Monthly Archives: March 2012
A solid start to 2012
It seems a bit surreal the first quarter of 2012 is already over. While I have uncharacteristically battled some mental issues, I’ve had a great start to the year.
Here are some very quick highlights:
- Completing, and ending, the Runner’s World Holiday Run Streak
- A bloody trail race
- Signing up for, and then changing my mind about the Cleveland Marathon
- A PR in the Shamrock Half Marathon
- Riding my bike for the first time in several years, something I haven’t really detailed yet
- Running on the track today for the first time in nearly 5 years, something I’ll talk about soon
- Running 270.8 miles, the most in the first quarter by nearly 20 miles
- And when not looking at a traditional calendar year, I have run nearly 1,150 miles in the past 12 months.
Three Things Thursday
Being in this in between state of feeling like not doing anything, taking a break from the word “training” and nursing a knee a bit, I’m finding a variety of things on my mind right now. So, here’s my first “Three Things Thursday” post, which is great for moments like this.
1. Speaking of my knee, I realized today that in my great moments of being healthy, I let my form slip a bit. I think I got too comfortable, but today I set myself straight by concentrating on my foot strikes.
I feel like this is a constant work in progress, but since I’ve been injury free for a while now, I know that what I’m doing is working. I just can’t let it slip again.
2. Barring any kind of setback, I’m going to hit my high school’s track this weekend. I’m not sure what I’ll do; my initial thoughts are a few 800 repeats at my 1:39 half marathon pace. Since I haven’t been on the track in 5 years, anything I do will be a learning experience.
3. My 2-3 lunch runs per week will pretty much be coming to an end next week since our workout program’s rewards are drastically changing. Simply put, it’s not nearly worth it as much to workout there beyond a couple of walks a day, which is pretty sad considering I work for a health care company. It’s well known that I don’t talk about work on here much, but I’ll miss those mid-day runs around Roanoke.
That said, my original plan from a year ago to becoming a morning runner is back in full force. I’ve had several morning runs in the past couple of months without major problems, and I’ve been mentally preparing for this for a couple of months now. Getting up a half hour or so earlier will not be a problem.
A pain in the …
As much as I rave about the Shamrock Half Marathon, there’s one aspect to it that I truly dislike – Shore Drive.
The unevenness of the road for a few miles is something I’ve noticed before, and this year I really noticed it. I ran the high side of the road the best I could so I could get to the flattest part, but it was still rough.
Every year I am relieved to turn back onto Atlantic Avenue and head south for the second half of the race to a more even surface. This year, though, I noticed this nagging feeling near my left knee cap with about 5 miles to go.
I’ve probably felt that in this race before, but since it had been two years since my last Shamrock, any weird feelings are easily forgotten about. Even the year in which I got hurt during the race is a distant memory.
Last week I stayed away from running quite a bit – the roads really took a beating on me and I needed some time off. A short run the day after Shamrock felt fine; a few days later I felt that nagging feeling after a couple of miles. I didn’t mention it in my post the other day because I needed to give it some time.
Today, on a run just under 4 miles, I felt it slightly at the end.
Pain or discomfort is not easy to discuss or write about – of course in my mind I want to blow it off, but there are also the questions as to whether or not this an injury or if it’s post-race soreness due to Shore Drive or maybe even a combination of the two.
It’s not of great concern yet – in the past, a pain like this has come and gone in a few days with rest and ice. I have already done that will continue to do that over the next week. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d say it’s a 3.
While I have races on the horizon, I know that a second straight low mileage week won’t set me back too much. The downtime after my highest mileage first quarter ever isn’t necessarily a bad thing anyway.
It gives me a chance to do other things, like dust off my bike like I did yesterday. …
A head-clearing race
In the past couple of months I have had so many moments in which I could not wrap my head around anything that was going on. Then, around mile 10 on Sunday, everything suddenly seemed so clear.
In my race recap this week I talked about how in the last 5k of Shamrock I seemed stuck in one gear. I realize now that this whole “one gear” thing comes from something that’s been going on for a while both mentally and physically that I am now working to change or improve.
Dual training is not for me
Signing up for a marathon when I was so intent on a goal in a half marathon was a huge mistake. In a few of my long runs, I’ve asked myself which race that run was for.
In a way I’m glad that I pushed myself beyond the half marathon distance a few weeks ago – it made me not think so much about the distance I was covering Sunday.
In many ways, though, I have struggled with the marathon training aspect because I really needed more miles both in long runs and overall mileage. Two weeks ago, for example, I probably should have been running 16 miles for my weekly long run; this week should have been about 18.
A PR in Shamrock always trumped marathon goals though. I have no regrets with that at all.
I think I made this decision while I was running Sunday, but this week I officially changed my marathon entry for Cleveland to the half marathon. Much more on that in a future post.
Want to talk speed? How about these Shamrock 8k leaders ...
Need for speed
I know I haven’t talked about individual workouts too much here, but a quick look at my dailymile workouts are revealing – while I’m a good 20 seconds faster per mile on regular runs than a year ago, I have once again fallen into a trap of one speed all the time.
I have to push myself more. For the first time in nearly 5 years, I will be hitting the track soon. I’ve used the inconvenient 10-minute drive to my local high school as an excuse for too long.
There are 8 weeks until Cleveland, which is plenty of time to get a few quality track workouts in. If I’m going to run sub 1:40 in a half marathon soon, I need to know what that speed really feels like.
Continue the core
There’s no question that push-ups and other core work have helped me tremendously in recent months. This will continue.
Where’s the bike?
I will dust off my bike. Remember this post about getting a bike helmet? Yeah, I still haven’t hit the road with my bike yet.
Get in my belly
I need to continue to eat better. I’ve set the wheels in motion this year with eating better and getting back to better portion control.
I still need some work with that, and over the next several weeks I want to lose a few more pounds and get to Cleveland feeling even better than I do now.
For help, I have downloaded the myfitnesspal app for my iPhone. I need to see where I am screwing up in the eating department and will use this as a tool to continue to improve.
Advice No. 1: Have fun
“Have fun” is my go-to final words for other runners. While I thoroughly enjoyed Shamrock and all its surrounding festivities, somewhere along the way I started taking the race too seriously.
While I have laid out some things in this post that will make me focus even more, I am doing a couple of races soon in which I’m not pressuring myself to PR. In fact, I couldn’t PR in them if I tried.
I’ll talk about that more in a later post, but I need these events to get back to the true fun part of doing a race. I did that several months ago with my series of 5ks, but I have drifted a bit from my main reason of running.
* * *
It’s funny how my best race of my life has made me feel this week. I have this feeling of having some potential for some great things yet to come, and for the first time in a while I know what I really need to do. …
12 months of PRs
This past weekend’s Shamrock Half Marathon brought to an end the best 12 months of racing so far. After coming back from injury, I have pushed myself to tough, but attainable, goals. I can’t wait to get to what’s ahead, but I think this span of time deserves some reflection.
I have set PRs in all the traditional racing distances since last April. Here’s a look at them and how much I improved from the previous PR.
10k
The flatness of the Monuement Avenue 10k in Richmond has been very friendly to me. Last year in April I went out and unexpectedly ran 48:08, a 3-second improvement from two years before.
I was tempted to sign up this year and go for another PR, but the proximity to Shamrock and my other current running plans put this event off.
I’ve never put much emphasis on 10ks, but I think right now I could do some damage to this PR on the right course.
5k
When I went to Ohio for the July 4th weekend, I had one goal for this race: PR. A flat 5k? I had to knock it out.
And I did, beating my previous 5k time by 31 seconds, running 22:10. Then, surprisingly, less than 2 months later I knocked another 18 seconds off, hitting 21:52 in a mostly flat Fab 5k.
I would love to get even faster at this distance, but I’m not sure when the next opportunity will come.
Marathon
I don’t really look at my 3:56 in Baltimore as a PR — I look at it as all the pieces finally coming together to run the marathon I wanted to run. It took a lot of lessons learned from two previous attempts for this to work.
All that said, it was a more than 14-minute PR in that distance, beating my time from Richmond in 2007.
Half marathon
And, of course, all this ends with Sunday’s race in Virginia Beach. My time of 1:40:48 is a PR by 2:04. Of all these PRs, this is the most important to me — this is the distance I love and will be the distance I continue to tackle for a while.
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