Interstate Training

I had a pretty good 16-mile training run Saturday morning. The weather sucked (a little sleet and some ferocious winds on the Columbia), my legs hurt, and I had some problems with the fanny pack I was using (I somehow got it turned with the wrong side facing me for a number of miles, believe it or not… my lower back still looks rug-burned from it), but other that that it was a good run. It was my first interstate run, starting in Vancouver, Washington, then going across the I-205 bridge into Portland, then back.

There’s a bike path in the center of the 205 bridge, which of course is loud, windy, and isolated. Kind of a unique experience though. As you can see, the bridge is about two miles long. The bulk of it runs uphill to the north; I’d say there’s about a one mile section with a moderately steep, perfectly consistent grade. A little like running on a treadmill :-( Better scenery :-) Even noisier, though :-( During the forty minutes I was on the bridge, I didn’t see another runner or any bikers.

For once I wasn’t staring at my GPS every minute to see how fast I was going. I still managed to hit the kind of training pace I was looking for though, which was nice. I averaged 9:20/mile, with faster miles toward the end.

Thursday hill reps

My highly scientific training plan (“making it up as I go” is what it is technically termed) called for a hill workout last night, to build strength, cardio, and strong moral fiber. So I ran three of those little 1.5 mile loops near my house that include The Hill (180 foot climb in 0.25 miles). It definitely felt easier than the last time I did 3x up that beast. Still not a walk in the park though. Totals 4.97 miles, about 50 minutes, 9:59 minutes/mile average.

Not something I want to do, stop giving me those worried looks

A fellow name of Ben Saunders has just started on a speed record attempt for reaching the north pole on foot (skis), unsupported. (That means dragging everything along with him the whole way. In a big sled.) From his start at Canada’s Ward Hunt Island, it’s 478 miles as the crow flies. He’s aiming for 30 days. Normally this would all be completely abstract to me. But his blog is well-done and looks like it will be frequently updated, and makes it seem all quite real. In a short day one, he made about three nautical miles in 2.5 hours. Check out the movie on this page for a little more (highly-produced documentary-style) background.

My First Stress Echocardiogram

The stress test is done, but I won’t have the results until the doctor looks at the data and his nurse calls me, I guess. It was not as grueling as I feared and/or hoped it would be… it seems that for a stress echo, they only need you with an elevated heart-rate, above 85% of an estimated maximum, not at your maximum effort. They must have just used the old 220-age formula (bogus!) to guess my max rate (183 bpm), so they wanted to get me somewhere over 85% of that (155 bpm) on the treadmill, then stop and have me lie down on the table real quick to get my heart imaged. (I’ll note that 220-age doesn’t seem all that far off for me, but I’m surprised they use it — as far as I know it is generally discredited, and I know one person at least who differs quite a bit from the formula.)

Before hopping on the treadmill, they attached a full belt-mounted set of EKG electrodes to my chest, and before that, they had to shave a few spots… I look a little like Steve Carell after a half-complete chest waxing now. They took my blood pressure twice at rest: first it was 128 over something, then a little later, 142 over something. After they started the treadmill on a very slow setting and I had been walking for a couple of minutes, it was back down to 120 over something. Are they sure these blood pressure readings are useful? It might just be a random number generator.

They used the Bruce Protocol for stepping up the treadmill speed and incline. Here’s how it went.

Stage	Speed (mph)	Pace (minutes/mile)	Incline	Comments
1: 0-3 minutes	1.7	35	10%	zzzzz
2: 3-6 minutes	2.5	24	12%	Stretch, yawn
3: 6-9 minutes	3.4	18	14%	Brisk walk
4: 9-12 minutes	4.2	14	14%	This would be a very slow jog if not for the hill
5: 12-14.5 minutes	5	12	16%	Sweating profusely now

It’s the slope that gets you, not the speed. I would have liked to give stage 6 a try, but after my heartbeat got up to 159 or 169 and stayed there for a while, the nurse who was doing the treadmill part (and taking the blood pressure readings every three minutes) told me I could quit when I wanted. A minute or two later, I guess she decided that waiting for *me* to want to quit wasn’t the way to go :-) We stopped two and a half minutes into stage 5, I think. That initiated what the echo tech had described as the “hard part”: quickly getting over and onto the examination table. It wasn’t bad. Except for all the sweat. It was warm in there.

So there you go. Hopefully that will be my last time on a treadmill for a few years.

Recovery from the long run; new shoes; stress echo cardiogram today

I’m definitely still recovering from Friday’s long run — it feels more like a race recovery than the usual training recovery. I ran five miles last night, averaging 8:45/mile. My right ankle had been hurting a little the previous few days, but last night during the run it was my left shin complaining. Not a big deal though.

Oh! New shoes! I bought yet another pair of Brooks Addiction 7 men’s size 10 EE last night before the run. This time I’m going to do a better job of tracking how many miles I put on them. Let’s see… my total running mileage before last night’s 5.1 was 1248.3.

I have a stress echo cardiogram today at 1:00. That means I’ll be violating one of my rules: I’ll be running on a treadmill! Special case, right? It also means that I’m supposed to skip lunch; I guess they get too many people puking on the treadmill otherwise.

Restaurant: Sel Gris

Sel Gris
http://www.selgris.net
1852 SE Hawthorne, Portland, OR 97214
(503) 517-7770

Thursday afternoon I found out that we were getting Friday off at work, and that seemed like a good excuse for going out to dinner, so I made a reservation at Sel Gris and told Sweetie that we were going on a “surprise date”. The restaurant called back a little later and said they had a cancellation at the “chef’s counter” and would I like it? I wasn’t sure; they talked me into it.

The chef’s counter is a small bar overlooking the large open kitchen. It’s a pretty small restaurant, and the kitchen takes up a lot of the floor-plan. It seemed a bit form-over-function. It was entertaining watching them cook, it was interesting watching them plate the various dishes (and guessing what they were). It was impressive how quick the dishes made it out onto tables once they were ready. It was a little unnerving watching the chef stare out at the diners during the slow moments. The counter seating also made for much more difficulty people watching. And the counter was illuminated from beneath, shining though an open-weave tablecloth, all to somewhat annoying effect.

The bread and butter was a brioche and some slices of some bread or another. The brioche looked beautiful and was a nice touch, but it was on the dry side and (deliberately, I’m sure) heavily surface salted. The bread was nothing interesting at all. On the plus side, once we finished it all (yes, we’re pigs), another plate of the same was immediately set down.

We started with the “bacon and eggs” or ris de veau appetizer (sweetbreads served with ball of batter surrounding an egg yolk), since I’d heard good things about it. Neither of us had ever had sweetbreads (calf thymus or pancreas) before. It didn’t blow me away. The tiny little sweetbreads themselves were unremarkable (“tastes like chicken,” sweetie said, and she wasn’t wrong — it was actually McNuggetty) and the egg yolk thing was interesting, but kind of disjoint — it didn’t meld with the rest in a meaningful way to me, it just tasted like yolk.

Next we shared the crab salad: “Oregon Dungeness crab, avocado, grapefruit supremes, radish, cranberry vinaigrette, grapefruit granita”. The granita was on the side, served over thin slices of a large and unusually colored radish, while the rest of the ingredients were formed up into a big spiky-looking round tower, all served on a interestingly shaped plate, with dots of sauces off to one side, along with one stray ball of avocado. Ball? Oh, yeah, all the avocado in the salad was in ball form. So… ring mold, tall food, careful dots and drizzles of sauce, avant-garde plates, and carefully melon-scooped vegetables. Yep, it’s haute cuisine. Isn’t that, like, so ’90s? Well, it’s OK by me so long as the flavors live up to the presentation. Did they here? That night, for me, not usually. Again, form over function. I thought the crab salad tasted fine, and I enjoyed the granita, but there was nothing compelling about it. Watching the various stacked and ring-molded dishes get plated up for other tables, I got a little disgruntled that I couldn’t tell what any of them were. The haute artistry has a way of reducing it all to the same abstract entity.

For the main course, I got the escolar (“grilled, with a lemongrass-coconut broth, Mediterranean mussels, clams, cabbage wrapped rice cake, aioli & Meyer lemon”) and sweetie the lamb shank (“braised Cattail Creek Farm shank, chestnut honey glazed baby carrots, curried cauliflower, lentils du puy, lavender sel gris”). Things picked up here. My fish was served atop the cabbage roll, swimming in a broth and sauce swirled with colors; the clams and mussels were out of their shells and in the broth. It was really good. Sweetie’s lamb was also fine. It had these little round red-purple berry-shaped things, that were too firm to be a berry. She asked the waitress. Those were the carrots. They were purple carrots, scooped out with a tiny melon baller into half-rounds. Well of course. Still, it was good.

Dessert: a chocolate raspberry marquis (two mousses layered on one another), served with a cocoa nib praline, and an apricot bread pudding, with a few sauces and a little ice cream. The marquis was a little gelatinous, the bread pudding had some sauces fighting each other (the basil oil, in particular, wasn’t being a good neighbor), but they were OK.

Toward the end of our meal two women took newly-vacated seats next to us at the counter. I didn’t think much of it until Sweetie looked over and erupted “Oh My God!” easily loud enough for them to hear. I looked over and found myself exchanging a smile with local-plus celebrity Storm Large, two seats over. We’d seen her in Cabaret not that long ago. She ordered the oysters and the lamb, and seemed to have a great time at the chef’s counter… watching the food was like porn, I believe were her words to her friend.

Celebrity encounters aside, Sel Gris didn’t live up to my expectations. That’s a shame, I really wanted to love it.

Long Run

(Full map)

Wow, 22 miles was a long way today. Well, 21.3; I walked most of the way in after that. I’m not surprised it was a challenge. My cold made me miss my last planned long run, two weeks ago, so I was jumping right to 22 “cold turkey”, as it were. Plus, I’d already run 21-some miles in the last six days, including a 15K race and a hard six-mile run the day after. So I was neither properly trained up nor in any way rested.

Lap (#)	Time (m:s)	Distance (mi )	M Spd (mph)	Energy (Cal)
1	10:01	1.00	6.9	123
2	9:37	1.00	7.2	127
3	9:42	1.00	6.7	127
4	9:39	1.00	7.2	124
5	9:32	1.00	6.9	125
6	9:27	1.00	7.4	127
7	9:44	1.00	7.2	127
8	9:40	1.00	6.7	125
9	9:40	1.00	6.7	124
10	9:38	1.00	7.2	127
11	9:42	1.00	6.7	127
12	9:57	1.00	7.4	127
13	10:11	1.00	7.4	123
14	9:50	1.00	6.9	126
15	10:02	1.00	6.9	128
16	10:01	1.00	7.4	126
17	11:01	1.00	6.7	125
18	10:20	1.00	9.2	126
19	11:04	1.00	11.6	128
20	9:58	1.00	6.9	128
21	12:04	1.00	6.3	125
22	16:20	1.00	5.6	102
23	4:28	0.31	5.8	32

I parked near the east end of the Sellwood Bridge, at Umatilla and Seventh. The plan was to run six miles east on the Springwater trail, then back, then after a pit stop at my car, do the ten mile Sellwood-to-Steel-Bridge loop along the river.

I’d never been on the Springwater east of Sellwood before, but I knew there was a gap in the path through the Sellwood neighborhood. It looked like you could just make your way to SE Linn Street and follow it east until it ended to pick up the trail. That’s what I did, and it worked. Then there’s a nice trail segment over these three new bridges they built… one over a creek, one over 99E, and one over a railroad. For a while the path is well off-road and through a park, but eventually it becomes a bit more urban, following Johnson Creek Boulevard and crossing several larger streets. The trail was pretty quiet on a Friday. Once out of the park area, I don’t remember seeing a single other runner. A few bikers, a few walkers, and a few drunks… that was it. It was a little sad.

Returning the way I came, I got back to the car with 12 miles down and 10 to go. My legs weren’t feeling great, and I was somewhat fatigued overall, but I wasn’t feeling so bad that I didn’t want to keep going. I had some pretzels and filled up my water bottle and I was off, across the bridge then north. The miles were getting harder and harder and I was slowing down a bit. I just kept running. I tried to focus on listening to to radio (NPR, Science Friday and Day To Day by then) and on just moving forward.

The last five miles weren’t much fun. It hailed a bit, just to set the mood. I started with some short walk breaks in there too, to try to recover some energy. They started getting longer and longer, and shortly after mile 21, I called it a day, and walked (somewhat painfully) the rest of the way in. Except when I would get impatient and jog a bit, just to get back to the car quicker. Even my quitting isn’t quite right!

Looking back on it, it went about as expected. Like I said, I wasn’t ready or rested for this run. But I still felt like I needed to do it to jump-start my schedule of long runs and get it back on track for the Eugene marathon, May 4. We’ll see how that works out.

Six miles, pretty slow, many stops, two eggs, too much candy

Last night the Red Lizards did the Easter version of their regular Wednesday-evening “Fulton Run” (or “pub run”), wherein they “hid” a large number of candy-filled plastic eggs along the route, which starts at the north end of Willamette Park, goes south then across the Sellwood Bride, through Sellwood Park and Oaks Bottom, returning along the Springwater trail and back over the bridge. It seemed like everybody who would normally run Wednesday nights at PRC Beaverton was going to be there instead, so I went too. If you keep your eyes peeled during this short film presentation (courtesy of Jeff), you will see that I need a lot more practice with the joggling.

Pushing Myself

A good number of people showed up for today’s Monday-night run, but they split into just two groups: the fast guys and much slower group that was going to go the short route. I needed a middle group, but didn’t want to run alone. I really wanted to run the longer route, six miles, so I did my best to keep up with the speedsters. Let’s just say I wasn’t doing much talking during the run — pant pant pant pant. I hate people who run faster than me! Look at them up there, laughing and chatting as they glide along, while I’m huffing and puffing and barely holding it together! “It’s good training,” I tell myself. It’s also a pretty good trick that I managed to do it at all, considering that the Shamrock 15K was only yesterday. In the end, I made it, with what must be a PR for this route: six miles in 47:22 (with a rest break at 1.5 miles in, not included in the time). Mile splits 8:00 7:48 7:43 7:52 8:06 7:47. A whole new portion of my legs stiffened up afterward — the outside of my calves. Just when you think you’ve felt it all…

Congratulations to Steve, who showed up at the store but didn’t run with us, for reaching an amazing 107 miles in his first 24-hour race! Tim also ran it, but wisely dropped at 100K when he hit some serious fluid-retention and food-consumption issues.

Race Report: 2008 Portland Shamrock Run 15K

I got downtown around 7:30 and parked pretty far from the race start. The weather was a lot colder than last year, but it wasn’t raining. I’d already picked up my bib number and timing chip the day before (the early pickup was a lot more crowded than I had expected, but then 14,000 people is a big number), so I went straight over to find people from MeetIn. A few were there, but it took a while for our little MeetIn group of 15Kers to all arrive: me, Kay, who I hadn’t met before, and Marlene and Rollie, a couple I’ve known for quite a while now.

The 5K started about half an hour before the 15, and I watched the river of people stream by… about 5000 of them, according to the announcer. I think it took about 10 minutes for them all to get past the start area. After that, I went and left most of my clothes in the clothes-check. I decided to run in tights, a short-sleeve shirt with a long-sleeve over it, gloves, and a cap. Just before the race started, I decided to take off the long sleeves, tying it around my waist. It was pretty cold, but I was glad to be in short sleeves once we were into the run.

The first mile, we were all jammed pretty tightly together, so even though it was mostly flat, I had to run a little slower than I liked. The next three and a half miles were all uphill, first up Broadway through downtown, then up Terwilliger. It’s only a couple of miles from the start of Terwilliger to the Chart House restaurant, where the hill ends, but it feels like forever. Somehow — I have no idea how this happened — I averaged about 8:40/mile through here. Shortly before we reached the top, I spotted Rollie a little ahead, and ran with or shortly behind him for about a mile. He told me he’d started in the very back of the starting pack, so he must have passed me at some point. Once we turned back toward downtown on Barbur, which has a lovely consistent downhill slope just right for running on, I surged ahead a bit and didn’t see him again.

The last four miles of the race were a dream. I love running downhill. Miles six, seven, eight, and nine were all sub-eight, the last three sub-7:30. And I wasn’t pushing it that hard. My legs felt really good the whole race. My lungs still felt a little under the weather from the cold I’ve just gotten over. By milepost six or so it was pretty clear I was going to break my goal — 1:19:00, or about 8:30 miles — and I began to think about shooting for an eight minute average pace.

Fifteen kilometers is 9.32 miles. My Garmin thought I ran 9.51 miles. I ended up finishing in 1:15:55, which averages out to an 8:09-per-mile pace if you believe the course markings, or a 7:58 if you go with the GPS. Rollie finished a ways behind me, but since he started at the tail end of the mob, his tape-to-tape time was pretty close to mine: just three seconds slower, by our watches! We’ll see what the official chip time has to say once it’s available.

My mile splits:

Lap (#)	Time (m:s)	Distance (mi )
1	9:01	1.00
2	8:38	1.00
3	8:42	1.00
4	8:35	1.00
5	8:07	1.00
6	7:42	1.00
7	7:30	1.00
8	7:21	1.00
9	7:07	1.00
10	3:07	0.46

The race is tailor-made for a negative split, with its first half uphill and its second half down. It would be hard not to run a faster second half than first. Still, my steady pace increase the whole second half is gratifying: look how nice the graph looks!

Group runs are back in the daytime

The Portland Running Company’s Beaverton group runs are back on the summer route since it’s staying light past seven again.  That means that we’re doing an out-and-back (with a little lollipop on the end) along the Fanno Creek paths, instead of a loop on sidewalks and streets. It’s also flatter.  Last night I did six miles, averaging 8:40 a mile, which I was pretty happy with considering my cold.

Next month will be my one-year anniversary running with the group… See my blog entry from April 9, 2007! (See, now this is why you need a blog, so you can compulsively figure out when everything in your life ever occurred.) Anybody at all is welcome to come and join us, see the PRC’s group run page. We also meet at the Beaverton location six pm Wednesdays, which that page doesn’t mention. If you want to have fun on the run, you’d probably want to be able to run five miles at a 10-minute-per-mile pace or better.

The Shamrock Run is coming up, am I still sick?

My cold is still lingering, mostly nasal and sinus congestion now, along with the odd piercing sinus headache. My energy level is still better, even if my frustration level isn’t. With the daylight savings time switch in place, I was able to get a run in after work yesterday while it was still light out: 5 miles at a pace varying between nine and 10 minutes a mile. I was getting out of breath pretty easily.

Trivia: with that five, I’m up to 1199.5  miles of running since I started. Here’s where I am on my virtual Trans-America run:

I’d like to get better by Sunday, I’m entered in Portland’s Shamrock Run 15K and it’ll be more fun if it’s not pure torture. My first time in the Shamrock run last year (the 5K that time) was my first race ever. Looks like I was getting over a cold last year too! I believe they will once again have clam chowder for the finishers. Come out and join us, it’s a fun race.

One week and counting

Still sick. Augh! I did jog six miles yesterday morning, which felt OK at the time, but maybe it was a mistake, maybe it prolonged my cold. Who can tell? My legs felt all right during the run, but interestingly enough, afterwards, my knees were a little sore — something that never happens to me. Maybe it was the cold, but I’m guessing it was more the result of a week without any running. In any case, the soreness was very mild and seems to be gone today.

Being sick sucks

I’ve been sick since Monday. This is also the longest I’ve gone without running since I started. I think I’m getting better, at least.

Catching Up

You’ll never be able to prove this is me.

• Saturday I participated in the Portland Urban Iditarod, one of hundreds of costumed people running from bar to bar for several hours in teams of five, with decorated shopping carts. There may have been some drinking involved, too.
• Sunday Sweetie and I went to the coast… Cannon Beach, Seaside, and Astoria.
• Monday I was feeling a little under the weather, but I was looking forward to the Monday-night group run, having basically skipped any training during the weekend. I had to push myself hard to get through the 5.8 miles with a 8:09 average pace.
• After I got home, I started feeling worse and worse. Sore throat and fatigue. I stayed home sick from work today.