Weekend Update

Wow – time really seems to fly when you have your nose to the grindstone.  Sorry I haven’t posted in what seems like forever – and now it seems like every post is a series of excuses for not posting.  Vicious cycle

Anyway – a couple of catch-up items on this weekend’s runs, starting with Saturday.  I have to try to do my runs as early as possible so I can help with the kids etc on the weekend, so I headed out on Saturday at around 5:45.  Seemed like reasonably cool weather and not terribly humid (a welcome change in August in Indiana) so I was feeling decent.  Had 12 miles on the docket, so any positive is welcome.  However, during the first 2 ½ miles, I kept trying to decide if I was getting rained on – by the time I figured out that I really was, I was soaked and figured the hell with it and headed back home.  No way was I going to cover 12 in the rain (wimpy, I know) so I called it a day.  As it turns out, if I had left the house about an hour later, I would have been set, as the rain ended about 30 minutes after I got out of the shower. 

Sunday was a different story – had a big project (deck staining) slated for the day, so didn’t think I was going to get out and run at all, but my wife talked me into going (basically, she said “Are you running today?” and out the door I went).  However, I have bursitis in my right knee and it had flared up over the last week.  I'm coaching my son’s soccer team and my lateral movement isn’t what it once was and my knee makes sure I don’t forget it.  So, I spent at least 2 miles getting it loose before I started feel decent.  However, I had already mentally prepared myself to do a specific course – and said course wasn’t going to get me to 12 miles.  It was a little warmer than the day before, but overall very pleasant and the course was new to me (on foot at least) so it was a good time.  Run Keeper on my iPhone apparently thinks I can teleport however, and mapped me as covering about 3 miles with no time elapsed (neat trick) and ended up shorting me on the distance.  However, the trusty Garmin kept me on track and clocked the full distance at 9.03.  Stupid knee is still stiff today, so we will see how the week plays out.  Supposed to do 13 on Saturday, but I'm also shuffling the schedule a bit and am planning on a Half on Labor Day weekend, so not sure if it’s going to happen this week or not.

Final Weekend run numbers:

8/21       4.81 Miles            Pace: 9:35

8/22       9.03 Miles            Pace: 10:26

Catching up after a hectic week

Reasonable approximation of what is outside my window

Well, I have several updates to pass along, but not a lot of real news.  I spent the better part of this week getting my oldest son off to school (he started kindergarten this year) as well as organizing a quarterly meeting with one of my key vendor customers, so I've been swamped and haven’t had time to post.  Long excuse, I know, but there it is.  Plus, we were on a short vacation at the end of last week and rolled back into town on Saturday afternoon.  So, my long run got pushed to Sunday.  I had 10 miles in front of me without having run for the previous 4 days, which made me a little nervous, but it came off fairly well. 

Courtesy of central Indiana weather this week though, the remainder of my runs have been indoors on the dreaded treadmill – outdoors , the thermometer has been topping out in the mid-90’s with a heat index of well over 100.  No thanks.  So, that meant a 3-mile recovery on Monday, and then fear.  I've dealt with a recurring (my wife claims chronic) calf strain that sabotaged my Mini this year when it cropped up at mile 4.  I felt a twinge after sitting at my desk Monday afternoon, so I purposely held off even attempting to run on Tuesday and Wednesday – leaving me with some catching up to do at the end of the week.  A 5-miler, interrupted by a couple random “emergency” emails that had to be dealt with.  Friday was an easy 3 and no recurrence of the calf, so fingers-crossed for tomorrow.  A step-back weekend of 7 miles will hopefully be done before 8 AM and I can complain about it by Monday.

Times for the week:

Sunday – 10.8M; 1:46:46

Monday – 3.11M; 30:00

Thursday – 5.11M; 50:00

Friday – 3.11M; 30:10 (Damn, didn’t realize I missed the previous by :10)

8-2 Loop Run

So, this week’s training is going to be totally screwed up for a number of reasons, including the fact that I'm going on a mini-vacation with the family at the end of the week (which is nice) and I have to go to court in the middle of the week (which is not).  As a result, I'm trying to juggle my training to make sure I at least come close to outing in the miles this week – and decided to go out for a run around 11:30 this AM, figuring I would have some time before things starting to legitimately heat up outside.  According to Google, it was a tolerable 78, so I figured I would be fine. 

I think this crack is from the heat

Not so much – 78 or not, it felt like about 128 and the loop that I can run here at work has roughly 2 trees providing shade so, except for the semi trucks that blow by you, you are on asphalt with no relief for the distance.  That said, not a bad outing, just not a particularly good one either.   What I did do was try Run Keeper for the first time (Nike+ can go hang) on my iPhone and I'll be giving MapMyRun a shoot the next time I'm out so I can get an idea of what I like.  If anyone reads this at some point, id love some feedback on what you prefer

Restarting this thing

OK, so this is the first post in this series and it comes about 4 weeks late, since I’m in week #4 right now. I’ve been meaning to really start blogging about something, but never had the “theme” that would keep me coming back to post regular updates. Now I do – I decided to regale everyone with my training story as I prep for my first “real” marathon. I say “real” because I did complete a marathon last year – I'll get into the details in a bit – but I don’t really count for reasons I'll soon explain.

First, a little background – I'm 40 (h/t to Mike Gundy – “I'm 40! I'm a man!”) and I've been running on and off for about 7 years now. I live entirely too far away from my office, which puts a crimp in morning runs; meaning afternoon runs are either done on a treadmill or on a 4-mile loop in an industrial park – good times! I'm training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon in November and I'm working on Week 5 of the training plan. My goal is to finish in under 4:30, but as my long run during training was only 9 miles, I have no idea where I'm really tracking. Prior to turning 40, I “ran” the AF marathon at Wright-Patt. Ran is in quotation marks, because I was working to complete the distance without training for it – my youngest had been born only a few weeks beforehand and any thoughts I had of distance training (and there weren’t many) went out the window when he rolled in. Let’s leave the gory details alone for now and just say that it was ugly and I want to improve.

My intent for this little exercise is to post updates on my runs – simple as that – along with my various triumphs and travails as I go through the process. My hope is to update 3-4 times per week, but actual results may vary as they say. I hope this little intro serves to pique the interest of anyone who stumbles across this little slice of the internet – look for more soon

Work Bites

All right, I know I haven’t posted in several days. I'll work to get additional race reports up over the weekend. Work has sucked so far this week and I simply haven’t had a chance to write much of anything. I’ve gotten a couple of 3-milers in this week, but had to skip again today due to meetings – I'm hoping to knock out 5 or so early tomorrow before starting in on the yardwork. Hope everyone is having fun pounding the pavement!

2009 Mini Race Report (Part 1)

Since I don’t really have a whole lot of other stuff to write about, I'm going to stretch the race recap out as long as I can. This also helps me avoid doing any actual work as I sit here at my desk.

<-- Neither of these people are me


Pre-Race
Every year, people start to freak out about traffic, parking and getting into their corrals in time. After my 2nd year, I started playing things casually and not sweating it so much. For those of you familiar with Indianapolis, the start line runs from the State Museum back Washington street to the Artsgarden – it takes a lot of space to cram 35,000 people and they tend to use every inch. As a result, a lot of the road on the west side of downtown are closed – or congested. However, the last several years, I simple come down the other side and park on the east side of the circle. No traffic and no problems.

With the race starting at 7:30, I had pre-arranged a meet with 3 of the guys from work whom I had been (on and off) training with for the last month or so. I parked the car about 6 and hit up one of the hotels to take care of some “business” pre-race. I also liberally applied the Tiger Balm to my lower back in the hopes of avoiding any mid-race flare-ups. This stuff is amazing. I waffled on what to wear a couple of times, since the weather yokels couldn’t make up their minds on what the temps were actually going to be. I ended up opting for short sleeves with a long-sleeve shirt over top that I planned to dump as soon as we got rolling. About 6:30, I hooked up with two of the other guys (John and Jeremy – we couldn’t find TW) and we started to make our way down to the starting corrals. I needed to check a bag, so that meant a walk up the entire column of runners – a bit of a pain, but John and I jogged back to the corral afterwards, which was a good way to get the blood moving. We were starting back in R because John got dumped there and couldn’t move forward - even though he was probably going to beat Jeremy and I rather handily. Usually, it seems like you are milling around in the corral for ages before anything happens, but this year I think they pulled the ropes earlier than in years past and people started to move forward. Because of hotel construction right at the start line, we were being told that the wait to get going would be longer than in previous years. That was putting it mildly

Mini Report - Brief

Mini completed - fell short of last year by about 4 minutes, so could have been better, but it was fun. Full report and pictures coming later

First Post and Mini Prep

Well, while I'm probably not nearly as good of a writer as most of the other folks out there writing running blogs – and I'm certainly not as good of a runner, I figured I would start chronicling my running experiences. Hopefully someone somewhere might enjoy it a bit.

As I write this, I'm now less than 24 hours away from the start of the Indianapolis Mini Marathon; supposedly the largest in the US. This will be my 5^th one, and I'll be out there with 35,000 of my closest friends. Hoping the rain holds off and the temps stay in the upper 50’s like they are saying.

On Wednesday, I woke up with back spasms that got progressive worse throughout the day. After trying to “fix” them by laying flat on my back that night, I ended up almost not being able to get back to my feet. Not that I’ve been training for a PR this time out, but I was feeling pretty good about the race, so needless to say, the back had me pretty down. It has been improving steadily for the last two days – helped along by liberal applications of heat and Tiger Balm, which is amazing stuff. One more day of it and I should be in decent shape to go.

More coming later!