convention center on one side and a raised road on the other. Because of this, my GPS unit couldn’t get a satellite lock until after the race was underway. So my data recording didn’t get started until a third of mile in.

Lap	Time
1	7:55
2	8:08
3	8:23
4	8:31
5	8:07
6	8:00
7	8:12
8	8:06
9	7:51
10	7:58
11	7:54
12	8:02
13	6:27 (0.82 miles)

My official time was 1:46:14, for an 8:06/mile average pace. A new half-marathon PR! (Wait, this is only my second one.)

Stress Echo Results

Finally heard back (after some prodding) about my stress echocardiogram. If you’ll recall, I got it because my ejection fraction showed up as low (42%) on a regular echocardiogram. (Which I only got to check for something else, which I didn’t have.) The absolute volume of blood being pumped out on each stroke was normal, but compared to the size of my heart, it was low. (They like 50% or more.) If the ejection fraction went up when I exercised, then this was probably just a case of “athlete’s heart”, where I had built up a large heart which could afford to be lazy when I was just sitting around. If it didn’t go up, then maybe my heart was getting pathologically large, presumably due to damage from hypertension or some other problem. Also note that they don’t expect to see athlete’s heart in people who’ve only been exercising for one year.

Enough suspense. My ejection fraction shot up to 70% or so during exercise. I’m good!

Upcoming: Race For The Roses Half Marathon

Sunday morning I’m running the Race For The Roses half-marathon in Portland. This will be my first time running this race, and only my second half-marathon. According to Greg McMillan’s magical running calculator, a 1:47:50 half-marathon (8:42/mile pace) is the “equivalent performance” to a four hour marathon. I’d like to scoff at this “equivalent performance” business, but based on my limited data, the calculator doesn’t seem too far off, so my scoffing is feckless. Anyway. So there’s my pace goal for Sunday, 8:42/mile. Actually I’ll try to start off around there and see if I can’t pick it up after the halfway point. I guess there’s a steep bridge approach right near the end of the race, which might complicate things a little.