Posts in Category: Training
Old me. New me. Just me.
10 years ago I started this journey on a hike. 10 years later I’m not where I want to be, but I’m certainly in a much better place.
While everyone else is doing a year in review, I’m looking forward. Reflecting on a calendar year’s successes just isn’t in the cards for me right now. I’ll only find myself in this circle of wishing it could have been a better 365 days. It was good, not great. I’m injury free. I’m in a perfect spot to do what I think I can do over the next 12 months.
As the calendar changes, though, I came across my photo from Jan. 1, 2004, that started this whole journey. Today I took a similar profile photo to see the changes.
I’ve kept at least 30 pounds off for 10 years. I’m much healthier and in far better shape. I could recap a lot of what’s happened in the past 10 years, but I know all that already. I’ve learned a lot about myself in this journey as I’ve gone from my mid-20s to my mid-30s.
But the journey isn’t over. It will never be over. A year from now I want this story to be different than it is today and be planning another path that continues what I’ve started.
Another chapter begins tomorrow with fresh shoes and a new training log; new socks and underwear arrive Thursday. Goals for the Shamrock Half will start to take place over the next few weeks. I’ll have ups and downs, but I feel much more ready for them than I was this year.
Have a happy and healthy 2014!
Setting goals for 2014
After falling short of a few goals this year, I’ve done a lot of thinking about how to approach 2014. My best results have always been when I have a bigger picture in mind, rather than smaller goals.
If I set a handful of bigger goals, smaller goals pop up along the way. In my past few runs and other moments in the office with no one around, I keep coming around to 3 ideas for next year that are much larger in scope that what failed this year with 13 goals for the year.
A year from this moment, I want to be able to reflect in a much more positive way than I’ve done lately. Part of being content with how this year went also brings along discontent as I know I could have tried a little bit harder in some ways. It’s not a “beat yourself up” type of thing, but instead a thought process of making myself a better well-rounded person and athlete over the next year, not the “same old, same old” that 2013 was.
Here are my 3 goals for 2014 with some explanation of what they mean.
Finish what I start.
Since late 2012, I’ve done a lot of “just finishing” runs and races. Every race this year, which was considerably less than years past, didn’t have a time goal. Most of them were “I’m just going to do what I feel like doing.” As I said in my last post, that’s exactly what I wanted to do this year.
That just hasn’t felt right though. I can’t continue running without more specific goals in place; I need to start a training cycle and train the best I can for it. Specific PRs aren’t a part of my goals for next year — those will happen if I train well and stay focused. The way I feel right now is very much like I did a few years ago as I approached 2011 coming off an injury.
Logging mileage on paper.
There used to be a point in my running life in which I felt like I couldn’t function without dailymile. Now that site is nothing but a place I log into a couple of times a month to catch up on my miles. I’ve certainly made some great friends along the way, and for that I am grateful, but I just want to be done with a run, write down the mileage on paper and go on with my day.
I can analyze mileage and runs later, not as soon as they happen. And with the way the site is set up, I find it much easier to carry on a conversation about my run or others runs via Twitter or Facebook.
1,000 miles.
Every time I say something about 1,000 miles I remember the video above from several years ago and there actually being runners in it. I hope you appreciate that flashback because part of 2014 will be a flashback as I refocus on a specific mileage mark — 1,000 miles.
If I finish what I start, there’s no reason this can’t happen. I’ve missed going for this mark after hitting it in 2010, 2011 and 2012. I didn’t realize I’d miss it so much.
Streaking. Not streaking. Streaking.
The last time I did a running streak, I ended it feeling really out of it. It was the second time I’ve attempted some sort of streak and it just left me unsatisfied after hindsight set in.
Fast forward a couple of years and I found myself intrigued once again by the Runner’s World challenge to run at least a mile every day from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day.
I didn’t think about it too much — I decided a couple of days before it started to go ahead and do it. Nothing else has been normal about this year, so I figured this could be a good way to end the year and enter 2014.
After kicking things off with a race in Ohio, then easing my way through the first week and then doing the Surf ‘n’ Santa 10 Miler, I was really looking forward to getting through the month with a mile or two here and there, and a handful of 3-4 mile runs. Nothing big. Nothing crazy. Enjoying running to run.
The day after Surf ‘n’ Santa, my throat hurt a bit, but I squeezed in a mile between periods of rain and sleet. That afternoon I had a low-grade fever. Nothing much to really worry about though.
Monday morning, my hands hurt. I could see small red spots showing up. I thought about running a mile just to keep the streak alive, but by that afternoon my feet had the same feeling as my hands.
On a pain scale of 1-10, I’d say it was only a 2. It felt like my foot was asleep after sitting for a long time, only it wasn’t going away. The red spots only intensified.
I self-diagnosed myself with hand, foot and mouth disease — mostly a children’s illness, but it was something I didn’t have when I was younger.
On Tuesday I finally opted to go to the doctor just to make sure that was it. Sure enough, that’s what it was. Tuesday night and early Wednesday were the worst. Then as quickly as it hit, it started to go away.
I opted to let things heal before running again. The run streak became a runless streak of 6 days, nearly ending a streak I re-started last year after being sidelined from the flu of running at least a mile a week.
I took Monday off and today I agreed with myself to get the streak going again. It’ll only be 2 weeks, but I don’t want the “disease” to be a defining moment for me.
As I look ahead to these two weeks, I also want to end the final full week of the year recapturing one of my biggest highlights of the year — running 26.2 miles for the week.
You can see my post from earlier this year of why I did it. It meant so much to me for a variety of reasons that I want to do it again …
A new approach to October
October wasn’t about the finish … it was about getting back on track.
For the past few years, October has been about winding down. It’s been more about ending something rather than starting something.
This year, though, it’s been all about a change of pace, quite literally. With this being the first full month of being a father of two, all I was really striving for was making sure I ran 3 or 4 times a week for 30-40 minutes. If I had it in me, go for 10 miles or so on the weekends.
It turns out this extremely loose plan with no major goals was exactly what I needed to make this October completely different than previous years. And the more removed I am from the Runner’s World Festival weekend, the more I realize how important those few days really were to me.
A few things about this month:
- I ran 78 miles, the fourth month in a row of increased mileage since a really low mileage month in June.
- My combined running and biking mileage was more than 100 miles for the third straight month.
- My streak of running 1,000 miles in a calendar year will end, but in November I’ll still cross a combined 1,000 exercise miles for the year. I’ll take it.
- I lost 3 pounds of my “baby weight.” September and early October were a bit rough with everything that involved eating. I got things under better control in the past few weeks and feel much better because of that. I’m back to 30 overall pounds lost since early 2004 and I feel a stronger desire than usual to get to my original 40 lost before the end of the year. I can’t obsess about it, but I can certainly stay on this path.
- After writing about setting a goal of a PR in the 10-miler, I realized I need to actually run at and below that goal pace. A renewed effort with speed work started this week by including 2 miles on the treadmill at 15:21. That, too, is a path to stay on with more and longer speed work.
Now it’s on to November. No major goals other than to build on October.
Let’s go …
The PR streak
The competitor in me is ready to compete against myself again. I don’t know if 6 weeks is enough time to knock off a PR, but the one I’m going for feels reachable. My current 10-mile PR was set on the hilliest of courses in the Virginia 10 Miler last year at 1:21 and change.
Certainly on a flat course at Virginia Beach (and at sea level) in the Surf ‘n’ Santa 10 Miler I can drop closer to an 8-minute pace to beat that time. If my PR in the half is so much faster pace wise, I know I just need to put in the work to get there.
All this thinking about a PR has me reflecting on nearly 10 years of running and this “PR streak” that I have, which is, quite simply, setting at least one PR per year (technically two) since I started running. I’m a big believer in looking at my past to understand what my next goals are, so for the first time in a really long time, I’m looking back at what PRs were set each year all for the purpose of making sure I go for at least one this year.
* indicates first time racing that distance; ** indicates tlast time racing that distance
2004
5K - 24:51
* 4 miles - 34:00
2005
* 2 miles - 16:18
5K - 24:42
4 miles - 33:47
2006
* 1 mile - 7:11
5K - 23:49
* 8K - 39:17
* 5 miles - 41:07
* 10K - 48:32
* 10 miles - 1:22:49
* Half marathon - 1:55:28
2007
1 mile - 6:26
5K - 23:03
5 miles - 36:59
Half marathon - 1:44:23
* Marathon - 4:12:51
2008
** 4 mile - 32:49
8k - 38:26
2009
** 2 mile - 14:57
10K - 48:11
2010
** 1 mile - 6:15
5K - 22:41
Half marathon - 1:42:52
2011
5K - 21:52
5 miles - 36:47
Marathon - 3:56:17
2012
** 10K - 45:49
** 10 miles - 1:21:22
Half marathon - 1:40:48
This year hasn’t been a total loss with racing. My 5K in July was a nice race, but I didn’t capitalize on those feelings. I’ve also opted to focus more on fun this year rather than PRs, such as running in costume with my sister in April (where she got a PR).
In a little more than two weeks I’m running the Richmond Half Marathon with no major goal in mind. I’m looking at that similar to last year’s Runner’s World Half. It’s a set-up race. Run it strong; finish healthy; stay focused on the Surf ‘n’ Santa 10 Miler in December.
Getting, or not getting, a PR isn’t going to make or break me, but I need to set realistic goals in 2014. The December race will help determine that that reality looks like.
I ran on a treadmill and the world didn’t end.
I hate getting emails with a sentence as a subject line and nothing in the body of the email. It would be like writing a headline with no blog entry.
That’s kind of how I feel about this blog title. I don’t need to provide context, but then I’d hate myself later on.
So a few things about running on a treadmilll …
* My outdoor-only running streak has ended at around 4 years.
* I joined a cheap gym.
* I joined that gym because I’ve been very tired in the early mornings with my baby working his way toward a schedule and with the sun setting earlier this time of year my neighbor hood is crazy dark at night.
* I actually liked it. Sure it was only 10 minutes, but I was quickly reminded at how I can do a variety of speedwork on the treadmill that I may not normally try on the road.
I have several other reasons for doing all this, but what’s important is I survived and don’t feel any worse for having run on a treadmill. And the world didn’t end and hell didn’t freeze over. At least not yet.
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