Posts Tagged ‘long runs’

I’m not happy with January for a variety of reasons, but how can I complain about it? I spent half of it not feeling well, but I still managed to accomplish more this month than any other January. Here are the highlights:

• My first-ever January race. A trail race is more of an experience than an actual race, but the bloodshed led to some good lessons learned.
• Most miles ever in January. I’m disappointed with 81.5 miles, but in comparing what I did two years ago when I was on my way to a PR in the Shamrock Half, I have more mileage — both in quantity and quality.
• My long run is back to double digits already with a 10-miler this past weekend.
• 478 push-ups.

All in all, I am in a good place heading in February. Next month is sure to be full of more miles and additional speed work as I narrow down a goal for Shamrock. I’m also eager to start my core streak.

It’s all about focusing …

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.

Way back on June 25, on the first long run of Baltimore Marathon training, one of the first streets I ran on was Baltimore Avenue in Bedford. Today, 15 weeks later on the final long run of training, I revisited that street as one of the final streets of my run.

I have a lot on my mind that I want to reflect on next week. I know I’ve been staying quiet, but I realized this morning that I need to hammer out my thoughts about training. No matter what happens next week — good or bad or anything in between — I’ve had a tremendous 16 weeks of training.

Despite all my thoughts this week about tapering, I knew that one more double-digit long run loomed. While running 10 or more miles for a long run is something I’ve done nearly every week since July, I still had this weird feeling about this one.

Last year I couldn’t do another double-digit long run after my second 20-miler. Not running was the right thing to do then; this year it was all about fear.

Turns out, I ran a little more than 10 miles with no big issues at all. It was a clear, starry morning at 6 a.m.; it was about 30 degrees colder than a mid-day run earlier this week; and the miles ticked by fairly quickly. I didn’t focus on my time or pace — it was a run just to run. I should have left my Garmin at home.

Now is the time where the taper is important. My mind is ready to do 26.2 miles again; my body needs rest. While my running has been great lately, I can tell that another week of even lower mileage is going to have me ready. Through 15 weeks of “official” training, I have more than 40 miles on my legs than I did through 15 weeks last year. The extra mileage will pay off, but I can feel those extra miles with various soreness.

My plan for the next couple of weeks will be to take several Epsom salt baths, something I’ve done a lot of in the past month, but haven’t mentioned. I feel so relaxed after doing that and I can then stretch and foam roll with comfort. I also hope to get an adjustment from my chiropractor.

From a running standpoint, I plan to have a short run tomorrow (just shy of 30 miles for the week) and then about 20 miles next week. Race week — which I am calling week 0 — will have just a couple of short runs.

Just two more weeks …

As I approached my second 20-miler of Baltimore Marathon training this week, I’ve been doing some reflecting on the past few months, and even years, but I’m also staying focused on the final weeks of training. I’ve been continuously paranoid about a re-injury occurring, but at the same I’ve been extremely excited about my progress.

I’ve made a promise to myself to stay quiet about a lot of things, so don’t expect many deep thoughts from me through my taper. Yes I’ll still post blogs, but I have a feeling there will be some more randomness to things.

So what about that 20-miler?

It was pretty good. I hit the middle miles a little too hard and the humidity got to me more than I was expecting. Overall, though, it was a good run — 2 minutes faster than a couple of weeks ago, no major pains and no crazy animal sightings for once. And with Bedford’s Centerfest setting up, I got to see things like this:

Yesterday’s run also included a road to one of the highest points in Bedford, as you can see below in the spike around mile 7. The hill didn’t seem all that big at the time, but thinking back is was definitely pretty big. Comparing this 20-miler to two weeks ago, yesterday’s had 100 more feet of elevation gain.

I like runs that leave me with thoughts all over the place. I finished today’s 14.3-mile run feeling good, strong and eager to do more. Instead of fearing next week’s second 20-miler, I’m embracing everything about it.

Here are some highlights from today’s run:

• My time — 2:09 — was 38 seconds faster per mile than a 14-mile run from a year ago. It’s more than a minute faster per mile than either of my 20-milers from then; it was also 20-plus seconds faster than last week’s intentionally slower long run.
• My continuous intentional start slow, finish strong method of training was well executed today. The first mile was 9:43; the final mile was 8:47. All the other miles were within 26 seconds of each other.
• The weather was perfect — a consistent temperature in the low 50s and lots of clouds made this an ideal training run. I’d gladly take this for the Baltimore Marathon in 4 weeks.
• There were hills in Bedford I hit for the first time since last summer. It was part of getting rid of the injury fear factor that’s plagued me all year.
• Four weeks to go … all I have to do is stay focused, run smart and stay patient.

My 11 things post on Saturday didn’t exactly reflect how things went on my 20-miler. Now that I’ve had a few days to let it sink in, as well as a short recovery run Sunday and a nice 8:30ish pace run today, I’m very pleased with how it went and how my body has reacted.

To say it was awesome or great is a drastic overstatement. It was good — while I had a moment or two that just felt weird, I also moments that I totally felt in the groove.

Today's route in Roanoke

I used the run to concentrate on not falling apart in the second half of the run; I felt like I took a lot of mental notes to apply for the next 20-miler next weekend, and a few things I can use in the Baltimore Marathon.

In looking back at the end of last year’s training cycle for the Richmond Marathon, I realize more and more how I just settled into the last month of training as “just running.” It was like I just let it fall into place without effort, which may have contributed to the injury. Now is the time to fine-tune things.

Today’s run, for example, was a solid run in some surprise heat. A year ago I would have slowed it down and settled for the mileage. If I’m going to get anywhere close to 3:45 in Baltimore, I have to do than just log miles.

For my next 20-miler I am pretty sure that I am going to go somewhere flatter and focus on getting the overall pace down just a tad. This past weekend’s run was 15 minutes faster than my two 20-milers last year; while that is awesome progress, I want some practice in my long run getting closer to marathon goal pace. I’ve had some faster, solid long runs this year, but I want one final dress rehearsal.

32 days to go …

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.

Thanks to Irene for the extremely overcast, humid day today.

Hurricane Irene tried to make my run miserable today, but I was having none of it. I’m far enough inland to not get impacted by heavy rain or wind, but the humidity she’s brought with it and slapped on most of Virginia was brutal this morning.

Sorry, but the weather wasn’t winning today.

Percival's Island bridge from Lynchburg into Amherst County.

I headed to Lynchburg for my 18 miler for a change of scenery — the plan was to run about 6 miles by myself, meet my friend Scott I met via Daily Mile a few months ago for about 7 miles, then finish the run off by myself.

What I didn’t anticipate was how dark it was just before 6 a.m. — I was a bit scared to park where I planned on parking and it was too dark to get on Percival’s Island for about 30 minutes.

So I parked near the downtown market where people were setting up for their busy morning, ran about a mile on the streets then headed down to my planned run along the bike path on the island.

The first 7 miles by myself were weird. I started intentionally slow — a 9:52 first mile — but gradually picked it up. I had that feeling of a good run on my hands. When I met Scott I was already drenched; the humidity was nuts. Where was Irene’s breeze?

Fortunately as Scott and I took off, we caught a few breaks with the wind. Our conversation was good and all over the place, but we had a nice pace throughout. I was not feeling tired at all.

When we separated, I still had about 3 miles to go. With no music like the first third of the run and no one to talk to, it was all about focusing on my breathing, my form and finishing the run strong.

I had no idea what my overall pace was. I knew that I set out with a goal of a 9-minute mile pace today, and in my head the only thing I could figure out was 162 minutes — 2 hours, 42 minutes. (I did the math as 9 times 9, then doubled it.) I looked at my watch with about a mile and a half to go and realized I could probably walk and hit that mark.

Besides a few glances at my watch after the first mile, I had no idea what I was doing. It turns out I was having the fastest long run beyond a half marathon that I’ve ever had and a negative split that I couldn’t even imagine.

My first half splits were: 9:52, 9:18, 9:12, 8:51, 8:51, 9:11, 9:22, 9:08 and 8:14 for a total of 1:21:59.

My second half splits were: 8:12, 8:36, 8:19, 8:27, 8:09, 8:20, 8:26, 8:39, 8:29 for a total of 1:15:37.

Really? A 6-minute difference? An 8:45 pace overall?

It’s such a different way of training for me, but I can’t help but like the feeling of a negative split. While today was a bit flatter than usual, I was intentional about doing something different and doing it faster.

The weather didn’t win and my mind didn’t win. It may have been the best long run I’ve ever had, but my focus is what lies ahead for the next 7 weeks before the Baltimore Marathon. My immediate focus is on a short recovery run tomorrow and a recovery week next week to give myself a break.

And then … my first 20 miler. After today, it’s a run I can’t wait to get to.