Monthly Archives: October 2007
Creeping toward 1,000 miles
AND PLEASE!!!! — do not wish me luck. As nice as it sounds, it’s not what I want to hear anymore. After these past few months, it’s not luck that’ll carry me through to the finish line.
C-c-c-c-c-cold
Was that really me this morning putting on pants to run in and busting out the early season gloves? Yup. Sure was. Was that me questioning why I would train in the winter again for a race in March? Yup. Was that me forgetting what cold felt like?
All of a sudden, Mother Nature decided to skip a month and bust out the 30s for overnight lows. I’m not complaining — this is much, much better than 80s in October. It’s just a shock to my system. There was very little transition from 50s to having frost on my windshield. It doesn’t look like it’ll last long, which I think is a good thing. I don’t want my body getting used to this and then turn around and have something warm happen on race day. If it’s this cold on race day, then that’s fine. It would be warmer than the day I ran the Shamrock Half Marathon back in March.
Speaking of race day, it’s now very fun to say that the Richmond Marathon is NEXT WEEK. While Nov. 10 seems like a while away, it really is next week. I’m first looking forward to having a day off work on the 9th and getting much more sleep in the next 10 days … but it’s next week!
A solid week of cutting back
It seems all too often I read about people who are in their taper weeks and they just want to run more. It’s something missing in their lives by cutting several miles from their weeks after running so much in the few months before.
After one week of cutting back, I am more than pleased with running less and giving my body a much needed rest. By the end of this week, I have felt stronger and my pace has actually gotten faster with me feeling as if I was putting less effort into it. Perhaps it’s because there’s less pressure to actually get the miles in. It’s time to rest and take it easy if something hurts, not to log miles just for the sake of logging miles. I also ran without my iPod all week, which led me to wondering if my music was dictating my pace too much. I think I’ll continue to run without music in these last two weeks to better prepare myself for race day. I’m a believer that iPods shouldn’t be allowed in races (that’s another post for some other time down the road), so I want to make sure I’m not addicted to the tunes. If you’re hooked and think you can’t run without music, I’d suggest taking off the earphones — the sounds at this time of the year deserve to be heard … as well as listening to yourself breathe.
Today I had my last double-digit run before the marathon and my knee hurt a very little bit toward the end, so I cut it short. No need to go another two miles just because that’s what I wrote down to do this week. Why risk hurting myself now when the marathon is less than two weeks away? That’s the point of this taper.
All week long I’ve gotten 8-9 hours of sleep every night instead of the usual 7-8. Last night was close to 10. It’s been solid sleep, too. Pretty soon I’ll start proclaiming that marathon training can cure insomnia and other sleeping disorders. Ambien? Don’t waste your money. Several miles a day is the natural way to go.
This week will be about the same through the week as this week, with a long run back in the single digits. Eight miles is going to seem like nothing next week, and I’m really looking forward to it.
Rain, rain, don't go away!
It’s so easy to complain. I’ve done it a lot this past summer and early fall about the weather. We all complain too much. So enough with it. I’m here to praise this rain and cooler weather. How awesome would it be to get up on race day and have temperatures in the low 60s or cooler and have a very light drizzle? Perfect I say.
The past two days have been great. For the first time in two months, it has been raining the past few days — a lot — but in the mornings the heavy rain has been holding off and it’s been very misty. And cool. And I even felt a breeze yesterday. It seems like forever since the wind picked up around here.
It’s odd to think that in the three years I’ve been running, I’ve only run in the rain a handful of times. I’ve never had it rain during a race. In 2004, a hurricane rolled through the day before the four miler and the forecast was for heavy rain, but it turned out to be fairly nice, but windy. In 2005 I ran in some very heavy snow during a Turkey Trot in Warren, Ohio. That was actually pretty cool to do. It rained fairly hard during one of my last group training runs in 2006, and earlier this summer our group ran in some light rain one morning. I’ve had to dodge a few afternoon storms when I was an evening runner, but all in all, it just doesn’t seem to rain when I run. Not that I’m complaining! I’d rather not, but I like the dampness that this week has offered. It finally feels like October.
Marathon training = lots of progress
I’ve been too hard on myself lately. In my last post, I think I left the impression that I haven’t accomplished anything until I cross the finish line of the Richmond Marathon. On my run this morning, though, I realized that I have accomplished a lot in the past few months in my running life. Instead of using the word “accomplished,” I’d like to think of it as making progress. Much of it is in thanks to training for a marathon, but I still want to avoid reflecting too much. I’m afraid of giving myself high praise for what’s happened these few months in fear of jinxing myself, slipping on a freakin’ acorn and busting my ass and not being able to reach the start line in two-plus weeks.
So, without talking about the marathon anymore, here are a few things that have happened in my running career this summer. Reflecting on what I’ve learned while training for the marathon will come sometime after Nov. 10:
* Some of my training runs have beaten race times since I started doing races in 2004. Just this morning in the heavy humidity of August … I mean late October … I included a 2-mile tempo run of 15:54. That’s nearly 30 seconds faster than a 2-mile race I did in November 2005 in the Thanksgiving snow in Ohio. And believe me, it’s much easier to run while it’s snowing than 80 percent humidity in August … I mean October.
* In addition to beating a 2-mile race time, I’ve had a few tempo runs while training better than several 5k races, and a 13.1-mile run was the same time as my very first half marathon. To me, no matter what I’m training for, that is my best sign of progress in the past few months.
* My 5k race times have dramatically improved since training for the Virginia Ten Miler last summer. From 24:37 at a cross-country style race in Bedford in November (which was nearly 3 minutes faster than my previous PR at that race) to a 22:42 this summer with a ton of hills, I have figured out how to push myself in a 3.1 mile event. Now that I’ve gotten below 23 minutes in a 5k comes the challenge of continuing to be able to do that, if 5ks are what I want to keep doing. Train faster, race faster. It’s actually a simple technique that works really well!
* I now have a new standard for a “short run.” It used to be three miles. Now it’s four. And I really like five.
The power of 10 … hours of sleep that is
I think in yesterday’s post I was blaming myself for things beyond my control. I was mad for yesterday’s run not feeling like the majority of my runs have in the past few months. Plus I was tired … and I think that was my biggest issue of all. Yesterday evening, I took a nap for about an hour. Then last night I slept for about 10 hours. Mark this down as a lesson learned without having to hurt myself — had I kept going yesterday, who knows what would have happened.
So today around 5 p.m., my wife and I headed to a nearby park with our.JPG)
dog (that’s him in the photo!). Instead of the short walk before my run, I took a longer walk to get warmed up — probably a little more than a mile. Then, the run. I started slow just to make sure my knees weren’t turning old on me. Two miles in, things were fine. I kept the first four miles or so off road on the relatively flat trails. Half way through I was feeling great. No pains, no issues with the late-day still-too-hot-for-October weather … my only complaint would be that my iPod was enjoying playing Bush songs I’ve already heard this week. I ended up running 10 miles in 10 seconds less than 1:30. Compare that to yesterday’s first 10 that I did in 1:37, plus another 9:30 pace mile. For the weekend, I did 21 miles. Although my 20 miler didn’t come in one attempt, I did accomplish a first in my running career — two double digit runs in consecutive days. Also this weekend, I passed 100 miles for the month, which is about 20 more than where I was at this point last month. While I was feeling down yesterday, I’m feeling much better tonight. It’s funny what a good night’s sleep can do for the body.
So, now what? It’s time for the taper. A lot of people have a lot to say about tapering — when doing a Google search for tapering and running, 2 million items come up. Nobody is right; nobody is wrong, either. For people like me, running in that 30-40 miles per week range, it seems there’s not much of a need to drastically cut back until the week of, but some cutting back needs to happen. Then there’s the ton of people who run 40-60 miles a week … then you have the 100-plus miles a week runner.
There are too many different types of runners out there to develop a perfect plan and not enough research for so-called experts to really know what is right. I have now had five consecutive 30-plus mile weeks since my mid-September move. Based on what I’ve read, what I’ve been told and what I’ve done with the two shorter races I’ve trained for, next week’s plan is 29 miles with a long run of 14. I may alter some things during the week and shorten the long run just a bit, but I still plan to be in the double digits. The following week, my target mileage is 24 miles, with my long run being 8 miles. And the week of the marathon? I’ll wait and see how I feel, but basically I’m planning 10 miles or less.
I’m excited that taper time is here and I can use some reasonable excuses now to rest up. There have been some mornings that I just don’t feel like dragging myself out of bed, but I do it anyway. Now I won’t feel so bad if I sleep just a tad longer and run a mile less. There’s a lot of reflecting I’d love to do, but now is still not the time. It is not time too look at how far I’ve come since the spring. There’s a marathon to focus on — I haven’t accomplished anything until I cross the finish line.
Recent Comments