Posts Tagged ‘lessons learned’

These past couple of weeks have been fun reflecting on what happened in 2011. Today I bring you the last of my lists with my top running moments of the year.

Narrowing down the top 5 running moments of the year is hard, but honestly anything longer than that is boring and diluted. Anything beyond 5 is like having honorable mentions, which I will not do. This list is completely different from my top 5 racing moments of 2011 – this list is more broad and not necessarily as focused on one specific moment.

5. Monument Avenue 10k
While this was my No. 1 racing moment this year, it’s definitely not the top running moment. It was huge though, but from an overall perspective it wasn’t as important to me as other things on this list. Gradually building my mileage in the first quarter of the year, getting back to the start line and then setting a PR, though, still make this a great moment.

4. The Holiday Run Streak
In a few months, perhaps this will be higher on the list; it’s actually tough for me to include this here as it’s happening now with another day to go. That said, my running streak through Jan. 1 is teaching me a lot about running for the sake of running. It’s fun to just go out and run with training pretty far from my mind. I’ve run in the rain, in the wind, in awkwardly warm December weather, through neighborhoods brightly lit by Christmas lights; and included a few races to close out the year.

3. “Most ever” moments
It’s important to me to not confuse “most ever” with “best ever.” When it comes to this year, I won’t touch the “best ever” phrase. I’ll just use “best so far.” And with that nod comes many “most ever” moments this year — most weekly mileage (41.5 from Sept. 5-11); most ever miles in a month (135 in August and September); most ever mileage in a year (1,040.4); most ever races (13); and most ever consecutive races (4 in 4 weeks) are the highlights.

2. Watching my son race
I’ve learned a lot this year about running by watching my son. He has fun; he notices things like barns off in the distance in a race; and he runs just to run. If you don’t have kids, I highly suggest that you watch a kids race. Not the one with 10 or 11 year olds – the real kids race where everyone is under 5 years old. You’ll learn a lot.

My friend Jeremy (Train to Tri) asked me in a comment recently what I felt like I did differently to stay injury free during Baltimore Marathon training. When I think about this year and what went well, I like to think that the combination of what I did differently worked. Here are 5 things – in no particular order – I did that I think have contributed to my well-being this year.

Epsom salt baths
I think I started doing a salt bath once I got to 16 miles for the long run. They’re so relaxing and always left me feeling refreshed. I would usually do one the night after a long run and then occasionally during the week. For those screaming at me to do ice baths, I tried it once and couldn’t bring myself to do another one. Maybe next year. Scream away.

Running faster
Getting quicker was not high on my priorities this year, but speed, as well as drastically improving my race times, was definitely a big factor in making this year a different year. And in this last month as I run in a non-training mind frame, I’m only getting faster without intentionally running faster.

Rotating shoes
I’ve been a big fan of rotating shoes since I started that in early 2010. This summer I added in another pair to the mix and now rotate two pairs of Brooks Ravenna and one pair of Brooks Ghost 3, which is nearing the end of its life. In addition to alternating shoes when running, I also alternate what I wear to work from a brown casual pair to a pair of New Balance to a couple of pairs of retired running shoes. I think all these combinations have kept my legs and joints from another repetition-type injury.

Walking at work
I don’t talk nearly enough about this, but the job I started in the spring has a great workout program. I generally add a couple of walking miles a day to the time on my feet Monday-Friday. That extra movement, especially on days that I feel sluggish or sore, has been key. That said, if I ever change jobs, I will insist that I be allowed walking time.

Better training log
While I was training for Baltimore, I utilized a Google Documents spreadsheet to closely monitor my weekly mileage, as well as my cumulative mileage and how it compared to what I did in 2010 when training for the Richmond Marathon. That led me to always know where I stood with my mileage at any given time. I’ll admit at times it make me obsess a bit more about things than I normally would have, but I intend on refining the process in 2012.

As I look ahead to 2012, I’m looking forward to trying even more new things and improving on what I’ve already done differently. Things such as cross training, which I did a lot of in 2011, need to take more priority, as do losing 10 pounds that I never seem to try hard enough to lose. For now, though, I’m looking forward to these last few days of the year.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As I’ve mentioned, I came away from the Baltimore Marathon with a lot of things to say. I wanted to keep my race report to the point and focus on how I felt at the time – I had to let things sink in, as well as taking time to celebrate getting a sub-4 marathon.

It’s important to me to write these things down to make the next race experience of any distance even better.

Study the course map

I knew Baltimore had hills, but I got overconfident that my constant hill running would make those hills look small. That’s partly true, but the hills in the marathon were a lot different. They were longer in distance with gradual climbs; while the hills I usually run on have a steeper grade, they’re not as long when it comes to distance. Just look at the first few miles of my Garmin data with that steady climb.

Had I looked at the map closer, I would have ran more mountains or found roads that had hills longer than a half mile.

Longer short runs

If When I train for a marathon again, I need to incorporate the “middle” distances more. While training in the heat was highly beneficial this summer, I didn’t have enough distances in the 6-8 mile range. I definitely had benefits of doing doubles a few times, but from an endurance perspective, I need more longish runs mid-week.

Cross training

I still need to cross train more, especially with weights. I have drastically improved my routine with core work and some weights at least once a week, but I need to do it twice a week. All that made a huge difference this time around, but I believe with more I’ll only be stronger in the final miles.

Start even slower

I need to start farther back. I still feel like I ran the race I wanted to – I didn’t start too fast and I never felt like I hit a wall. However, I wish I had started a little farther back to slow down a little bit more in the first few miles. My first 3 miles were 10-15 slower than my goal pace at 8:36, 8:35 and 8:45, but I feel like I should have been a little slower. Between mile 3 and 4, I passed the 3:40 group, who I thought was going too slow, but obviously they were doing something right.

I should have started near the 4-hour pace group and been more conservative. I can’t beat myself up for that – with the way the wind was that day coupled with my cold, I don’t know if that would have made any difference with how I felt around mile 22.

Wind training?

I need to train in the wind. In the fall and winter that’s easy, but in the calmer summer months I’m not sure what to do.

* * *

So there you have it. There are no failures with running — it’s always about learning lessons and make it better next time around. As for “what’s next,” I’ll have a post on that … eventually.

I know for the second straight month that I’m getting away from my goal of “11 things” posts, but with the Baltimore Marathon just days away, I made a promise to myself the other day to do some reflecting.

There’s no better way to reflect than an 11 things posts. Here are 11 things that have happened during training, lessons I’ve learned, things I never posted and other random thoughts.

1. I listened to this song a lot on my long runs in the last month or so. To hear it when the sun is coming up often gave me a sense of peace and helped me find strength when I needed it most.

2. I’m pretty sure I experienced the biggest variety of weather this time around. With a majority of mid-week runs in the middle of the day, I had the hottest conditions I’ve ever run in, with temperatures often near 90 or slightly above. These past two weekends, it’s been half that at the start.

3. In a 16-week span, I ran 456.7 miles, which is 51.9 more miles than the 16 weeks prior to the Richmond Marathon last year.

4. I’ve been much more diligent about recovery runs this year with running a couple of miles or so the day after big runs.

5. I have walked 117 miles since the beginning of July 1. That’s just walking miles logged on Daily Mile. That’s miles I’ve walked at work and family walks on Sunday; actual mileage is probably a bit higher. I’ve also hiked a few times too. I wrote a long time ago about walking more and how it would impact training, and I have nothing but great things to say about it. All this walking silently pushed me over 1,000 exercise miles for the year recently.

6. As a weather junkie (see No. 2 above), I’ve been looking at long-range forecasts for this weekend as soon as they were available. Accuweather’s 15-day forecast and the Weather Channel’s 10-day forecast have surprisingly stayed consistent. Saturday is looking good right now, but I know things can change. After seeing hot weather for Chicago return this past weekend, I’m mentally preparing myself for the worse.

7. I’ve never once doubted setting my 3:45 goal. In fact, it was one of the best decisions I’ve made in training. It made my training much more intentional and focused with every run. Whether all this pays off Saturday is obviously to be determined, but I like heading to the start line in this mind frame.

8. I took my first ice bath after one of my long runs. I can’t bring myself to ice bath No. 2.

9. I stretch after all my runs — sometimes it’s just a few minutes for short runs, often it’s about 10 minutes after a long run. I rarely stretched before.

10. I ran 148 miles on Saturdays. That’s more than Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays combined. The lowest day was Monday, with 37.4 miles. In August, I stopped running on Mondays (besides 8.3 on Labor Day) when that became a regular core day.

11. I talk a lot about having fun and encourage people to always have fun on a race or run. In looking back at the past 16 weeks, I can honestly say I had fun. From the sunrises, to seeing families of deer, to laughing with co-workers on lunch runs, this has been an awesome experience.

With respect to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I wanted to move today’s 11 things post up a day. It didn’t feel right to do a silly post for tomorrow. I also am going out of the norm of my 11 things concept and making it a post about running. Today’s 20-mile run was full of observations and thoughts, some serious, some not so serious. Without further delay, here is this month’s 11 things a day early.

1. To all my friends who made the obvious statement about it being dark at 5:30 a.m. when I started my run, guess what? It was, in fact, very dark. The sun came up as scheduled.

2. I saw a deer poop for the first time ever. (It was still dark then. And she had the audacity to do this in front of her two kids, me and Duke.)

3. Two families were setting up their yard sales before 6 a.m. (In the dark.)

4. Someone in the middle of Bedford has a rooster. It was confused because it was doing its wake-up call before the sun was even thinking about coming up.

5. This may have been the most even-split long run ever — the second half was just 57 seconds faster than the first (dark) half. I wasn’t out there for speed today, but I’m happy with the (slow) consistency. Plus in the second half I walked a few hills, so I’ll take whatever negative split I can get.

6. Three GUs are better than two for this distance. That’s a very important lesson I’ve taken from previous bad runs.

7. I was really struggling in the middle miles. All of a sudden I got to mile 14 and I thought about stopping and walking home. I turned to Twitter for motivation. About a dozen tweets rolled in giving me some inspiration. I went from having my slowest mile at mile 14, to my fastest mile at mile 17.

8. 20 miles in Bedford is really hard. I know that from last year, but I was reminded of that today at nearly every turn. It’s so freakin’ hilly here that it makes it easy to drop F bombs at the sight of another hill. I think I may have offended some old ladies today.

9. I have a new favorite running song. It’s slow, but it’s easy to sing along to. And here is where I give you the parental advisory to not click on THIS LINK if you get easily offended by Ben Folds doing covers of Dr. Dre songs. This might have played when I ran my fastest mile today. And I may have hit repeat a few times. And I may have offended old ladies again.

10. Post-run I had a chocolate milk, a watered-down Gatorade and an egg and turkey burger sandwich. Good stuff. I’ve increased my protein intake this summer pre- and post-long runs and it seems to help me recover faster. Next run I’m finding that rooster and eating him for breakfast.

11. In more seriousness, though, I want to say that I had fun. And that’s what matters more than anything else. Even if it was dark.

“Tough.”

“OK.”

“Miserable.”

“Not so bad.”

I’ve had a variety of descriptions of yesterday’s long run of 16.2 miles. In hindsight, nearly 36 hours later, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I at least covered Bedford, Va., fairly well:

And it was hilly as usual:

I got it done with no major side effects today. That’s a good enough victory to move on to another week of running.

I do know that I’m not running a race and running long the next day again, especially in the summer when the weather can vary so much day to day. Perfect for Saturday’s 5k; 91% humidity at the start of Sunday’s run … yeah, not fun.

This week is shaping up to be my third consecutive week of mileage increases before a recovery week next week. At one point I had hoped for my first 40-mile week ever this week, but I’m not focusing on that. I want continued good runs and Hurricane Irene to stay away long enough to avoid torrential rain on my long run. We’ll see how I feel come Sunday on a recovery run what the final mileage will be.

Now that I’ve soaked all this up, it’s time to mark it off and move along …

I haven’t done a “Making the commitment” post in a while. The idea of having the theme throughout the year seemed to fizzle once I got things back on track. While I have failed to blog with the title as much as I had hoped, the theme lives on. Everything I have done has been about making a commitment to getting back to full health when it comes to running.

A couple of months ago I talked about how this training session for the Baltimore Marathon was going to be different. Now that I’m halfway through training I thought it would be a good time to do a check-up.

Core 

I’ve been able to get in a solid core workout once a week at work and have done a relatively good job at getting a second workout in at home. We shifted things up at work and I’m actually working out with our personal trainer on Mondays. In the past couple of weeks he’s added some weight training with the core work.

I know I should do more, but something is better than nothing, and what I’ve done this summer is far and away a lot more than I was doing a year ago. I can tell a difference when I run; I can’t pin-point exactly what it is, but I can tell that I’m more balanced and stronger.

Being visual

I’ve posted many more maps of my runs, which really helps give me a quick reference to look at what I’ve done. I look at my runs on Garmin Connect a lot more too. I like to see where I slow down or how hard I hit a hill.

Wednesday's elevation map

I’ve kept up with my spreadsheet regularly. My “non-plan plan” actually got a little more solid after a couple of weeks as I set goals for my long runs and weekly mileage for the rest of training. I set the bar high, but have adjusted the mileage a couple of times to better fit what I’m doing.

I’ve also added a column in the spreadsheet for notes when I’ve made adjustments and I added a column with last year’s mileage from the same time frame. It’s definitely too wide to post on here for it to make any sense.

Overall perspective

Training through 8+ weeks has been amazing. Aside from feeling a bit under the weather a couple of weeks ago, I’ve remained as consistent as ever and feel stronger each week. I really look forward to the long runs each weekend.

I don’t like to compare things from last year too much, but I had a great training session then until the very end. I don’t want to take away from last year, but the lessons learned in the last 4 weeks are what set the tone for this summer.

Adding the core work, more progressive runs and what I feel is an overall better attitude is making this a great summer for running.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

After having some good and unique runs this week, I think I was more and more critical of last week’s long run that really wasn’t all that bad. That said, I learned a lot of lessons last week that I had to apply to the next long run to get over it and move on with my Baltimore Marathon training.

When the alarm went off at 5 a.m. today I was hating life. I didn’t sleep much and it had already been a long week — I was letting self-doubt enter my mind before I even got out of the door. As soon as I starting running with Duke, though, I was fine and very happy that I was out before the sun. The weather was a bit cooler than last week, but still very humid.

After less than a half mile, we almost got sprayed by a skunk — what I thought was a cat hanging out on the side of the road was a skunk that puffed up and hissed as we neared it. I shouted “GO DUKE” and we took off through someone’s yard. That woke me up, and I immediately started thinking about my goals for this run. Like my overarching goal is for 2011 is, today’s frame of mind was to finish it stronger than I started it.

I did exactly that. Here are the highlights of today’s 14.5-mile run, with lessons learned and many other miscellaneous things:

• Don’t eat buffalo chicken wraps the day before a long run. I had a much-needed pit stop when I dropped Duke off about 5 miles into the run, but that wasn’t a bad thing. I realized I had forgotten to apply my Mission Skincare Anti-Chafe Balm before starting, something I failed to do last week.
• After the brief stop, I took a frozen water bottle with me. It lasted several miles, keeping me cool and relaxed. After getting so hot last week, I needed this relief, especially in the middle miles.
• While my route doesn’t look planned, I made sure I would be in some shadier spots when the sun came up.
• Speaking of the sun, I made sure I had my sunglasses with me today. As soon as the sun peered over the trees, I put on my sunglasses. As weird as this sounds, this may have been the best decision of all today. There’s a lot to be said for not squinting in the final hour of the run. I was able to keep my face relaxed and focus on other things. Who knew squinting took so much effort?
• I was able to put my phone in a good spot so I didn’t have to hold it. My playlist was a little more singer-friendly too.
• I ran through some parking lots to break up a few continuous hills.
• I was able to refill my water about 9 miles in and get me through about mile 12 — that left me completely hands free for the final push.
• After starting slow — a 9:44 first mile — I finished strong with a next to last mile in 8:40. The second 7 miles were a little more than a minute and a half faster than the first 7 miles. My overall pace was 9:25, which I am very happy with.
• This run sticks out in my mind like a 16-mile run last September, when the conditions were actually much cooler and less humid. I’m excited beyond words about that. This weather is tough no matter how much I talk about running in it.
• I did my first-ever ice bath following the run. Long story short, I learned some lessons and didn’t last long. Two hours later, though, my legs feel great.
• Today’s run puts me at 30+ miles for the week, the first 30-mile week in 41 weeks.

This year I’ve done more blogging than usual, but one thing I continue to struggle with is being able to put all of my thoughts out there. When I look back at posts over the past few months, I often refer to my injury from last fall/winter, but I fail to fully explain how it has truly impacted me.

Coming back from an injury is the absolute toughest thing I’ve encountered since I started running in 2004. Injuries have come and gone and eventually I stop talking about them, but they’re never far from my mind. I believe that the mental aspect of coming back is far tougher than the physical aspect.

Last  year’s ITB injury continues to be a hard thing to shake from my head. I think about it all the time. I talk a lot about it, too. I learned a lot of lessons from the end of summer and early fall about how I screwed up with some things with my form and lack of core work; there’s no doubt that my worst injury ever has actually made me a smarter and better runner.

My fear, though, is that I become overly cautious. As I begin to hit mileage I haven’t seen in a while, I fret about how my ITB will react. I can’t let that hold me back though. I have safely built a base and been as consistent as ever. I’m half marathon ready, meaning that I feel like I could go out and run an awesome half marathon without side effects.

If for some reason I start to feel pain or have to hobble away from training, I can’t have any regrets. And that’s what this post is all about — no matter what happens, I do not regret going for another marathon.

I know it sounds weird saying these things after two PRs this month and an otherwise good year of running with my comeback, but I have to put all this out there. It’s kind of like my little way of getting final closure on the mental aspect of this injury.

Image: smokedsalmon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My wife caught this awesome photo of the James River in Lynchburg from the first bridge we cross in the race.

You know those moments where you plan something and it plays out perfectly? Well, that didn’t happen today. For one of the first races ever, I set a very specific goal for today’s Percival’s Island 5 Miler in Lynchburg. I even went as far as writing on my wrist where I needed to be each mile to hit 36:54.

7:22 pace would have put me at 36:54 (yes, that's a 4, not a 9)

My time today was 36:47. That’s right, 7 seconds faster than my goal. It was also 12 seconds better than my PR in this race from 4 years ago, and it was nearly 3 minutes faster than last year.

The best laid plans of running a consistent, even-paced race — hitting about 7:22 each mile — just didn’t happen. Not that it’s a problem, but it turned this into a race in which I dug deep both physically and mentally  in the second half to make up time after losing precious seconds in the first couple of miles.

I got caught up in a little more traffic than I usually do in the first mile and hit it in 7:28. I hit mile 2 in 7:25. That put me about 10 seconds off where I wanted to be.

When I hit the halfway point and the clock read 19 something, I had a decision to make — lay off the gas pedal a bit and still have a solid race, but accept missing my goal, or … well … let’s just say I wasn’t going to play the mental game today. I picked my ass up and went for it.

Through mile 3 and 4 I was able to get my pace down a bit, but I still had some work to do. When I hit mile 4, the clock was right at 29:59 — I still had to do a 7-minute mile just to tie my time from 4 years ago. It was shut up and go time.

At that same moment, I passed a couple of people who had just passed me; then a quarter mile later a guy passed me; I stuck with him and we passed a guy on a bridge who told us we were looking strong; the guy we passed on the bridge passed me with a tenth of a mile to go and said “Come on”; I passed that guy 3 feet from the finish line; the other guy was just in front of me.

This is near the finish line; I'm in blue. Somehow I dug deep and passed that guy at the end.

Instead of thinking about what I was doing, it was some very friendly competition in the last half mile that led to a sub-7 minute mile and a PR.

In the end, I learned a lot today:

• For these community races I need to get closer to the front — I was 42nd out of 225 people. There’s no reason for me anymore not to start a little closer to the front than I do.
• Writing the splits on my wrist is a huge help in keeping focused. I don’t know how many races I’ve done in which I tried to do math in my head to hit certain times, but I felt more at ease mentally today. I will definitely have more specific goals for future races.
• Keeping my arms lower continues to help keep me relaxed when pushing it. I heard someone at the end telling runners to “work your arms; finish strong.” While I probably did use my arms at the end to push myself, that technique is not for me for a flat race anymore. For hills, yeah, you need to use your arms, but I had a lot of energy left at the end because I didn’t waste any with big arm movement the first 4 miles.
• When the weather cooperates, push it harder. Today’s temperature at the start was in the mid-60s, about 20 degrees cooler than at the same time for much of the first half of the week. We had highs in the mid-90s to near 100 until Thursday, and those temperatures are coming back, so I felt like I had a small window today to push things even harder than I usually would.
• Compression calf sleeves are great for recovering. I’ll write a full review later, but my legs do not feel like they ran a hard 5 miles this morning.

Today’s race also caps off the first quarter of marathon training. I couldn’t have asked for a better start with some strong runs, steady long runs and two race PRs.