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.