Posted September 2, 2010 at 9:30 pm | Tags: Garmin Connect, gear, hills | No Comments »
Day 1: 5.5 miles. Day 2: 5.1 miles. I’ve had two pretty good runs to kick off month No. 9 and get last week’s bad week behind me.
This week I finally created a Garmin Connect account, thus giving me more numbers to analyze in a more accurate fashion than trying to map the run myself. For example, in the two runs this week, I’ve had an elevation gain of 674 feet, with about the same in elevation loss. It’s nice to actually see the hills that I’m running in those numbers and more accurately on a map. While I love Daily Mile, the self-mapping feature wasn’t cutting it. You can view my Garmin Connect profile here. (There is an embedding feature that I can’t quite figure out with my site right now.)
Now all I need to make this week complete is a solid long run Saturday morning …
Posted August 31, 2010 at 7:46 pm | Tags: 100 push-ups, goals, reflection, Richmond Marathon, weather | 6 Comments »
Missing one long run — a big one at 16 miles — caused me to miss my August goal of 110-120 miles by a lot. But I won’t let that one run define my month. If you would have told me at the beginning of the year that I would run more than 100 miles in both July and August, I would have thought you were crazy.
I end August at 100.6 miles — 0.3 more than July. I had my longest run in nearly 3 years. I can’t be disappointed in that. It’s my third triple-digit month of the year. After 8 months of the year, I’m at 710.9 running miles for the year. One run isn’t going to drag me down.
It’s also worth noting that even though my end-of-the-month sickness impacted my latest attempt at the 100 push-ups program, I did 450 push-ups throughout the month.
As the calendar turns to the last one-third of the year tomorrow, I am looking forward to more consistent cooler weather. There have been signs recently of fall coming, but temperatures in the 90s this week have been a friendly reminder that it’s still summer. For September, I obviously want to continue to increase my miles as the Richmond Marathon gets even closer. I’m not sure yet if I’ll get my first 20-miler in or not since I missed last week’s run — I just have to see how the next couple of long runs go before deciding on that.
I’m really looking forward to September and seeing how things go. I’ve mentioned before that I want a sub 4-hour marathon in November and with cooler weather on the way, it’s time that I pick up the pace a bit. My runs in the past couple of months have gotten slower in the heat. There have been a few runs that were a bit sluggish, and I don’t want to slip into just logging miles. The more aware I am of that, the better I can make my runs.
As I have felt for much of the year, I think the best is yet to come.
Posted August 30, 2010 at 9:20 pm | Tags: health, Richmond Marathon, Twitter | 1 Comment »
4:04 p.m., my post on Twitter: It’s funny and sad how a few days of being sick makes me want to stop marathon training. It’ll pass, I hope
What?
I left work early today after feeling craptastic for the past two days, and up and down for a week straight. I probably shouldn’t have even been at work today. I even tried to call the doctor around 9 a.m. to figure out what was wrong with me, but fortunately really didn’t have time to go today. With a little less than 11 weeks until the Richmond Marathon, getting sick and staying sick is not what I need.
Fast forward about a half hour.
I made a stop at Walmart, picked up some B12, Naked Juice and a regular Pepsi. Oh, and a new thermometer because ours was broken. No fever, thankfully.
Fast forward two hours.
I felt tremendously better.
Fast forward another hour.
I ran a couple of miles with my dog and felt pretty good. I figured I could go do another mile … and another … and another. 5 miles down.
Who knows if I’ll pass out in a half hour and sleep like crazy, or if I’ll feel bad tomorrow, but something worked tonight and it’s time that I don’t let that self doubt creep back again.
Posted August 29, 2010 at 8:37 pm | Tags: health, long runs, Richmond Marathon, training | 3 Comments »
This up and down week of feeling bad, feeling good, feeling bad, and so on ended on a low note today. I skipped my long run this weekend. I woke up yesterday feeling bad and decided to go ahead and move it a day. After shaking things off in the morning and running 4 miles yesterday I felt pretty good. Then when I woke up around 5:30 this morning, I knew there was no way I could run 16 miles today. Perhaps I could run something later in the day to not feel so bad about skipping my long run. Perhaps enough to go ahead and get to 100 miles for the month and pass 20 miles for the week.
But no … it was not meant to be.
I’m not going to get too worked up about it. There are still 11 weeks to go to the Richmond Marathon. Marathon training is long for a reason — I have no problem with missing a long run or two along the way. I am a little frustrated that last weekend was so great and I didn’t get to follow that up this week, but I was not about to jeopardize my long-term health to force a long run today.
So now, I have to put this behind me and move on. I have to pick back up, move my 16 miles a week and just keep going.
Posted August 26, 2010 at 8:30 pm | Tags: 1000 miles, 2010, goals | 3 Comments »
Here is what I ran into at mile No. 700 for 2010:
Seriously … a stop sign. But there’s no stopping me now. I’m now less than 300 miles away from my 1,000-mile goal for this calendar year with more than four months to go. Despite still not feeling 100 percent today — I’d say I’m about 90 percent — hitting this milestone tonight feels awesome.
Posted August 24, 2010 at 7:39 pm | Tags: 100 push-ups, health, rest | 3 Comments »
Back in June, I got completely worn down after a trip to Ohio. To this day, I blame many things for that, including myself for not going to the doctor a second time more quickly. This past weekend, my son was obviously feeling bad, taking earlier-than-usual naps and saying “boo-boo” and pointing to his throat. Then Monday, it was my turn to have a “boo-boo.”
Playing it safe, my son went to the doctor yesterday even though he seemed to be doing better. The doctor said there’s a 5-7 day virus going around and that days 2-3 are the worst and he was probably better. So, he is pretty much back to normal today. Yesterday, though, must have been the big low for me. I slept a couple of hours in the morning, another half hour in the evening and went to bed around 9 p.m. last night. I really didn’t want to get up for work today, but there was some things I really needed to do, so I slogged my way into the office.
By the end of the day, I didn’t feel nearly as bad and even now I feel considerably better than 24 hours ago. I’m not 100 percent yet, but it’s been a much better experience back in June when everything seemed like such a mystery. It’s just frustrating that a week after running 30-plus miles for the first time in a very long time that this hits.
Today marks three days in a row of not running — the first three-day break since early May. While I may feel a bit down, I can feel that my legs are refreshed and ready for another 30-mile week; I just have to rearrange Monday to another day. Fortunately, Tuesday is a usual off day anyway.
This puts me behind on the 100 push-ups program just a bit. There’s part of me that wants to get started on week 4 tonight, but I just want to get completely healed up. I may do a test and repeat week 3 again … I’m not really sure right now.
Getting sick is a nice reminder that my health is my No. 1 priority. A few off days, or even a bad week, isn’t going to make or break anything. I’m coming up on some key weeks with my marathon training and I need to make sure I’m 100 percent healthy to do this.
Posted August 21, 2010 at 9:48 am | Tags: Bedford, hills, long runs, Peaks of Otter, Richmond Marathon, training | 6 Comments »
14 miles in 2:15 around Bedford. Longest training run since fall 2007. I realized this week that the last time I trained for the Richmond Marathon that I didn’t document my experiences very well. Now that I have a decent phone I can take with me and not have it get in the way, I’m going to start taking it with me on more of my runs. Down the road if I’m debating whether to train for a certain race or not, I want to remember scenes like this:
Or, better yet, this. You can never have a bad run when the Peaks of Otter are within view:
Meanwhile, my run around Bedford looked like this. The hill mapping on Daily Mile isn’t quite accurate, but it was still a crazy hilly run. I hit the biggest hill around mile 9, but pushed through it pretty well.
Posted August 19, 2010 at 8:53 pm | Tags: #runchat, 100 push-ups, Daily Mile, long runs, Twitter | 6 Comments »
As things continue to go well, I’ve hit a block this week with things to write about, so here are just a few things on my mind:
* Barring illness, I will hit 30 miles this week for the first time since … well, I’m not sure. I think it’s three, although I might have hit the mark two summers ago. Either way, my 14-miler planned for Saturday will get me to 30.7 for the week, the first 30-mile week in a long time. I’m looking forward to it.
* I’m in week 4 of 100 push-ups, a big make-or-break point for me in this program. In tonight’s second set, I struggled, so I dropped down a level for that set. I ended up with 89 total push-ups and felt great. Now my arms, which are starting to see some changes, are ready to fall off.
* Daily Mile has recently had some site upgrades that I think are awesome. I’m so glad I found this site to log my miles and connect with so many different types of people. There are slow runners, fast runners and everyone in between, and being a part of the site has played a huge role is this year being so successful.
* I’ve mentioned #runchat a few times on here, but we need your help in making it better. Please fill out our very short survey that will help determine the day(s) and time(s) for #runchat on Twitter.
Posted August 16, 2010 at 9:06 pm | Tags: hills, training | 2 Comments »
It took Saturday’s race to make me realize this, but my form on hills has gotten sloppy. I guess I have been taking it for granted that I get to run on hills on most of my runs. There is just no way to avoid them. So in the past couple of months, I’ve just been running them without focusing too much on my form and getting better at them.
Tonight was my first effort in a while to get out of my comfort zone with hills. I talked out loud to myself several times when I was going up the hills: knees up, head up, shoulder back, move the arms, shorten the stride. I learned all these things a few years ago in training groups, but somehow I stopped doing this. I couldn’t believe tonight how much I caught myself looking down and dragging my feet. Completely sloppy hill running, which I think has translated into sloppy running all around.
Tonight’s 6.2-mile run was tough both physically and mentally two days after my long run, but it’s what I needed to get things rolling for the whole week. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.
Posted August 14, 2010 at 7:54 pm | Tags: Blue Ridge Marathon, goals, half marathons, hills, lessons learned, Lynchburg Half Marathon, races, Richmond Marathon | 6 Comments »
Just after I got to mile 13 today, I saw my wife and son cheering me on. I saw a big smile on his face … I looked behind me to see no one near me … and scooped him up. Finishing the last little bit of today’s Lynchburg Half Marathon with him was special — something I won’t soon forget. I can’t wait until he can do his first kids race.
As for the rest of the race, I did what I wanted to do — a sub 4-hour marathon pace. I haven’t widely broadcast what I want to do for the Richmond Marathon, but less than 4 hours is my goal right now. So I went into today’s event with the mindset of this being a solid long training run. While I would have liked to have been around 1:50, my finishing time was 1:55:38. There’s really no need for a mile-by-mile recap because everything was pretty steady. Except for one thing.
The biggest issue with getting slowed down was a HUGE hill about three-quarters of a mile long — and it wasn’t really the uphill that caused the issue. Coming back down the hill kind of just killed the whole run. After the bottom of the hill, there were a little more than 3 miles to go. I just couldn’t go. I just settled into a pace a little more than 9 minutes a mile and eased to the end.
To put this hill into perspective, I have mapped this big hill and the middle miles of the race on Daily Mile. This rest of the Lynchburg Half is mostly flat, with some gradual hills along a bike path next to the James River. (For anyone new to my blog, this course has changed drastically from three years ago when it was a mostly flat race. I had NO IDEA that this hill was this big, despite what people told me.)
From a racing standpoint, this just wasn’t that great of an experience. From a training standpoint, it was actually a really good run. I’m not going to complain about it; I’m just going to move on from it. I learned some lessons today about hills — I may run on them every day, but I need to learn to work them better and not let them work me. I think I’ve become too used to them. I smell a hill repeat workout soon.
On a side note, today was the 10th half marathon I have completed since the summer of 2006, and my third this year. The past two experiences — this one with the hill and the Blue Ridge Half in April — have really taught me to respect this distance more than I already did. My other eight half marathon experiences have been mostly flat, including six half marathons at Virginia Beach. Experiences like today and in April are eye opening and why I want to keep going. It makes training for my second marathon all the more worthwhile.
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