Down time

The start of winter is a tough period to get motivated. It'll be easier when the snow's down, the winds tail off, and you have those crisp clean winter days to train in. Winter itself isn't all that bad, and actually quite pleasant for running. The transitional months are painful, but serve a purpose to 'toughen' you up. It's a lot easier running in calm cold winter air after you've trudged through a few weeks of howling winds and horizontal cold rain.

I'd developed a bit of a sore hip, nothing detrimental to training, but present nonetheless. It's on my right side, the side with the golfball sized bunion on my foot and similar (but smaller) aggravations to my middle toes. I'm guessing I adjust my gait ever so slightly when hitting my right side, and the accumulating effects mean the upper part of my leg also takes a hit.

I'm taking it a lot easier these days, only getting 30 or so miles in a week and opting to rest whenever the weather just isn't very accomodating that particular day. In the past if I've survived the fall without injury, I've pushed through into winter and spring and full tilt, and it's left me feeling less than rested come the next racing season. It's seemed that fall injury is a bit of a blessing, forcing me to take time off and recoupe. Without it, I have to force myself to cut back, and it's not easy to do.

Last Sunday I did a 2 hour run with the core 90 minutes at a light tempo pace (something a bit slower than half marathon pace). I'd started this while training for the Fiddler's Run, alternating an easy 20 miler on one Sunday with a hard 14-16 miler the next. The harder mid longs are pretty manageable. The pushed pace on the mid longs make marathon pace seem a lot more comfortable, and the length of the session helps me adjust to continuous effort. The one thing I've found myself doing a lot these days is much slower running than I have in the past, keeping pace near 9 a mile instead of always forcing 8 or better. This is out of necessity, if I want to keep on running.

A little post season down time...if I stay patient enough.

- The Fiddler's Run ended up cancelled due to the storm system pushing through on race morning. A bad call since the day turned out quite beautiful and I substituted a 23 mile long run...much of it shirtless... for a finishers medal. They auto-insert my name for next year, but I'll really need to think it over first. I doubt they'd be silly enough to cancel it two years in a row. Would they?

10 1/2 weeks

No Kim Basinger involved...and (thankfully) no Mickey Rourke either.

I've crammed a whole marathon training period into 10 1/2 weeks. I started mid August, quickly ramped up through 14/16/18/20 miles, then peaked to 23 miles a week ago Monday. Don't know if it'll work but it sure went smoothly.

We'll find out a week from Sunday.

Yes

I'm still here

Long ago and far away

I'm several dollars poorer but my names sits on a list of finishers for the 2006 edition of the Boston Marathon. Officially I ran 3:49:06, finisher number 10825 which means a good chunk of the second wave of starters passed me en route to Boylston Street. It's peculiar how easy it is to jeopardize months of training just to have a couple of days of enjoyment in a new place. We visited Salem and Marblehead the day before, did a bit of siteseeing in the area, a lot of driving (most of it unintentional, Boston is not a 'driver's city). Saturday had poor diet as we missed lunch (blame it on the driving around Boston part) and Sunday's lunch was no better. Stuffing my face with pasta on Sunday night wasn't going to make up for it all, my body wasn't going to process enough carbs into glycogen in time for Monday's noon start. Add on to that too much time on my feet including an unnecessary 3+ mile jog on Sunday morning. I dressed warm enough for the wait in Hopkinton but I knew I was unprepared.

I kept running until I met my family at 39k and continued to 40k, where I simply had to give up trying to keep only 1 foot on the ground at a time. I was in pretty dire strites and actually felt like I would have to dnf shortly after I started walking. The brain wasn't functioning all that well and despite being 10 minutes off pace I had convinced myself I could still requalify with a solid effort over the last 10k, except I'd have had to PR both the 5k and 10k distances to do it, which doesn't make much sense in my long since recovered state of mind.

I won't forget the noise of the crowd and I'm at awe that they do this the whole way and many keep it up until the last finisher crosses the line. I had my name pinned to my shirt and the walk from 40k to Boylston was met with wall-to-wall resonations of my name saying "Come on! You can do it Jim....keep goooooing!!!!". Simply amazing. I was petrified to start jogging again on Boylston for fear of just keeling over, but once I did start I felt fine.

Anyone who tells you that there's no event like the Boston Marathon, they are not exaggerating or embellishing in any way. The girls at Wellesly are everything they say, beautiful from the first to the last and all willing to take kiss (or a sweaty hug) from a runner. Heartbreak Hill isn't that steep, but it takes forever and the crowd pulls you all the way up. Every downhill must be respected and for my next attempt I will need to practice downhills more than I do the uphills. At 30k my quads were ready to call it quits, they felt like hamburger and I still had 12k to go. It was probably the largest contribution to my not running the whole way.

Next time.

One week to go

I've been down this road before, it's never any easier. Every quirky sensation is magnified 100 times. I can't tell if I'm getting a horrible head cold...or if my throat is just a touch dry, or maybe that twinge in my knee really is something going wrong.

All I want to see is just a regular plain old week, no different than that last 50. All I want to do is to get up, kill the alarm clock, slog my way through another 5-10 miles (even less this week), shower, drive my kids to school and head to work.

All I can do is go one day at a time, and watch my step.

Boston Marathon. What a long strange trip it's been.

T Minus Two Weeks and Counting...

Nothing changes yet. I'm doing nothing different than I have this past month. A review of taper to Mississauga has me running a normal week, doing a ladder workout for track on Wednesday, 9ish miles for mid long...the usual stuff. It all worked then so I'll do the same things now. The most important thing is to not get concerned or picky over what I'm doing for now, the final week is the most important one. My really critical time comes on the race weekend. Family will be with me, they'll want to go here and there and everywhere, and I'll be wanting just the opposite. In the two years I did Niagara they had me all over the place on the Saturday before, I was already tired when I got to the start line on Sunday morning. Somewhere in the back of their minds, they reason that since I can run a full marathon, all this walking should be easy.

To the track tomorrow morning. Ladder workout sans 1200's.

9 laps

If you run the same short segment over and over and over again you become intimately familiar with every foot and every view and every feature. I've covered this loop hundreds and hundreds of times. It is exactly 750 metres long. I've taken as little as 3 minutes to run around it and as long as 5. I have dodged wayward baseballs, leashes, dogs attached to leashes, dogs not attached to leashes, people, bicycles, lumps of poop, puddles, lakes, glaciers, front-end loaders, vehicles that are not supposed to ever be there in the first place, rocks, cracks, holes, the ever present crowd waiting at either of two bus stops. There is the young high school boy who sits in the bus stop with his feet up, the older woman who has a different wig for each day, the old guy and his son from the retirement 'villa' adjacent to the park, Penny who walks her Newfoundlander, Freddy who walks his German Shepherd, the guy who takes his dogs into the ball field and runs round and round and round. Some people have stopped showing up, maybe they moved, maybe they bought a car, who knows. Sometimes someone shows up once and never again. The news boxes have a different front page each day, the front-end loader clears ice left outside the arena every Thursday, the garbage trucks do their pickups for the arena twice a week. Sometimes the guy driving the truck pulls in, pulls out a paper, and spends an hour reading it. The maintenance guy for the arena walks his dog every morning. The crossing guard for the school arrives at 8, but I'm usually done by then.

And they all watch me.

The Boston Taper

Yesterday I ran a 30k race as part of my last long run before Boston. I ran this race during my first 20 miler towards Mississuaga last spring, raced it fairly hard, and that worked out well for me. Doing it as my last long run this year, I dunno. The weather was stunning and I did manage to keep myself reigned in enough that at least I didn't go anywhere near my previous finish times. I did 2 slow miles before it started, ran the race just a bit slower than marathon pace, then another 2 1/2 slow miles immediately afterwards. I was all over the wall in the cooldown jog. Don't ask me why but when I bonk I get a big bright spot that shows up in the middle of my vision, and it was glowing pretty good at the end of it all. But I was upright and not suffering badly from a running perspective.

Now comes taper. Not sure how to handle this week. I'll try a little jaunt tomorrow and see how my legs are. I had a blister on my baby toe that I didn't notice until late last night when I smashed it against the corner of our sofa. Ideally this week, I go easy for a couple of days, get 8-10 miles in on Thursday and scrape up a 2 hour run on Sunday. If I'm hurting I'll just have to cut it all back until I'm strong again, hopefully no later than this time next week. My only real concern is that yesteday's runs only had me on my feet for 3:15 when I really wanted to be out there around 3:25. Odd for a race but I'd rather have finished 10 minutes slower than I did. On the other hand I never sat down or stood still between arriving at the race site at 8 am until I got back in my car at almost 1, maybe that will help.

After all this I sure hope there's 26 good miles in these skinny little legs of mine.

The Internet is a Wonderful Thing

I found this while doing an image search for volleyball star 'Sanda Pires':

Ladies in Sports

And now for something completely different

Kevin Beck calls it the 'World's most earnest parody site'. Others are even less kind. For the person that stumbles onto Richard Gibben's running site, whether accidentally or from his force feeding of every running discussion board known to man, we hope they've done their homework.

My first experience with him was somewhere in Coolrunning where a reference was made to some nonsensical study being presented and one of the posters quickly recognized the info coming from Sir Richard and then preceeded to give us the quick rundown. It seems Richard is a runner of some experience but never really took it seriously (he sounds like an A type personality) until one day he decided that he would go out and kick the running world's butt in a concerted motion as he mowed them down in his path. No doubt he bought a gob of runner literature, read it all and decided to pound out a million miles a week, cuz somewhere it mentioned all top runners do this, and warning signs of imminent injury be damned proceeded to beat his knees and legs into useless props with a sole remaining purpose of keeping his ass from touching the ground. I don't think he races anymore, given the last result I saw from him likely had him finishing just behind Susie Q Austin's butt as she celebrated her 30 minute 5k victory shortly before the finish line was dismantled.

The whole thing seems to have left him rather disgruntled with the anyone capable of maintaining a 10 minute a mile pace for more than 10 minutes. Since surely his interpretation of training methodologies couldn't possibly have been erroneous,the fault MUST lie with the likes of Lydiard and Vigil and other top coaches. He's therefore decided to declare war on what he calls 'conventional training wisdom' and show the world that there is better path to success than hard work and dedication. Now we're not quite sure what 'conventional training wisdom' is since no two people train the same but let's not interfere with a good battle.

Somewhere in my exchanges with him on CR, he decided he didn't like my attitude (one of his favorite methods of evasion is to cry 'Attack! Attack!', declare you the latest member of his sh¡t list, and you'll never get to call his bluff again). So, to allow me to continue my hobby, I 'cleverly' signed onto his own discussion board as 'okrunner' (hee hee....I sure pulled the wool over HIS eyes) so I can get my share of shitsandgiggles when debugging ASP script becomes tedious.

His global contribution to the running world, in terms of advice, is to run 3 days a week...one interval workout, on tempo run (which he likes to call a 'power run') and a long run...and no more, and a top runner you shall surely soon be. This is remarkably like the FIRST marathon training plan published by the Furman Institute, which Sir R seemed to take quite strongly to as of late, and I have a feeling FIRST rather influenced this groundbreaking work of his. Anyway, it's easy enough to disect what comes off his fingertips into typed words and show him how his logic processing unit seems to have a short or two somewhere, but you do have to step around the dozen or so unrelated responses he usually provides to try and muddle whatever the original point was being made. But stick with it, I've learned to keep it focused for him and have even managed to get him to admit he makes things up (see his disc. brd. thread on 'FIRST Training Research Update'), but I have be oh so careful in my responses lest my alias gets bunkied up with my CR ID on his list.

I'm not sure what quite to make of him. I don't know if he's making the whole thing up and laughing hysterically at our own amusement of his brilliant work, or if he actually believes what he's peddling. Either way, like a dog that you can get to chase his tail, it's always fun to poke a stick at him now and again. Beck may have it right.

The Science Fair

Having at one time been young and infinitely naive and now being old and finitely capacitive I have a tendency to try to pass on the legacy of my experience to my oldest son. Unfortunately I have almost no ability to consolidate the events that allowed me to learn from what I now perceive as being paths to disaster. I've always had great confidence in myself to stand about 6 inches over the horizon and see what's coming, what it might do to me (or for me) and how best to handle it. For some reason I just can't seem to transfer that same level of confidence to my son. Maybe if I could see the world in his eyes I might realize he has the same talent, or maybe all I'll see is video game images a la first person viewpoint.

His big task in school the last several weeks has been to research, prototype and document an item ultimately to be included in his HS's science fair. His original plan involved levels of water in various size hoses and tubes to see what they would do. After he and I going through the plan we decided it didn't make a lot of sense (fill the various size tubes with water and measure pressure at the bottom) and instead decided to persue demonstrating how force can be applied to water in tubes, essentially hydraulics.

Now, understand my son isn't a big believer in providing feedback nor is he stellar in the arena of initiative. But once he puts his mind on something he can certainly persue it to the end even if that end is completely in the wrong direction or 100 yards beyond the edge of a cliff. He'll still be twiddling while approaching terminal velocity, oblivious to the upward motion of all around him and the inevitable meeting with the ground below. This takes a certain amount of reigning, as I explained to him one time to always make sure that what you're trying to accomplish is attainable (even if you're the only one who believes it is).

We built a prototype of a piston driven hydraulic setup. The plans became modified a dozen times over, going from a ballast supplied system (which, after review, we realized simply wouldn't do anything at all) to a closed system. The prototype had two upward tubes (simple ABS plumbing parts) of different diameters and a 'sealed' piston to compress the hydraulic fluid (water in this case) and record the effects on the other piston. Unfortunately we couldn't get the pistons to 'seal' no matter how hard we tried. We reviewed and revised the designs, added thick lubricants to help reinforce the seal...nada. Weeks went by and we were getting to crunch time. Classmates had theirs nearly done, documented, tidied up, and there's my son with little to show except a pair of leaky tubes.

So, on advice from his teacher, we changed the whole setup to use prefabed pistons (syringes) and we devised a sealed system (aquarium air-line tubing and connectors) and managed to form a sealed hydraulic lift system using one very narrow syringe as the activator and a large diameter one for the lifter. Then over a period of three nights built a display setup and stands to aid in measuring (it's very difficult to balance weights on the tiny end of an insulin syringe), and also managed to throw together a practical application display where we put 3 syringes together to mock up a disk braking system. He's a bit depressed that the original work had to be abandoned, he so wanted his nifty looking tubes and pipes and steel-rod pistons to work, but we can't persue what simply will likely end in failure. I'm hoping he's accepting of the new design and it seems he and his classmates had great fun pressing the various pistons and watching what happens. Today he's got a ton of work trying to get measurements and numbers and I have to just hope it all works out without being there to offer guidance.

And I reflect back on my own venture into the Science Fair arena. Me and a friend were trying to build a very basic digital logic system (this was before the days of PC's and it was nothing more than two switches and some lights) and a comparable analog system (although this failed miserably as we had no means of being able to build an output display). We had literally no help from our parents and teachers, persued blindly and abandoned to somehow have something to show, and stood with a rather ratty looking display that mimiced someone having emptied a box of garage junk onto the floor and this is how it fell together. Yet, we won a prize (only because there were less entrants at the fair then there were prizes to be handed out) and came away feeling that we somehow managed to accomplish something worthwhile.

I don't know which outcome my son would rather have, whether the tried and failed original, or the functional 'plan 2'. But I've got at least one more late evening on this one as he has to put together an information display and we cross our fingers hoping it has at least something to do with whatever his original intent was.

Freedom's just another word for being naked

I joined Bally's recently. Up until July and for the 5 previous years I had been fairly regular in going into the basement 2 or 3 times a week, setting out a nice cushy thick workout mat and doing a routine with 110 pounds of dumbells that kept me reasonably toned and firm anywhere above the legs. In July I started a bathroom reno which required a complete gut and rebuild and the basement floor become a storage area for anything involved. In January I waited for and took advantage of Bally's best offer (I get reimbursed anyway) and now do my workouts there (I still do all of my running outside).

Now, I'm not particularly modest or shy, and maybe it's just some deep seated conditioning from days of yor, but I find it just bizarre the way a lot of men simply like to walk around a locker room completely buffers. I keep a towel wrap and a few guys wear swim trunks when transitioning too and fro the locker area and the shower. Nonetheless it seems that at least half of the guys I've seen just like to stand around and make sure everyone gets a darned good view of whatever it is they like showing off. Maybe it's because I cut phys ed in high school, or maybe because I didn't play league sports, I dunno. But I just can't see myself walking about, looking at myself in a mirror, chatting with other equal fabricless guys and being totally nonchalant about it.

I don't think they need to see my junk and I'm certainly not interested in seeing theirs.

This is the hard part

Make no mistake, it's at this point that it can get pretty difficult and you've got to drum up the reserve from within to get there.

It's 9 weeks to Boston. I'm on 20 mile long runs and all the crucial filler runs in between. As long as I prep for them properly the longs aren't that difficult or demanding, but every other run has to be there to make it work. I have to get up in the AM to tackle that recovery run or that hill workout or make the time for that 80-90 minute mid week mid long. This is the period that crams in the conditioning and the effort, builds the endurance, builds the stamina, sets up my system to handle my goal marathon pace.

I'm not on a schedule, I have no plan or chart set up on a wall somewhere, I just follow my routine and execute the item I think I need on any given day. I know what's going to carry me from one weekend to the next and I know what will mess me up and make any particular run harder than it should be. At this point it's all about execution. I run when I can get it in knowing tomorrow might be a problem so better to have it done than not. I can't skip just because I don't feel 'up to it'.

Saturday I overdid it a bit. My nonchalant run over trail and road ended up being 7 miles...too far. Then we had to go to a kids birthday party and I spent an hour in a pool, half of it treading water which takes more out of you than you expect. And I didn't get any proper meals in. Sunday morning I was tired when I woke up and just not fueled up. As nice as a fresh blueberry muffin is, it won't replace a good solid meal of carbs the night before. 10 miles in I figured I needed to shortturn my second loop and cut it back to 18 1/2 miles...still not bad. It was tough though as I knew I'd be running sans glycogen for a while. Still, that has it's own benefits and so it's not like the run's a total loss. I've accounted for at least one missed target over this period anyway.

I just have to keep in mind that don't want to be standing in the start corral wishing I'd trained properly. It's just not a fun experience.

The body is a funny thing

Plan, run to a point just over 5 miles away, run back, pick up a bottle of warm gatorade waiting inside the doorway, run to a point just over five miles away and run back.

Sounds simple enough. And that's what I did. Out, back, peel off the safety seal and discard, turn around, out, back.

Some time ago when I was still a teen, my dad was finishing work in the city with weekend approaching and discovered his car was on the fritz. We were 16 1/2 miles away in the cottage soaking up the east coast sun. He opted to walk to the cottage, thumbing to passing drivers hoping to pick up a lift. He got sporadic hits but had a sizeable trek that eventually brought him to the doorstep something like 4 hours later. In work shoes his feet were sore and blistered and he didn't do much moving around for a couple of days.

In finishing off 20 1/2 miles in a 3 hour period, I get home and stroll a couple of loops around the block to keep from getting too tight. My feet don't have many complaints, the ever present sore spot at the base of the middle toes on my right foot that may or may not ache after a run (it's been there since many years before I started running), a couple of toes have the skin just slightly abraided, nothing more than you would feel if someone accidentally dragged a leather purse over your foot, and a few stiff joints.

I run a distance, I run a bit for a couple of weeks, then I run a bit further than that. The schedule is burned into me like making Kraft Dinner. Monday rest...Tuesday take the trash out, if I feel good (no big run last weekend) then it's 5-6 miles of tempo. If I don't have the time or I'm stiff, maybe 4-5 miles of nothing much...Wednesday, alternate between a hill workout (long or short hills) or a track workout (10-12x400, 5-6x800 or 3-4x1600)...Thursday, try to get a bit of distance in, 10 miles is the target...Friday rest...Saturday I do what I feel like, could be 5-7 miles of tempo, could be 5 easy, could be 6 or 7 miles of muddy messy trail (which is the preferred option)...Sunday, long, sometimes very hard, sometimes just very easy.

And the body compensates. Give it work, it will happily accept more. Work the cycle...push, rest, push, rest. The cycles are short (easy day, hard day, easy day, hard day) and long (buildup period, recovery, sharpen, race, rest and recovery, base build...). I've reached the point where I know what I can hit when I can hit it and what I need to do to get there.

2 hour runs are nothing. I can do them anywhere anytime. Once you hit 3 hour territory you know you're not just another guy in shorts.

"Yeah, I was over to the track early this morning getting a few laps in"

I'm sure this is what the track walkers tell their spouses or friends or anyone else they talk to. They seem to have an affection for inside lane 1, the preferred lane for those for whom the measured track distances actually mean something...that being runners.

A typical high school or college track has 6 to 8 lanes, each 1.2 (it varies from track to track) meters in width and the inner most lane measuring out to precisely 400 meters. For a person executing an interval workout using a multiple of the set distance of 400 meters, that inner lane is crucial to having an accurate assessement of the workout and the current level of conditioning. Most walkers don't even know the lanes have a set distance, and many think all the lanes are the same distance...duh.

As I arrive this morning, not specifically to do a track workout but just to use the parameters to help set pace on this moderately easy run, I arrive in total darkness with the venue all to myself, opting to run clockwise this time to balance out impact forces inherent in running in continuous left turns in the conventional (counterclockwise) direction. As dawn breaks, they arrive and promptly start their stroll on the innermost lane drawn like a floating spitball spiralling towards the inner vortex of the bathtub water going down the drain. Sometimes they actually get mad at me, as though I'm invading their preallocated space. I'm pretty accomodating and will vere around them when necessary but I'm also not above ensuring they feel a sudden rush of sweat laden hot air blowing across their neckline...usually this prompts them to shift left (or right) 1.2 meters. Sometimes 2.4. Sometimes 8.4. Since a hard 400 will be accompanied by short explusions of saliva, this can also have an effect, keeping in mind this isn't intentional but it's surprising difficult to either spit or swallow at these times so fluids will go wherever air goes...mostly outward bound in random directions.

This morning I circuited the course 25 times to total 10,000 meters in a bit over 50 minutes, not including the kilometer between the track and my house and my warmup laps in the muddy confines of the nearby park. The walkers continued towards their habitual 8 to 10 laps which they'll complete some time long after I've left, their cardiovascular system thoroughly cleared by the rush of blood through their arteries. In all fairness, good for them to be out walking, but surely there must be far more interesting things to see along the streets than lane 1 of the local track.

Pitch Black

which is what greets me at 6:30 in the morning. The park system isn't lighted so you hope for cloud cover to reflect the streetlights back down, so at least you can see what your foot is about to step on. I managed to step ankle deep in a puddle as I was avoiding a glacier that formed over the pathway. One mile out I returned back to answer natures knock on my sphincter door, then 7ish miles out and back. It's really hard to see dogs at the time of the morning, you have to go by sound. I think the owl hooting in a tree down there was hoping for a nice tasty Shihtzu to take home for the yunguns.

Blonde Joke

I admit...I liked it.