Catching Up, Part 1 - May

So did you miss me?  Of course you did.  A good looking, witty, charming guy who is an expert at practically everything suddenly goes silent for 3 months, probably pretty upsetting.  I bet you even cried a little.

What have I been up to in my absence?  Oh, you know, stuff.  Runner stuff.  Engineer stuff.

May started with a bang, and ended with a fizzle.

My training was going really well leading up to a local 15k race (9.3 miles), I started into shorter intervals to prep for a summer of 5k racing, I had a long weekend trip to the beach planned for Labor Day...in short, a very optimistic beginning for what became a pretty dull month.

The race was early in the month, while the morning weather was still chilly and comfortable for doing long runs.  I dislike running in warmer weather, I sweat enough, so if an additional layer of clothing is the price to pay for not needing a hydration plan, I'll make that trade gladly.  Race morning was just warm enough that I couldn't see my breath - perfect.  I went alone, my wife stayed home to make breakfast while I was gone and prep for a trip to Blacksburg for a friend's graduation party.  I still haven't fully formed an opinion as to whether or not I prefer having her at races - it's nice to have her there supporting me, but that breakfast was pretty darn good too...

I trained pretty well in April but March was hit or miss, so I was just looking to set a nice even pace and turn in miles under 8 minutes.  I managed that and then some, starting off around a 7:40 pace and gradually improving to finish with an average pace of 7:32, considerably faster than I thought I was capable of. 

It was one of my best races ever from perspectives of execution, effort, and enjoyment (3 E's, perhaps I'll start referring to this in the future, seems like a useful term when talking about race goals).  I set the pace I wanted early on and ran negative splits, gradually tracking down a handful of runners who were ahead of me one at a time.  In the final mile or so, I picked things up to take one more spot - an older guy (not really old, early 60s maybe, just old when compared to the kind of pace he was running) who could see in the distance from way back, running with a short, peculiar stride that didn't look capable of producing a pace that would put him so far ahead of me..  It took a long time to catch up to him, and a hard push in the final quarter to get away.  Old guys can be deceptively fast.  And I really enjoyed the race, the whole thing from start to finish.  The scenery was nice, the weather was perfect, the course had rolling hills but nothing ridiculous, and my results left me feeling good about the races I had planned for the rest of the summer.  The only real downside was that I didn't know many of the runners there, I haven't raced in quite a while, and the group at this race kind of have their own thing going on, they are local and know one another, I'm an outsider.

I went home to an excellent breakfast, and headed to Blacksburg for an evening of celebration, delicious food, and beer with friends.  A really good day, the kind that only come around a few times each year.  The kind of day that lets you know you're on the right track with things.  Then came the rest of May.

I had to attend a 2 week class to be certified as a Team Leader for bridge inspections.  2, 40 hour weeks of sitting in uncomfortable wooden chairs in a conference room at a local park, fighting to stay focused, learn anything new that I needed (my engineering education and experience covered a lot of it, making it that much harder to avoid zoning out), and hopefully pass the assessment at the end.  After several attempts here, I've given up on fully describing it - I don't have the words, don't have any kind of funny or clever analogy, no poignant picture stashed away on my hard drive, that can accurately express how boring this class was.

Week 1 crept by.  As Week 2 began to ease along, I felt a familiar ache in my left jaw, one I had felt another time in my right...a tooth dying.  One of my teeth was heading for an abscess.  Perfect timing, since 100% attendance was required to pass the class.  Since I'd be taking the assessment exams on the coming Friday.  Since I'd then be driving 10 hours to the Outer Banks right after the test, where there is only 1 hospital, nearly an hour from our house.  Of course my tooth would act up now.  I struggled through the week, using Ibuprofen only when I needed it most, sipping cold drinks to numb and soothe the tooth when I could (the little cans of V8 fruit juice blends are AWESOME, by the way), and made it to Friday. 

Test 1 before lunch, breeze through, take a big dose of medicine, check.  Head to lunch, eat a huge meatloaf sandwich and have a beer, check.  Afternoon, Test 2, challenging but nothing too tough, check.  Pass the course with the highest score in the class, CHECK!  Don't get done with the course until 4, then drive 10 hours to the beach...check.

The beach was nice, my tooth progressed as slowly as the class I'd just finished.  It ached to bite down, it hurt at random times at day and night, and was a general nuisance.  It didn't swell up like the last one (golf ball sized), but it did swell enough to feel tight by the time I got home on Monday evening.  Tuesday, head to the dentist, get antibiotics, schedule root canal, no big deal.  Root canals aren't that bad, I've now had 2, and as long as the tooth has died, you don't feel anything.  The anesthetic needle and holding your mouth open for a half hour are the worst parts - my jaw muscles hurt for a week afterward.

So after such an awesome racing experience to start the month out, how much running do you think I managed to do?  I ran a couple of times the week after the race, then didn't get back out on the road until early June...

Coming Back

I'm coming back to blogging!  Don't expect too much too soon though.  I plan to slowly get back to this over the next month, eventually doing a once-per-week post, hopefully on the same day each week.

So see you soon!

All Things Considered

So I haven't posted in a month.  Blah blah didn't feel like it blah.  I'm posting now.

I ran sparingly throughout the month of March and the beginning of April.  I'm back on track with consistent running again, trying to build a good base in preparation for long races this fall.  I'm also looking at a 15k on the 12th of May, so I'm trying to get ready for that as quickly as I can.

I had a nice 8 mile run on Sunday, with 7 miles just a little slower than what I thought would be my 15k race pace.  Afterward, I thought about how well that turned out, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.  Then I was reading someone's blog (I don't remember who's), and they had a so-so performance, and said they were happy with it, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

Then came this morning, 2x2 miles at around a 5k pace.  I decided based on my previous tempo work that if I could put both reps under 15 minutes it would be a good run.  14:49, 14:53, check and check.  At the end of the second interval I should have been wasted - completely blasted with nothing left.  I wasn't.  I think I could have put a 3rd interval in the 15 minute range if there had been time for 2 more miles.  My heart rate came down fairly quickly, my conditioning is much better than expected right now.

All things considered, I think the expression is an excuse.  Saying it is like giving ourselves permission to just be adequate.  There is far too much "meets expectations" in our lives right now.  Running is one of the things that a person has absolute control over - we're not running on teams, we're only accountable to ourselves.  If we want to take it easy, we can, if not, it is entirely up to us to stick with a hard workout and see it through.  When given the choice, I'd really like to be the kind of person who busts his ass working hard, regardless of the task.

All things considered, I need to quit being so wimpy and run hard when the schedule calls for it.

Beautiful Spring Weather

... wasted.  Crunch time at work on a project, which means no spare time in the evenings.  It means fitting in a run in the morning, taking my work laptop home in the evening, and working 2-3 hours every night.

If I can get past Easter weekend, I can hopefully enjoy some of this great weather.

Until then,

Running is going well.  I'm hovering in the low 20's for my weekly mileage since really getting back to running after all of my down time.  Typically right now, I'd start making wild plans for mileage increases and ramping things up as the weather gets nicer.  Not this time.  This time, I practice what I preach, and this sermon is about consistency.  Smaller, more manageable mileage (say that 3 times fast), which will keep me from taking extra days off, and very specific hard work aimed at giving me maximum benefit with minimum soreness and unscheduled breaks.  I'm always telling people to work smart, it's about time I wised up.

Um, February?

*Whistles inconspicuously, as if I've been here posting the whole time...

So it's been a while since I last posted.  And you know what?  It felt f-ing great!  This blog served its purpose last year, it kept me accountable, gave me an outlet, helped keep me focused.  But it also got heavy.  It weighed me down.  Instead of feeling like a place to unload burdens, it became one - I suddenly felt obliged to write something 2 or 3 times a week, and felt guilty when I didn't.

That guilt went away after the first couple of weeks.  It was a slow realization, that I wasn't REQUIRED to write anything.  There were even times when I forgot the blog was here, times when I didn't care.  I'm a grown ass man, I don't have to do anything I don't want to.

But I do want to write, I do want to get back to this blog.  I think I needed time to adjust my point of view a bit, and also needed time to decide how to come back, how to begin again.    Like an old friend that I've fallen out of touch with, how do you reach out and relight that fire?


It turns out my toe was broken, but still not a big deal.  My consistency was shot to hell, I had a horrible sinus infection followed by being stuck in the field for a bridge inspection, so I had a stretch of  a month where I only ran 5 or 6 times.  I'm back on it now, but I've lost a lot of conditioning and my time has run out - no early half marathon this year, no big finishes in local races.  Just a reduced schedule and a scramble to get in shape for it.

So business as usual...

A Gentle Guiding Push, or Backhand Upside The Head

Back for another hastily written post while taking a break from work.  Amid all of the folders and sketches and calculations flying around my office, I have managed to come up with something to post about to close out a very boring January.

In addition to talking about running here in my blog, which is meant more as a rambling personal journal and means to keep me focused, I often contribute (waste time on) to the running section of Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo's question and answer forum.  Typically, it is a regurgitation of the same handful of questions, which at first seem helpful, but after you've done it over and over again, you start to wonder how anyone could be this dumb (you don't "loose" weight, there phrase "workout regiment" has no meaning).  It is also a good opportunity to fight back against many of the prevailing myths about running and training that have persisted for years because so often people will blindly do as they are told without thinking for themselves - breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth...

Now that we're into the new year, we're at one of two critical times for young runners - preparing for high school track (the other is preparing for high school cross country).  This means the same handful of questions asked over and over again with poor (or nonexistent) punctuation and grammar, getting more frantic and anxious the closer they get to the first day of practice.

The point?  Oh yea, I'll get there eventually.  Did I mention rambling in this blog?  I often wish I had gone into teaching.  If not for the lousy pay, I would have.  I enjoy mentoring, and tutoring, and any opportunity I get to pass on things that I know to others (especially topics where I really know what I'm talking about).  I am certain that if I ever change directions and go into teaching, I'll probably try to coach running as well.  And based on the endless stream of questions and pleas for advice that I've seen on Yahoo, I think my philosophy for both will probably be similar.

Coaching, like teaching, is an exercise in psychology.  You can't coach someone you don't really know.  Some athletes respond well to being pushed hard, negatively reinforced, motivated by being reminded of their own failures.  Others don't, and negatively reinforcing those athletes is a fast way to drain the life out of their running career.  You can kill a person's love of running if you handle them improperly when they come to you, whether it be for coaching, simple advice, or even to have a single question answered.  It takes time working with someone to determine if they need to be coached with a firm hand to get their best, or gently guided to keep their head and heart in the proper place so they flourish.  It's hard to coach someone you don't know.  You can get in the face of a professional football player and scream at them if they screw up.  You can't do that to a 13 year old girl.  Too many people try to do too much when answering these young runner's questions.  I was guilty of this for a while.  I've since learned that this is a "less is more" situation, and to save the hard blunt responses for adult runners who think they know it all (like me!).




A little update on my training.  I took 5 days off.  Why would I do this, when things were going well?  Because I'm not as agile and graceful as I like to think I am.  Thursday evening, the teapot began to whistle.  I bounded through the house like a little kid (as I often do), and as I hopped up the step into the kitchen I slipped.  My trailing foot caught the step right on the knuckle of my middle toe - it felt broken.  I've broken pinky toes before (note the plural), you yank hard once to set the bone (TWSS), then tape it to its neighbor for a while.  So I did the same for this one.  It didn't hurt nearly as much as I expected, so it probably isn't broken, just deeply bruised.  I tested it out each morning afterwards, and today was the first time it felt like I could push off of my right foot enough to run.  So aside from my own clumsiness, training is going well, I'm still pretty consistent, I just need to get a lot faster.

Weekend Adventure!

Don't let the exclamation mark fool you, it isn't as exciting as it sounds.  And it wasn't this weekend, it was a couple of weekends ago when the weather was nice.

Weekend adventure

While randomly searching for something completely unrelated on the internet, I came across Wine Cellar Park in a nearby town.  It is a little park with trails and a stocked fishing pond, with a pre-Civil War stone wine cellar.  It is no longer in use (sadly), but acts as a tourist attraction.

The Wine Cellar, Very Old, Kind of Spooky 

There are a good number of trails, a few paved with asphalt leading to the pond, but many many more unpaved and randomly running through the woods.  I took the time to walk a bit farther than Kim to check a few out, and get a few pictures of the pond.  I doubt they would be much use for running (I'm not going to drive 25 minutes for a training run), but maybe we'll go fishing at the pond later this year.

Kim Being Cute on One of The Trails

 

The Pond, Seen from The Hill Top

And before we left, we found a purple travel coffee cup.  I always find the weirdest things.  When I was in Mississippi on inspections, I found a pair of hunting pants in the middle of the road, folded, that were randomly my size.

So what have my running shoes been up to the past few weeks while giving you the silent treatment?  The name of the game right now is consistency.  Rather than going too big too soon, as I am often wont to do (I don't think people use the word "wont" enough these days), I scaled back to mileage which is manageable to be done 5 or 6 days per week, and am slowly pushing it back up as my body is ready.  I just knocked out a 26 mile week, and my legs feel great.  My only hard workouts are twice weekly fartlek runs where I pick up the pace for about 20-25 seconds.  During this morning's run I finally felt the early parts of my conditioning coming together, the solid form that the fartlek gives, the added speed and power from the gym, and my aerobic conditioning helping me recover between bursts.

Eventually, when that site redesign that I've been talking about for... cough...a year... finally gets taken care of, I'm going to include something for weekly mileage.  I'm also working on my racing schedule for the year, I don't have it all figured out yet, but I am planning to try to start the year with a half marathon in late April.  I'll have more about that next time though.

A closing thought:  Experts don't know shit.  An expert is someone who knows enough to speak from authority to those who don't, and that authority is derived from their confidence.  Never let someone tell you that you should do something if they personally don't do it or haven't done it themselves, which is really the only way to know what works.  How do I know this?  I'm an expert, stop asking questions and do what I say.

Too Long Between Posts

I know I'm taking too long between posts.  Things have picked up at work, so I'm juggling work and training and other stuff I want to do, and the blog has suffered.  I'll try to write more, really...

This is just a short little check in to say hi, and tell you that my running has gone well so far.  I haven't skipped any workouts, I'm on track to build my mileage back up slowly after a long December of very little running.  I'm pretty out of shape.

I'll post again later in the week with pictures from my weekend adventures...