My Return To Running

The end of one year and the start of another

2012-01-20T20:33:00.000-08:00

So what's been going on since I last updated.

I...

- Shaved the cookie duster off and no longer hate looking at myself in the mirror.
- Enjoyed Xmas / New years with family and had no serious power outages.
- Ran a bit, got sick for a week then got back to running.
- Didn't make it to the gym to lift weights or swim much.
- Signed up for the 10.4 mi. Bridle Trails run on 1/28.
- Got snowed in this week and had to work from home between power outages.

So the running...

I managed 28 miles the last week of 2011 including the annual Horsehead Bay 7.3K race. This year attendance hit an all time low of 2 people. We ran the course in cold but dry conditions on Xmas day and ended up tying for the win. This marks the 5th time I've tied for first in this event. Some day I'll win it outright. At least I won my age group this year.

I didn't have enough time to get out to run the Crescent Valley or McCormack forest trails on New Years Eve this year. I wanted to but there was just too much family fun happening that day. I finished 2011 with some pretty good numbers though:

Comparing it to 2010: (for the stat geeks like me out there)

I ran two hours less (Odd that the numbers were that close)
I ran 56 miles less
I ran 9 fewer barefoot miles
I ran 16 more times
I averaged 1.5 more runs per month
My average pace per mile was 15 seconds slower

What about my goals for 2011?

1) More trail running, get into the ultra community a bit more
Yes and no.

2) Work on speed, try to beat 10K PR
nope. nothing like that happened

3) Run 2 races of 50K or longer
Yep. Chuckanut 50K and Pt. Defiance 50K

4) Convince my sister to run a marathon with me
Nope. she was injured and doesn't want to run another marathon any time soon. I'll keep trying though.

5) Figure out the GI issues
Happily yes. The Ginger Bread man hasn't visited in a long time. I'm going to chalk that one up to one specific prescription that I was taking. As soon as I stopped taking it, problem solved.

So, goals for 2012?

1) Run the White River 50M
2) Enter more shorter trail races (up to marathon distance)
3) Enter more races with my daughter, get her up to a 5K if she's game.
4) Run 1500 miles
5) Run a road marathon (preferably with my sister)
6) Fix this Piriformis issue that's still bothering me

The first step I took toward these goals was entering the Bridle Trails Winter Running Festival 10.4 mile race. As your lawyer I recommend that you do the same.

The other thing I'm playing with that I mentioned in my last post was Strava.com. I've been uploading all of my runs and started defining segments that I run often to compare my paces and hopefully push myself. There are also periodic mileage challenges that they put on (no prizes) to motivate people to get out and run. So far it's nice. It will get better as more people join.

I got another cold right around New Years and didn't run the first 7 days of 2012. When I was ready to run again I got right back out to the Bridle Trails to practice running the course conditions for the race at the end of January. It's pretty sloppy out there right now. This week in the PNW there was a big (for Seattle) snow storm that dumped a few inches of snow.

I ran around the trails on Monday in the snow and had a great time. The snow made it soft and forgiving but also created a layer of ice over the puddles that were already on the trails. I tried to avoid them to keep my feet dry but missed a few. There were also several branches down across the trails that slowed me down. I expect that as the snow melts over the next few days that the trails will be a huge muddy mess.

The last two runs I've done have been in the snow and I've really enjoyed them. It's a much slower pace trying to plan your footing, especially post-holing through a frozen top layer of ice, but it's great to run on the quiet soft white blanket, something that we don't get here often enough to be a nuisance.

Today's run at lunch in the snow was pretty terrible on the other hand. I planned to run a lap of the Bridle Trails and barely made it five miles. I should have stayed inside on the treadmill but I had grand ideas of how much fun it would be to run outside in my new shoes (more on them in a minute).

Starting from work I had to run along the roads covered in dirty plowed snow piled up which was hard enough to run on. Once I got through that to the start of the corridor trail slower than I ever had before the real challenge began. The snow was melting and turning into slush. It was soft with ice cold puddles everywhere. My feet became quickly soaked and confidence in my Dry Max socks kept me going.

Even with the grippy lugs of my new trail shoes I was slipping frequently, especially on any kind of slope. I eventually got to the Bridle Trails and started around the perimeter. On top of the extra effort required to run in the wet slush, I had to navigate around/over/under/through all of the fallen branches and downed trees. Parts of the trail were totally blocked so I couldn't follow the outer perimeter as I had planned. I was surprisingly tired after only a few miles and my pace was very slow so I decided to turn back early. The rest of the run was more of the same with the addition of my toes starting to really hurt from all of the icy puddles that I couldn't avoid. I love running in new snow but I sure can't stand the slushy stuff.

As for the new shoes, I finally got my hands on a pair of New Balance MT110s (yep, kinda ugly). I've been reading reviews and hearing about these shoes for months. They just came on the market around the beginning of the year and I got a pair as soon as I saw them on Amazon. They feel nice so far running in the snow but I'm anxious to take them out in the dirt and see how they hold up. I'm hoping that they live up to the hype of being a big improvement to the MT101 that I really like already.

Running, swimming, push brooms, and a personal appeal from the author of 177 blog posts

2011-12-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

With my last trip around the Bridle Trails I'm over 1400 miles for the year and I'll probably be able to get in 4 or 5 more runs before the year is over. The last two years I've gone to run at the Crescent Valley Forest trails on New Year's Eve. I think I'll try that again depending on what else the family and I have planned for the week. (my company gives the week between Xmas and New Years off to all non-essential employees). I don't love the Crescent Valley trails but I've only run them twice so far (the last 2 NYEs.) I've needed a map to find my way around and will probably want to grab one again. The trails have a couple of very mild climbs, not hilly at all. A good alternative to McCormack Forrest or Pt. Defiance I guess.

Going back to that last trip around the Bridle Trails, I pushed a little too hard the first mile and then hung on for a few miles trying to get my strength back before pushing the last two miles and barely breaking an hour for the route. It's great that I'm under an hour for the first time since hurting my knee after Pt. Defiance but I'm still 4+ min off of my PR for the route. Given the muddy winter conditions I think I'll be able to take maybe 2 minutes off of that time by spring. I've started uploading the GPS files from my runs to Strava. (you need a free account on the site to look at them or search for me.) The site lets users create segments (routes) and then every time you upload a GPS file from a run it looks for any segments (created by you or other users) that you ran and compares your time for those segments to the times of all other Strava users who've done those segments. It was initially created for cycling and in the SF Bay Area the popular cycling hills are super-competitive. For running in the Seattle, Redmond, and Gig Harbor areas, not so much. I love pouring over my stats though...

Swimming has been a form of cross training and a good way to burn calories when I couldn't run but now that I'm healed, I find that I'm enjoying swimming more than I thought I would and sticking with it a bit longer. I've just recently gotten my pacing under control and yesterday I bumped up the distance that I swim at lunch from 1mi to 1.4mi. (1800 yds -> 2500 yds). I didn't think I'd be able to go that far as my shoulders were pretty sore from the start due to weight lifting earlier in the week (shoulder press to failure) but I just slowed down and kept counting down the laps. As I warmed up the pain went away (or I got used to it). I was averaging around 1:50 - 1:55 per 100yds which included stopping between my 800 yd sets to drink water or put on / take off hand paddles etc... I'm not fast yet and I'm interested to see what difference (if any) a pair of jammers will make over swimming in my board shorts. Shaving off the Movember moustache won't hurt either.

That pool skimmer might be slowing me down.

Now for a slight bit of promotion that I'm doing completely on my own based on past experience...

I think I'm going to enter the 10.4mi Bridle Trails race at the end of January as I did last year. I like the race, it's my home course and held on the trails that I run the most and know best. The people putting the run on, Northwest Trail Runs are great people, they put on several trail races (20 events in 2012! most of them with multiple distances available ranging from 4KM - 50KM) in the area with very reasonable entry fees and a good value for money in terms of course, support, swag, atmosphere, and attitude. They don't seem like their goal is to maximize revenue, but to maximize runner enjoyment. This isn't to take anything away from (previous Bridle Trails RDs) Scott and Leslie McCoubrey who were/are excellent race directors in their own right and a pleasure to volunteer for.

In any case, these are the type of events that you (as a runner) should be supporting. The Competitor Group doesn't need your money for their expensive Rock-N-Roll events. ($90 - $140 for the Seattle Marathon, $80 - $130 for the half-marathon!?! Ouch!). NW Trail Runs does deserve your money and they ask for much less of it. So if you're in the area and want to run on some great (muddy) trails, come check out the Bridle Trails Winter Running Festival on 1/28/12. They don't even start until 3pm so it doesn't take over your whole day. (bring your most aggressive trail-running shoes).

busy busy

2011-12-18T23:00:00.000-08:00

When I'm injured the blogging slows down. It's easy when I know that my readership isn't even double digits and I find other things to occupy my time. Take this weekend for instance:

Saturday: Slept in until 7:30am (quite late for me), ate, got dressed and took both kids to a 1K Kids Dash in Tacoma. The race scheduled events backwards and held the kids race after the 5K/10K events. It was a really well executed event and in a great location but Parking was nearly a mile away. This wouldn't normally be a hassle but part of the walk to the start line included about 100 stairs that I had to carry the BOB jog stroller (and it's rider) down.

I ran the race pushing the boy in said jogger while my daughter ran beside me. It's funny that she loves doing the kids races and asks often when I can sign her up for another one but when we get there, she quietly runs them at about the same pace as the other kids that start around us. She never speeds up to pass people or slows down. She runs much slower than I've seen her run when it's just her and I without the crowd. I think she either doesn't get that it's okay to pass people and run fast or that she's happy just jogging. Either way as long as she keeps asking to go run races with me, I'll keep signing us up for them. I love running with her.

After the race and the post-race donut & coffee / chocolate milk we came back home where the kids either went down for a nap or some quiet crafting time while I took over laying down wood floors in our kitchen from my wife. It's a been a long remodeling project so far (going on 4 months??) and it's a major step that we're starting to put the flooring down. I only had 3 hours to work on the floors which didn't get us very far because of the precision required when floating a wooden floor, cutting almost every single piece of flooring so that the joints are in a semi-random pattern yet wasting as little wood as possible.

I gave up the flooring to shower and get dressed up for my daughters first every ballet recital. It was a big recital where 6 or 7 different ballet classes did numbers, ages ranging from 3 up to 17. The youngest kids were just as fun to watch as the older kids. I've never had any appreciation for ballet, even when dating a girl who used to dance and was somewhat passionate about it. Seeing my daughter do her short choreographed routine was wonderful and I looked at it differently. With some of the older kids' performances I noticed how angular the dancers were and the lines that they create with their arms and legs. I was kind of an eye-opener for me.

After Ballet we went to our favorite Thai restaurant (which happens to be 5 doors down from the recital hall) for a great meal. We let my daughter choose whatever she wanted and that ended up being two full appetizer plates of Crab Rangoon, her favorite thing on the menu. That's not something I can ever remember my parents letting me do. It felt good to let go.

Sunday (today) E and I got ready and left the house at 9:30 for our day of shopping. Typically E's parents will take the kids all day for one day leading up to Xmas so that we can embrace consumerism and do all of our shopping. We made it to REI, the Ballard Market, two Waldorf-friendly toy stores, a tiny bed/mattress store, and Bellevue Square (plus Serious Biscuit for lunch) before heading home with a car full of commerce.

It's been one of the busiest weekends in months for us (I didn't even mention the two kids birthday parties scheduled this weekend, one we could attend and one we sadly couldn't) and next week will be really busy for me at work. The powers at work decided that everyone was going to switch cubes so I moved my stuff to a new cube Friday afternoon. It'll be a while before I get a network connection in my new cube so I'll have to be nomadic with my laptop until the network folks light up my new digs with the sweet Ethernet juice.

Exercise? Yeah, I've been doing some of that. I'm getting back to running a little more but still lifting weights twice a week and swimming once a week. I'm making decent progress with the weights doing my one set to failure routine. I'm also finally starting to 'get' swimming. Rather than swimming a mile as 18 x 100yds with a short rest between each 100, I just figured out my pacing and effort levels to do it as 3 x 500yds + 1 x 300 with a few seconds between each bigger set. I've always found it odd that my whole life I've been heavily skewed toward endurance over speed in things like running and cycling yet when it comes to swimming, I get pooped after 2 - 3 min of swimming and just can't catch my breath after 8 lengths of the pool. Maybe always swimming in board shorts is the problem. I know they slow you down noticeably over a speedo but maybe they're good for the training effect of dragging a parachute through the water with you. I like swimming more as I improve but as my knee is healed, I really like the ability to get back to running whicih I missed so much when I was injured. If only I had more free time. :-)

So the running lately... My knee feels good and I've been running the Bridle Trails at night after work lately. Friday night's run felt pretty good and I had power in my stride for the first time since hurting my knee after Point Defiance 50K but I'm still 4+ min off of an average time for the loop (comparing against daytime runs in warmer weather anyway). I've lost a good bit of fitness and I don't know what I'll be up for by the end of January at the Bridle Trails 10.4 mi racebut it would be a stretch for me to come close to last year's 1:14.

I've run 50 miles this month so far and only need 11 more to break 1400 for the year. My goal was 1600 miles, but I'm happy with 1400 given the injury and number of days I've been sick. Now I need to focus on getting back to a good racing weight, hopefully I can find a way that doesn't rely solely on a Tim Ferris diet.

Baby steps

2011-11-27T08:26:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a month since my last post. I would have been writing about my running if I'd been doing much of it. Since 10/31 I've run six times totaling 18.5 miles. I started by taking a week off between runs and only running 2 - 2.5 miles at a ~9:00/mi pace. I've been increasing the distance and frequency of the runs in a lazy progression that has me up to 4.5 miles pain free as of last night's One Store Loop. I'm still keeping the pace really easy and trying to stay light on my forefoot. I've been leaving the Garmin at home too. I love having the numbers and analyzing my pace / splits but I've gotten out of the habit of just running and enjoying my time and surroundings without looking at some gadget on my wrist every few minutes. I'd like to get some kind of device with no screen that I could just put in my pocket that would record the run so I wouldn't be tempted to look at it but could still comb over the data afterward.

I'm not going to make my 1500 mile goal for the year (sitting at 1333.7 currently) but I should be able to hit 1400 assuming that my knee continues to improve.

I'm still working out at lunch every day and instead of running I've gotten back into swimming. I started out doing 1000 yds at lunch and then began working on my form, trying to learn how to glide through the water. I'm up to swimming a mile per session now and I've shaved a few seconds off of my 100yd average time. I feel like I'm noticeably smoother in the water but still have a ways to go. I'm really inspired to work on my technique when I see videos like this one (the underwater shots are very impressive. The instructor looks like he's barely trying). As I slowly improve at swimming it gets me thinking about doing a Triathlon some day. I think I'd be fine at all three of the sports given my running and cycling background but I would need much more time to train. I'd also have to give up swimming in my board shorts and move to a Speedo or those long spandex shorts type suits. I'm sure the board shorts are slowing me down plenty but maybe I can call that a training tool. I'd love it if my first Triathlon was an Ironman, but I just don't see where I'd find the time to train for it.

In any case, to wrap up: running is improving and I'm trying to get the joy of running back, knee pain is calming down and I'm doing much more swimming and weight lifting.

I've also just started reading Time Ferris' book "The 4-Hour Body" which presents some very interesting experiments to try in the realm of exercise and diet. I might give one or two of them a shot and see what happens.

Ouch, that hurts!

2011-11-01T07:28:00.000-07:00

Since completing the Pt Defiance 50K I've run three times. My cold came back the week after the race and my legs were sore so I took a few days off and cross trained. Later that week I tried an easy run out to the Bridle Trails. The first two miles felt okay but my left knee started to hurt the further I ran. I had to stop and walk some of the non-flat sections of the trails because the knee pain got so bad. I couldn't figure out if it was just my legs being sore from the race and affecting my form and the way that my knee was tracking or if I had injured my knee.

The pain was on both sides of my knee for the first run. My knee hurt enough the rest of the day that I didn't run again the rest of the week, going swimming at lunch instead. I enjoy the swimming but I'm a slow swimmer. It takes me a little over 20 min to swim 1000 yds. Given my personality, I am of course looking at technique articles and videos online to learn about swimming form and trying to improve my efficiency in the water. Technique eludes me thus far and progress is slow.

I tried running again yesterday (10/31) and had 1.5 miles of pain free running followed by 2.5 miles of knee pain and walking breaks. The knee pain was limited to the outside of my knee this time. Now the process of diagnosing and reading about knee injuries begins. In an odd coincidence, my sister is experiencing knee pain in almost the same spot on her left knee. Hopefully between the two of us we can figure out what's wrong with our knees and get back on our feet.

Pt. Defiance 50K Race Report

2011-10-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

10/7 - 10/14: no running

What started as a scratch in my throat grew into 2 sick days home from work and feeling like crap for the better part of my taper week leading up to the race. I was careful to get more sleep and hydrate as much as I could stand (which probably still wasn't enough) leading up to the race. I didn't decide whether to run the race or not until I got up on Saturday morning. I felt pretty bad Thursday and Friday morning but by the afternoon on both days my cold was subsiding. I woke up Saturday morning (the 15th) feeling stuffy and a little scratchy but not quite as bad as the previous two days. I got dressed, ate some cereal, packed my running bag, said goodbye to my son (the early bird) and drove to Starbucks for coffee.

The drive out to Pt. Defiance from my house is only 20 min, one of the big selling factors in my running the race. I got out to the start/finish area at Owens beach 45min before the race started. There were a few hundred people running in the three different events (15K / 30K / 50K) but most of them hadn't arrived yet so packet pickup and the bathroom lines were minimal. I got changed in the car and relaxed listening to a podcast while I waited for the race to start.

Five minutes before the race started I collected my things (one hand bottle, four gels, some Clif Blocks, and my iPod) and headed to the start line. I jogged for a couple of minutes out along the course to warm up my legs. While I was slowly jogging I accidentally kicked the timing chip on my left foot and snapped both of the tiny zip ties holding it onto my shoe. As I looked around for the timing chip I heard "3 minutes to race start" over the loudspeaker. I found the chip on the ground, grabbed it up and practiced a little bit of speedwork as I ran the 1/10th of a mile back to the check-in table. They got some new zip ties for me and I was able to get the chip reattached to my shoe with my cold clumsy fingers with a minute to spare.

This is the first time I've used this style of timing chip (about 2/3rds the size and 5x the thickness of a business card) and I don't like them. They're too big, and the zip ties that came with them were the smallest flimsiest dainty little bubble-style ties I've ever seen. They were hard to manipulate with cold fingers and way too fragile. If people are cutting them off at the end of the race with wire cutters, why use the tiny fragile bubble-style ties instead of larger / stronger zip ties? After kicking it off before the race I was worried about losing my timing chip the whole run and kept looking down at my foot every mile or so. I remember running several marathons 10 - 15 years ago and the timing chips used back then were about the size of a quarter and required one small (normal) zip tie. They never came loose and worked just fine.

I lined up near the back of the pack for the race start. I figured that all of the 15K and 30K runners would be faster at the start but that wasn't the case. I found that my 9:00/mi easy pace still had me weaving in and out of people and passing several other runners for the first mile or two.

Pt. Defiance isn't a big place and holding a 50KM race on the trails there is quite a stretch. The race director was very creative with the route. The course consisted of three 16.6KM loops that zig-zagged and tangled all around the park. Each loop started with about half a mile of flat running along the water before heading up a big set of stairs and then snaking around the very nice trails that tangle through the park. The trails were almost all soft single track paths with damp bark and leaves under foot. There were a few road crossings every lap as well as a short section of road near the end. One nice thing that the race provided was crossing guards to hold car traffic at every single road crossing. There were a few short hilly sections and one steep 1/4mi climb every lap but it only made for ~1300' of climbing per loop. At the end of each loop there was a steep descent down a hillside with ropes provided to hold onto as you climb down to the shore and back to the start.

As a 50KM runner I had to complete three loops of the course. I wasn't sure if I'd finish all three given my cold so I started out pretty conservatively, running ~9:00/mi and trying to stay light on my feet with good form. I felt like I could have run much faster but I didn't want to wear myself out and pay for it later. The race was planned as a training run for the Ron Herzog 50K so I didn't have a "A" race mentality, especially just getting over a cold. It was tough to hold myself back and I had to keep reminding myself that it was okay to take it easy.

The first lap was pretty crowded with 15K and 30K runners but started to thin out by the 8mi mark. Just before the end of the first lap a group of 5 or 6 runners and I were mis-routed by a pair of volunteers who thought that the 50KM course had a different finish for each lap. It took us about half a mile to figure out that we were going the wrong way and we turned around and went back the right way. I finished the first lap in 1:41.

There were several picnic tables at the start/finish line where they had an aid station set up and runners could put their drop bags. I stopped to refill my bottle, throw away empty gel wrappers and fill my pockets with 4 new gels, some Clif Blocks and take off my base layer, hat, and gloves. I was feeling good after the first lap and set off at the same pace for the second lap. Over the second 10 miles my legs lost a lot of their spring and I could feel the warning signs of cramping starting to creep in. I kept up with my plan of eating something every 15 min (2 gels and 2 Blocks every hour) along with drinking my CarboPro solution. I power-hiked the one steep hill on the second lap but ran the rest of the loop. When I came down the steep descent at then through the timing mats for the finish I heard someone calling my name and looked up to see my wife and kids cheering for me. I didn't know that they were coming so it was great to see them there and take a minute to chat while I refilled my bottle / pockets before hitting the porta-potty and starting on my final lap.

The third lap was where things started to fall apart. I was still running at about the same pace but I really felt like I was on the knife's edge cramping-wise. I was taking my electrolytes regularly, so I don't know where the cramping was coming from, only that I'd have to be careful not to push too hard and stay on top of my hydration. I began hiking almost all of the uphill sections on the third lap trying to save my legs from cramping. I make it a little bit past the mid-lap aid station before the first of the cramping started causing me to stop and stretch out my hamstrings and calves. Unfortunately it happened just as three other runners were passing me and asked if I was okay as I stepped off of the trail. I told them I was fine and that they should keep going.

The last 5 miles was a combination of walking all of the hills with slower jogging to keep my central governor just under the limit where the cramping came on. I was looking forward to the end of the race and happy when I finally arrived at the steep rope descent which meant that there was only 1/4mi left to the finish line. I made my way down the ropes and out onto the waterside path where I saw my wife and kids waiting about 20 yards in front of the finish line. Both kids ran up and hugged me, probably happy that they could go home soon after waiting so long for me to show up from my third lap. I held the kids' hands and we ran across the finish line together... while no one took pictures of it. Oh well.

I finished in 5:43:02 (46th / 112), which would have been good on it's own but when you look at my lap times, you can see my decline. I ran a 1:41 first lap, a 1:45 second lap (the difference being time I spent at the aid station) and a 2:15 third lap. A steady 1:45 third lap would have moved me up to about 24th place. A sub-6hr finish on the kind of training I've had this fall along with getting over a cold (and the 50 times I blew my nose during the race) isn't too bad at all. It was a great course and an enjoyable way to spend my morning. I'd like to go back next year and try to improve my time.

I hope I can pick up the pace a little bit for my next run on 11/5/11, the Ron Herzog 50K. I don't know anything about the race except how to get there. The race website doesn't give any real information on the course or elevation profile. It'll probably be fairly cold up in Granite Falls by then as well. Tough to predict a result for Ron Herzog. I'll just say that beating my time from Pt. Defiance would be nice.

As an addendum here just over a week since running the Pt. Defiance 50K, my legs feel horrible. My knees are the worst. I have some sore hamstrings but I'm getting knee pain in the sides of my knees that's keeping me from any serious running. I've run a total of 9.8 miles (2 runs) since the race. It looks like I'll be hitting the pool and the gym for a few more days and hoping that my knees calm down before I have to decide whether or not to brave Ron Herzog. I'm not sure what the problem is with my knees, whether they're sore, inflamed, tracking wrong, or if I did some actual damage do them? I really hope it's nothing serious.

A cold... sure, that makes sense.

2011-10-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

Mon 10/3 (7.9mi, 1h 9m, 8:45/mi) I took it easy for a slow recovery pace run around the Bridle Trails. My legs felt surprisingly good after Saturday's 22.5 miles. The trails weren't too muddy either. Good deal.

Tue 10/4 (8.35mi, 1h 2m, 7:26/mi) I tried to run a hard tempo pace around the Bridle Trails today but my abs felt like they were on the edge of cramping the whole run. I pushed my body hard but I didn't feel like I was running very fast. Poor hydration the days leading up to the run? A Gingerbread man didn't help my pace in any way.

Wed 10/5 (6.4mi, 53min, 8:19/mi) I took an easy pace out to Viewpoint park for a few loops. I felt okay but slowed down for loops around the park trails. The good news is that the steep uphill section on the park loop doesn't seem as steep as it used to. Adaptation I assume. I'll take it.

Thu 10/6 (6.25mi, 51min, 8:12/mi) Another easy pace run due to a scratchy feeling I'm getting in my throat indicating that a cold is probably on the way. I'll be tapering for another 10 days, so I'm annoyed but not worried. As long as I'm good about getting some rest and staying hydrated I'll be fine for the race on the 15th.

That's it for the week...I did end up coming down with a cold on Thursday night. I'm a little bummed that I'll have to take a few days off of running but it's taper time anyway and as the saying goes, it's better to be a little under-trained than a little over-trained. Pt. Defiance is a tune-up race for the Ron Herzog 50K coming up in November, so no pressure to push myself if I'm not feeling good on race day.

Shoe Geek talk:
I was in downtown Seattle to meet a friend for dinner Wednesday night so I stopped by the flagship REI store to buy some running food (chews, gels, recovery drink, etc...). While I was there I got to geek out on some new shoes. I saw a tweet the other day from @scottjurek saying that the new Brooks Pure line of shoes had been released. They're Brooks' first steps toward a minimalist shoe. I looked at the four shoes in the Pure line and tried on the trail version, the Pure Grit. I ran around the store in them for a couple of minutes and I wasn't impressed. I wasn't disappointed either, they felt taller and bulkier than their advertised 4mm heel - toe drop. Their swept-back streamlined lugs didn't look like they've be very effective. I didn't buy them but I'm sure I"ll try them on again soon and see if I can convince myself to take them home with me. They've got to be better than the Cascadia 6 that I've hardly used.

While we're on the topic of shoes and shoe stores, a new running shoe store just opened next to my favorite coffee shop. The shoe store is called Born To Run. Those who've read Chris MacDougall's book of the same name would be correct in assuming that the store focuses on barefoot / minimalist running shoes. I was in the mood for a cappuccino so I stopped in Born To Run after getting my espresso fix. The store was pretty minimalist itself in the layout and arrangement of shoes, which I liked. I'm sure they'll add more clothes and gear to the store as time goes on but it was only shoes when I was there. Mens on one side, womens on the other.
The woman that I talked to wasn't very knowledgeable about Merrell's upcoming barefoot releases, or New Balance's soon-to-be-released minimalist shoe updates sadly. One thing that the store did have was several shoes from the Inov-8 line of shoes. This is the first store that I've seen selling the shoes. Unfortunately for me, being a British brand most of their shoes only go up to a UK size 12 (13 US). It's a shame because they make some great looking lightweight minimalist shoes for both road and hardcore trails. I imagine that some of their shoes with the really agressive tread (that look like cleats) are born from British Fell running which sends runners through bogs, swamps, and just the nastiest muck that the UK countryside has to offer.

It wasn't a total loss though, I found a pair of the F-Lite 195s in my size which I tried out and liked enough to buy. They're very light and have a good mix of minimalist feel (3mm drop) and a little bit of cushioning, something I've been looking for in a running shoe. They felt good on Thursdays' run but I'm looking forward to putting them on for a few longer runs to see if they'll work out better than the Merrell Trail Gloves which start to hurt my feet if I go more than about 12 miles. I love the trail gloves for shorter runs, but a little cushioning would bump them up from everyday shoes to 50K race shoes.

Weekly update - now with more miles!

2011-10-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

Mon 9/26 (7.9mi, 59min, 7:31/mi) With no running on Sunday the legs are somewhat fresh on Monday. I got a good run in around the Bridle Trails in the fresh mud. It rained enough over the weekend that the trails got a bit sloppy. I mentally didn't have the drive to push a hard pace from the start so I settled for a Fartlek run to get a little bit of hard pace work into my legs. I ran easy out to the trails, then pushed hard on the East and West sides of the trail with recovery pacing in the middle. Once I got out of the trails on the way back to work I picked up the pace and finished with a 6:03 mile on trail / sidewalk. Running a full loop in just under an hour was even better than it sounds because of how slippery my Trail Gloves (forgot to wear socks) get when they're soaked and muddy on trails.

Tue 9/27 (7.9mi, 1h 4m, 8:08/mi) One run through the Bridle Trails wasn't enough so I came back for more. I ran the opposite direction than Monday and wore my other pair of Merrell Trail Gloves. I kept a slower pace this time and didn't try any tempo paced running. It felt nice to be able to pick my head up and look around at the beautiful forest instead of watching my steps as I do when I'm running hard. The legs felt good.

Wed 9/28 (4.0mi, 33min, 8:27/mi) Run #1: Wednesday was another double run day. It's the only way I can manage to kick the mileage up to run 50+ mile weeks. I ran 4 miles on the treadmill at the gym taking it easy at a steady 8:27/mi pace. It's boring but it's a good warmup before hitting the weight room and the Kettle Bells.

Wed 9/28 (13.25mi, 1h 44m, 7:55/mi) Run #2: After work I ran down to the trail that goes along the East side of Lake Sammamish. I didn't time it very well and it was getting pretty dark by the time I got to the turn-around point. The trail along the lake isn't lighted so it was tough seeing where I was running. Luckily it's a very flat smooth dirt/gravel surface. I picked up the pace on the second half of the run, hitting some mile splits in the low 7:00/mi range. Instead of running back up the trail along Hwy 520 I ran up 51st st which is shorter and steeper. I was pretty tired so I practiced some power walking / hiking to recover a little bit. Overall a good run.

Thu 9/29 (6.5mi, 54min, 8:26/mi) I ran out to Grass Lawn Park for 3 miles of barefoot running around the track. It still feels good to get out and run barefoot as long as I don't try to push the pace and it's neither too hot or cold. I expect that I won't be running barefoot at the track much longer with the rainy season approaching.

Fri 9/30 (4.0mi, 34min, 8:29/mi) Another easy 4 miles on the hamster wheel at the gym before lifting weights. It's almost like I'm cross training but I hate to not run while I'm building up to a race.

Sat 10/1 (22.5mi, 3h 29m, 9:17/mi) I got out on Saturday morning for a long run. I started the run with a side-stitch for the first 3 miles as I headed out the Tunnel Trail and around past Kopachuck. I kept to my standard route out to McCormick Park near the women's correctional facility. I ran about 6 miles around the different trails in the park. I started out with a perimeter loop and then followed some arrows marked on the ground that probably indicated a previous race. I normally only run the largest perimeter loop around the park so it was nice to run some of the interior trails that were new to me. The trails at McCormick will be a pretty close match to the trails I'll be running at Pt. Defiance in two weeks. It hasn't rained enough yet to make a mess out of the trails and I hope that the same can be said for Pt. Defiance come race day. After my 6 miles on the trails I headed the same way back home.

My nutrition on the run was pretty good. I drank from my Nathan 2L bladder pack which had 3.5 scoops of CarboPro and a few Nuun tablets in it (100 Kcal/scoop) and I ate two gels and two gummy chews per hour like clockwork. I was trying to drink on pace to finish the 2L in 3 hours but I was falling short. I ended up drinking more based on thirst. With 4 miles to go I stopped at the Island View store and bought a small Gatorade, a small bottle of water, and an ice cream sandwich. I took a break at the store while I ate most of the ice cream sandwich before getting back to the run for the last few miles. I drank the Gatorade and about half of the water. I never felt hungry / full, or bloated / nauseous on the run luckily. I was probably consuming 320 - 350 Kcal/hr for the first 3 hours. If I can eat like this on race day I'll be very happy. I need to work harder on staying ahead of my eating in races.

I didn't run Sunday (but would have liked to get a short very easy run to flush the legs out) and finished the week with 66 miles, a new personal best. This will be my biggest week for this race cycle. The heel pain is easing and I'm learning to ignore the Glute / Piriformis pain (F*!%&^@# the legs!). I finished September with a new monthly best of 211 miles, eclipsing last August's 208 mile benchmark. I'd love to run a 100 mile week some time but I'm pretty far away from the place in life where that kind of thing could come together. Maybe if I sent my wife and kids off on vacation, and house-sat for someone who lived 10 miles from the office...

Next week will be the first week of a mild taper for the Pt. Defiance 50K on 10/15.

F&!#@^ your legs! Just F&!#@^ em!

2011-09-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

Mon 9/19 (7.9mi, 55min, 7:02/min) After a mediocre 18 miles on Saturday I took Sunday off as usual and went for a hard Bridle Trails loop Monday. My training plan called for an easy day but I was feeling good after a day off and the weather was warm but slightly cooler than the last few weeks. I pushed the pace from the start and didn't feel like I was really running that well. I was definitely pushing myself and at the point of trying to hang on and keep from slowing down. Running the loop CCW changes the climbs around so that I don't have any for the first half and then have a short hard climb and a short moderate climb just after passing the halfway point. I felt pretty good going up the climbs and found a good piece of motivation from a podcast that I regularly listen to called Marathon Talk.

Each week on Marathon Talk the British hosts have a common set of segments covering what they've been up to, running news, rant/raves and upcoming marathons among other things. One of the regular segments is a comedy bit read by a great English soap actor called Tony Audenshaw. The bit is called "Tony's Trials" and it's a usually Tony talking about things happening in his life that tie into running. This particular podcast had to do with motivation and Tony was explaining to a friend that no matter if you run relatively hard or at your limit, your legs will still hurt afterward. This led to Tony's common refrain / amusing tagline of the segment: "So just F&!*#@^ your legs! Just F&!*#@^ em!" with the profanity beeped out. It was funny but at the same time made me think about my legs. It inspired me to ignore my legs and continue pushing myself. I kept the pace up and kept ignoring my legs to finished with mile splits of 6:34 and 6:06 stopping my watch with a new PR of 55:34. This was 1:45 faster than my best time for a full Bridle Trail loop and almost 4 minutes better than my previous best CCW loop. Breaking 55 min is next on the list if the trails stay dry.

Tue 9/20 (6.8mi, 58min, 8:36/mi) After Monday's beating I headed out to Viewpoint park for the first time in quite a while. I ran 4 loops around the trails. In the middle of the 3rd loop I felt a sharp pain in my right foot near the attachment points of 3rd and 4th toes. It was so bad that I had to stop dead in my tracks and wait a few seconds for the pain to go away. It lasted about 30 seconds and it was very out of place for me (and a tad scary.) My right heel was also hurting, probably from pushing it too hard on Monday in the Trail Gloves. I absolutely love those shoes but they offer just about zero protection against even smaller rocks. I took it easy and trotted back to work.

Thu 9/22 (8.3mi, 1h 9m, 8:19/mi) My heel was still sore so I skipped my run on Wednesday and just went to the gym instead to spend some quality time with the Kettle bells. Thursday I ran a full loop around the Bridle Trails but added a little detour in the middle of the lap to follow the route that the Bridle Trails Winter Running Festival follows. I want to run one of the events in the race coming up this January but I don't know which one. The 10 mile was fun last year but doing a 2 or 6 person 50K would be fun as well.

Sat 9/24 (13.5mi, 1h 50m, 8:10/mi) I took Friday as a complete rest day and had a weekend non-long run scheduled for Saturday. I had to finish in under 2 hours so I set off to run a few local hills. I went up the Tunnel trail, out around Ray Nash and then onto Whitmore/78th. I practiced power-walking up the steep side of 70th and then headed down 40th toward Wollochet. From there I looped around 24th to come around the other side of 70th with a quick half loop of the park before heading straight back home with 10 minutes to spare.

This caps off a relatively lighter week of 36.5 miles. I planned to run fewer miles week this week because:

a) It's good to throw in a recovery week once in a while and
b) I was on call for work so I had to be reachable by phone and be relatively close to a computer so couldn't just go for a long run after work.

Mileage will pick back up next week with my last long run (21+ mi) on 10/2 before the Pt Defiance 50K on 10/15.

A big week

2011-09-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

9/12 (5.5mi, 36min, 6:33/mi) In my list of standard routes that I track my PRs on is the "Redmond Streets Loop" that I haven't run in almost a year. I only had one entry in my PR list for running it CCW so I gave it a try. I came in at 36:04 which beat the previous PR by 12 seconds but I feel like I could beat it by another minute on a good day. I think it was the first time running this route where all of my splits started with a "6". I was impressed by this given the mile+ hill early in the route.

9/13 (3mi, 23min, 7:54/mi) Run #1: I ran 3 miles on the treadmill at lunch before lifting weights. 2.5 of them were in my socks before one of the employees came over and told me that I had to put my shoes on for safety reasons. He said that there was a risk that the treadmill could grab my socks and pull me down. It'll never happen but I stopped and put my shoes back on for the last half mile rather than argue.

9/13 (15.3mi, 1h 59m, 7:48/mi) Run #2: I didn't get my long run in last weekend so I made it up on a Tuesday. I ran down to Redmond from work and East through Marymoor park over to the East Lake Sammamish trail. I'd never been on this trail and had no trouble finding it. I did have to climb over/around a couple of construction fences to get there however. I ran South on a trail that goes between the road and the lakefront houses until I hit the 7.75mi point. I turned around and came back at a slightly higher pace. I felt pretty good and kept up with my nutrition. Somehow I made one 22oz bottle of water last the entire run.

9/14 (6.4mi, 55min, 8:35/mi) I ran an easy run around part of the Bridle Trails. My right heel was a little sore. I guess my Merrell Trail Glove shoes (which I just love) aren't quite padded enough for 15+ miles on hard dirt and pavement. Either that or my feet still haven't toughened up after 500 miles in those shoes.

9/15 (6.5mi, 55min, 8:33/mi) I took it easy and went down to Grass Lawn Park for nearly 4 miles of barefoot running around the track. It would have been a little more enjoyable if it weren't peak soccer season with 3 separate kids practices happening at the same time on the small field. Kids were spilling out onto the track at regular intervals. Add to this a group of adults (who sounded either Russian or Serbian) waiting to use the field who decided to stand around on the track while they warmed up causing me to have to weave around/through them for about 15 laps. Ugh.

9/16 (3mi, 26min, 8:40/mi) One more day of easy treadmill running at the gym before hitting the Kettlebells and other misc. weights.

9/17 (18.1mi, 2h 25m, 8:35/mi) I managed to get my long run on the proper day this week. I ran in the morning just as the rain was easing up. I did a few loops around different parts of Gig Harbor before heading with 18 in the bag. I didn't feel particularly good on the run despite nailing my nutrition and hydration. I fueled with 400 Kcal of CarboPro in my Nathan's Bladder along with taking a gel every 30 min. I'm not that happy with the pace but given how I felt in the morning and the mild stress that comes with doing long runs leading up to an event, I shouldn't be disappointed.

Also, I'm just shy of 58 miles for the week, which I realized is my highest (non racing) weekly mileage total ever. I thought I'd done at least 60 in the past, but not according to my spreadsheet. My highest ever was the week of the Helen Klein 50 mile race back in 2002. I managed 65.5 miles that week including finishing the race.

The calm before the storm

2011-09-17T22:07:00.000-07:00

9/6 (7.9mi, 58min, 7:22/mi) I headed out for a full loop of the Bridle Trails as fast as I could. I would have beat my PR, but instead I fell just over a minute short due to yet another Gingerbread man. I didn't stop my watch during the break so I'll still count the time as my 2nd fastest. I felt good and picked the hard pace right back up after my urgent pit stop.

9/7 (6mi, 44min, 7:27/mi) Run #1: At lunch I ran on the treadmill at the gym before lifting weights. I started with an 8:00/mi pace and sped up 0.1mph every half mile and then really picked it up the last half mile. Not too bad for a treadmill run.

9/7 (12.0mi, 1h 30m, 7:32/mi) Run #2: After work I headed down to the Sammamish River Trail. I ran the first half at just under 8:00/mi pace before turning around at the 6 mile mark and heading back with mile splits in the low 7's and even one in the 6's. Felt good.

9/8 (6.45mi, 59min, 9:07/mi) An easy run in the bridle trails on tired legs after the previous day's 18 mile total.

9/9 (5mi, 39min, 7:49/mi) I ran on the treadmill with socks on (no shoes) before lifting weights. It felt pretty good as long as I kept the incline on the treadmill at 1.0% or higher.

9/11 (5.6mi, 51min, 9:10/mi) I ran easy after getting the kids to bed. I didn't feel very good at the start but felt better as the run went on. Easy Sunday night run before starting a big week of running.

Picking up the totals and a disappointing kids race

2011-09-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

8/29 (7.9mi, 57min, 7:12/mi) After recovering over the weekend with a big fat 0 miles I attacked the Bridle Trails, running just under 57 min for a full loop. This would have been a PR for me except that I had to stop twice for the Gingerbread Man and stopped my watch each time. Other than that it was a great run.

8/30 (4mi, 31min, 7:42/mi) I went to the gym at lunch for some Kettlebell swinging and plyometrics. I managed a 4mi run on the dreadmill as a warmup. Nothing special.

8/31 (7.9mi, 59min, 7:32/mi) I went for another hard run around the Bridle Trails but my legs just didn't have any pop after my session in the gym on Tuesday. Great weather and great mindset made for a very enjoyable run.

9/1 (5.0mi, 39min, 7:46/mi) Run #1: 5 easy miles on the treadmill before hitting the weight room.

9/1 (10.2mi, 1h 18m, 7:41/mi) Run #2: After work I ran a long loop around the local Redmond/Kirkland area with a couple of decent hills. I wound around the West and South perimeters of the Bridle Trails as well. I thought that I was going to bonk at some point on the run due to my efforts at lunch but I never did. I felt surprisingly good the entire run.

9/2 (6.4mi, 55min, 8:40/mi) It had been a while since I'd last done some barefoot running so I headed down to Grass Lawn Park for 3.5 miles around the track sans shoes. It felt pretty good to take a relatively slow pace.

9/3 (0.25mi, 3min, 12:00/mi) I headed over to Uptown Gig Harbor for a kids race with my daughter. Unfortunately the race was poorly organized. Despite having 3 age categories for the kids dash, the kids in the 2-4 and 5-7 groups only ran a tenth of a mile. My daughter wanted to run the longer route with the 8-10 year olds which turned out to be a paltry quarter mile. We finished dead last but the kids did have 3.5 - 5.5 years on her despite the fact that she was just as tall as the 8-10 year old girls and even a couple of the boys. The upside was that there was plenty of cheering, a bouncy castle, face painting, and balloon animals. Next year we'll have to pass on the kids race and just run the 2 mile walk or the 5KM event. She was disappointed that the race was so short.

9/4 (8.4mi, 1h 7m, 8:04/mi) The family was heading over to my wife's cousin's beach house on Fox Island so I took off 25 min ahead of them on foot and met them there. It was a nice run despite the heat and the two long hills on the way over. It felt great to be out running on such a nice day. As soon as I arrived I took off my shoes, shirt and watch and jumped into the very cold water of the Puget Sound. The rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying good food, family, and playing in / on the water with the kids. The paddle boat was in near-constant use.

I managed a 50 mile week for the first time in about a year. I feel pretty good. My Piriformis pain is slowly calming down (but far from gone) due to the exercises that I got from my PT which focus on strengthening my hips and pelvic floor muscles.

A Double double week.

2011-08-31T20:26:00.000-07:00

8/23 (6.0mi, 40min, 6:46/min) Run #1: I ran on the treadmill at lunch, something I really didn't want to do. My company has a policy about the heavily subsidized gym membership to the really fancy gym near work. To keep the membership active, you have to go at least 4 times per month. I'm a little short on visits for August so I stopped by for a run and a little bit of free weights. The < 7:00/mi pace is deceiving, I started out at 8:00/mi with a 2.5% incline. Every half mile I lowered the incline 0.5% and raised the speed a little. For the last half mile I was running a 5:52/mi pace at a -3.0% incline. The lower the incline, the easier it is to run at a faster pace. My 5:52 was probably equivalent to a 6:30/mi pace on flat ground.

Run #2: (4.5mi, 42min, 9:20/mi) After I put the kids to bed I went out and ran the One Store Loop with my head light after dark. I didn't time the run and took it really easy. It was a wonderfully peaceful time to run with a great view of the sky full of stars. Running up the Tunnel trail was pretty much pitch black and I only thought about bears during the first half. I'm glad that I know the trail well enough that I can run it well at night.

8/24 (6.3mi, 56min, 9:00/mi) My legs were tired after my double yesterday so I kept an easy pace running around the Bridle Trails. I just tried to pick some of the less-used trails and have fun at a comfortable pace.

8/25 (4.0mi, 31min, 7:51/mi) Run #1: Another double run day which started with a treadmill run at the fancy gym followed by weights.

Run #2: (7.9mi, 1h 1m, 7:46/mi) After work I ran a full loop of the Bridle Trails CCW. I tried to run a sub-1hr time but my legs weren't feeling good enough. I just didn't have the energy to go any faster. It was good to get out for a run while it still feels like summer. I just love running shirtless.

8/26 (7.35mi, 1h 2m, 8:29/mi) I ran the long way out to Grass Lawn Park for 3mi of barefoot running on the track. Actually it was on the narrow cement strip between the track and the artificial turf which were both too hot for my feet. Almost 18 months later and I'm still enjoying the barefoot running.

Montazuma's rebound

2011-08-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

When I last left off, I was just starting to feel the effects of food poisoning. It lasted about 36 hours. I felt mostly better by Monday the 15th but still didn't feel like running yet.

8/16 (7.9mi, 57min, 7:14/mi) Back from the dead and right into a hard tempo run at lunch. I pushed a hard pace around a full loop of the Bridle Trails. It's great running out there in the summer when it's warm and the ground isn't muddy. The only downside is that the horse people are out in force. I had to stop three times to let horses pass. One of the times I came around a bend in the trail and startled myself and the horse. I also tried to catch another runner who passed me on the trail but I couldn't! He just pulled away effortlessly. Minutes later we were both waiting for another horse to pass and I got out ahead of him. I decided to pick up the pace and see if I could hold him off. It turned out I couldn't. He ran me down in about a quarter of a mile and kept going smoothly right past me and my sluggish 6:15/mi pace. Impressive.

8/17 (6.45mi, 58mi, 8:58/mi) After a hard effort Tuesday I took it easy (129 avg HR) just noodling around the Bridle Trails. My legs were dead and my stomach still felt bloated and gassy from the food poisoning episode. It was one of those days where I was just glad to get the miles in.

8/18 (9.0mi, 1h 16m, 8:26/mi) I was on call for work so I couldn't get out for a long run after work. Instead I did two easy runs on the treadmill at work with some weight machine sets between. As much as I dislike the treadmills I was able to keep my phone near me and if I did get called I had my computer in the locker room. Luckily I wasn't called. I felt a little better than the prior day but my calves were still dead.

8/20 (8.5mi, 1h 45m, 12:24/mi) The family and I headed to Salt Spring Island, BC for a long weekend which involved two ferries and about 3 hours of driving so I missed running on Friday. On Saturday the family went to Ruckle Park on the island. They all went for a hike while I set off for a run on my own. The trails at the park were very technical, narrow, and rocky. I started out on the SE edge of the island and then headed North along the coast before the trail headed inland. I caught my feet on rocks and nearly fell probably 5 times during the run. It was fairly hilly as well but my legs felt good after a day off so I didn't have to stop and walk any of the hills. I made a few wrong turns during the run but I had memorized enough of the park map to find my way back to the right trails.

The only part of the run that almost turned into a problem was near the end when the trail bordered a working farm. I came around a bend and stopped in my tracks when I saw a large steer with a sharp pair of horns that were about as wide as my outstretched arms. He was standing in the middle of the trail grazing. We looked at each other and he went back to grazing. I had open field (his field) to the left of the trail and dense forest to the right. I could have tried to find a path through the brush and trees to get around him and pick up the trial later but decided not to. Instead I grabbed a hand-full of small rocks and began skipping them along the ground at his feet. He seemed a little confused at the source of the noise and after about a dozen rocks came his way he slowly wandered down into his field. I never actually hit him with any of the rocks either, so win-win. I began running again but only for a few seconds before seeing two more large steers with long pointy horns standing just past where my trail turned off to the right. My plan was to jog along the trail which went up a short hill and if the steers started moving toward me I'd sprint up the trail and try to out-run them. Luckily they showed little interest in me and left me alone. Aside from all that, the run went well.

8/21 (10.1mi, 1h 18m, 7:43/mi) I had time for a run on Sunday on the island so I just started from the place we were staying (Salt Spring Spa along the NE perimeter) and followed the road SE for 5 somewhat hilly miles before turning around and heading back. I started with 8+ min miles on the way out and picked up the pace to the high-6 min range on the way back. It was a great run except that I forgot to tape up my pinky toes and got a large blister on one of them. Sadly this happens when I run longer than 5mi in my New Balance MT101s. New Balance announced that the next model (MT110) will have a wider toe box. Being a running shoe geek, this excites me quite a bit.

Running and a little bit of riding before salad strikes back.

2011-08-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

8/1 (6.7mi, 56.5 min, 8:30/mi) Another lunch run at the Bridle Trails. I felt pretty good after riding the long way in to work and before riding the short way home. I wasn't paying full attention to my footing and took another digger on the trails. No damage luckily, just dirty. I wore my heart rate monitor chest strap and found that my average HR for the run was only 136. That seems low to me based on the last set of %HR numbers I calculated. Maybe it's time to test them out again.

8/2 (6.9mi, 58.5 min, 8:28/mi) I ran hill repeats up the hill next to Hwy 520. It's about a mile long so I ran down and back up 3x. I ran backwards for 1/10th of a mile in the middle flat section of each repeat. As it happened a podcast I was listening to had an interview with a pro triathlete who mentioned that he incorporated some backwards running into his training so I thought I'd try it out. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary from / after it. It's supposed to be good for your quads and your form. I should try to get a little bit in 2 - 3 times a week and see if I notice anything.

8/4 (8mi, 59min, 7:25/mi) I ran the full Bridle Trails loop at lunch. I had some gas and stomach bloat but felt relatively okay otherwise.

8/5 (6.1mi, 54min, 8:52/mi) I ran out to Grass Lawn Park for a little over 3 miles of barefoot running. The track there is a little rough for a rubber track so I tried to run on the grass and cement border where I could.

8/7 (2.3mi, 30min, 13:00/mi) I went for a slow out-and-back run with my daughter around the neighborhood. She burned through her energy in the first mile and we jog-walked the next half mile and walked most of the way back home. I'm happy that she wants to go for a run with me now and then.

8/8 (6.4mi, 51.5min, 8:03/mi) I took an easy run after work around the East half of the Bridle Trails, It felt pretty good.

8/9 (7.9mi, 1h, 7:37/mi) I ran around the Bridle Trails at lunch and kept almost a tempo pace. I just missed breaking an hour (by 14 seconds!). My legs were pretty tired.

8/10 (2mi, 16min, 8:10/mi) Two moderate miles on the treadmill before lifting weights. Rode my bike to work and back the long way (44mi R/T)

8/11 (6mi, 51min, 8:30/mi) An easy run in the Bridle trails after riding in to work the long way. My legs were pretty tired from the cycling and not drinking enough water during the day didn't help matters.

I was planning to run on Friday the 12th but left work before noon feeling awful. It turned out that I'd picked up a case of food poisoning that kept me down for the next 48 hours. Ugh.

Still falling behind on the blogging

2011-08-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

Mon 7/18, 6.2mi, 42:13. I had a PT appointment on Tuesday 7/19 for my Piriformis issue so I wanted it to be nice and sore when I got there. I ran the standard "work loop" CCW and pushed the pace. I don't feel that I'm in top form but comparing this to previous times, it's pretty good. 6:48/mi avg.

Tue 7/19, 6.2mi, 41:51. The PT appointment wasn't until after work so why not just drive that soreness home with another hard tempo run. I ran the same route as Monday but in the opposite (CW) direction. I thought I'd be worn out from Monday's tempo but I managed to run it 22 seconds faster. It's possible the CW is faster though not historically the case. My 6:45/mi avg was the 3rd fastest average pace I've run for this route since I started running it a few years ago.

The PT appt. went okay. The guy is just a regular PT, not a sports medicine PT or someone with experience dealing with endurance athletes. I hope to get something good out of it no less. So far I have a couple of feet of surgical tubing and a sheet of exercises to do while concentrating on contracting my Pelvic Floor muscles with a goal of learning to engage them while running.

Wed 7/20, 2mi, 17min. Just an easy 2 mile warmup on the treadmill before lifting weights.

Wed 7/20, 7.9mi, 1h 7m. I ran a slow steady run around the Bridle Trails after work. My legs were sore from the two tempo runs so I kept an easy pace.

Thu 7/21, 5.8mi, 50min? I ran out to Grass Lawn Park to run 3 barefoot miles. The battery on my watch died early into the run so I don't know the time for sure or what kind of pace the BF miles were run at. Sometimes it's good to unplug.

Sat 7/23, 5.5mi, 46min. It was sunny and warm out (rare this summer) so I went for a run with shorts, shoes and sunglasses. I soaked up the Vitamin D and enjoyed being outdoors.

Mon 7/25 8.35mi, 1h 2m. I didn't think I'd get a chance to run on Tuesday so I took on the Work Hour Loop (148th -> Old Redmond rd -> Powerline trail -> Bridle Trails -> 132nd -> 24th -> 148th). Again the watch died early on so I'd estimate that I wasn't quite able to break an hour. Hard run for me.

Tue 7/26 6.1mi, 50min?. A good friend (Chris) and his family were visiting. I used to train for and run marathons with Chris and then he got me into road cycling and endurance events. Predictably he wanted to go for a run after the kids went to bed. We got some flashlights and went for a run just after sundown. We ran the One Store Loop but popped out to Kopachuck State Park and back in the middle. It was great to run with him again. We had great conversation the whole time at a faster than expected pace. He said that it was only his 3rd run of the year (he's ridden 4000+ road miles though) yet he's in really good shape so we were holding a good pace. It caught me by surprise as I was just expecting a casual pace. He even wanted to test our power running up the final climb on the route. Overall a great visit and great run. I hope that I can take him on a few more runs next time he comes to visit. He probably feels the same way when I visit him in CA and borrow his road bike.

Wed 7/27, 7.95, 58:44. I ran a full loop of the Bridle Trails after work on Wed. I was still a little tired from Tuesday's run so my attempt at a fast loop didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I was still "on the rivet" the whole time but I thought I'd be able to finish about 3-4 min. faster. It felt good to see <8 min left with a mile to go and know that I could break an hour.

Thu 7/28, 2mi, 17min. I ran a couple of miles on the treadmill at the gym before lifting weights. I picked a random program (pace and elevation) and after a mile started to bonk really badly. I'm not sure what happened but I was having trouble holding a 7:00/mi pace. As soon as I hit 2 miles (of a planned 3) I stopped, ate a gel, chugged some water and headed down to the weight room where I recovered as I lifted weights. No idea what happened there.

Friday 7/29 8mi, 1h 4min. I ran another full loop of the Bridle trails. I started off strong with high hopes on a fast time but my stomach started to rebel about 3 miles into the run. I got confirmation that I wouldn't finish in under an hour in the form of two gingerbread man stops. I still pushed the pace the best I could but my heart and stomach just weren't in it.

That was all I managed to run for July. My stats for the month were:

Runs: 21
Miles: 122.5
Time: 16h 12m
Avg Pace: 7:56/mi

I'm on pace to break 1500 miles for the year if I can keep my momentum through the fall. I hope that I can find time to train for another 50K race later this year as well. My Piriformis issue is still bothering me a little bit but it's a little less painful these days. I've been doing the exercises recommended by the Physical Therapist and I think that they've been helping.

Easy weeks, not much to write about

2011-07-29T07:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick summary of the first two weeks of running in July. I'm spending more time than I should be writing a glorified training log that only I read I'd bet.

Wed 7/6: 7mi, 58min. Came back from a few illness-caused days off to run 7mi at the Bridle trails.

Thu 7/7: 8mi, 59min. I felt a little better so I put a decent effort into a full Bridle Trails loop at lunch.

Fri 7/8: 4mi, 28min. A warmup run before lifting weights. Two quick miles (6:20/mi, then recovery, then 1/2mi @ 5:20/mi, then cool down)

Sat/Sun: lazy / busy / didn't run

Mon 7/11: 6.2mi, 43min. Faster tempo run out to Viewpoint park for 2 laps then back via 520 trail.

Tue 7/12: 6.6mi, 55min. Ran out toward BT then down to Grass Lawn park for 2 mi. barefoot on the track.

Wed 7/13: 3mi, 22min. Treadmill at the gym before lifting. W/U, 5x400 @ 87sec w/ 400 recovery between.

Thu 7/14: 6.4mi, 56min. Easy recovery run out to the Bridle Trails.

Fri 7/15: 3.1mi, 20:58. Treadmill at the gym before weights. Started at 8:30/mi, worked my way down to 5:00/mi. Started the incline at +2.5%, dropped to -3.0% as speed increased.

Sun 7/17: 9.2mi, 1h 27m. Ran with the boy in the BOB jog stroller while he napped. Went farther than I'd planned or expected. Felt really good.

My weekly totals were 19mi and 25mi. Not much to write about really.

2011-07-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

Monday 6/27 (5.9mi, 48min, 8:15/mi) I took an easy run toward the Bridle Trails and then I headed down to Grass Lawn park to run about a mile and a half barefoot on the artificial turf of the baseball field. I wish I had time for more but I don't have that kind of schedule. I'd welcome a corporate change to a two hour lunch break.

Tuesday 6/28 (3.2mi, 25min, 8:00/mi) I was planning to ride my bike to work a couple of days this week so I needed to "run" an errand at lunch and head down to a local bike shop.

** Bike shop rant **
Unfortunately it was a Performance Bikes store with very poor selection. It seems like every time I go into Performance I see less brand diversity and more of their house brand "Forte" junk. Forte gear isn't much less expensive but I perceive it to be of far lower quality than the companies that specialize in what ever piece of gear that Forte is copying. In my case I needed a couple of road tubes and I prefer tubes with the superior threadless valve stems which Performance didn't carry because A) Forte doesn't make them, and B) the store only carried Forte and one other brand of road tube. Thanks guys, I don't feel so bad about buying gear online if I'm putting your store out of business. Sadly buying online will probably affect the smaller one-off stores like the superstars at Branford Bicycles (who rebuilt my Campagnolo shifter two years ago) more than a big chain like Performance. It's probably no surprise that I'm a total gear head when it comes to cycling with strong opinions on what I ride.

So back to Tuesday... I ran out to the Performance bike shop in Redmond, bought a lock and some tubes then came back to work to lift weights for a few minutes to eat up the rest of my lunch break.

Wednesday 6/29 (2.0mi, 17.5min, 8:45/mi) I rode my bike to the train station, took the train for a bit, and then rode the rest of the way to work. It's been a little over 2 years since I've ridden my bike and it came back to me quickly but I've predictably lost quite a bit of bike fitness, especially when it comes to hill climbing. Other than that I ran 2 miles at the gym before lifting weights and taking the bus and a much shorter bike ride home.

Thursday 6/30 (6.65mi, 51min, 7:44/mi) I was a little sore from the ride in to work yesterday (especially the muscles that were contact points with the saddle) so I started out a little slow on my run out to the Bridle Trails. I picked up the pace as the run went on and felt pretty good overall.

Friday 7/1 (3.0mi, 24min, 7:56/mi) I rode in to work from North Seattle. I took a route that went north over and around Lake Washington and ended up being 22.5 miles each way. I kept a pretty high pace (for me) on the way in and was a little bit slowed down by the wind and the hills on the way home. At lunch I ran 3 miles on the treadmill and lifted weights. I started the treadmill at just over a 9:00/mi pace and increased it a few seconds/mi every quarter mile. I ran the last quarter at a 5:40/mi pace, just barely hanging on.

Not much running for the week but adding 85mi on the bike was a nice change. I started feeling sick on Saturday afternoon and didn't run from Sat through the following Tuesday.

I finished up June with 138 miles on 25 runs in 19h 2min for an 8:15/mi average pace. It was my best month so far this year but pretty low for a summer month. I hope to pick it up in July. I'm sitting at 734mi at the end of the first half of 2011. I'd like to hit 1500 for the year so I'm hoping to pick it up the rest of the summer and have a couple of big months.

Thanks for the run Marshall.

2011-06-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 6/21 (10.45mi, 1h 18m, 7:29/mi) I skipped my lunchtime run in favor of running a little longer after work. I started the run at 6pm headed down to Old Redmond Rd. I kept a nice 7:00/mi pace running up Old Redmond (a steady 5% - 6% grade for a mile and a half) and then kept pace while cutting across the power line trail to pick up the Bridle Trails and ran a CCW loop of the park. I felt pretty good in my Trail Gloves and no socks. The feedback from my feet while wearing such minimal shoes is great. I grabbed some water at the main stables on my way around and then tried to keep a good pace around the south and east perimeters but I was losing steam.

I started to feel a familiar pain in my feet that I thought could be blisters forming. I finished the full loop and then cut back out to the street and turned East to pick up the corridor trail back to 148th ave and to work. The foot pain never let up and at the end of the run I found 3 new blisters on the bottom of various toes. Luckily two of them were tiny enough that I could just leave them alone and let my feet absorb them while the third needed to be drained. Good run but I'm a little disappointed that I'll have to wear socks with my yellow pair of Trail Gloves from now on as the foot bed is wearing out.

Wednesday 6/22 (2.0, 17min, 8:52/mi) Just two slow miles on the treadmill before lifting weights. My Piriformis was really sore from Monday's hard trail miles. I haven't conquered the Piriformis problems quite yet but I did find a few exercises like this one that were able to ease the Sciatica pain that was also plaguing me after every fast / hard run. Progress.

Thursday 6/23 run #1 (5.5mi, 43min, 7:55/mi) I ran the Redmond Streets route CW at lunch but I took it easy as I was planning to get in a second run after work in Seattle. I figured that this would help make up for missing Monday's run.

Thursday 6/23 run #2 (5.0mi, 45min, 9:00/mi) I didn't bring my watch so I'm estimating the time and distance. This was another running celebrity in-store appearance at Fleet Feet in Seattle. Just as they had Scott Jurek do an in-store meet -n- run last year, Thursday evening they hosted another legend in the sport. This time it was Marshall Ulrich sharing his time and promoting his new book.

A few of Marshall's accomplishments:

15 time Badwater 146mi. Ultramarathon finisher (meaning he goes past the 135mi. official finish line at Whitney Portal and on to summit of Mt. Whitney every year as the race used to be run)
4 time Badwater winner
Masters and 50+ record holder for running across the US (3000+ miles) with a time of 52.5 days
Only person to complete a quad-Badwater crossing (Badwater to Whitney summit and back TWICE! non-stop)
Climbed the 7 summits of the world (Aconcagua, Carstensz, Denali, Elbrus, Kilimanjaro, Vinson, and of course Everest)
Much more than I haven't even read about in his book yet

So Marshall is kind of a big name in ultrarunning. Traffic was terrible upon leaving work going across the lake on the way over to the store. When I got there, I only had a few minutes to spare. Parking was terrible and I had to run a few blocks to the store. Other people were just leaving when I arrived so I quickly filled my hand bottle and headed out the door last. I was only a few feet behind the back of the pack which consisted of... Marshall Ulrich and a friend of his who had also completed a run across America. There wasn't anyone else running with Marshall. None of the 20 or so people who showed up to hear him talk wanted to run with him. Who would pass that up? Not me, so I just hung back with Marshall.

I'm not much for words, especially when I'm around someone whose accomplishments I respect so I was racking my brain to come up with good questions to ask Marshall. He didn't seem like an extrovert either so we ran much of the route just making idle chatter with his friend. I didn't want to ask him a bunch of questions that he was going to talk about in his presentation after the run or ask stupid questions. It was easier to just listen and talk about where he lived, and old time wheelbarrow ultra marathons from the 1800s.

After the run Marshall and Fleet Feet provided snacks (nice touch) and then he gave a slide show presentation covering his history, accomplishments, and the details of his trans-America run. He had many interesting and funny anecdotes about his trip followed by Q&A after the talk.

A few of the interesting answers he gave:

A) Including the film crew, Marshall's crew, food, supplies, etc... it cost around $600,000 for his run across America. He had some very nice sponsors.

B) He had no nutrition / electrolyte issues during his 52 day run. At some point in the run he was stopping every mile to eat a little bit of food to keep his calorie intake steady. He said he was eating about 9,000 calories a day.

C) Marshall wasn't able to run as many miles a day as he had initially planned due to stress on his body, injury, and not knowing what to expect. In the last few weeks, his film crew was asking him if he could bump up the mileage because they were going over-budget. Marshall laughed about the absurdity of the question but in the end he managed to wind up running the final miles through Time Square in Manhattan just after dark on November 4th 2008. Yep, the day Obama was elected. He couldn't have timed it better and the film crew got way more than they bargained for in terms of footage and crowd energy.

After Q&A I bought a copy of his book that he signed for me with a nice personal message, I asked a couple of questions and then I went on my way. Another great in-store event for Fleet Feet Seattle.

Friday 6/24 (5.5mi, 44min, 8:04/mi) I ran the Redmond Streets course again, CCW this time. I was in no hurry at all so I took it pretty easy. My Piriformis was feeling better after 3 easy runs in a row now.

Saturday 6/25 (10.7mi, 1h 35m, 8:54/mi) Another rare weekend run. This time my wife took my daughter out for a haircut and some shopping so it was just me and the boy. I got myself and the jog stroller ready just before his naptime and took him out for a rolling nap. He drank a bottle of milk and was sawing logs 7 min. into the run. Sadly he only slept for 45 min, half of what he normally would. I'd say taking him out for a run is a reasonable price to pay once in a while. After he woke up he was pretty mellow and snacks, juice and the scenery kept him occupied for most of the run. He started fussing three miles from home and I had to talk him down and pick up the pace. It became a game of "Do you see that truck?", "Is that a crow?", "Can you smell the yellow flowers?", etc... until he calmed down for the last mile. It was a nice run around Gig Harbor on a great day and I was happy / lucky to get it in.

I managed 39 miles this week. Not bad considering that I'm not training for anything right now. I hope I can pick up some extra mileage over the summer like I did last year. I don't know if I'll be able to break 200 miles in a month (which is what Tony Krupicka runs during his biggest training weeks mind you) like I did last July but I'll try.

Kind of getting back into the swing of things

2011-06-26T19:25:00.000-07:00

Mon 6/13 (6.4mi, 48min, 7:29/mi) A cloudy and windy day gave way to good temperatures (low 60s) so I headed out to the Bridle Trails for a simple loop. I didn't feel very good, but I was glad to get a run in.

Wed 6/15 (6.8mi, 56min, 8:21/mi) I lifted weights on Tuesday and gave my legs a break apart from doing 3 x 60 calf raises. Wednesday I ran out to Viewpoint Park for 3 loops at an easy pace and then I came back along the bike path that follows Hwy 520 instead of 148th ave. It was a much better choice but it did add a 1/2 mile onto my run. Smooth, low traffic, no stop lights.

Thu 6/16 (6.75mi, 55min, 8:11/mi) I didn't get a chance to run at work so I went for a run at home after the kids went to bed. I ran the One Store Loop but made a detour out past Kopachuck and down the hill. I turned around at the bottom of the hill and came back up and finished the loop. I tried out the black Trail Gloves with much better results than last time and no pain in the toe joints on my left foot.

Fri 6/17 (6.45mi, 52min, 8:03/mi) The weather was nice again (sunny and mid 60s) so I ran a half-loop of the Bridle Trails. It was warm enough that I stashed my shirt at the start of the run and picked it up again on the way back. Well, actually I ran a bit past it and had to turn around and go back for it. I love the simplicity of running with just a pair of shoes and a pair of running shorts.

Sat 6/18 (10.5mi, 1h 38m, 9:23/mi) Fathers Day came a day early. My present this year was a couple of hours to go out for a run. I haven't been running much on weekends lately and of course I miss it so I took advantage of my family's generosity and drove out to McCormack Park (next to the women's prison) and ran 5 loops of the park plus a few wrong turns and an out-and-back at the end to make up 10.5 miles of beautiful technical trail running. My pace was slower than usual due to the technical nature of the route and the steep section of climbing at the end of each 1.8mi loop. It's a hard loop to run fast and the last half mile consists of a slippery descent (still muddy in mid-June!), two small stream crossings and then a very narrow foot path (Trail "U" for the locals) carved into the hillside that requires careful footing with all of it's exposed roots and washed away sections. There's no taking your eyes off the path here. Overall a great run that left me very tired and happy.

Going back over this week now I see that there is very little complaining about the Piriformis. More on that next week.

Bruised barefoot Ego and Race weekend

2011-06-18T20:10:00.000-07:00

6/6 (8.0mi, 1h 8m, 8:30/mi) I ran twice on Monday, once at lunch around the Bridle Trails and then on the Treadmill after work. I'm estimating the lunch-time run distance based on prior runs as I left my Garmin watch at home. After work I had to stay a little bit late so I headed down to the basement gym to run on the treadmill and made it about 2 miles before getting called by work to fix something. So much for that.

6/7 (5.6mi, 45min, 8:02/mi) I was too busy at work to go for a run at lunch so I ran after work around home. I did the One Store loop plus a small detour up to Kopachuck and back. I wore my new Merrell Trail Gloves and was loving them until my left big toe started hurting half way through the run. The pain felt like it was being caused by the seam of the shoe pushing the base of my big toe. I stopped probably 4 times over the next mile to adjust and re-tie the shoe but nothing seemed to help. The joint was sore the rest of the day. I hope it's not the shoes.

6/8 (5.1mi, 39.5min, 7:44/mi) I ran down the hill next to Hwy 520 that goes into downtown Redmond. The plan was a short hill repeats workout. I jogged to the bottom of the hill and then alternated running up the hill for 1/4mi at a hard effort (5K equivalent) and then jogging easy back down for 1/10th of a mile of recovery. I kept it up until I got back to the top of the hill. It took 7 repeats to get back up. I cooled down with an easy jog around the block and back to work. It felt pretty good and I was holding 7:00 - 7:15 pace for the uphill repeats.

6/9 (5.6mi, 38min, 6:50/mi) I ran down to Grass Lawn park and took off my shoes for some barefoot running around the track. It's been a while since I've actually run barefoot. Now that I have the zero-drop Trail Gloves I haven't been bothering with barefoot running but I think I should get back into it now and then if I can be smart about it. I ran 2.7mi on the track at an increasing pace. My ego got the best of me and for the last mile on the track I tried to run a sub-6 min. mile. I was on a pretty good pace and only slowed down a little bit when my big toe and the side of my right foot started hurting. It wasn't that painful so I ran through it and finished the mile in 5:56 which was good, but as soon as I looked at my feet I saw that my efforts had earned me two quarter-sized blisters. On top of that joy was feeling the blisters as I ran back to the gym with my shoes on. My overall pace was pretty good for this run which surprised me. Not recognizing the blisters and shutting down was just stupid.

6/11 (1.2mi, 15min, 12.30/mi) Sound to Narrows 2K race, run with my daughter. She's still interested in doing races and wants to run them when I ask, so I keep looking for short races for us to do together. I hope that it's something that she looks back on fondly in the future and that the idea of running won't seem so foreign when she's older. We left the house a little later than we should have to drive to the race in Tacoma. I knew where it was but as we were approaching we found the streets blocked. I quickly re-routed in search of another way to get close to the park where the race was being held. My efforts were in vain as all the streets near the park were closed and there was no street parking. I didn't know that the race was so popular. Using Google Maps on my phone I eventually found a nearby neighborhood and quickly parked the car about half a mile from the park. I grabbed my daughter and took off running. We had about 5 minutes before the race started and luckily I had parked uphill from the park. I ran down to the park carrying her and hurried across the park only to learn that the start line was on the other side of the park up a hill. I picked her up and continued running. As we arrived at the start line there were only a few officials standing around. Everyone in the 2K race had already started. The officials said that we weren't too late so off we went. When I run with my daughter I let her dictate the pace and walk when she walks, no point in pushing her to be competitive, I want her to like running. She took off at a nice steady pace (probably a 12 - 13 min. mile) and we trotted along for the first half mile before stopping to begin our run-walk strategy. We hit a downhill shortly which we jogged down and then we were faced with the last 6/10ths of a mile of the course which were mostly up a gentle incline. We stuck to the run-walk strategy until we got up near the park where the run finished. People were cheering us left and right which felt nice for me but I think she was in the red pushing to finish so she didn't acknowledge any of the cheers. We ran down the finishing straight and being that we were the last ones on the course got some attention from the race announcer as we crossed the line. Something like "Great job dad and daughter!" We started late and I didn't have my Garmin on so I don't know what our finishing time was. (nor do I care). After finishing, we walked over and partook in the freebies (fruit, juice, water) and then picked up her bib and T-shirt (we didn't have time to get them before the race started) along with her finishers ribbon. A quick play in the park and we were off to her swim lesson.

I didn't manage much running this week due to time off and blisters from my barefoot ego problem. I still managed a little over 25 miles which isn't terrible when I don't have any races lined up and I'm still trying to get through my Piriformis issues.

something something new shoes something something

2011-06-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

Monday 5/30 (7.7mi, 57min, 7:29/mi) Holiday Monday so I got out for my home "Hour loop" AKA "Two store loop"). I kept a solid pace but didn't really push it too hard as I put out a good effort the day before. It felt good just to get out and run.

Tuesday 5/31 (5.5mi, 41min, 7:34/mi) I ran the "Redmond streets" route at work clockwise today. It wasn't a speed run, just more of an almost-recovery run with a few tough miles at the start. I picked up the pace down Old Redmond Rd and back up 148th for a decent time.

Thursday 6/2 (5.7mi, 44min, 7:51/mi) More Viewpoint park loops, only two today as I'm taking it sort of easy this week. The run felt great and I felt absolutely fantastic after I was warmed up. My body was responding well when I'd try to pick up the pace and my footing felt good as did my form.

Friday: 6/3 (2.0mi, 16min, 8:02/mi) Pt 1: Two miles on the treadmill before hitting the weights.

Friday 6/3 (6.0mi, 48min, 8:01/mi) Pt 2: Six miles on the dreadmill after work in lieu of being a sane person and running 10 miles outdoors. The weather was nice but I'm on call for work so I thought I'd just hang out in the gym with my phone and watch whatever was on the TV and have an awful run on the hamster wheel instead of enjoying myself on some trails. I meant to run 8 miles but could barely stomach 6. Horrible.

Sunday 6/5 (5.6mi, 50min, 8:52/mi) With my wife and daughter away at a birthday party I took the boy out for a run in the BOB jogger. Being on call for work I stayed somewhat close to the house and just looped around nearby roads. It was a good easy paced run and the boy seemed to be pretty happy with the views.

I ran in a new pair of Merrell Trail Gloves that I exchanged the Vibram Five Fingers for. They felt fantastic. So much better than any other shoes I can think of with the possible exception of the New Balance MT101s. Now that I have two pair I'm actually looking forward to wearing one out so that I can retire them and wear them as every day kicking-around shoes. When I returned the Five Fingers I was hoping to exchange them for a pair of Merrell Tough Gloves, which are casual shoes with the same flat Vibram sole that the running shoes have. REI doesn't carry Tough Gloves unfortunately. Before 2011 I didn't care about Merrell shoes at all, now they're at the top of my list. Why can't Brooks make a good minimalist shoe?

[Number] [synonym for awesome] [nouns] that [verb]

2011-06-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

Monday 5/23 (6.5mi, 51min, 7:57/mi) I ran out to Viewpoint park for 3 loops which has become a regular staple run during the week since finding this small trail. I think that after so much running at the Bridle Trails I was just starved for something new to sink my shoes into. Now if it was only 2 miles closer to work and 20x longer. Moderate pace, felt pretty good to get out and run.

Tuesday 5/24 (6.15mi, 42min, 6:51/mi) I went back to the "Pro Club Loop" after avoiding it for a while. I put in a hard tempo pace and turned myself inside out for this one. Not a PR but for me a pretty good time for roughly a 10K with a decent bit of climbing. It's always confusing when I'm pushing the pace getting up the hard hills that come at the end of the Corridor trail so that I'm red-lining when I turn down the back stretch. I feel like I'm spent and barely slogging through a 9min/mi pace after giving so much on the climbs, but I go back to look at my splits and see that I still managed a 6:43 mile and that my pace over the whole route was never slower than 7:45/mi.

Wednesday 5/25 (2.0, 15min, 7:41/mi) First run of the day was a warmup at the gym before lifting. I gave the Vibram Five-Fingers another try. I like the way they feel for the most part but my pinky toes are a little too short for the toe pockets and slip out occasionally. It's not painful but annoying enough that I'll stop after a minute or two and fix them. The difference between the length of my biggest and smallest toes is considerably more than then difference between the toe pockets in the shoes. They're not that well suited for my feet and I feel like they're kind of a novelty running-wise. There are other minimal shoes out there with a better fit for me like the Merrell Trail Gloves that I rave about frequently. I think the experiment with Five-Fingers will result in an exchange for different shoes. I'd like to try the Brooks Green Silence which aren't really minimalist shoes, or get another pair of Trail Gloves. While I'm talking about shoes, I should mention that I tried on the New Balance Trail Minimus shoes two weeks ago at a New Balance store and I didn't like them. The material seemed nice but in my size they didn't fit well at all. The length of the footbed was adequate but the toebox was both narrow and low. I couldn't splay my feet out at all in them and my toes felt trapped against the footbed. I've read about people cutting the rubber strap that goes over the top of the toes to ease the pressure on the toebox but I didn't want to buy shoes that needed modification from the start. I've also seen a promising review of the successor to the Trail Minimus which should be coming out this summer. I hope that New Balance opens up that toebox in the next revision.

Wednesday 5/25 (10.7mi, 1h 33m, 8:41/mi) I wanted to get a second run in on Wednesday as I was staying late at work anyway so I got out to run at about 6pm in light rain. I ran over to Viewpoint Park for 4 loops before continuing on to the SE corner of the Bridle Trails as the rain picked up. By the time I was in the Bridle Trails heading West the rain increased to crazy torrential downpour levels. Hard enough to drown out my iPod and reduce visibility greatly. I don't think I've ever run in rain this hard. I was quickly soaked and the trails were filling with large puddles and small streams. I tried to hop around the mud and water for a few minutes before giving up and just running through the middle of it without regard for keeping my shoes clean or dry. By the time I got to the main horse ring at the SW corner of the park I was soaked through and the water had shut down my iPod. I stopped to wring a liter or more of water out of my shirt before continuing on.

The short break gave me a second wind and I slopped on through the mud and water and eventually made it around the perimeter of the park and down the Corridor trail on the way back to work. The rain had calmed down to a drizzle by this point but the damage was done. I was soaked through to my skin, my iPod was dead and my feet were sliding around in my muddy wet shoes. I could say that these were some of the worst conditions I've ever experienced on a run or turn it around and say that this was a great benchmark showing that even in terrible conditions I still love to run.

Sunday 5/29 (4.4mi, 32min, 7:17/mi) I missed Thu - Sat for work/family errands and got out for a quick One-Store Loop run on Sunday night. I started out a little easier than I normally do and then kept a steady strong pace once I got to the bottom of the Tunnel Trail. I felt pretty good after 3 days off of running and came within 30 seconds of my PR for the route. It felt great just to get out for a short run.

Almost 30 miles for the week and I'm looking at 125 for May. I'll fall just shy of 600mi YTD. It's quite a bit better than I was doing last year to through May (of course I spent 2.5 weeks in Hawaii last May). I'm feeling the draw of racing now and I really need to get my Piriformis issue under control. I was hoping it would be improving by now but it isn't. Give up and call in the doctor or just research more on the Interwebs?

Another light week of running but finishing with a PR

2011-05-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

Monday 5/16: didn't feel well, see last week's update.

Tuesday 5/17 (6.2mi, 53min, 8:32/mi) I felt a little better than Monday and was ready to run again so I put on my newly purchased Vibram Five Fingers Bikila shoes and went out to Viewpoint park for a few laps. The shoes felt okay on the pavement but felt great on the trails. They are a fairly tight fit but didn't bother my toes. After the run I found that I not only had a blister on the outside/bottom of my left foot but a spot on the top of my right foot where the stitching inside the shoe had given me quite a painful abrasion. That's a strike or two against the VFFs right off the bat. I'm not sure if I'll keep them after that first run. As soon as the abrasion heals I'll give them another try. The Merrell Trail Gloves are still working really well for me and I just love running in them. I don't need to wear socks with them, and they don't hurt my feet. I've heard people refer to them as the Vibram One Finger. Great shoes.

Wednesday 5/18 (3mi, 23min, 7:45/mi) I ran to warm-up before lifting weights at the gym again. I thought I'd try a little speedwork so I ran 1/2mi warm-up, then 5 x 1/4mi starting at 90 seconds and working down to 78 seconds for the final repeat. I ran 1/4mi recovery interval between each rep at 9:00 pace. It was a pretty hard workout but I could have kept it up (descending times) for a few more at least.

Thursday 5/19 (6.25, 50min, 8:06/mi) I ran relatively easy out to the Bridle Trails then ran down the East border until I got to the southeast ridge where I started running up the various paths to the top and then jogging down. I probably ran up and down 6 times before turning for home. I was almost out of the park when I caught a root with my big toe and tumbled to the ground. I landed on my side on the soft dirt and other than my throbbing toe I was unscathed.

Friday 5/20 (6.5mi, 47min, 7:19/mi) I started out easy and ran out to the Bridle Trails again. I picked up the pace when I got to the park and headed down the East side. From there I ran along the South border until I got to the middle of the park where I headed North and back out. I kept a hard pace for the rest of the run in the trails, then slowed a bit before picking it up for the last mile. If I'd pushed it from the start I think I could have taken the average pace < 7:00/mi.

Friday 5/20 (3.0 km, 24:30, 13:14/mi) After work on Friday I hurried home and changed into running clothes, picked up my daughter who was ready and waiting and we went to a local elementary school that holds an annual 3km charity / memorial run in the name of one of it's former teachers. The school is only about 3 miles from home and the race is held at 6:30pm on a Friday night. On top of that it was only $10 to enter and was all for a very local charity. Tough to pass that one up.

There was no kids category so we both raced in the Open division. We started out quick (for us) at the back of the pack and ran pretty hard for the first 1/2 mile. We adopted a run/walk strategy on the first hill. At about the 1mi point we ran through the first of several sprinklers to cool down. The course was punishing but we did our best to run the downhill parts and some of the flats. We looped around the streets before coming back to the school to the finish. We started our finishing kick a little too early and were really worn out with 200m to go. It was hard but we convinced ourselves to push ourselves for that last bit on an empty tank to cross the line with a new 3km PR! (for both of us).

Catching up on my running

2011-05-24T19:44:00.000-07:00

Monday 5/9 (7.7mi, 53min, 6:55/mi avg) I was working from home Monday so I did a tempo run around my "2 stores" loop, named so because it takes me out past both the Island View and Arletta stores. It takes about an hour to run at a conversational pace so I tried to see how much under an hour I could run it. I ended up a bit over 53 minutes. Any run that I can finish with < 7:00/mi pace makes me happy. It was almost a 3 minute PR for this route. Unfortunately I did get a visit from the Gingerbread Man mid-run.

Tuesday 5/10 (6.3mi, 50min, 8:07/mi avg) Back at work I ran out to Viewpoint park for 3 laps and then back to the office. I was feeling oddly good despite nearly turning myself inside out on Monday's run. I don't care much for the run out to Viewpoint park but I just love running around that loop. It's just under 1/2 mi per loop and being on a hillside less than 5% of it is on flat ground. It's either up or down. I wish it was closer to work so that I could spend less time/distance getting there and more time running loops.

Wednesday 5/11 (3.5mi, 25min, 7:09/mi avg) I went over to the gym to lift weights and ran 4x800m @ 3:00 to warm my muscles up. The first two were easy but the last two were hard to hold. I feel like I'm cheating if I don't put the incline on the treadmill at 2.5% or better even though this makes the equivalent pace harder than the numbers suggest.

Thursday 5/12 (8.4mi, 59min, 7:03/mi avg) I ran the "hour loop" from work at lunch as a second tempo run for the week. I started out pretty strong going down to Grass Lawn Park and up Old Redmond rd. I kept the pace up cutting across the power line trail and even through the back section of the Bridle Trails and down the road to 24th. I started to slow down heading down 24th and especially coming up the other side of 24th. I recovered once I was up on 148th heading back to work. My splits were surprisingly consistent given the hills:

1) 6:36 (downhill)
2) 7:06 (uphill)
3) 7:09 (uphill / flat)
4) 6:59 (flat)
5) 7:09 (slight downhill)
6) 6:50 (slight downhill)
7) 7:38 (steep downhill / steep uphill)
8) 7:12 (slight uphill)
8.4) 6:18 (flat)

Great week of running except that I felt like I was getting sick by Friday and felt pretty bad over the weekend and even through Monday so I didn't run any more this week. I got a whopping 26 miles in though most of them were pretty good tempo miles. I'll cut the weightlifting back and pick up the mileage when I pick my next race.

The return of tempo

2011-05-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

Monday 5/2 (2.0mi, 15min, 7:40/mi) Another 2 mile warmup on the treadmill before lifting weights. I played with my speed a little bit on this one. I ran sets of a quarter mile and then a tenth of a mile cool down. I increased the pace of each quarter mile repeat 0.5 mph and lowered it down to 8:30/mi for the cool down tenth. I think my fastest was 6:00/mi pace. I thought I'd do something different to try to keep it interesting.

I'm also playing with my weight lifting routine. I only lift weights twice a week for 30 - 40 min. I don't know if it's better to do one set of an exercise per muscle group and hit all 6 main groups (shoulders, biceps, triceps, back, chest, legs) in one session or to focus on 2 - 3 muscle groups per session but doing sets of 3 different exercises per group. Hit all of the muscle groups lightly every workout or hit them hard every 2nd or 3rd workout? I did the former on Monday.

Tuesday 5/3 (6.25mi, 48min, 7:43/mi) I ran out to Viewpoint park again for 3 CCW loops of my newly discovered trail. I ran them in decreasing times (4:25, 4:03, 3:48) which left me pretty tired after the 3rd one given the short steep climb at the end of the loop. Good run other than my nemesis the Gingerbread man showing up and the stinging nettles that I managed to scratch my butt on.

Wednesday 5/4 (12.0mi, 1h 26m, 7:13/mi) I had a long day at work so I kicked off a job and went out for a run so that I could come back as it was finishing up. I decided to run along the Sammamish river trail and insert some half-mile pickups into the run. I feel like ever since hurting my Piriformis muscle I've been slacking on my running, mostly jogging with no speed or hill work thrown in.. I got down the long hill to the trail and ran six 1/2mi repeats with 1/4mi cooldown. I ran the repeats in: 3:07, 3:06, 3:10, 3:09, 3:08, 3:14) The times slipped a little bit which I'd expected. I was pretty tired after the last one. I ate a gel and turned around for the run back to work. I tried to run the next 4 miles increasing the pace every mile and I'm impressed that I did in: 7:22, 7:09, 6:52, 6:41). Even running mile 10 mile in 6:41 didn't seem that hard. There is a hill at the beginning / end of this route that follows hwy 520 down into Redmond. It's about 1.25 miles long and averages maybe 7% - 8% grade so it's much more than a false flat. I felt good enough that I was able to pass a guy my age on a mountain bike at the bottom of the hill and by the time I got to the top I couldn't even see him behind me. I wasn't able to pass the guy in front of me on a road bike as he slowly put distance on me. Maybe if I hadn't just finished 10 miles of tempo running I could have held on to road bike guy.

Thursday 5/5 (6.2mi, 50min, 8:09/mi) After yesterday's tempo / interval run I needed to take it easy. I probably should have gone to the gym and lifted weights instead of running but I didn't have the time. Instead I ran the Pro Club loop CCW at a somewhat leisurely pace. Starting the run was a little rough with the soreness in my legs from yesterday but once I got going I felt pretty good. I tried to really work on my legs before bed with my PVC roller and some stretching.

Friday 5/6 (2.0mi, 15mi, 7:45/mi) Just ran a simple 2 mile warmup on the treadmill before lifting weights.

I didn't get a chance to run on Saturday and Sunday. It was just an overloaded weekend hanging out with the family and spending Mother's day out and about. I did make it to the pool and had time to swim 300 yds while the wife and kids were getting ready. I didn't have goggles with me so I just squinted to watch the line on the bottom of the pool. It reminded me how much of a workout swimming is for me. I'll run for hours and feel good but a few hundred yards in the pool has me out of breath in no time.

Push week

2011-05-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

I looked at my spreadsheet last weekend and saw that with one week to go in April I was sitting at only 75 miles. I ran 113, and 115 miles in Feb. and Mar. respectively. I thought that with a little push I could finish up the month with 115. That meant 40 miles for the week which shouldn't be too hard except that I had to take Monday off to take care of two sick kids and a sick wife. I haven't run 6 days a week in quite a while, I usually take 2 days a week to lift weights in the gym.

Tuesday 4/26 (6.1mi, 47min, 7:42/mi) As I've been running the "Pro Club Loop" route over the last few years I've noticed a little wooded trailhead off the side of the road at the Southwest corner of the route. I checked it out on Google Maps satellite view to see how big it was and decided to give it a try. It's 2.5 miles out to the park, when I got there I found a nicely groomed dirt path and followed it to see where it went. It turned out to be a 0.4mi loop on the side of a hill. There was a decent bit of climbing on the short route. As I was Running at lunch I didn't have a lot of time to spend there so I ran 3 loops, alternating direction each loop before returning to work. It was a very nice trail to run, it's just a shame that it's not longer.

Wednesday 4/27 (6.2mi, 49min, 7:56/mi) My hamstrings were a little tight after Tuesday's run. I ran the Pro Club loop clockwise at a modest pace. The weather was pretty dreary with rain and dark skies.

Wednesday 4/27 (8.1mi, 1h 11m, 8:47/mi) Run #2 of the day. I found myself at work late so I went out for another run, planning to run 10 miles. I started out feeling good heading down toward Grass Lawn Park and then going up Old Redmond Rd toward the Powerline trail. As I got onto the Powerline trail my stomach started to feel very empty. Vortex-trying-to-collapse-in on-itself empty. I didn't have any food with me, only water. I started to bonk pretty badly in short time which surprised me after having a decent lunch and afternoon snack before the run. I stopped to walk for a minute as I reached the Bridle Trails to see if I could shake off the brain fuzz I was feeling. I was about 2.5mi away from work so I'd have to make it at least that far. The only think I could think to do was drink more water to at least have something in my stomach and try to keep running.

I started to perk up in about 10 minutes and my pace came back to the 9min/mi range. I thought I was safely out of the woods at that point and extended my route through the Bridle Trails. As I left the Bridle Trails and back down the Corridor trail I started to bonk again. I didn't want to slow down as every step was one closer to work (and food!). I was able to hold on and suffer back to work but I had to lay down on the floor of the stretching area in the gym for a few minutes and try to catch my breath. I can't remember the last time I've been that beaten down after a run. I'm still not sure what happened either. I thought I was good on hydration, nutrition, and pace.

Thursday 4/28 (6.2mi, 52min, 8:21/mi) With fond memories of Tuesday's run up to Viewpoint Park I went back out there for 3 more loops. I timed them for splits of: 4:26, 4:27, and 4:19. I wasn't feeling very strong and my body is starting to tire from the uptick in mileage this week but it was still enjoyable running this new trail.

Friday 4/29 (6.4, 49min, 7:40/mi) I was tired and a little sore from the previous 4 runs but I still able to keep a pretty good pace with only one hilly mile that was > 8:00. I ran out the Corridor trail and through the power line trail, down to Grass Lawn park where I ran up and down the gravel path. After that I ran back up the hill to work. I worked on running efficiently, standing upright with a slight forward lean and taking shorter but quicker steps. I can feel the difference in my calves but it's not as bad any more. I'm still loving running in the Merrell Trail Gloves.

Sunday 5/1 (4.4, 32min, 7:14/mi) I didn't get out for a Saturday run that would have put me over 115mi for April. #FAIL. The flu struck our house and it seems that everyone but me got it at some point. Hmmm. I'm the only one that runs, the only one that doesn't get flu shots, and the only one that didn't get the flu. Coincidence? I only had about 45 minutes before dinner for my run so I threw on shorts and a shirt (it was in the low 60's today. Finally!) and ran a quick One Store Loop. I ran it CCW for a change. I kept the pace high almost the whole time and came in just under 32 minutes. According to my spreadsheet this is the fastest I've run the route by about 40 seconds. My Piriformis was still a little sore during the run which held me back some but I was able to push a good threshold pace the whole time. I sure does feel great to finish a run after pushing yourself hard and gasping for air.

Enough about your butt already!

2011-04-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

Monday 4/18 (6.5mi, 54min, 8:24/mi) I took it easy for a partial loop around the Bridle Trails (I run there a few times a week but never get tired of it), then down to Grass Lawn Park and back to work. Even though I took it easy my Piriformis was still agitated quite a bit afterward. Anyone getting tired of reading about my ass? I'm sure getting tired of writing about it. I'm looking for some good PT exercises for Piriformis issues. Know any?

Tuesday 4/19 (2.0mi, 17min, 8:40/mi) Just an easy 2 on the Treadmill before lifting weights to give the Piriformis a break.

Wednesday 4/20 (2.0mi, 16min, 7:50/mi) Another easy 2 on the Treadmill before lifting. See Tuesday.

Thursday 4/21 (6.0mi, 51min, 8:30/mi) Back out to the Bridle Trails. The running felt okay but the Piriformis was predictably pissed off. I think I found a stretch to help with it, I'll know more next week after trying it out this weekend.

Saturday 4/23 (9.2mi, 1h 20m, 8:41/mi) The boy needed a nap so I took him out in the jog stroller for a 7 mile loop around home. The tunnel trail had some big mud puddles that I had to lift and carry the stroller through the best I could. A good deal of mud was shared among all involved. Getting out of the house at 10am made for less traffic which meant running on roads with little or no shoulder was much easier. The boy slept for about 40 minutes and woke up half a mile from home. As soon as I got home I pulled him out of the stroller, handed him off to my wife as my daughter put her shoes and her new running skirt (to match my wife's) on. A minute rest and we left for a short run. We ran a two mile out-and-back route with several walking breaks. I'm happy running her pace, it's slow with several walking breaks but worth getting out on a run with her. I hope these runs continue and at some point a few years in the future that I'll get out to run with both kids at the same time and show them where the good running trails are.

Another sub-par week of running due to an annoyance (sub-injury? mild-injury?) that's holding me back from any kind of tempo running. I'm having good luck with the stretches I found for it and bought a new Foam Roller after my old one was starting to break down and sag. The new one was a bargain at $8. It's a 3' long piece of PVC pipe, the kind typically used for residential sewer lines. I bought it at the local hardware store and plan to glue a piece of Yoga mat around it for a little bit of comfort. It's rated at 3,000 lbs crush strength so it doesn't budge at all when I roll with it.

I'm sitting at 75mi for April with 6 days to go. I hope to get another 40 miles in to match my march total of 115mi. That'll be a stretch but possible if I can get a double in one of those days.

Pain in the ass... er... Piriformis

2011-04-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

Not a good week for running. After my last tempo run my right Piriformis muscle is still quite sore. Add to that the pain I get in my calves from running up on my forefoot in my minimalist Merrell Trail Gloves. I'm not training for any races right now and have been getting the bare minimum amount of sleep (kids are sick) that I can handle before I start to crumble so I've been slacking on my running. If I could knock those two things out I'd be golden. I've had a couple of chances to get a good run in at home lately but instead chose to take a 4 hour nap.

Monday 4/11 (5.9mi, 50min, 8:30/mi) I didn't have any training plan and my legs were feeling pretty good so I ran out to the Bridle trails at an easy pace but sought out all of the hills on the East side of the park and ran a hard tempo pace up each one. The longest was maybe 400m and I ran them hard enough that I was gasping for breath by the top. I jogged easy to recover on all of the non-uphill sections. Short hill sprints are supposed to be a really good training tool according to Running Times. They sure can hurt.

Tuesday 4/12 (2.3mi, 22min, 9:33/mi) My Piriformis and calves were really sore from my short hill sprint workout on Monday so I just went for an easy plod around the block to get some blood flowing in my legs. I debated skipping it entirely but I'm glad that I got a couple of miles in and spent the rest of my lunch hour stretching.

Wednesday 4/13 (2.0mi, 18min, 9:03/mi) I ran a slow warm-up jog at a 4.5% incline on the treadmill before I lifted weights.

Thursday 4/14 I went Curling at a work-sponsored event. It's nothing to do with exercise, but I just wanted to brag that I did it. Much more fun that it looks.

Friday 4/15 (7.5mi, 1h 1m, 8:08/mi) Still dealing with the annoyed Piriformis. My calves stopped complaining about their millions of micro-tears from all of the strain of the Trail Glove transition at least. I took it relatively easy, going down to Grass Lawn Park, up Old Redmond Rd, then ran a half loop of the Bridle Trails and back through the Corridor trail to work. It was a little longer than my usual lunchtime run but I needed a little more time away from my desk.

Saturday 4/16 Rather than going for a run I thought I'd give the bike trainer a try. I'd never ridden one other than getting fitted for a bike or having my VO2 tested. I'm borrowing a trainer from a cousin because I didn't know if I'd like it or be bored to death by it. So far I lean more toward liking it. With a DVD playing or watching something really good on TV, I can see how one could almost enjoy it. I rode for 45 minutes and did probably 5 or 6 hard 1min efforts in there to work up a nice sweat. It was a good workout on my legs as they've all but forgotten how to pedal a bike. It was the first time they've pedaled the thing since August 2009. Sad.

zero drop and a weekend race.

2011-04-12T22:48:00.000-07:00

Monday 4/4 (5.2mi, 35min, 6:48/mi) I just finished reading a book called Natural Running written by the guy that started the Newton Running shoe company. It goes over the benefits of running barefoot and with shoes that closely mimic barefoot running ("Natural running"). I didn't feel that there was that much information in the book that I hadn't already seen elsewhere but there were some good sections on transitioning to barefoot / natural running, barefoot running techniques / form, and exercises to help the transition. With this fresh in my mind I went for a run at lunch with my Merrell Trail Gloves (0 heel-toe drop and thin rubber soles) without socks. I'd been wanting to try the shoes sockless for a while to see if it was possible with my feet in those shoes. It worked out except for one small abrasion on the top of my right foot. The other thing I did on this run was focus on running up on my forefoot and working more on lifting my knees to begin each stride rather than pushing off with my back foot/leg. The two things I noticed the most were that 1) my heels weren't even touching the ground. I was running up on the balls of my feet, and 2) my pace was much faster than I thought it was based on my perceived exertion. I felt like I was running at about an 8:00 - 8:30 mile pace but my watch told me that I was running a little under a 7:00 pace. I was running at what felt like a conversational pace, when I should have been breathing very hard barely able to spit out a short sentence.
I stayed on the sidewalks and ran down to Grass Lawn Park. I ran a little over 2 miles around the track before returning to work. I wasn't trying to kill myself with a fast pace but the sub-7 miles came easy to me. I spent most of the run questioning the accuracy of my Garmin's numbers. So what's the catch? As I ran back to work my calves were starting to feel tight from running up on my forefoot the whole time and I figured that I'd be in for some soreness on Tuesday. I might have overdone it running so far up on my forefoot that my heels hardly touched the ground.

Tuesday 4/5 (3.2mi, 30min, 9:15/mi) My calves were on fire when I woke up Tuesday morning. I had definitely overdone it with Monday's run. I thought that with the amount of barefoot running I'd done that I would be okay but instead I was hobbled and had to carefully go up and down stairs with the gait of someone who'd just finished their first marathon. I'm sure my calf muscles were just full of micro-tears. That didn't stop me from getting out for a short easy run though. Hair of the dog and all that. I just ran around the block near work in a rectangle using the four nearest streets and took the pace easy, running some up on my forefoot and some on my mid-foot. I was a little bit limited by the calf pain but I thought that getting the blood flowing would help my eventual recovery. I'll have to keep working on the forefoot transition until my calves are strong enough to take the work. As I ran I experimented with my foot strike and felt just what a difference the forefoot strike made on my bad knee. That was a good reminder of my I'm doing all of this.

Thursday 4/7 (4.8mi, 36min, 7:38/mi) My calves were still sore but I figured that getting out for a few miles would soften them up. I wasn't in the mood to run slippery muddy trails with my aching calves so I ran out to Grass Lawn Park again. I ran a mile around the track while I was there and then ran out around the short trail system (gravel paths) that they've recently completed at the park. I ended up a bit short of 5 miles but that was okay because it gave me more time to stretch my legs back at the gym before showering and getting back to work.

Friday 4/8 (2.0mi, 17min, 8:36/mi) Another two mile warmup on the treadmill at the fancy gym before lifting weights at lunch. The more I'm running in the Trail Gloves, the more I want to run in them and feel the closeness to the trail/pavement/treadmill/whatever. I even enjoy wearing them to lift weights. I need to start looking for some shoes with a minimal sole like these for every day use.

Friday 4/8 (8.3mi, 1h 4m, 7:44/mi) I found time to get a run in after work and headed out to the Bridle Trails for a full loop in the Trail Gloves (what else, right?). I've been wearing them without socks lately and enjoying the feeling. I don't think I could go sockless for a big race but for an hour I've had no problems. The wide roomy toe-box on the shoes makes it that much easier to leave the socks at home. I did mostly a standard loop around the park. I started out at an easy pace and then once at the park I picked it up to the low 7:00/mi range for the next 3 or 4 miles. Instead of doing a complete outer loop I ran the reverse of the Bridle Trails loop from the middle of the park (the Horse stadium) which took me up a couple of short steep climbs and just sapped my energy. I was battling the ascent and the fatigue that my legs felt while my brain was telling my legs to keep going or pick up the pace. It was an interesting feeling when I didn't think I could go any harder but still trying to force it out of my legs anyway. I kept up the hard pace until I started to feel a sharp pain in my left calf. I backed off the pace about a minute per mile the rest of the run just to be cautious. I don't want to find out that it's easy to snap an Achilles Tendon with my new found love for natural running.

Saturday 4/9 (0.6mi, 7m 52s, 13:06/mi) Race day! I took my daughter to her second kids 1K race. Oddly this one used the exact same course as her first 1K race did last October despite a difference in race organizers. We lined up near the back of the pack and ran hand-in-hand down the dead straight out-and-back course. We passed quite a few kids and were passed by a few ourselves to come in about midway through the field. I was again impressed with my daughter that she A) was excited to run this race and B) beat the PR that she set at the last 1K race we ran. In the car on the way home she asked why she didn't win. I told her that it was because some of the kids were twice her age (she's 4). She said that she wanted to do a race that was all 4-year-olds so that she could win next time. As long as she has fun doing the races I'll keep taking her. It's a blast for me. I hope to be able to take both kids to races in a few years.

Just another week. Nothing to see here...

2011-04-06T05:43:00.000-07:00

Monday 3/28 (5.6mi, 48min, 8:34/mi) After short runs on Saturday and Sunday I just took an easy run out to the Bridle Trails. My Piriformis was a little sore from last week. I think the problem stems from me putting more stress on my good knee (the one with the intact Meniscus) and hamstring when I push off. I wish I could find someone in the greater Seattle area who is a runner and could help diagnose specific problems like this. The Googles have come up empty for me so far. I'll keep tinkering with my running form in the mean time.

Tuesday 3/29 (6.6mi, 55min, 8:30/mi) Same place as Monday but a different route. I took an easy to moderate paced run in the Bridle Trails and didn't feel that great. I was happy to get out for a run but the weather and my stomach haven't been very good lately.

Wednesday 3/30 (2mi, 16min, 8:16/mi) Just two easy miles on the treadmill at the gym before lifting weights.

Friday 4/1 (2mi, 16min, 8:06/mi) Another two miles on the treadmill before lifting weights. This time I set the treadmill to a 3% decline for fun.

Friday 4/1 (6.2mi, 44min, 7:09/mi) A rare 2-run day. After work I got out for a tempo run around my old work loop in the CCW direction. I pushed a hard pace from the start and was gasping for breath much of the last 5 miles. All of the rain lately made for slippery trails that slowed me down. I felt my Piriformis acting up and knew that I'd be paying for it over the weekend with some soreness. I also had a return of the Gingerbread Man mid-run which required a quick hike through the brambles to find some privacy. That's what I get for being lazy about restocking the Acidophilus after I ran out last week. Stupid flora and fauna in my gut!

With a sick family (everyone but me again) I never got out to run over the weekend. I had the chance on Sunday but chose a much needed nap instead of a run. I'm not training for anything right now so there's no strict schedules to follow.

Recovery, New Shoes, and Trail Maintenance

2011-03-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

After running Chuckanut last weekend my legs were really sore. I took a proper ice bath the evening after the race and even took the recommended serving of Udo's Oil to try to help recovery. My Quads had it the worst from all of the pounding descents. They weren't as fried as they were after running Mt. Si in January thankfully.

I took Sunday completely off but I was back out for a run on Monday. I'd bought another pair of shoes a few days before Chuckanut and had been itching to try them out. I didn't want to run in them before the race out of fear of messing up my feet somehow. I'd been waiting to get my hands on the shoes ever since reading a review about them on Jason Robillard's blog a few months ago. The shoe is the Merrell Trail Glove. It's my first real barefoot style shoe. My beloved MT101 is a transition shoe with it's ~10mm heel-to-forefoot drop whereas the Trail Glove is marketed as a "barefoot" shoe with a 0mm drop from heel to forefoot. The soles of the Trail Gloves are made by Vibram of hiking boot and more recently Five Fingers fame. The shoe itself is really light at 6.2oz compared to MT101's 7.6oz and most road running shoes heading north of 12oz. The Trail Glove doesn't have much cushioning under the soles which makes you think more about where you're planting your feet. With zero drop and no foam under your heels you have no choice but to run up on your forefoot in them. They're the next step in my transition from a heel striking to a mid-foot striking running style. With them being so different than any other shoes I've ever run in I was very wary of taking them out for a run pre-race.

Monday 3/21 (5.3mi, 49min, 9:15/mi) My legs were pretty beat up from the race so I put on the Trail Gloves and took it easy heading out toward the Bridle Trails. It was interesting getting a feel for the minimal soles of the Trail Gloves on the dirt and mud along the corridor trail. They have a nice roomy toe box but a very narrow heel. The fit was snug with no room for my foot to move around inside the shoe, largely due to the narrow heel and the the excellent lacing system that snugs the upper around your foot. Putting the word "glove" in the name wasn't just clever marketing. They do fit like a glove which allow me a great proprioceptive sense and feel for the ground below me. The only downside of this is stepping on the occasional sharp rock that I wouldn't notice in a bigger shoe. The feel of running in these shoes was more than worth the trade off.

The route for the run was mostly the same as other recent Bridle Trail runs. I was running around on the East side of the trails and hit some of the short steep technical downhills to practice my fast descending. After all of the descending at Chuckanut that just trashed my quads, I wanted to warm them up with some more fast footwork. By the end of the run my legs were feeling much better than when I started. It felt great to get the blood flowing.

Tuesday 3/22 (5.6mi, 42min, 7:42/mi) I had so much fun running in the Trail Gloves on Monday that I did it again on Tuesday. Someone's horrible sense of time running a meeting at work meant that I only had about 1:15 to change, run, shower, change, and eat lunch. I still ran the same route I'd planned (Bridle Trails) but ran it about 8 minutes faster. I started out at just over an 8min pace and then picked up the speed to see how it felt to run fast in the new shoes. My splits dropped to 8:12, 7:26, 6:56, and finally 6:43. Only being 3 days after a 50K race, this surprised me somewhat. I got a childlike sense of enjoyment pushing a fast pace around the soft dirt trails in the minimalist shoes. As cheesy as it sounds, I did feel more connected to the ground as I ran. The increased feedback on how I was planting my feet was great. The only drawback so far of running in these shoes is the strain that I put on my calves because I haven't been running enough barefoot miles over the winter to prepare for the change in stride and form.

Thursday 3/24 (6.2mi, 47:37, 7:44/mi) I chose lifting weights on Wed over running to give my legs a break. I have to remember that I'm still recovering from a race. (Maybe the ice bath and Udo's Oil really made a difference on Saturday). Thursday I decided to run my old Pro Club Loop. The route is mostly on sidewalk or asphalt so I went with the MT101 shoes for a little bit more cushioning and to give my calves a break. I started out easy and picked up the effort to a steady <7:30 pace for the second half of the route. I felt good but I could feel a little bit of tightness developing in my right Piriformis. So far tempo running in the MT101s seems to trigger the pain. I hope it's something I can find a way around through training or footwear.

Friday 3/25 (2.0mi, 18min, 9:00/mi) I ran two miles at an easy pace on the treadmill at the gym wearing the Trail Gloves. Just two miles to warm up and get the blood flowing before I lifted weights. I wanted to see how the shoes felt on a steady unchanging surface. They were pretty good and I liked how low the soles are but they didn't have as much feel as I thought they would. Now I wonder how it would feel to run barefoot on a treadmill. I should try it after work one day at the gym in my building.

Saturday 3/26 (3.5mi, 30min, 8:30/mi) I only had half an hour for a run so I ran out to the top of the tunnel trail and back It was a bit muddy up there and getting pretty overgrown. The Trail Gloves felt pretty good on the soft dirt.

Sunday 3/27 (3.5mi, 31:30, 9:00/mi) A rare two-run weekend for me. I didn't have time for a proper run so I grabbed a Cross Cut saw and some gardening clippers and ran out to the tunnel trail. I cut back all of the bush and branches that were overhanging the trail and in my way. I also moved a fallen tree that's been across the trail for the last two years. When it fell it landed between two pair of trees in such a way that it sat about 5 1/2 feet high across the trail. I've been ducking under it every time I run the trails and lately it's been slowly slipping lower. It was probably just under 5' high which meant that instead of slowing down and running under it, I had to stop and walk under it carefully. I sawed one end of the log off and the tension of the two trees that it was wedged between on the other side of the trail caused it to pivot to the side of the trail as if someone has swung it like a baseball bat. I had to be quick to get out of the way before it knocked me out of it's way. I did manage to bloody myself up pretty good with all of the thorny vines and whacking myself on the wrist with the saw once on accident.

Chuckanut 50K race report

2011-03-23T20:17:00.000-07:00

I drove up to Bellingham on Friday after work and checked into the Guest House Inn. I found the hotel online and the reviews weren't too bad. My needs were basic: somewhere to sleep that was close to the start and wasn't a dump. Other than loud kids in the hallway outside my room at 10:30pm it worked out nicely, especially at $60/night.

I set out my clothes and gear on Friday night and was in bed at 11pm. I slept with earplugs as I find they help me sleep more soundly. The consequence of the earplugs is that I worry that my alarm won't wake me up. I set four different alarms, three on my iPhone plus the hotel clock-radio. I made a mistake and set one of the iPhone alarms (as a calendar item) to go off at 3:40am instead of 5:40am. Oops. Luckily I got back to sleep pretty easily. When the next 3 alarms went off I got up, got dressed, ate a big bowl of cereal that I had brought and mixed up 2 flasks of Perpetuem slurry.

I packed up and drove the 3.5 miles south to Fairhaven Park. I found parking at a nearby school then walked over to pick up my race packet. With number in hand I had 45 minutes until the race started so I went back to the car to relax and finish getting ready. I put my race shoes on and filled my Nathan's bladder with a Heed/CarboPro/Nuun/S-Caps mixture. I walked back to Fairhaven Park for the start and had enough time to stretch for a minute before the horn sounded.

From the start in Fairhaven park the course heads South on the hard gravel paths of the Interurban trail. I started in the back of the pack so that I would be forced to keep a responsable pace for the first few miles. The runners around me were running about 9:30 - 10:00/mi pace so that's the pace I had to keep unless I wanted to start throwing elbows and push my way through the pack. The first few miles were on trails that I'd actually run once before on a trip to Bellingham in August of 2009. After 3 miles of gravel paths we got out onto a brief section of dirt trails along a creek. The field was starting to stretch out and the path wasn't so crowded through this section. I kept kept up with the runner in front of me and enjoyed the scenery. My plan was to hit the first aid station (6.1mi) in around an hour.

My timing was good as I hit the aid station in just over 59 minutes. I was all stocked up with food and drink so I didn't even break stride on my way through the station and on to a brief section of dirt trails going up the hillside and back down to the path that led us to the aid station. From there we departed the gravel and headed into the wooded Fragrance Lake trails. Almost immediately we started our first real climb and I took my first walking breaks going up the steepest sections. I burned myself out by the half-way point at Baker Lake last October so I wanted to take it easy on any tough uphill sections.

I was feeling pretty good and eating the Perpetuem slurry every 30 minutes. The trail was mostly uphill for the next two miles and then it was a series of rolling hills. We continued past Fragrance Lake and looked down on the Interurban trail that we'd run earlier. I came in to Aid station 2 (10.4mi) about 10 minutes under my 6hr pace estimate.

Again I didn't bother stopping for anything at the aid station. I was still feeling pretty good but beginning to feel the need to find a restroom. Luckily it wasn't urgent because there were no restrooms around and nowhere beside the trail that provided any privacy. The course headed South out of AS#2 and up Cleator rd. which is a fire road that climbs steadily for almost 3 miles. It's depressing to look up and see a long string of other people walking ahead of you. I mostly walked this section and took "run breaks" every few minutes to pick up the pace. My mile splits for these miles were in the 14 minute range. Near the top of Cleator rd I hit Aid station 3 (13.3mi) feeling good but my legs were starting to regret the climbing.

After Cleator I was pretty thirsty and the warming reservoir of Heed/CarboPro/Nuun on my back wasn't as tasty as it was a few hours before. I tried to chug a few cups of water at AS#3 but it was too cold to drink very fast. We turned off of Cleator rd. and headed down a dirt trail through a net-downhill section of the Chuckanut Ridge Trail. This part turned out to be very technical. Not much flat ground and plenty of narrow steep short descents that required full attention to keep from going out of control over the next 7 miles. There were also some fantastic views up along the ridge line of the surrounding valley and lakes to the East of the ridge. My training didn't prepare me nearly enough to keep a good pace over the technical trail with it's slippery rocks and rooted descents which required very precise foot placement and often a hand grabbing a nearby branch. I mis-judged one of the muddy off-camber sections on top of the ridge and took my only tumble of the day. Luckily I caught myself with my hands as I hit the deck. I was back up and running in a few seconds.

The up and down of the ridge really started to punish my quads. I was running the descents pretty well but the climbs slowed me to a walk. The weather was fantastic at the start, sunny skies and low-50s but up on the ridge trail it was windy and 10 degrees colder. By the time I hit AS#4 after 7 miles on the ridge trail my fingers were so cold that they were almost unusable. I'd only worn one pair of thin gloves and couldn't get my backpack open to refill the bladder inside. I had to ask one of the volunteers to help me. After he filled it I fumbled with the pack and managed to spill about 1/3 of it's contents trying to close it. The guy saw this and took pity topping it off again and closing it for me. This is the level of service that you're paying for at ultramarathons. Great volunteers. I had been good about eating every 30 minutes but I was getting tired of the taste of the Perpetuem. I had some soup and a few donut holes as I headed out of AS#4 a little behind on my 6 hour target pace.

Right out of the aid station was the toughest climb on the course, called "Chin Scraper." It wasn't just a cute name either. It was a little over a mile of narrow dirt trail that climbed almost 1,000 feet. My quads were starting to cramp in earnest from the pounding of the downhills which made Chin Scraper that much slower. I managed my worst mile split at this point, a 27:59 mile. The trail was steep enough that I almost needed to use my hands to help climb it. After reaching the top of the climb I was able to start jogging again on the now rolling hills. I arrived at the one on-course restroom at mile 23 but it was locked. I thought someone was using it but after a few minutes I knocked and never got an answer. Who closes a public restroom and why no port-o-potties!?

After a half mile of running through deep shoe-sucking mud, the course started down a 3 mile descent leading runners back to the Interurban trail to re-run the first 6 miles of the course in the opposite direction. I didn't think I could wait any longer for a bathroom so I started looking for a secluded spot along the side of the course where I could take care of business. After another half mile of looking I climbed down the side of the ridge and went behind a large tree. I'm not counting this as a Gingerbread Man. I looked for a bathroom over the previous 10 miles before punting.

After the pitstop I put on my iPod and started picking up the pace on the descent. The first song on my playlist was "Lose Yourself" by Eminem which has the perfect tempo for running. It's about 180 beats/min and easy to keep cadence with. I started feeling really good and at mile 24 had my best split of the day (8:34). My quads were still sore but I was able to ignore it for the most part during the descent.

After the trail flattened out I pulled into the final aid station (which had also been AS#1), chugged some flat soda and had a few bites of food before heading off for the flat final 6 miles. My legs were doing okay and I was holding about 9:00 - 9:30 miles. This included stopping to walk for a minute every mile and stretching my quads and IT bands. I knew that the chance for a sub-6 hour finish had passed by this point to I put it out of my mind and just tried to run as much as I could and enjoy the last hour of my race.

The last 6 miles went by faster than I remember them going by in the other direction earlier. Before I knew it I was almost back to Fairhaven park. It felt great to see the finish line and hear my name called as I crossed the timing mats.

Saturday was the 19th running of the Chuckanut 50K. It's usually a pretty competitive race but this year quite a few big names in the world of ultra running showed up. This lead to both the Mens and Womens course records falling. For the men it was 2009 & 2010 Ultrarunner of the year Geoff Roes, and for the women it was world 100K road champion Ellie Greenwood raising the bar. I kept with my middle-of-the-pack strategy and only saw the elite runners as I was eating my lunch at the post-race awards ceremony.

I stayed around for the awards to see who had won and to talk to some friends that I saw at the race. I thanked the Race Director Krissy Moehl for putting on such a great event and even found myself chatting with Udo Erasmus from Udo's Oil who were sponsoring the event and wound up giving out $1000 after both the course records fell. Talking to Udo was very interesting. He's very knowledgeable and can talk your ear off about oils and nutrition. He kept telling me to take more free samples. Nice guy.

I hit Dairy Queen and Starbucks for a treat and some caffeine before sitting down for the 3 hour drive home on sore legs. It was a great race but the logistics surrounding it (hotel, long drive, traffic, race selling out quickly) means that I probably won't be doing the race again soon. With so many 50K races held in the Pacific Northwest I want to try as many of them as I can. I didn't care so much for the 10 - 12 miles of gravel roads, but otherwise the course was very nice. I just wish that my training had gone better and I was able to get more hill running in before the race. Also, as I type this 4 days after the race I've had zero Piriformis pain. Nice!

The stats according to my Garmin:

Dist: 31.4mi
Time: 6:26:26
Avg: 12:33/mi
Alt: 11,827'

Just as an example of how bad my Garmin 305 is with altitude, it only registered ascent/descent data for the last 18 miles of the race (?) and came up with nearly 12,000'. I don't swing my arms very much when I run so I don't know where these numbers are coming from. If I had to guess I'd say the course had about 5,000' total climbing.

Gear: It was in the low 50s and sunny so I wore shorts, a Craft base layer, and a long sleeve shirt. I started with a wind jacket but took it off about 7 miles into the race. I should have left the jacket in the car. I wore a thin pair of gloves but I needed two. I don't know why my hands get cold on long runs but I keep forgetting that it happens. I wore my Nathans 2L hydration backpack and filled it with food and my phone/keys. I ran in a new pair of New Balance MT101 shoes and loved them (as well as my Dry Max trail socks). I had a little bit of soreness under the ball of my left foot for a few hours after the race but otherwise my feet were happy and blister free.

Lessons for next time:

Consistency in training
More hilly trail runs (Mt. Si)
Wear less clothes but pack extra gloves
Keep working on my fueling strategy.

A forced taper for Chuckanut

2011-03-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

Last week felt pretty good. I hit all of my runs and had a solid 16 miles Sunday on the trails with a good bit of climbing. This week was not quite as fruitful.

Monday: (6.1mi, 56:30, 9:15/min) I just wanted to get out for a recovery run after Sunday's miles. I gave the Cascadia 6's another try rather than the new MT101s, mainly because the trails were muddy after the rain last weekend. I took it easy and even avoided the hills in the Bridle Trails for the most part. My Piriformis felt better than I thought it would after Sunday's run. It was a good start to my taper period for Chuckanut.

Unfortunately I started getting sick on Tuesday. I went to the gym for some light cardio and to lift weights. I felt okay but I knew that a cold was coming on. I could feel it starting to tickle my throat Tuesday morning and by Tuesday night I was coughing and stuffy. I didn't run the rest of the week and I'm using the cold as an excuse to rest, take naps where I can, stay hydrated, and not over-eat. I think I can be over it by the time I line up in Bellingham next Saturday morning. As long as I'm not feeling much worse than I am today I should be able to get through the race before the time cutoffs with enough Sudafed. It's incredibly annoying to get another cold, I'm not sure if the kids are bringing it home from school or if the cleaning people at work are licking my keyboard at night.

I don't expect to get any running in next week but if I kick the cold soon I'll give it a try. Other than that I'll be driving up to Bellingham on Friday after work and facebooking / twittering my results when they're in.

I think realistic goals for the race based on my less-than-stellar training buildup are:

A: 5:59:59
B: 6:29:59
C: Finishing

I can't see doing much better than 6 hours based on the course and my health and training. I'm going to stick with Perpetuem slurry and Heed / CarboPro as my main fuel with a gel here and there if I need more than that. My stomach has been handling the Perpetuem really well lately. Also, now that I'm taking probiotics every night I haven't had the Gingerbread Man problem at all. Look for a write-up next week after the race.

The one about getting a new pair of shoes and really liking them.

2011-03-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

Monday 2/28 (5mi, 46min, 9:12/mi) After a long run on Sunday my legs were a little sore and my right Piriformis muscle was hurting. I wanted to get an easy recovery run in but I wasn't up for running in the cold and rain so I plodded away on the hamster wheel for an easy 5 miles. I was a little out of breath running just over a 9:00/mi pace due to Sunday's long run. It was good to shake my legs out a bit.

Wednesday 3/2 (6.3mi, 56min, 8:57/mi) After cross training on Tuesday I ran out to the Bridle Trails and looped around the interior. The weather warmed up a little on Wednesday but while I was running in the middle of the forest it started raining pretty hard and then turned into hard hail. My Piriformis was feeling a little better after all of the stretching I've been doing for it. I took the Cascadia 6 shoes out for another run and they felt better this time than the last few runs I've had in them. Maybe they needed to break in a bit.

Thursday 3/3 (2.0mi, 19min, 9:30/mi) I warmed up on the treadmill before lifting weights. I set it to a 10% incline and ran two slow miles uphill. It was pretty tough to keep the pace at that incline and it ended up being quite a good warm-up. Prirformis was still a little sore.

Friday: 3/4 (7.6mi, 55min, 7:18/mi) I got a new pair of New Balance MT101s (green this time) because my first (black) pair are starting to wear out already. I ran with the new ones for the first time Friday on a loop through Redmond. It was about half on sidewalk and half trails. I feel that the MT101 works really well on both surfaces while not being an expert on either. I ran down to Grass Lawn park, then up the Old Redmond Road hill. I noticed that I was keeping a pretty good pace in the low 7's even heading up the hill. It's been a while since I've run any kind of tempo (the run out to Target on 2/16) and my legs felt good at a faster pace so I tried to keep it up. I pushed it going up the hill and over the top out to the cut-over trail that took me out to the power line trail that bisects the Bridle Trails. I wasn't gutting myself with the pace, it felt sustainable for maybe an hour to 90 minutes at most. The trails weren't too muddy so there were only a few spots where I had to run along the extreme edge of the path to get around puddles. I stuck to the inner trails again and came out by the corridor trail. I kept the pace up and tried to ignore my complaining Piriformis over the last mile and a half before I got back to work. My splits were all between 6:50 - 7:24 with an outlying 7:54 through the toughest part of the Bridal Trails. It was a great run with temps in the high 40s and no rain, fantastic conditions for this time of year. I love those MT101 shoes.

Sunday: 3/6 (15.9mi, 2h 25m, 9:09/mi) This was my last chance to do a long run to prepare for Chuckanut. After running 21 and 24.5 miles the last two Sundays I decided to run a med-long trail run to see what kind of pace I might be able to deliver on race day. I drove out to Pt. Defiance park so that my entire run could be on the trails. I'd run here once before almost a year ago but I was following a friend who knew the trails pretty well. I didn't pay attention at the time of how the trails were laid out. I was prepared this time with a great color map that I found online and enlarged, re-oriented in Photoshop and printed out just the way I wanted. Yeah, I left that on the printer at home. The other thing that I forgot that ended up being important was two band aids for my pinkie toes. I sure love the New Balance MT101 shoes but the toe box is too narrow for me and will rub my pinkie toes raw if I don't tape them up in these shoes. It took about 2 miles for the pain in my right pinkie toe to start. After the run it was pretty badly abraded.

I headed out from the car and quickly found some trails that I remember walking in the past and followed them to see where they could take me. I saw that there were signs at most of the trail heads that had either a circle, triangle, or square on them. I recalled from the map sitting at home on the printer, that the trails marked with a square were the outermost loop. I picked square whenever I had the chance and found my way around some really nice slightly muddy trails but many times when the trail would cross a road there would be no indication of where it picked up on the other side. Sometimes they'd lead you into an open grassy area that you had to cross before searching for the connecting trail marker to continue on. I ran somewhat of a loop but didn't want to be so rigid with my route so I just started turning onto other side trails where the path looked good or went uphill. After about 90 minutes I started to recognize the trails that I'd already run on and was getting a feel for where I was in the park. The good thing about running at Pt. Defiance is that it's a "Point" (triangle shaped) and 2/3 of it is against the water. Almost all of the roads are one-way going in a CCW direction. This makes it really easy to find your bearings when you need to.

I felt pretty good during the run other than my pinie toe. I kept on top of hydration and food. I made my Perpetuem slurry again but used coffee instead of water to mix it. The coffee didn't provide as much flavor as I'd hoped. I thought I'd get a really strong coffee taste, but I mostly tasted the Espresso Hammer Gel I added. Between the Slurry and a pack Clif Bloks I kept well fed and my energy never dipped according to my mile splits. The link below goes to an animated image showing the path I took today. I was all over the place. It was a great run and I feel much more confident about Chuckanut than I did a month ago when I was just coming back after being sick.

pt defiance run

Notes: I forgot to turn my watch back on somewhere in mile 3, hence the one mile jump. I went back to the car at mile 10 for my gloves. My fingers were really cold.

In other news, February was a sub-par month for mileage. I missed the first 8 days of the month ill. I managed a little over 100 miles due mainly to the 21 and 24 mile long runs the last two weekends. It's been really cold and rainy here so I only managed a staggering two miles barefoot (well, in my socks).

February numbers:
Miles: 113.7
YTD (as of 2/28): 247.1
Barefoot miles: 2
Runs: 14
Total time: 17h 12m
Avg/run: 8.12
Avg pace: 9:05/mi

Now that's progress!

2011-02-28T17:25:00.000-08:00

Monday 2/21 (5.1mi, 47min, 9:15/mi) After 20 miles on Sunday I wanted to just put some easy miles in and circulate the blood in my legs. I ran down to Grass Lawn Park at lunch on a surprisingly sunny but very cold day to run around the track barefoot. I got there and remembered how cold I was last time I tried running barefoot so I left my DryMax socks on and ran in those. They're great minimalist footwear and were just warm enough. I ran 2 miles on the track and then headed back to work with my shoes on. It was a pretty slow run but with my aggressive long run schedule leading up to Chuckanut I'm treating almost all of my other runs as easy recovery so that my legs will be ready for the next weekend's long outing.

Wednesday 2/23 (6.6mi, 1h 4m, 9:44/mi) With a big snow storm in Western Washington I worked from home on Wed, Thu, and Fri. I made a point of treating them like normal work days and set an alarm to go run at lunch time. On Wednesday the snow was really dumping just before noon so I hurried to get dressed and got out for a run in the snow. It's rare that we get a good bit of snowfall in the area so I just had to get out and run in it. It was great running with big fluffy flakes falling (I grew up in San Diego where they don't have snow so this is novel to me) but hard to see when they were hitting my eyes. I should have worn glasses. It's also neat how the snow dampens the noises you normally hear and makes everything quieter. The hard snowfall only lasted about 20 minutes. I ran up the tunnel trail and out to Kopachuck State Park where I ran down to the main parking lot and then down the path to the beach. I stopped on the way down and ran on a few short hiking trails that were really hilly and muddy but eventually looped back to the path I was just on or to the parking lot. Some of the trails were muddy and technical enough to make them un-runnable. After playing at Kopachuck I headed back the way I came but took the long way around past the Arletta store instead of going back down the trail. Easy peasey.

Friday 2/25 (5.6mi, 51min, 9:08/mi) Again working from home I set a workout alarm for lunchtime. There wasn't any snow falling but the ground was covered from another couple of inches of snow that fell Thursday night. The roads were somewhat clear but very icy in spots. I tried to run on the shoulders and trails. I stuck to my normal 40 - 50 min time allowance that I do at work so I just ran up to the corner by Kopachuck and back the long way. Running *in* snow is much more fun than running *on* snow.

Sunday 2/27 (24.5mi, 3h 34m, 9:07/mi) For the second Sunday in a row I had a long progression run scheduled. No distance goal, only to be on my feet for 3.5 hrs or more. I didn't feel very good the last hour of my long run last Sunday so I didn't have big hopes for this weekend. On top of that the rest of the family is still sick and I swear the boy tries to cough in my mouth every time I'm holding him. Somehow I'm avoiding getting the cold.

Before I set out to run I did some active warmup exercises (leg swings, hip/trunk twists, lunges, and rolled my legs with "The Stick") Then set out in light rain and sub-40F temps. For the first time in a while I got the clothing choices exactly right. Nothing was cold or overheated. I barely thought about what I was wearing other than unzipping my jacket 1/2 way and back up a few times when running into the wind. I also got my nutrition right for a change. I went with my 2L Nathans bladder and put 4.5 scoops of HEED and 1 scoop of CarboPro in it for ~600 calories. On top of that I had a flask with 500 calories worth of my Perpetuem slurry mix in it. I accidentally made the slurry a little thinner than I usually do by adding some of the left over coffee from the morning after adding water to it. It didn't taste quite as good as usual but making it thinner made it much easier to eat.

I ran a big loop around the West side of Gig Harbor, starting by going past the Fox Island Bridge, heading out to the trails off of 70th ave for six 1KM laps to add a few miles to my day. I really like these trails. They were still snowy from the storm but not slippery at all. It's a great place to run, I just wish it was much longer. From there I headed down to Cromwell along the water where there was no shelter from the strong off-shore wind. I was lucky though as it was only a headwind when I was running down the big hill to get to the shore. I ran up the East side of Cromwell and down Wollochet up to Skansie ave and then 54th / Bujajich. This took me past the women's prison and the McCormick park trails that I ran last weekend. I stayed out of those trails and headed over to Sehmel park to run the trails through the park and down 86th ave where I stopped at the Shell station. I thought I was about out of water and bought another liter when it turned out that I still had enough left to get me home. From there I ran to past the Island View store and down Ray Nash drive and up to the Tunnel Trail, down it and back home. I had a couple of 10min miles but the rest were mostly sub-9's. I was feeling much better than last week's long run thankfully. It gives me great confidence going into Chuckanut in 3 weeks. I could have gone farther on today's legs.

I also decided to try a few new things for recovery after my run. I had a couple of TBSPs of Udo's Oil to see if the claims that Scott Jurek, Devon Crosby Helms, and Geoff Roes make about the product hold true for me in the least. I also had my first ice bath. I stayed in for 10 min at 51F. After googling, the interwebs recommended 10c - 12c (54F - 60F) but the cold water that comes out of the faucet was only 50F so I went with that. I added ice but not enough to affect the temperature. I barely lasted 10 minutes and I think that it helped my recovery other than the horrible Hamstring/Glute pain I'm still getting.

Finally a proper week of training -- and an Owl!

2011-02-21T07:11:00.000-08:00

Monday 2/14 (5.9mi, 54min, 9:30/mi) My legs were a little tight after Sunday's 12 miles. I've been getting a bit of tightness where my right hamstring meets the Glute muscle lately. I wanted to get out for an easy run to loosen up my legs. Despite the rain over the weekend as well as most of Monday I gave the Bridle Trails a shot. I wore my Vasque Transistor shoes which are getting old enough that I don't care about getting them dirty any more. I started out trying to avoid the puddles on the trails, working hard to hop from side to side or sneak by on a sliver of dirt to get around them. After about a mile of this I just gave up and started plowing through the middle of the trail, mud and water be damned. It actually took a few good puddles before I even felt my feet get wet through my Drymax socks. Again I followed the small interior trails that I seldom run rather than the familiar exterior loop. By the time I finished my route through the Bridle Trails and back through the muddy wet corridor trail I was pretty well covered in mud and dirt from toes to knees. It took a bit of work to wash it all off in the shower back at the gym. It was actually quite fun to play in the mud and puddles as I ran. My knee didn't hurt particularly but didn't feel good either. Glad I got out for a run.

Wednesday 2/16 (6.0mi, 40:42, 6:47/mi) I had tempo on the schedule and hadn't pushed a fast pace since before I was sick at the end of January. I also needed to pick up a new combination lock to use at the gym lockers at work. It turns out that the Master (tm) combination locks that I remember from my high school days are crap now as mine barely works after a few months of sporadic use. I planned to run out to Target in Redmond and see what Tempo I could hold on the trip. The way out has a big descent along the bike path that parallels Hwy 520. I managed to pull 6:05 and 5:50 my first two miles, largely due to the hill and my NB MT101s. At the bottom of the hill I ran along the Sammamish River trail out behind Redmond Town Center and under 520 to Target. It's almost exactly 3.0 miles each way. I pulled up to Target in 18:30, quite a bit faster than I thought I'd be. After buying a different type of lock I started on the trip back. I did okay getting out to the trail but I was starting to struggle keeping the pace under 6:30/mi. It definitely wasn't comfortable but I didn't want to back off. I had some luck with the two stoplights I had to go through, catching them after only a short wait. I was hoping for more of a break to catch my breath though. Running back up the 1+ mile hill was pretty tough. I was just gutted trying to keep any kind of pace heading up that hill. When I was half way up I was greeted by a strong headwind to further work against me if the gradient wasn't enough. I pushed the best I could and then recovered pretty quickly to sub-6:30 pace once I was back on the flat streets near work. I'm surprised to see 40:42, especially considering the hills. It makes me hopeful that there's a fast 10K in my legs later this year if I can find a flat course. Later in the day my legs were really sore from the tempo, but I'd say it was worth it.

Thursday 2/17 (2.0mi, 18.5min, 9:13/mi) My legs were very tight after Wednesday's tempo run so I just wanted to get on a treadmill and run a couple of slow miles to stretch out my legs. My right Glute/Hamstring was still really tight. The tightness is pretty deep in there and hard to work out with the stick or the foam roller. I've tried using tennis balls but it doesn't quite work the knot out. Speed work seems to bring it out more than other things so I'll probably tone down the speed work for the rest of my training for Chuckanut. After the treadmill I lifted weights for about 30 minutes. I've started spending 2 days a week lifting to give my knee a little break as the mileage ramps up.

Friday 2/18 (3.0mi, 27min, 9:00/mi) I had plans to do a longer run after work so I just ran 3 easy miles at lunch before some more weight lifting. It really helped shake my legs out as I was still feeling some Hamstring/Glute tightness from Wednesday's tempo run.

Friday 2/18 (8.9mi, 1h 18m, 8:47/mi) Just after dark I got out to run at the Bridle Trails. I'd just put new batteries in both my headlight and my small flashlight and wanted to see what kind of improvement that made. The ground wasn't too muddy and wearing my beat up Cascadia 5's, I didn't care enough to avoid the mud. I tried to keep the pace pretty easy on the way out to the Bridle Trails and ran a little bit more around the interior trails instead of taking the perimeter trails that I knew would be in the worst shape. About 5 minutes into my run in the middle of the woods I saw something swoop over me just at the edge of the beam cast by my headlight. It startled me enough to bring a four letter exclamation out. I looked up in time to see a large bird fly over my head and perch in a tree just ahead of me. I looked up with my light and saw a good sized owl watching me. I continued running and the owl swooped over me twice more. I decided that I didn't want the owl to keep following me so I stopped and walked over to the tree where it was perched about 12' up and squirted it twice with my water bottle. It flew off and I took off running at a little faster pace. I didn't know if it was attracted to my lights or using them to hunt but I know that owls have some pretty serious claws that I could just picture digging into my shoulder when I wasn't looking. Luckily the trail ahead had much more tree cover and that was the last I saw of the owl. The rest of the run was pretty easy but my fitness isn't great after being sick and it was a pretty tough haul. Running at night in a muddy forest requires extra effort and concentration to process the little bit of the trail that you can see and then plan your path through it. One odd thing did happen though, I got turned around in the middle somehow and made two wrong turns in a row. I was lost for a few minutes knowing that I wasn't where I wanted to be. Once I recognized a sign at a trail junction I got back on track but it added a little over a mile to my run. I was over my planned time, running a little bit late by the time I got out of the Bridle Trails so I picked up the pace and got back to work to shower and get on the road back home.

Sunday 2/20 (20.0mi, 3h 05m, 9:17mi) After missing my last two long runs I decided that if I can get a long run in the next three weekends I'll still be okay to run Chuckanut. If I hurt myself or it's too hard, I'll just go and volunteer on race day. Today was my first of the three consecutive long runs. My only plan was to be on my feet for 3 hours (the next two weeks are 3.5 and 4.0 hours). I headed out the way I normally do and went up the Tunnel trail (muddy) and out past Kopachuck. Down the hill and around past the Island View market. I headed out to Sehmel park as I'd heard from the local running store (Route 16 Running) that there were some trails to run there. I happened to find a quick way into the trail about a half mile from the park. I didn't know where the trails went exactly but I tried to head toward the general direction of the park. I was pretty impressed with the trails and they lead me right to the park. I cut through the park and picked up the trail on the other side. I turned East onto Sehmel Dr. and went up the steep hill. At the top I kept on for less than a mile and then turned off onto Bujacich dr. where I found the entrance to my final goal, McCormick Forest Park. I'd run by it on previous long runs but never ventured in to check it out. I regret not looking previously. The trails are hilly, wooded, clean and groomed. In other words: Great! I didn't know the layout of the trails but it was incredibly easy to find the perimeter trails as most of the major trail heads had small laminated maps next to the trail markers. The trails actually reminded me of the little bit of the Interurban trail that I ran on two summers ago up in Bellingham, which happens to be part of the Chuckanut course. I think I need to spend some time on these trails. It was about a 1.5 - 1.75 mile loop around the perimeter with a good bit of climbing and descending. Half of the loop was flat and the other half had no flat sections at all. I'd say that they are the best trails I've found in the area so far. I had time for two laps before I had to head back home to make my 3 hours. By the two hour point in the run I was feeling pretty beat up and my pace was slowing. I was a little confused trying to find the Northern entrance to the Sehmel park trails and then took a different route through the park trails which resulted in two dead ends that I had to backtrack. Once I got back onto the roads with about 6 miles to go my legs were really starting to complain. My form was getting sloppy and I could feel my Hamstrings tightening up. I tried to just ignore the pain and focus on the music which worked for a little bit. I had to stop and walk for a minute up the hill heading toward the tunnel trail. I felt a little better after getting to the bottom of the trail and for the last mile but overall it was a pretty brutal long run due to the shape I'm in right now. I was just glad to get through it.

For nutrition, I drank Heed & Nuun in my Nathan's bladder and it lasted until I had a mile to go. I also was eating my Perpetuem / Hammer Gel slurry mix every half hour. On top of that I tried out some Gu Chomps for the first time today. They're just big flavored sugar gel blocks but they're 33 cal/block and they tasted pretty good. I need to look at what kind of sugar they use and if it's not HFCS, buy some more. I didn't have any stomach troubles on the run, or the entire week for that matter. Maybe the Acidophilus I started taking recently is helping.

House full of sick and a sparse week of training

2011-02-14T17:20:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 2/9 (3.0mi, 26min, 8:40/mi) I've been quite sick lately. Sick enough to take 4 days off work with a horrible chest cold. Both of my kids had pneumonia so I'm glad that my illness wasn't worse. I don't like taking sick days, especially when everyone else in the house is sick. I especially don't like being too sick to run for 8 days straight! On Wednesday I still had a bit of a cough and some nastiness in my chest but I felt good enough to work out so I hit the gym at work for some cardio and weights. At the end I threw in a slow 3 miles on the treadmill. I tried to numb the boredom by practicing running up on my toes. It didn't feel as hard as I remember the last few times I've tried to focus on it. Maybe I can continue the transition to forefoot running.

Thursday 2/10 (6.0mi, 54min, 9:00/mi) I forgot the Garmin so I'm guessing on the numbers. I ran over to the Bridle Trails at an easy pace. I still had crud in my lungs so it was a challenge just to get through the run. My knee bothered me almost the whole run. The knee pain scares me that I've re-torn my Meniscus or something. I'm hoping that it's just due to the new Brooks Cascadia 6 shoes that I've been running in lately. I really want to like the shoes but I have had knee pain every time I've run in them so far. Good easy run other than the knee thing.

Sunday 2/13 (12.1mi, 1h 53m, 9:24/mi) It was a busy weekend so I didn't have time for a proper long run. With my lack of running lately (<10 miles/week the last 2 weeks) I'm not quite in shape for the scheduled 20 miles either. I was able to get out for a 12mi run around Gig Harbor though. I was worried about how my knees would take it so I ran with the Garmin but set the screen to the menu rather than the data so that I wouldn't be constantly checking my pace/time/distance. I also ran in my favorite shoes, the New Balance MT101s. They're so low profile that they feel easier to run mid/forefoot in. They're far from a zero-drop shoe but they're much smaller and lighter than the Cascadias. I didn't have any knee pain on the run which was hopeful, I kept waiting for it to creep in but it never did. My knee felt tired rather than sore. The long dynamic stretching routine I did before the run probably helped quite a bit. I've been watching some videos on pre and post run routines from the Running Times podcast series for ideas.

One other nice thing about the run on Sunday was that I finally explored the trails at the corner of 70th and Warren dr. I'd run by them many times but never ventured in. Turns out that it's a nice 1KM outer loop with several trails crossing in the middle. The trails are very narrow with high bushes and many sharp turns which caught me a little bit by surprise at times. There was a little bit of climbing on each loop and I was the only one there. They aren't really wide enough for two people to pass each other. Great little find, I'm glad that I finally checked them out.

So I'm 5 weeks out from Chuckanut with very few miles in my legs. I'm going to try to ramp up with three long runs on successive weekends then an easy weekend, then the race. If I have more knee pain or my body can't take the steep increase in mileage I'll have to give up running Chuckanut and go volunteer instead. I'm very hopeful after yesterday's run but I'd still give myself about a 50:50 shot of starting the race.

Pass the lemons

2011-02-05T20:38:00.000-08:00

Monday 1/24 (7.4mi, 1h 02m, 8:25/mi) I went for a recovery run in the rain after Sunday's longish run. I looped around on trails less traveled in the Bridle Trails and got a little bit lost. I ended up running about a mile and a half longer than I'd planned. Felt pretty good with a little residual knee pain.

Wednesday 1/26 (6.5mi, 51min, 7:51/mi) Easy enough start from the gym and out again to the Bridle Trails to test out my new Brooks Cascadia 6 shoes. They weren't scheduled to hit the stores until February but I got a tweet from @brooksrunning that they were available on their website last week so I snapped up a pair. Too early to give my thoughts on them so I'll just throw some muddy winter trail conditions at them instead. My stomach was horrible on the run and I had to stop twice mid-run to umm... rest briefly. Ugh. I hate my guts right now.

Friday 1/28 (8.2mi, 1h 16m, 9:16/mi) I got out for a night run on the Bridle Trails to see how the new Cascadias performed on muddy trails in the dark. It was a little darker than my usual night runs as my small LED flashlight kept blinking off and my headlamp's batteries appear to be dying. Good thing I've run the trails enough that I know the perimeter loop pretty well by now. There was a little rain but I was dressed just enough to be very comfortable.

I missed my planned 18mi long run over the weekend. I finally gave in to the cold that the kids and wife have. I figured I was in trouble when the boy coughed in my mouth twice Wednesday night. It's started out pretty mild but enough that napping was a much better idea than running on Saturday and Sunday.

Monday 1/31 (6.4mi, 49min, 7:45/mi) I was feeling a tiny bit sick but not bad enough to skip the run. I ran out to the Bridle Trails starting slow and then picking up the pace as I got around. Again I tried to run on some of the interior trails that I seldom use to shake things up and enjoy different scenery. I also went with the Cascadias again to see if I can get a good feel for them before Chuckanut in March. It'll be between them and the New Balance 101s for that race.

After running on Monday I finished January out with:

133.4mi
19h 49m
Avg Pace: 8:55/mi

My cold got much worse and the family and I are all very sick now. I called in sick to work 3 days last week and have barely left the house since then much less gotten out for a run. I hope to resume with some easy jogging on Monday and somehow rearrange my training for Chuckanut to still get my long runs up over 27mi and fit in a few runs in the real mountains in Feb and early March. After seeing how much fitness I've lost I'll rework my goals for Chuckanut. In my current state, just finishing sounds great to me.

Keep the updates coming

2011-01-26T17:18:00.000-08:00

Tue 1/18 (10.0mi, 1h 13m, 7:18/mi) I couldn't get out at lunch for a run so I ran after work in the dark. I ran down the long hill along Hwy 520 to the Sammamish River Trail, a nice path that I'd run a tiny bit of a few times in the past. I didn't realize how far North it went. I could run all the way up to the North side of Lake Washington and meet up with the Burke Gilman Trail if I needed to. The trail was pretty dark and I didn't have a lot of time so I ran out 5 miles and then turned around. It was ~35F during the run which is pretty cold without gloves. The trail was pretty flat. I ran an easier pace on the "out" portion and then picked up the pace on the way back. I held a couple of <7:00 miles on the way back but had the long hill to climb near 520 just before the finish. I ran a negative split by just over 2 minutes (37:37 vs. 35:30). My knee was a little tight after the run which is worrying.

Wed 1/19 (5.4mi, 47min, 8:46/mi) Just an easy run out to the Bridle Trails to run through the mud. My knee and Hamstring/Glute were tight but manageable. I've noticed more lately that I'm getting soreness deep in my right leg where my Hamstring meets my Glute. I foam roll, I use The Stick, and even this odd "S" shaped thing with wooden balls on the end to really dig around in the muscles but it still acts up after harder runs (Tempo on Tuesday). I'm not sure what exactly is sore in there or how to better work it out. I'll have to do some of that Interwebs research that bloggers are so famous for.

Thu 1/20 (2.0mi, 17min, 8:30/mi) I did some cross training at the gym (weights and Elliptical) and threw a couple of token miles on the Treadmill in to try to shake some soreness out of my legs. Knee still not feeling great.

Sat 1/22 (4.4mi, 35min, 7:59/mi) I got an unexpected pass to get out for a run after watching the (sick) kids and wife all day Fri and Sat. I planned on running a good hill workout on Sunday so I took it easy on the standard "One Store Loop" from home right at sunset. Good run, nothing fancy. Held back to save some energy for Sunday.

Sun 1/23 (14.0mi, 1h 49m, 7:49/mi) I had a "Short Hills" workout on my training schedule but decided that I'd rather run long hills. I ran out to the bottom of 40th ave which is just over a mile long and gains around 300 feet. I ran up the hill 4 times, jogging back down for recovery. My splits got faster as I went up: (8:11, 8:05, 7:38, 7:45) and down: (7:25, 7:11, 7:09, 7:19)... except for that last one. I was really surprised that I was able to keep the pace under 8:00 for the last two climbs up the hill. I was ahead of schedule so I diverted on the way back up and around toward Kopachuck and down the Tunnel Trail and home that way for a couple of bonus miles. The knee still complained a bit but not enough to stop me. I need to work on my fueling as I train for Chuckanut. I'm thinking about trying the Fructose / Glucose mixture that Cycling endurance stud Chris is using with success and having my Perpetuem slurry as a backup. I need to find a place to buy Fructose and Glucose in bulk.

Guest runners this week

2011-01-19T17:45:00.000-08:00

Monday 1/10 (6.25mi, 49min, 7:53/mi) I felt pretty good after the race on Saturday and taking Sunday off so I ran hill repeats at lunch. I ran down the steep 51st ave hill, back up it, then down the bike path that borders Hwy 520 and back up it 1.5 times. The 51st ave hill was about 0.8mi and the 520 path was 1.2mi. It worked out to about 2.6mi of uphill running at probably 9:00/mi pace going up. I would have liked to do another full run up the 520 hill but I just didn't have the time at lunch.

Tuesday 1/11 (3.0mi, 23min, 7:41/mi) I was planning on cross-training at the gym and didn't have enough cold-weather clothes to run outside anyway so I used the treadmill. I started out slow at maybe an 8:30/mi pace and kept steadily increasing the pace every quarter mile until I was running the last quarter at 5:40/mi pace. Boy I detest the treadmill.

Thursday 1/13 (6.0mi, 1h 8m, 11:20/mi) I had family in town for half the week so I took the opportunity to go for a run with my sister, a rare treat. She's training for a half marathon and had a 6 mile run on the schedule. We got out a little bit before dark with me pushing the boy in the BOB (a gift from my sister years ago). We kept a conversational pace for the most part and the boy even fell asleep for a quick nap as I showed her where I do my weekend running around the neighborhood. As we were coming up to my street which is a mild uphill, she called out "Race you home" and took off. I pushed the pace the best I could but just couldn't catch her by the time we got to the mailbox. She rightfully claimed a win and added insult to injury by handing 2nd place to my son as his stroller technically was in front of me at the finish. That meant I was 3rd out of 3 finishers - ouch. Also, she reads this blog and knew not to apologize for "slowing me down" during our run. She's a smart one.

Saturday 1/15 (8.4mi, 1h 22m, 9:45/mi) My brother-in-law wanted to get out for a run so who was I to argue. We started out running the same out-and-back route that I ran with my sister on Thursday but he said that he could go further, so we did. I turned it into a loop and hit another couple of hills as we went around past Kopachuck State Park and back to the Arletta store running roughly a figure-8. It may have been a little hillier and longer than he wanted to run but he ran pretty strong the whole time. It was great to have new people to run with and family no less! In talking to him I found out that he runs at the Umstead trails near their house in North Carolina. I look forward to running those trails with him next time I'm out there visiting.

Sunday 1/16 (4.4mi, 35min, 7:58/mi) I had a wedding to go to in the afternoon and a small window to run opened up for me if I took the boy with me, so I loaded up the BOB and ran the One Store Loop as fast as I could. I managed 35:05 which is pretty good pushing the stroller considering how slow the Tunnel Trail is with the BOB. I have to lift it over the mud/log puddle as well as a few fallen trees that I need to get in there and clear out some time soon.

A good start to the new year and my first race of 2011

2011-01-13T21:32:00.001-08:00

Monday 01/03 (7.75mi, 1:09, 8:57/mi) I ran around the Bridle Trails loop from work. It was pretty cold and the ground was crunchy and not too wet and muddy. There were 4 or 5 downed trees across the trail. I hope they clear them up for the Bridle Trails run coming up on Saturday. Felt pretty tired today. My legs felt like I ran up and down a mountain or something.

Tuesday 1/4 (2.0mi, 18min, 9:00/mi) My quads felt absolutely wrecked so I just ran a slow 2 miles on the treadmill at work to try to loosen them up and then used the elliptical machine and lifted weights for some solid cross training.

Wednesday 1/5 (5.5mi, 45min, 8:16/mi) Quads are still just on fire. They're too sore to even roll them out with "The Stick" or the foam roller. What the heck? I ran the Redmond Streets loop and took it pretty easy.

Thursday 1/6 (5.4mi, 46min, 8:35/mi) I ran out to Grass Lawn Park. I ran around the track for a bit but left my shoes on. I ran around the gravel path that goes around the park that I noticed the last time I was at GLP. Nice little loop. Legs still hurt quite a bit.

Friday 1/7 (2.0mi, 18min, 9:00/mi) My legs were still a little stiff and I wanted to shake them out a little so I ran two easy miles on the treadmill at work before riding the stationary bike and lifting weights.

Saturday 1/8 (10.4mi, 1:14:04, 7:07/mi) Bridle Trails Winter Running Festival. I wasn't in shape for the 50K race and I wanted to volunteer at this race so I entered the 10.4 mile event and volunteered afterward. The race went pretty well for me. I was careful not to eat for 3 hours before the event and my stomach was relatively calm in response. A few minutes after 3pm the 5 mile runners set off. About 3 minutes later the 10 mile runners started. This meant that half a mile into the first lap we were beginning to overtake them. I got held up on some of the narrow portions of the course waiting to pass slower runners but after half a lap it was pretty wide open. My experience running the trails so often helped my pacing as I knew what was coming and where to be on the trail when turns, puddles, or hills were coming up. I ran a little too fast on my first lap, probably from anxiety and trying to pass the 5 mile runners. I finished lap 1 in 36min and change. I slowed down toward the middle of lap 2 but brought it back together for the last 2 miles to finish strong in 1:14:04. for 12th place overall out of the 100 ten mile competitors. I was 3rd in the 40 - 50 age group, or would have been had they kept track of those sort of things. After getting through the slower runners I was only passed by four people, the winners of the 50K solo, pairs, and team events and one other 10 mile runner. I should have lined up closer to the front of the pack at the starting line. I'm happy with the time and it's good enough for a 10 mile PR as I've never raced at this distance before. Sweet!

Year end wrap up

2011-01-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

I want to be part of the popular crowd so I'm putting together a year end wrap-up.

My year in running wasn't really that exciting for people other than me, but amuse me and continue reading...

Going somewhat chronologically:

I volunteered at the Bridle Trails Running Festival in January and really enjoyed it. I was a gopher, ran a water stand, helped at the timing table and then swept the course to take down all of the course markings. I'd only volunteered at a race once before, the horrible and ill-fated Silicon Valley Marathon where I sat in a Ben and Jerry's truck scooping Cherry Garcia for 3 hours with 2 grumpy people trying to make jokes and not hate every minute of it.

I met a great Seattle area photographer named Glenn Tachiyama while volunteering at Bridle Trails. He specializes in ultra-running photography and releases a calendar every year to support the Washington Trails Association. The photos he selects for the calendar are absolutely amazing and on top of that he lists dozens of ultramarathons and trail races in CA, OR, WA, and beyond so you can plan your racing season. I really liked the Bridle Trails race itself as it's held on one of the trails that I know really well from running it every week at work. I hoped to run the 50K in 2011, but I don't have time to train for it, so I'm running the 10 mile race and volunteering after I finish.

In March I ran the Mt. Si. 50K race. It was my first 50K race though I'd run the distance before with Chris for fun once in CA and I'd finished a 50 mile race almost 10 years ago. The 50K went pretty well. I had stomach issues at the turn around which made for a 10 min. stop at the aid station. I under estimated the heat and my nutrition so by the 27 mile mark I started cramping up and taking walk breaks. I finished in 4h 29m and was happy about that. The race itself was pretty mild for an ultra marathon. It's an out-and-back course with about 1,000 feet of climbing (4,000 according to my Garmin) on very smooth trails with nothing overgrown or even mildly technical. I finished in 16th place.

I spent 2.5 weeks in Hawaii in May and I didn't run much, only totaling 29mi for the month. I ran barefoot for the first time in Hawaii and liked it.

I was back on the mileage wagon in June and July although I did make the mistake of running a few barefoot miles on a hot track in July that resulted in blisters on the bottom of my feet and 3 days off.

August and September (along with July) were high mileage months for me. I cracked 200 miles in one month for the first time ever in August. I was building up for my 2nd 50K race of the year.

In October I tapered my mileage and ran the Baker Lake 50K. I grossly underestimated the course and the aid available. I carried 2 hand bottles and ran out of water several times due primarily to the 13 miles between aid stations. I had GI issues, got very dehydrated, and pushed the pace way too hard early in the race. Somehow I still finished mid-pack. It was a huge learning experience for me.

I hoped to ramp up the speed for a pair of 10K races in Nov / Dec and break 40 min but I got sick and had to take almost 3 weeks off of training. My fitness declined and I canceled both races. The 10K will have to wait until next year.

Before I talk about my mileage numbers, here's a list of things that did or didn't work for me in 2010:

The Good:
- New Balance MT101 shoes: Great shoes. They're not quite minimalist but they're the most minimal shoes that I've run in. There isn't much material to them, just enough to function well as running shoes. After decades of running in heavy over-supportive motion control shoes, these feel light, nimble and fast. The toe box is a tad narrow for my pinky toes but they're my favorite shoes that I've run in, probably ever. I'd written New Balance off after the last pair of NB shoes I had but now I'm looking forward to the update to these (the MT110) as well as the Minimus line that's coming out in a few months. I actually want to buy another pair of the MT101s before New Balance stops making them.

- Brooks Defyance: These are just a 'regular old' pair of running shoes but they've worked pretty well for me this year. I'm approaching 500 miles on the pair I have with zero problems on the roads. I ran my two 50K races in them (should have gone with Cascadias at Baker Lake for better traction though) and have enjoyed their comfort and durability.

- Drymax trail socks: After reading Jamie Donaldson's stories about how she's had such great races in Drymax socks I bought a pair of the Maximum Protection Trail Running socks in 2009. Even in size XL they were too tight for my feet. Early last year I bought a pair of the regular Trail Running socks and really liked them. I found that I was wearing my old WrightSock brand socks during the week and saving the Drymax socks for my long runs. Midway through the year I came to my senses and bought 5 more pair of Drymax socks and tossed the old running socks. I don't know why it took me that long. They're fantastic socks and the XL size fit with room to spare.

- Science of Sport blog: I read quite a few blogs and one that I've really found some great articles on is The Science of Sport. They're live-blogging major marathons, examining human performance potential, writing articles on doping in cycling, speculating on a sub-2 hour marathon, investigating pro cycling power output, and writing on a huge pile of other topics. It's one of the most consistently interesting blogs I subscribe to. They even made an article breaking down Sprint Canoe pacing in the World Championships interesting.

- iRunFar.com blog: I have to give Bryon Powell and his juggernaut blog of ultrarunning a proper acknowledgment as well. His race coverage is excellent, his reviews are excellent, his interviews are excellent. The result is that his blog is excellent.

That was the "good", this is the Bad:

- Perpetuem Solids: Hammer Nutrition decided to get into the portable food game. I remember reading something in their monthly advertising magazine last year about their stance against nutrition "chews" but perhaps that predated their own product. I've used Perpetuem in the past and even found a way to get around the taste so I thought I'd try the new Perpetuem Solids. As soon as I bit into the powdery disc during a recent run I knew that trying them was a mistake. The tablets have a consistency between freeze-dried ice cream (like Astronauts eat) and billiards chalk. As I bit down I got a mouth full of dry powder. The powder extracted all of the moisture from my mouth and turned it into a hard rubbery wad that I really had to chew on to break down. I'd hoped that the Cafe Latte flavor would be an improvement over the regular Perpetuem taste but it wasn't even close to "tastes good". I tried one of the Orange-Vanilla flavor chews and had the same conclusion. No thanks, I'll stick with my Perpetuem / Hammer Gel slurry mixture. As a side note, why is it so hard to get good coffee flavor in food? Coffee Ice Cream seems to get it right.

- Gu Roctane Island Nectar flavor: After trying the Gu Roctane Island Nectar flavor, I was pretty repulsed. I almost spit it out mid-stride. I can only guess that my taste buds are vastly different than others and the sharp "fruity" Mai-Tai flavor that Gu was aiming for totally missed me. Fortunately for me, they were free which will take the sting out of giving the rest of them away. Want em?

- Recoverite Chocolate: Another Hammer Nutrition product. I don't want to come down anti-Hammer here because I use some of their products with success and I think that they're a good company overall. I like the regular flavor of Recoverite and use it after most of my long runs. I recently tried the new Chocolate flavor and found it pretty repulsive. Like coffee, I don't understand why a basic chocolate flavor would be so hard to get right. I like the Chocolate flavored Hammer Gel but Hammer's Chocolate flavored powders (Whey and now Recoverite) are just inedible to me. I'm glad that I can fall back on the regular Recoverite flavor.

- Stomach issues: I've been having much more trouble with my stomach while running this year. I haven't nailed down what is causing my formerly iron stomach to fail me so often this year. Medication? Vitamins? Eating within 3 hours of a run? It's something that I need to work out in 2011. I'm not a fan of the consequences, especially during a race like Baker Lake where I had to stop 5 or 6 times for the dreaded outdoor poo.

There were a couple of things that I'd like to put into the good or bad categories but don't have enough data to sort them out yet:

- Nathan HPL 020 Hydration Pack: After Baker Lake in October I broke down and bought one of those Nathan Hydration pack/vest/jacket things. I didn't like the look of them but when two 20oz water bottles aren't enough water in a race there aren't really other options. I've worn it on 6 runs so far and it's neither comfortable or uncomfortable. It doesn't hurt my back like previous hydration packs have so that's a plus. It doesn't hold much stuff in it's three pockets however, so that's a minus. I think that I can adjust the fit to make it a little more comfortable when I take time to fiddle with it. I wish that the drinking tube was about 3" longer so that it wouldn't pop out of the waist clip as often.

- Brooks Launch: I talked to a Brooks rep a few months ago and asked him which shoe in the Brooks line was just below the Defyance in terms of support. He said that it was the Launch. I tried the shoe on and bought a pair, hoping that it would perform similar to the Defyance. So far I haven't been very motivated to put the shoes on and run in them. I'm loving the MT101s, still enjoying the Cascadias and luke warm on the Launch. I was hoping that they'd feel like a fast pair of road racing shoes with their flashy Orange and Cardinal color scheme. They feel like too much shoe so far.

Finally, rather than ramble on and on about the monthly / yearly numbers, I'll just leave a screen shot from my running spreadsheet:

I fell just short of my 1500 mile goal. I could have easily hit it so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. It's my highest mileage year to date and my knee is holding up, so I'm happy.

Well, that's my 2010. How'd I do?

Confirmation

2011-01-02T08:19:00.000-08:00

I'm in!

Confirmation
Thank You!

Order Number: 35337 - Sunday Jan. 2, 2011 8:04 AM  
 

Nrmrvrk

 Chuckanut 50k Shirt
 Mens Large    $25.00    1    $25.00

Nrmrvrk
Gig Harbor, WA
Gender:M
nrmrvrk@dev.null
 
Chuckanut
50 Kilometers
March 19, 2011   

 Will this be your first ultra - No 
 How many prior Chuckanuts - 0 
 Emergency Contact Name - Mrs Nrmrvrk 
 Emergency Contact Phone - ...-...-.... 
 Emergency Contact Relationship - wife

So that's it. 2010 is done.

2010-12-31T21:51:00.000-08:00

Friday 12/31 (12.4mi, 1h 44m, 8:24/min)

I got one last run in today to finish out the year. As I did last New Year's Eve I drove out to Crescent Valley Forest to run on the trails. Does two years in a row make it a tradition? Last year it was pouring and I was soaked from the rain and constantly avoiding huge puddles. Today's high temp was in the low 30s as it was yesterday which meant that there was a dusting of snow on the and everything was generally frozen. Every step was just as I ran on the thin layer of snow and frozen mud / grass. There were still plenty of puddles but they were all frozen over, which made them even more hazardous than usual. I've only run at Crescent Valley Forest once before so I didn't know where I was going. I brought a map with me and tried to make the biggest loop I could. I missed a few turns here and there and didn't worry about pace. I just enjoyed my day on the trails. Running on the snow and the narrow trails was nice but I forgot how much harder running on real trails is than running on the roads or light trails. I was well worn out after a large loop and then a small loop. I did pretty well with the clothing choice: tights under running pants, base layer, S/S shirt under a L/S shirt, thick knit hat, Drymax socks and my Cascadias. The only bad choice was my gloves. They were too thin and I only lasted about an hour with them before I had to pull out my thick gloves. I'll have to look into getting a medium weight pair of gloves for cold runs like this. One minor annoyance was catching my foot on a very small but sharp tree stump. It caught the toe of my left foot and left a two-inch tear in the mesh upper of my shoe. Luckily I'm 300 miles into the Cascadias, so I won't be running in them much longer. I would have been bummed if that happened to the MT 101s.

Some photos from the run:

Almost there...

2010-12-29T21:56:00.000-08:00

This week has been pretty insane at work. I've only missed one day of running so far but I've had to run twice after dark when I missed my lunch-time runs.

Monday 12/20 (4.0mi, 33min, 8:15/mi) I didn't bring enough warm clothes to work so I gave up running outside and hit the treadmill at lunch instead. I thought I'd last longer than 4 miles but that was all I could stand. I kept a recovery pace after Sunday night's after-dark half tempo run. I hit the weights a little bit after the treadmill and then called it a workout.

Tuesday 12/21 (8.3mi, 56:30, 6:49/mi) I ran a new loop at work last week after dark that wound through the streets and then through a little bit of the Bridle Trails and around the rest of my "Pro Club Loop" in Redmond. The first time I ran it I finished in an hour and two seconds. Of course I wanted to go for < 1hr. Today I pushed the pace from the start and almost kept all of my splits under 7:00/mi, just missing out with a 7:07 on the technical mud puddle-avoiding part of the Bridle Trails and a 7:09 on the big hill leading up to 148th st. I was pretty gassed and had the "how much longer can I hold on to this pace?" feeling for half of the route. I finished in well under an hour which felt great for the distance. I think I'll keep this as my new tempo run as it has a little more variety than the Pro Club Loop and it's a little longer but still do-able once in a while at lunch.

Wednesday 12/22 (8.3mi, 1:11:00, 8:36/mi) I ran another work loop that happened to be the same distance as Tuesday's run but only shared about 50% of the route. I kept a recovery pace after Tuesday's hard tempo and started late in the afternoon so that I finished just after dark. Always nice to get out and run after work. I look forward to next summer's warmer temperatures and longer days to enjoy runs like this more often after work.

Thursday 12/23, Friday 12/24 (0,0,0) I just couldn't make it happen on Thursday and Friday with everything that was going on at work.

Saturday 12/25 (7.7mi, 55:45, 7:14/mi) As is the tradition on Xmas day, I directed an informal race that I've been holding for the last 4 years, the Wise Invitational Xmas Day Extravaganza. (I'm still working on the name). With so many people coming over on Xmas day I gather up the runners and we all go for a run after the gift exchange regardless of the weather. This year I was the only participant as all of the runners in the family were away for the holidays. With just me running I changed from the regular 4.5 mile "One Store Loop" course to my 7.3mi "One Hour Loop" course. I started strong and got out to an early lead. I pushed hard the last five miles, running them at < 7:00 pace average. I never looked back and kept the lead from start to finish. I worked through some cramps in the later miles of the run and after the awesome traditional Norwegian breakfast I think I could have pushed myself hard enough to throw up if I really tried.

Monday 12/27 (7.3mi, 1:01, 8:28/mi) I ran the same route I ran on Xmas day but at an easy recovery pace instead of hard tempo. It felt much better than the cramping, almost-throwing-up pace I held on Saturday.

Wednesday 12/29 (12.4mi, 1:37, 7:49/mi) I decided to make my run a little longer on Wed and started out with the hour loop but peeled off onto Artondale which led me out to the bottom of Wollochet dr. It snowed the night before and there were still traces of snow on some of the hills. There was no snow on the roads thankfully. My stomach wasn't feeling very good so I didn't keep a great pace overall. No sub-7 splits, but I pushed enough the 2nd half to get my average pace back under 8:00/mi. I had a hard time getting the right temperature on the Run. A L/S base layer, L/S tech shirt, shorts and running pants worked pretty well. My thin wind jacket on top of that was too much so I had to carry it. I flip-flopped on gloves and a hat. With them on I'd start to overhead but taking them off would make my fingers start to go numb. I did find that when I wanted to warm up a gel so that it wasn't hard and chewy that putting it under your hat for a mile does the trick.

Now with only 2 days left in the year I need to start writing up my list of stuff I liked / didn't like.

Another week goes by

2010-12-19T23:24:00.000-08:00

Another week in running. I missed one run this week but did pretty well overall. Here's the rundown:

Monday 12/13 (5.4mi, 48min, 8:55/mi) After Sunday's tempo run in the rain I took it easy around the Redmond streets. I practiced forefoot striking a little.

Tuesday 12/14 (cross training) My knee needed a break so I used the stationary bike, the elliptical and the weight machines at the gym instead. Now that my wrist is healed I can start using free weights and machines again. My body isn't used to it so my chest, back, and arms were pretty sore for a few days.

Wednesday 12/15 (6.2mi, 40:56, 6:36/mi) I missed running intervals on Tuesday so I went for a hard tempo run around my old standard "Pro Club Loop" starting at work instead of the Pro Club. I suffered running up the few hills along the route and almost slipped on a few muddy sections. I felt like I was running well after cross training on Tue and my time agreed. I'd put an asterisk on the performance, I had to stop for 5 lights and follow a detour going up 24th street. Still a very good tempo run that left me gassed.

Thursday 12/16 (6.0mi, 51min, 8:22/mi) At lunch I ran out to Grass Lawn Park and ran 2.5 miles barefoot around one of the baseball fields. Felt decent.

Thursday 12/16 (8.3mi, 60min, 7:13/mi) After work I had some time so I went for a night run around Redmond and through part of the Bridle Trails. I felt pretty good and kept a good pace, hitting the first 4 miles in 7:01, 7:06, 7:02, 7:02. Going through the Bridle Trails in the dark with just two small lights slowed me to an 8:14 mile. I finished up with a 7:18 mile, an uphill 7:25 mile, then a 6:56 final mile. I don't know where the night time speed came from, especially on the second run of the day. It was one of those runs where I felt like my base training was finally starting to show.

Work was too busy on Friday to get out for a run and Saturday is usually an off day for me.

Sunday 12/19 (7.6mi, 59min, 7:52/mi) I was out all day in Seattle with the family so I suited up for a run when I got home just after dark. I brought both my small and large head lights and wore a reflective vest. I wore the small light and carried the large one. I ran the same loop (out to Island View and around) that I ran last Sunday. I started out a little slow and ran a few form accelerations through out the run. I picked up the pace about half way through and started making some low 7 min mile splits interrupted by stepping off the road and waiting for cars to pass. My stomach started to gurgle with about half a mile to go and pushing the pace to try to break an hour didn't help. I got home with 8 seconds to spare, full of endorphins.

I'm loving running lately except for the pain I'm getting around the top of my left kneecap. I hope it isn't a sign of my knee getting worse. Ever since having my torn Meniscus repaired I've had some pain in my left knee. It usually hurts after a run or after sitting in a car for an hour but it goes away in a day or two. I find that my knee will often start out a little sore on a run but warm up about 4 miles into the run and feel fine from then on. I'm not sure I want to look into what's wrong with my knee as long as I can still run and it doesn't get much worse. I really don't want to find out that I have another Meniscus tear and have to go under the knife again.

This week in running

2010-12-13T21:47:00.000-08:00

Monday 12/6 (6.25mi 49min, 7:52/mi) I hit The Machine at work for intervals. I ran a slow mile warm-up and then peeled off 6 x 800 @ 2:52 with 400 slow jog between. It got pretty hard to hold the pace by repeat #4. Good workout.

Tuesday 12/7 (5.45mi, 40min, 7:20/mi) Rather than take an easy recovery day I thought I'd try to wear myself out a little more. I Ran a hard tempo run out to the Bridle Trails and back. I held a good pace and really felt it. My Hamstrings were quite sore after the run. I embraced reality and decided to skip the 10K on Saturday. I'll have to try for a sub-40 next year. I'm just not in the shape I want to be in to keep that kind of pace.

Wednesday 12/8 (5.45mi, 45min, 8:20/mi) Time for recovery. I ran an easy pace out to Grass Lawn Park for two miles around the track barefoot. I felt pretty good on my feet but my knee has been sore lately.

Thursday 12/9 (2.0mi, 17min, 8:30/mi) I cross trained to give my knee a break and then after an hour of cardio and strength I couldn't resist and ran 2 "cool down" miles on the treadmill.

Friday 12/10 (14.0mi, 2h 4min, 8:54/mi) I ran a long hill repeat workout at lunch, running two one-mile-long hill repeats near work at a hard gasping-for-breath effort. It went pretty well. After work I had some time so I went for night-time loop around the Bridle Trails. I didn't prepare for two runs so I had to put on my sweaty clothes that I'd worn at lunch, which is never pleasant. The trails were dark and muddy. I had a flashlight and a headlight but neither were very bright. I need to get something brighter for night runs. It was fun running in the dark but the mud slowed me down as I tried to stay to the sides of the trail and avoid the deep stuff. My socks stayed dry despite stepping in puddle after puddle. They didn't feel even the slightest bit wet until about 6 miles. I have to hand it to Drymax, they make some great socks. Their "Trail Running" socks are my new favorites, they're replacing all of the Wrightsocks that I've been running in for the last 12 years. Also, while I'm handing out praise, I'm still loving my New Balance MT101 shoes. They're light but definitely not flimsy, have a great ground feel, and have just enough tread for light trails.

Sunday 12/12 (7.7mi, 59.5min, 7:45/mi) With an all-day Christmyth shopping trip planned for the bulk of the day, I had to get out early. I was up and dressed by 8am but there was the small matter of it raining cats and dogs outside. I really debated calling the run off and staying warm inside instead. I talked myself into running and headed out in the rain. The first 10 minutes were pure annoyance with the rain until my body warmed up and I was mostly soaked. After that I just focused on enjoying the run and keeping a decent pace. The rain was creating small streams going across the streets at any slight incline. I headed out toward the tunnel trail where I hopped back and forth over the water running down the middle of the path. When I got to the upper section of the trail where the mud and water collect, I saw that there was no way to keep my feet dry. After running through the edge of the water flow and feeling the cold water on my feet I was surprised that the cold only lasted for a minute or two at the most. My DryMax trail socks either warmed it or wicked it away from my feet quickly and my feet didn't feel wet at all. These socks are worth every penny.

I sped up going past Kopachuck and down the hill to the Island View store. I turned down Artondale heading back to Ray Nash dr. The fields that I ran past were almost completely flooded which I didn't expect to see. I picked up the pace as much as I could running against the wind and rain on the way to the Arletta store. Once I made the turn toward home at Arletta I saw another runner about 400 meters ahead running up the next hill. I thought it'd be a tough catch but I pushed anyway. I suffered up the first hill, ran quickly down the back and made up almost half the distance by the time I started up the second (longer) climb. I was within about 40 meters of the runner by the time I got to the top of the second hill and then caught (and startled) her 1/10th of a mile later. She had earbuds in her ears and jumped with a gasp when I said "Good Morning" as I was trying to catch my breath. I apologized and picked up the pace to shoot for a sub-1 hr finish. I made it with less than 30 seconds to spare.

I'm working up a list of what worked well and not-so-well for me in 2010 in the areas of running gear, nutrition, and training goes. Look out for that in a few weeks. I'm also (like everyone else) trying to put together a plan for races next year. I don't know how many I'll have time to train for. I'm getting a little push-back on the amount of time I spent training for the 50K races this year. We'll see what I can bargain for.

Last week in running

2010-12-05T23:13:00.000-08:00

Summary of the past week in running:

Monday 11/29 (5.75mi, 51min, 8:53/mi) I ran out to the Bridle Trails, noodled around for a bit and then back. My stomach felt iffy, my left shoulder blade was sore and I couldn't manage much more than a recovery pace. Beats going out to lunch though.

Tuesday 11/30 (5.5mi, 45min, 8:10/mi) I ran my first real interval session in some time at the gym on The Machine. I ran 10 x 440 @ 84 seconds, or 10.6 mph. I started out running them with a 2.5% incline and then dropped that down to 1.7% (what I've read will nullify the advantage of running on a treadmill). I started out with a 9:00/mi jog during the recovery interval, then every 4th repeat I just had to walk for the recovery interval. I was barely able to last the 84 seconds at 10.6mph, just begging for each interval to be over. With warm up and cool down it ended up being a pretty good session.

Wednesday 12/1 (5.4mi, 51min, 9:27/mi) Easy run on the Redmond Streets route with Nate. Slow pace and good to talk to Nate. The only thing I don't care for is when Nate apologizes for "being so slow." It's something that I've run into in the past with other people I've run or cycled with. I guess it's just natural that people apologize when they feel like they're holding you back but after the third time I say "don't worry about pace, I knew what the pace would be when I asked you to go for a run" it gets a tiny bit irritating. I get it, running isn't your thing so you don't run as fast as I can. I don't run fast every day, I need at least 2 recovery runs a week and I'd rather run and talk with someone interesting on those days. If I'm ever training for a National Championship, I might worry more about recovery pace, but until then, stop apologizing and enjoy running with me, dammit! :-)

Thursday 12/2 (6.55mi, 51min, 7:47/mi) I headed out to Grass Lawn Park for some barefoot running. I took the corridor trail route out there and was surprised how easy I kept a sub-7 pace down Old Redmond Rd. When I got to the park I found that the track I run around was closed for maintenance, I thought for a second and headed over to try one of the baseball fields. Turns out that they're just as good. Artificial turf and each lap was nearly a quarter mile, slightly longer than the track. I ran just over 2 miles barefoot, practicing a pure forefoot strike every 3rd lap. It felt good at the time but I was a little sore later.

Friday 12/3 (5.3mi, 45min, 8:30/mi) I ran down the path that follows I-520 into downtown Redmond and then along the West Lake Sammamish trail to 51st street. Starting at the bottom of 51st I ran 8 short (30 - 40 second) hill repeats at what I'd estimate was 5K pace up the very-steep hill. I was absolutely gassed after 30 seconds going up that hill. It was really taking it out of me. I jogged slowly back down and then walked around at the base of the hill for another 20 -30 seconds before the next hill repeat. I was impressed that I made it through all 8 given how much they hurt and that I was just about maxing out my heart rate in 30 seconds. After the last hill repeat I jogged back to the bottom of the hill and then slowly ran up the hill and back to work for some stretching. Good workout.

Sunday 12/5 (4.6mi, 40min, 8:42/mi) With the rest of the family sick for the most part I was really lucky to get out at all today. My daughter was out with her grandmother so I loaded the boy into the BOB and bundled him up with a blanket and set him up with juice and snacks and hurried on my way. I planned for the One Store Loop and if things went well I'd tack on some additional miles at the end. I got up the tunnel trail well enough. There were quite a few downed trees / branches that I had to move / break to get the jog stroller through. I should go for a run with a saw and some clippers next weekend. I got around from the top of the trail out to Ray Nash before the boy started to complain. I checked and he wasn't cold, had snacks left and wasn't thirsty. I pressed on and kept talking to him and stopping every few minutes to check on him. By the time I reached the store his complaints escalated. I stopped again to make sure he was doing okay, which he was despite the squawks. With about half a mile to go he started to cry. I knew that I just needed to get home and get him out of the stroller ASAP. I picked up the pace from the 9:00 min miles to a 6:00 mile pace for the last of the run. I hurried up my street and down the driveway. As soon as I unbuckled him and picked him up, all was right in his world again. Better luck next time I hope.

Winter is upon us

2010-11-27T21:43:00.000-08:00

I've been busy with work, family and snow lately so I'll try to catch up with the last few runs for those die-hard readers (both of you)...

Tue 11/16 (5.4mi, 50 min, 9:16/mi) I ran with Nate at lunch at an easy pace. I felt like crap from the start and had G.I. issues the whole run. I had to stop a few times in the middle of the run to use the port-o-potty which is always fun when you're running with friends. "Umm, you go ahead and I'll catch up with you..." I'll blame the antibiotics for this.

Wed 11/17 (5.0mi, 43 min, 8:30/mi) I ran on The Machine at work. I still wasn't feeling 100% recovered from the sickness/flu that stuck with me for the last 3 weeks so I kept an easy pace. I was increasing the incline every half miel until I was running at 7% for a bit before bringing it back down to my usual 2.5%. I felt a little better than Tuesday.

Thu 11/18 (5.4mi, 50min, 9:16/mi) Another easy run with Nate. Same route as Tuesday but the opposite direction. Nate apparently didn't like the mile+ long uphill that you get when you run the route CCW. My condition continues to improve and I felt like I was ready to up the mileage and start running faster. It was pretty cold out and I wish I'd brought a hat and some gloves.

Fri 11/19 (6.6mi, 52min, 7:53/mi) I ran out to Grass Lawn Park for some barefoot running on the track. I wanted to add a little faster pace running so I made it a Fartlek run. I ran hard for one song on the iPod and then eased off for the next one. Songs being all different lengths I was really suffering for a song or two to end. Once I got to the track I ran 2 barefoot miles doing two laps easy and then one lap hard. Pretty good run overall.

Sunday 11/21 (8.5mi, 1h17min, 9:05/mi) With temps dropping I bundled up and prepared for a good run to test out the MT101s a bit more. Just before leaving my daughter said that she wanted to go with me. I tried to tell her that it was too cold (low 40s) but she said that she could bundle up and stay warm. I decided to give it a shot and got the BOB jogger ready and bundled her up. When I run with her the route always stops at one of the local convenience stores for a treat. I think this is the main reason she likes to go with me. Unfortunately the temperature dropped almost 10 degrees during the run which made for one cold kiddo. We stopped at the Island View store for some chocolate and some milk before wrapping her back up in the blanket for the trip home. It started snowing on the way home and she wasn't happy. I picked up the pace and went down the Tunnel Trail as a shortcut despite all of the fallen tree branches. We got home just in time for her to warm up in front of the fire while I took a shower before we bundled up again to go ice skating. (great run, great day)

Snow, wind, and ice took over the roads on Monday and Tuesday and I didn't even try to drive in to work. Working at home makes it harder for me to get a run in. Add to that the icy roads and sub-freezing temps and I didn't get out for any miles. So much for my training cycle for the 10K I'd planned on Turkey day. If anything I'll drop down and run the 5K race with my daughter if it's warm enough.

Wednesday 11/24 (6.21mi, 46:25, 7:29/mi) Back in the office on Wednesday, I ran a 10K on the treadmill at lunch. My plan was to run the middle 3-4 miles at my target race pace of 6:25/mi. The reality was that I didn't have that in my legs or lungs. I started at an 8:30 pace and dropped down :30 per mile until I was running 3/4 of a mile at 6:30 and backing off 1/4 of a mile to recover. Not the workout I was hoping for. Fitness is still coming back after the illness.

Thursday 11/25 (8.4mi, 1h12min, 7:30/mi) There was still plenty of snow on the ground and the temp at the start of the run was 33F. I didn't even bother with the Turkey Trot. It warmed up during the run to maybe the high 30s. The snow wasn't very deep so I wasn't post-holing but it was just enough that the roads were slippery and running on the snowy shoulder was sluggish. I was one layer overdressed and had to keep taking off my hat and gloves and putting them back on. I kept a pretty good pace except for one mile that I tried an alternate route up the tunnel trail. I followed a new path to a dead end and then tried to bridge over to the proper trail. I wound up bushwhacking for a few minutes as I made my way through the thorns. It was a pretty good run overall.

One thing about the run that didn't work out was my choice of gel. A little backstory: During this year's Kona Ironman World Championships Gu came up with a new Roctane flavor that (rumor had it) was originally called "Mai Tai" but because of the alcohol connotations was renamed "Island Nectars." During the week of the Kona event Gu had a deal where they'd send you a free pack of 6 Island Nectar gels if you bought something else from their website. I bought some chocolate mint gels to get the free box of Island Nectar. I've eaten two of the new flavor so far and they're just about the worst tasting gel I've ever had. I've read about people raving over the flavor but it was bitter and harsh to me with very faint traces of fruit flavor. I can't imagine eating another one.

Friday 11/26 (6.5mi, 58min, 8:55/mi) Warmer out (low 40s) but I was still overdressed. With my jacket on I was too hot but with it off I was a little cold unless I was running uphill or really pushing the pace. I brought my son in the BOB this time. I bundled him up and ran out past Kopachuck park and then back around the one store loop. I was worried about the boy being cold but with the big jacket and a blanket he was warm enough to fall asleep after he finished his snack. My pace was a little slow with the BOB but it was great to get out for a run.

I just passed 1,300 miles for the year. I don't think I can make my goal of 1500 by the end of the year but I'm pretty happy where I'm sitting now and how my running form has developed over the year.

back on my feet.... slowly

2010-11-15T07:52:00.000-08:00

I'm still feeling the last throes of this flu that snuck by my immune system over the last two weeks. I miss running but haven't been very motivated to get out there and push the miles. My stomach is sour presumably from the antibiotics that knocked out the flu. Unfortunately, this affects my appetite and my ability to run fast. I think that I've lost a little bit of fitness after missing so many runs while I was sick. I'll get it back, but not in time to perform well at the Turkey Trot 10K next week. I'll have to look at adding a 10K in Jan/Feb to see about breaking the 40 minute barrier. The positive aspect of all this is that being sick makes for a great diet and I'm down to 187lbs. I think I can go lighter though.

Friday 11/12: (6.3mi, 51min, 8:03/mi avg) I got outside for a run at lunch and the weather cooperated nicely. I wanted to try the MT101s out again and see if I noticed any difference between them and my other trail shoes in their weight or traction. I ran out to the Bridle Trails and the conditions were a little sloppy. The shoes feel great and their lightness is definitely noticeable after running in my Cascadias. The traction however doesn't seem quite as good as the Brooks shoes. So far I like the 101s with a few small complaints, chief of which are the laces and the narrow toe box. It was a good run but I was being careful not to push the pace very hard and overtax my lungs.

Sunday 11/14: (8.4mi, 1:07, 8:00/mi avg) After a long day out with the family in Seattle I didn't get home until 4:30pm. I was laced up and out the door by 4:45 on my run but without a light as I didn't realize how early it gets dark now. I made it up the tunnel trail in the last of the twilight. I headed out toward the Island View store with the plan of turning around after 30 min. With small shoulders on the local roads, I was in the habit of stepping completely off of the road when a car would approach. Luckily there weren't many cars on the road and I was wearing a bright blinking Firefly light and a white shirt so there were no close calls. Yielding for traffic did slow me down a bit, mainly after the turn-around. It was pretty dark on the way back so I had to go around on Ray Nash dr. instead of going back down the Tunnel trail. I used the first and last miles as a warmup and cooldown, though probably not as easy as I should have. My lungs and stomach still didn't want to run fast so this didn't end up as a focused workout (ie: LT / Speedwork / Tempo)

Rain is forecast all week, so I'll see what kind of mettle I have when it comes to running in foul weather.

The one about shoes and buffaloes

2010-11-09T07:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I was on track to run 1500 miles for the year. I've run all of 4 times since I've last posted. I've been sick with a bad cold / weak flu. I don't get colds often and when I do they never last long, usually 3 - 5 days at most. I'm coming up on 2 weeks now with symptoms that haven't changed: Snotty and scratchy. It's the worst cold that I've had in about 15 years. I remember living in England in 1994 and getting a flu shot (haven't gotten one since) and being sick for 3 weeks before going in to the doctor for antibiotics. With this cold dragging on I'll be picking up those antibiotics tonight on the way home from work.

So my monthly stats for October ended up looking like this:
Runs: 17
Miles: 123.4
Time: 18h 9m
Avg: 8:50/mi
Barefoot miles: 6

That and the 2.5 slow miles I ran on the treadmill at lunch yesterday put me at 1230 miles for the year so far.

I'm still sick so I probably shouldn't have run today but I've been going stir crazy missing all the exercise I've grown used to. The upside of being sick is that I don't have much of an appetite lately so I shouldn't be too shocked when I step on the scale again in the near future.

The other thing that's been gnawing at me since getting sick are the two new pair of shoes that I got for my birthday last month. My sister was feeling quite generous and gave me a substantial Amazon.com gift card that I used to buy two pair of shoes, several books on running and nutrition (nerd!) and a Nathan bladder system.

The shoes I bought are the New Balance MT101 and the Brooks Launch:

I've been following the hype on the newly released MT101 shoes and reading reviews online. I've never cared much for New Balance shoes so I was a little skeptical. I ran in them twice before I got sick and other than rubbing against a rough spot on one of my pinky toes they felt pretty good. They're much less built up and have lower mid-foot and heel cushion than any other shoes I've run in. I can't wait to get out on some proper trails for a longer run to really check them out. They weigh probably half of what my Brooks Cascadias do and it's quite noticeable. I'm hopeful that these will really work well for me.

I just ran in the Launches yesterday at lunch on "The Machine" for a paltry 2.5 miles at 9min pace. They're one level of cushion and support less than the Defyance, the last pair of Brooks road shoes that I've been running in. I've had really good luck with Brooks lately (except as a shoe tester where they have no love for people who wear larger sizes) even if I have to pay for them myself. I tried on the Launch a few months ago at a running store I like in Seattle but wasn't ready to buy them yet. Now that I'm not a heel striker any more I hope that I'll be able to move down to the lighter / less cushioned shoes. The color combination (Cardinal / Orange) is really bright but I kind of like it. The MT101s come in a dark green color scheme that was out of stock to my disappointment.

The Nathan bladder system was something that I bought in reaction to my results at Baker Lake a few weeks ago when I was massively dehydrated and cramping up. The Bladder is on the back of a loose vest and is very popular among ultra runners. It holds 2 liters, so using that along with a bottle or two should work well for me on runs with a long distance between aid stations. I've never liked running with a bladder on my back in the past but I see so many other people with them at races that I hope it's something I can get used to. Bombing a race because of poor hydration is a pretty dumb mistake to make.

So, to sum up: I'm still sick, I miss running dearly, and I've been reading an excellent book lately called "Running With The Buffaloes" by Chris Lear. It's presented as a series of journal entries written by someone following the Univ. of Colorado Cross Country team over one season. The level of competition and the training that these kids put in is incredible. It might not be a great read for everyone but as a running geek I can't put it down. It just fascinates me and reaffirms my love of running. Let me know if you want to borrow it when I'm done.

Returning From Vacation and a 10K Training Program

2010-10-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

Monday (10/18) 5.1mi, 39min, 7:46/mi avg. I got one last run in while we were in Kauai. I ran from the condo in Kapa'a out on the beach path toward Anahola and back. I started out slow the first mile and then ran a lackluster tempo pace the rest of the run. I only had 45 minutes to run, so I turned around at 22:30 and came in with a slightly negative split. I knew it would be hot and humid so I left my shirt and hat and just ran shirtless. The views were amazing and the week was very relaxing.

Wednesday (10/20) 5.5mi, 41min, 7:27/mi avg. Back at work I ran out to the Bridle Trails and back. I kept it slow the first and last mile but pushed hard the middle 3.5 miles. It was tough holding the pace and I was really winded by the end. I need to put more speed work in my training.

Thursday (10/21) 4.6mi, 38min, 8:20/mi avg. I put together a basic schedule to build up for a 10K based on a few resources I found online. One thing that it prescribed that I've been neglecting were hill repeats. I ran from work out to the 520 bike path that goes down the long hill into Redmond. I ran down to a nice steady downhill section and stopped to run 5 x 500m hill repeats at 5K - 10K pace. I did all of the repeats without stopping but I didn't quite hold a 10K pace. The hill might have been too steep for that though. I ran them at about 7:15/mi pace and was completely gassed at the end of each one. They left me gasping for air like I'd almost drown. I ran a little warm-up and coold-own around the repeats that was mostly just the distance to/from the hill.

Friday (10/22) 6.4mi, 53min, 8:17/mi avg. I took an easy jog out the first part of the corridor trail and headed over to Grass Lawn Park for 3 miles barefoot around the track while some kids kept kicking the soccer ball at the net (and usually missing) right as I ran behind the goal. I'm not totally sure that they were doing it on purpose to annoy me but if not, it was quite a coincidence. The balls of my feet were a little sore the day after the run.

I wanted to run on the weekend but with the heavy rain, picking apples and pressing cider with the family I never found the time.

Monday (10/25) 6.0mi, 47min, 7:55/mi avg. Intervals. The schedule called for 10 x 400m @ 90 sec. It was still raining outside pretty hard and I didn't want to try to adapt 400m repeats to the odd 325m track near work (1.23 laps = 400m) so I ran them at the gym. I set the treadmill to a 2% incline and ran a warm-up mile. I made it through 10 repeats without too much trouble, running them between 88 and 90 seconds each. 400m repeats are just short enough that you can just suffer through them. The treadmill also seems to make it easier even with the slight incline. I'd need to find a real track to run intervals on some time.

I'm sitting at 110 miles for the month so far and 1215 for the year. I'm still on track to hit 1500 miles for the year. I have 7 weeks to train for my last "A" race of the year.

Catching up and on vacation

2010-10-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

Now that my big A race is over, I've predictably lost some of my motivation to update the blog with my daily runs. I'll try to stick to two sentences or less for the runs since Baker Lake:

Monday (10/4): 5.1mi, 43min, 8:35/mi avg. Boring recovery loop around Redmond to get the blood circulating in my very sore legs. Ouch.

Tuesday (10/5): 5.5mi, 53min, 9:38/mi avg. Another recovery run with a co-worker. I stuck to his pace as anything more still hurt.

Wednesday (10/6): 5.1mi, 40min, 7:58/mi avg. Legs are feeling almost all better. Pace is improving.

Thursday (10/7): 6.2mi, 49min, 7:55/mi avg. Ran out to Grass Lawn Park and ran 3 miles barefoot on the track. Did some drills barefoot (strides, running the lane line, high knees, band leaders)

Friday (10/8): 8.5mi, 1h13m, 8:40/mi avg. Kept an easy pace as the work week had been über-busy and wore me down working 10 hour days. Ran around the Bridal Trails which is almost always enjoyable.

(no runs over the weekend)

Monday (10/11): 6.4mi, 46min 7:11/mi avg. I started out a little slow going out to the Bridle Trails and then really picked up the pace and practiced my fast footing on the technical sections. This was my last run before leaving for a week in Kauai.

Thursday (10/14): 7.1mi, 54min, 7:42/mi avg. Ran along a beach path near the house we rented in Anahola. I Didn't have the stomach to run any faster. I think Shave Ice was a poor pre-run food choice. It was 82F and humid and the breezes coming off of the ocean weren't consistent enough to cool me down. Good birthday run though.

Saturday (10/16): 7.0mi, 50min, 7:19/mi avg. I got out in the morning to run along the same path but starting about 1/2 a mile South of the end of the path. I ran 7:30 splits for 3.5 miles and then turned around and ran 6:50 miles back. It was hot and humid at 8am but the views of the ocean were fantastic. I hope I'll get a chance to run one more time in Kauai.

Baker Lake 50K

2010-10-04T23:25:00.001-07:00

I decided to make the Baker Lake 50K my second 50K this year and an "A" race. I trained well and hit all of my benchmarks. I was thinking I'd have an easy 5 hour finish with the possibility of a 4:30. According to the website, the elevation gain/loss for the course was "insignificant" and the event was classified as a "lake" not a "mountain" run. The course is an out-and-back from a campground SE of Baker lake, around the bottom of the lake, up the East shore and over the top to the NW shore of the lake and back. The first (and last) 2 miles are fire roads and it's forest single-track the rest of the way. I was expecting a relatively easy trail but found it much more technical than I'd planned for. I also didn't expect it to be so humid out in the middle of fall.

I got to the starting area about 30 minutes before the official 8am start. I had just enough time to get changed, check in, use the restroom and set up my drop bag. I missed half of the pre-race briefing and lined up in the back of the pack just in time for the count-down. The horn sounded and we were off. I started out at a slow pace and stuck with the back of the pack (of maybe 75 runners.) I was feeling pretty good so I slowly picked up the pace until I was in maybe 10th place as we snaked our way over the dam at the southern end of the lake and up a fire road toward the trailhead.

Once we got onto the trail there wasn't much position swapping because there wasn't really room for it. There were no other trails branching off of ours and not much of a shoulder. The way the trail was cut out of the side hill there was little space off of the trail to get out of someone's way. I kept pace with some pretty strong runners and came through the first 5 miles in mid-8 to low-9 minute splits. It was at about the five mile point that I started to notice how humid it really was. I could feel it sapping my energy as my shirt and shorts were soaked with sweat. I Also noticed that the course was much more technical than I expected. I thought it would be relatively easy footing on dry trails. Instead it was narrow, leaf covered and often wet. There were several small stream crossings and quite a few wooden bridges (about half of which were mossy and slippery as well). On top of that there were plenty of downed logs to step over and large rocks jutting out of the trail hidden under the fallen leaves. You could barely see the rocks until you were right on top of them. My feet would occasionally slide off of of kick a rock and I was lucky enough to resort to flailing my arms to keep my balance and never taking a fall.

Most of my training has been either at the Bridle Trails (fairly flat, wide, fire-road type trails) or on the local roads and their gravel shoulders. I haven't done any real technical trail running in some time. I wished I had. I started to notice my energy waining after a few more 9-10 min miles. By mile 10 I slowed down enough that I gave up on my time goals and started walking up all of the longer uphill sections. People were passing me fairly regularly now but at the same time I was starting to pass some of the people that started in the two early waves 30, and 60 minutes before me. I lost all track of my place in the race and any desire to track it as well.

One of the hard things about this race that I knew about going into it was that due to the nature of the course there would be a 12 - 14 mile section with no aid, not even water. In planning for this I ran all of my long training runs with two 22oz hand bottles. I found that I was able to easily make it 14 miles with the two bottles. I learned the hard way in the race that I hadn't solved the water problem at all. With the humidity and the extra effort the trails were taking out of me I went through my bottles much faster than I'd trained for. I put myself in a bad position of rationing half a bottle of water with about 6 miles to go until I would have a chance to refill. I think the water rationing was what started to derail my race. I didn't notice it at the time but dehydration was beginning to set in.

I also noticed that my hamstrings and one of my calves were starting to get sore, another thing that had never happened in training. I continued to walk the hills and run the rest at a 9min pace but my splits were coming in around the 12 - 13 min mark every mile. Both of my bottles were empty about a half mile before I saw 3 big jugs of water along the side of the trail at the 13.5 mile point. I filled them both and praised the volunteers I saw a few minutes later carrying in two more big jugs. It felt great to have more water than I needed for a change and knowing that it only had to last another 2 miles to the turn-around aid station.

Another thing that started bothering me was my stomach. I was on top of my nutrition all day, I was eating a gel every 30 min and drinking Carbo Pro in my bottles to eat between 275 and 300 KCal/hr as planned. I was also taking one S-Cap every hour to keep my electrolytes in balance. Both strategies worked very well on my last 3 long runs. At the race howeer, my stomach was getting quite sour (a side-effect of dehydration) and I knew what that would mean for my GI tract soon.

I made it to the turn-around aid station in 2h 39m and immediately set off for the facilities. After using the restroom (just like at Mt. Si 50K earlier this year) I thought I had everything handled. The two Immodium tablets that I'd taken before the race should have plugged me up tight but my body just laughed at them.

I actually debated dropping out at the aid station because it was the only place that a runner really could drop. Quitting anywhere else on the course meant that you'd have to walk to which ever end of the trail was closer anyway. I wondered if I had enough in my legs for the return trip. I picked my my drop bag, threw away my 5 empty gel wrappers (don't litter, kids) and refilled my bottles with new 150 KCal doses of CarboPro and a Nuun tablet for flavor. I also took off my shirt and wrung it out. The humidity had left it absolutely soaked. My stop at the aid station took about 10 minutes and I was back on the trail for the return trip. I hoped that I could keep up more or less the same pace walking the uphills and running the rest.

It didn't take me long to abandon that plan when the head of my right Quad started cramping. I had to walk for a minute to calm it down and took an S-Cap immediately to try to calm things down. I didn't have much luck as time wore on. My mile splits with all of the walking and now cramping were in the 13 - 15 min range. I kept yo-yo-ing with a few other runners who were using the same basic strategy of walking up the hills. I started taking S-Caps every 30 minutes instead of every hour but the cramping kept getting worse. I started to realize that I was getting dehydrated but that there wasn't much I could do about it. The 12 mile gap between water stops had me rationing water again with 8 or 9 miles to the finish. I decided to just drink at my normal rate and when I ran dry I'd stop and walk if I couldn't keep running and ask if any of the other runners had water that they could spare.

I guess I looked pretty bad after a while another runner asked if I was okay. When I told her that I was out of water, she offered up some of hers. She still had close to 3 liters o water in her bladder pack and filled one of my bottles. This improved my spirits and I was off and running again. In addition to my cramping, my stomach troubles worsened. On the return leg I had to stop four times to find a secluded spot to "take care of pressing business" so to speak. I don't know what happened to the Immodium but it worked like a placebo. With 7 miles to go I caught up to a woman competitor and struck up a conversation with her. She was a little bit slower than I was but I was having so much problems with cramping, stomach, and dehydration that I decided it was better to run with her and keep talking to make the distance go by faster. We walked the hills and ran the rest at a slightly slower pace. I could have gone faster but the trade-off was worth it.

The miles went by slowly (15-17 min mile splits) and my legs were hurting more and more. I started having to ration water again with 4 miles still to run. Luckily someone had brought in water jugs about a mile before the trailhead and I was saved once again. When we finally reached the trailhead itself there were volunteers waiting with more water and plates of cookies. I took a chocolate chip cookie and filled my bottle again. I thought the cookie would taste fantastic but my sour stomach almost rejected it.

It was a mile and a half from the trailhead to the finish along mostly-downhill fire roads and back across the dam. Sadly my legs were so sore that even slowly jogging down the fire roads hurt too much and I was reduced to mostly walking. I walk-plodded along until it flattened out to cross the Dam and then shuffled down to the finish in a shocking 6h 37m. That's a 2hr positive split and over 2 hrs slower than my first 50K race.

I felt that I controlled most of what I could control, namely my food and my electrolytes but there were several things that I either couldn't account for or underestimated. For instance:

- the high humidity, I had a much higher sweat rate and thus needed to drink more water per hour and take more electrolytes from the start.

- didn't bring enough water. In good conditions (on the roads, no humidity) I can make 2 large bottles last 14 miles. At the race with the extra effort that the trails required and the heat, I needed to run with a Camelbak type bladder system.

-I forgot to drink enough at the turn-around aid station. I refilled my bottles but I didn't drink anything when I was there. I should have chugged an entire bottle to try to catch up a little bit in my hydration. It wouldn't have fixed everything but It definitely would have helped.

- I never trained on technical trails. I get into a rut with my lack of local trails and just end up running on the shoulder of the local roads instead. I need to go out to Cougar & Tiger mountain, Mt. Si, or even Pt. Defiance for some technical trails to build up my stamina. At the same time I'd make the point that these trails would (and probably do) make great hiking trails but don't make good running trails.

- I had breakfast at 5:45am but I should have eaten more before and during the race. Especially starting at the aid station. I wasn't prepared to deviate from my nutrition plan when things started going badly for me.

- A few miles into the single-track I was starting to regret my shoe choice. I did all of my long runs in the Brooks Defyance which is a road shoe. It's a great shoe and it's the pair that fits my feet the best currently. I didn't think about how helpful even a lightly lugged sole would be. I saw quite a few people running in Brooks Cascadias and wish that I'd worn mine despite their narrow fit. I need to start looking at more serious trail shoes for future races and stick with road shoes on the roads.

Overall there were many things that went wrong and/or unplanned for. I had a pretty bad race and didn't have a lot of fun out there. My legs are still quite sore and will be for another few days I'm sure. I'm torn on my thoughts of the race overall. The R/D is very nice and accommodating, but the course description doesn't do the race justice. Some of my perspective could be due to being a trail racing neophyte with a whopping 3 ultras under my belt and not reading between the lines or having the experience to know what to expect. Would I do the race next year after yesterday's experience? Possibly if I could train better for it.

So the stats looked something like this:

Dist: 31.1
Time: 6:37:20
Avg: 12:46/mi (!!)
Alt: no clue. The Garmin didn't register altitude for the first half of the race for some odd reason. The second half of the race it registered 14,770' of Ascent. Given that the highest climb was maybe 100' - 150' and most were < 30' I'd be hesitant to even divide that number by 10 and get 1,477' each way or ~2950'. The satellite signal was extra poor in the woods I guess.

Quick update

2010-10-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

So I came down with a cold Monday afternoon (great timing). I took Tue & Wed off of exercising. I ran 2 miles on the treadmill on Thursday to see how it felt, figuring that I'd make the go/no-go call on the race Friday. The run felt fine and I felt even better Friday so I went for it.

The cold was gone but I had my worst race ever and finished the Baker Lake 50K in 6:37:20. That's a 12:46 average pace.

I'm too tired and sore to get into it tonight. More tomorrow hopefully.

Ugh

One week to go until the big race.

2010-09-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while. With a teething one year old who's been waking up between 3-4 am last week I haven't had much time or energy to write. I'll try to keep it brief and go over the runs starting where I left off...

Friday (6.2mi, 43min, 6:58/mi avg) I ran around my "Work Loop" with the goal of an 80% effort. I hit it pretty well. I was working hard but left a little back. It felt hard but good.

Sunday (16.5mi, 2h 11m, 7:56/mi avg) I had 20 miles on the schedule as a final long run before the taper weeks begin. I was on call for work so I had to split the run up into 3 parts. First my daughter wanted to run the whole thing with me. "I can run 20 miles, Jay." Ummm, lets go around the block and see how you feel.... We ran around the block (just over 1/2 a mile) and she started out strong but stopped to walk at the half way point. She had a few more running efforts in her but by the end of the lap she was calling out "DRINK BREAK!" every 30 seconds to get a sip from my hand bottle. It was cute but the opposite of running. She decided that she wanted to go on a second lap for some reason so we went past the house and she ran probably 10% of the time and continued with the drink breaks. She wasn't interested in a third lap. I dropped her off at home and refilled my bottle that she had drank most of and ran a double out-and-back around the neighborhood to get another 5 miles in my legs. I came back home, refilled again and headed out to the YMCA.

The plan was for the family to give me a 45 - 50 min head start and then drive out there along the same route so that if I did get called for work, that they'd bring me my laptop and I could just hop in the car and start working. (sounds fun eh?) . Work never called and they passed me about 3.5 miles from the Y. I kept going and ended up with only 16.5 on the day. Good enough.

Monday (5.9mi 46min, 7:52 avg) I was a little tired from Sunday's adventure so I took it a little bit easy and ran out to Grass Lawn Park. I ran a mile around their funky 0.2mi track with shoes and then 2 more miles barefoot. There was a soccer game going on so I had to watch for errant kicks as I went past parts of the field but overall it went well. My feet feel pretty good.

Tuesday (5.1mi, 48min, 9:25/mi avg) I ran some easy miles with Nate again. Good to have the company out there on the run.

Wednesday (5.4mi, 37.5min, 6:57/mi avg) I went for a decent tempo run (my last for this training cycle) and had a little bit of stomach trouble holding me back on top of a lack of sleep. This was after one of the nights when the boy got up at 3am so that he and I could spend some quality time not sleeping.

Thursday (5.4mi, 51min, 9:34/mi avg) I ran the same route as Wednesday but with Nate in a pretty good rain storm. We were both soaked to the skin inside of 5 minutes. It wasn't that cold thankfully. It stopped raining by the time we finished which added to the humor of the run.

Friday (5.6mi, 45min, 8:05/mi avg) Easy pace out to Grass Lawn Park again where I only had time for one mile barefoot before heading back to work. Felt decent but not great. It always feels odd when I put my shoes back on after running barefoot. It takes me probably a quarter mile for my footfalls to feel normal again.

Sunday (10.5mi, 1h 22m, 7:50/mi avg) I ran out to the YMCA again following the same route as last weekend. I tried to keep close to an 8:00/mi pace. It's not easy with all of the smallish hills that I go up and down around here. I had to push a little harder on some of the uphills and hold back on some of the downhills. It worked out in the end to 7:50/mi which would be a great pace for me on race day. I think that would be a stretch but not impossible. My legs and body felt almost completely good. The exception to that statement was my stomach. I had to stop twice at the bathroom, by which I mean bushes by the side of the road. Annoying.

I passed the 1000 mile mark earlier this month and I'll pass the 1100 mile point next week. My weekly and monthly mileage are falling off a little this month due to the taper weeks before the race. If all goes well I'll run twice during the coming week. I get antsy when I don't run but it'll only help me rest up for next Saturday. So far so good.

One more note

2010-09-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

I finally hit 1000 miles for the year during last Saturday's long run.

That is all.

Looking back at the past week

2010-09-16T19:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday (27.1mi, 3h 43m, 8:14/mi avg) Saturday ended up working better for me to get out for a long run. I had a 4 hour window between cleaning house and friends coming over for dinner. The plan was to run out to Pt. Defiance and back. I decided on Pt. Defiance because it was just over 13 miles away (I planned for a 26mi run) and I thought that I had a good chance of finding a water fountain to refill my bottles there. If I wasn't able to find a water fountain I could easily run up Pearl street to one of many convenience stores to buy water. I also knew that I wouldn't be too far from a pay phone if I bombed the run completely and needed a ride back home. The downside of the route was that it was all on paved streets/paths.

At noon the weather was partly sunny and in the mid 60s which was just about perfect. The first few miles were out to 40th ave, up and over the long hill and down to the Grange. The shoulders on these roads were plenty wide enough that I could stay well away from passing cars.

I felt calm and at ease with my long run from the start which isn't the norm for me. I'm usually a little nervous about how the run is going and I don't really settle down until I'm 3/4ths over and I know I have it in the bag. Saturday I was feeling confident. Maybe it was the last five 50 mile weeks I'd racked up. I kept a steady pace that was hovering around an 8:00/mi average over the first few net-downhill miles.

I was enjoying some music on my new Ipod Shuffle that I bought on a lark when Apple announced the new models two weeks ago. My first generation Nano is having headphone jack issues and cutting out frequently so it was time for a new one. I took advantage of the free engraving that Apple offers on Ipods and had them etch it with part of one of my favorite running-related quotes: "Never sacrifice the gift." The full quote is from Steve Prefontaine:

"To give less than your best is to sacrifice the gift."

I don't know why distance running comes easy to me especially given my size and the lack of athleticism anywhere in my family history. Maybe it was some genetic trait laying dormant. A gift in a manner of speaking. Thank you Science!

Back to the run. From the Grange I turned onto East Bay Dr NW (great name) which has little to no shoulder now that it's been re-paved but is the most direct route to the Narrows Bridge. I ran in the grass and dirt along the side of the road until I came to the bottom of the last hill. It was here that my body decided in no uncertain terms that it was time to find a bathroom. I was maybe 1/4mi from a gas station but I didn't think I could even make it that far. Luckily there was tree cover and an embankment that offered some privacy. Once I got back on the road I continued climbing the hill that lead up toward the airport and further on to the Narrows Bridge.

I had only run across the Narrows Bridge once before, at a 5KM race held the day before the new span of the bridge opened. We were running on the road then, not just the bike/pedestrian path. Running across the bridge this time was quite disorienting for me. The view of the water 187' below was very distracting. I was glad when I reached the other side and headed up the hill and turned left at the light. I followed Jackson for a mile or so and then turned left to head down Narrows dr toward the Zoo. I was still keeping a good pace even with the hilly route as I eventually headed down N. Park wy which lead me right into the park and a water fountain.

My Garmin said I was 13.5 miles into the run and it had taken me 1:50 to get there. I refilled and turned around for the journey back. I felt surprisingly good considering the 2hrs already spent running. I was trying to keep good running form (upright, don't over-stride, stay loose) which helped keep the demons off of my back. The temperature picked up a little on the way back so I took off my shirt and enjoyed the breeze. My pace was starting to slip by about 18 miles but I was still hitting the occasional sub-8 min split. I followed the same route back and by the time I reached the Arletta store I was starting to feel the miles in my feet. I pushed through the discomfort and pulled out a final sub-8 min mile before finishing in 3:43. I went through the 26.2 mile point in 3:36:08, which is about 4 minutes faster than I hit that point in my last training run for the Mt. Si 50K earlier this year.

My nutrition plan worked really well. I tried to consume between 275 - 300 Kcal / hr. I put 150 Kcal of CarboPro and a Nuun tablet in each bottle to start with. I carried two plastic bags with 150 KCal of Carbopro and a Nuun tablet in my pocket for the mid-run refueling. On top of that I carried 6 Hammer Gels. Two bottles lasted me about 13 - 14 miles. I ate a gel every 30 min and an S-cap every hour. I never felt hungry, bloated or cramped.

Sunday (0.6mi, ~6min, 10:00/mi avg) The other reason I did my long run on Saturday is because my daughter's first ever race was Sunday. She mentioned a few weeks ago that she liked to run with me so I offered to sign her up for a race. She said "Sure Jay!" (we're on a first name basis) so I signed us both up for the Bank 2 Bay 1K race. I thought about running the 5K or 10K race myself as well but I wanted it to be about her first race instead of worrying about my own event. The 1K event started in two waves, first the 5 - 10 year olds took off, then three minutes later then 0 - 5 year olds. We were in the second wave and got a little boxed in when the starter's horn sounded. It took about 100 meters before the race opened up and we were able to start passing people. We weren't warmed up so we started out slow with a short walking break. Once her legs warmed up she picked up the pace a bit. I left it to her to set the pace and just kept up with her.

The course was an out and back. We weaved through people and got to the turn around where she exclaimed "I see two cones!". We went around the cones and headed back to the finish line on the other side of the street. We were steadily passing other parent/child teams as we chugged on at what I'd estimate was a 10min/mi pace. My wife was cheering for us at the side of the road and took a couple pictures as we trotted by. When we were maybe 100 meters from the finish my daughter saw the Tacoma Rainier's mascot (a big moose) and slowed quickly. She didn't know what to make of him and was a little startled by his size and appearance. She made me laugh when she said: "A MOOSE JAY!" I said "lets go around him" and she kicked it into high gear and we sped around him and into the finishing chute. The race wasn't timed so I'm just estimating that it took us about 6 minutes. As soon as the race was over she said "That was a short race, Jay." I'll look for something longer next time I guess. Overall it was a great time and so much fun to run with her. I hope we continue this trend in the future.

Monday (5.1mi, 44min, 8:36/mi avg) Just a recovery run out to the Bridle Trails and back. My legs were pretty sore from Saturday so I took it pretty easy, stopping on the way back to try a few wild Blackberries (disappointing) and just stretch out those legs.

Tuesday (6.2mi, 47min, 7:38/mi avg) I planned to run out the corridor trail to the Bridle Trails and then come back down to Grass Lawn Park for a mile barefoot on the track. As I approached I saw a motorcycle cop blocking the trailhead. I asked him if the trail was open or closed. He said that there was a burglar in the area and the Police were tracking him with dogs. I changed my plans and kept going down 148th to Old Redmond Rd. I saw Police cars parked every 2 blocks watching for the burglar. I ran up the long hill and turned around when I hit the 2.5 mile point, headed back down the hill and stopped at GLP for 5 laps (0.20 mi track) barefoot. It felt great to run without shoes again now that my feet are healed after the long saga with the blisters after the last time I tried to run barefoot in the blazing sun. I wanted to run another mile or two on the track but I went with caution instead and headed back to the gym. My legs were feeling a little better.

Wednesday (5.4mi, 36:16, 6:43/mi avg) Time to pay the piper and get back to some tempo running. I ran the Redmond Streets route (148th -> Old Redmond -> power line trail -> corridor Trail -> 148th) CCW. I had some speed in my legs but I struggled to really push myself hard. Still recovering from the long run I guess. I'm pretty happy that my mile splits were:

6:05 (downhill)
7:02 (uphill)
7:01 (uphill)
6:48 (mixed)
6:37 (mixed)
6:50 (last 0.4, mostly uphill)

I came close to staying under 7:00 every mile. It's just tough to plod up Old Redmond rd that fast. Good run but tired.

I also finally weighed myself at the gym and I'm down 4lbs since I've put a hold on the deserts a week ago. Tough to stay honest with this one though. I'm sure I'll crack when I go to the Puyallup Fair this coming weekend.

Thursday (5.4mi, 52min, 9:38/mi avg) I ran the reverse of the route I ran yesterday with Nate. We ran at a slow recovery pace. Well it was a recovery pace for me anyway. Nate runs for fitness rather than enjoyment, so his pace is a little slower than mine. Great to have company on the run though. I could have just kept going and going....

The past few runs (recap)

2010-09-08T23:18:00.000-07:00

Thursday (5.3mi, 51min, 9:38/mi avg) I ran a very slow recovery run with a co-worker and didn't worry about pace. I just tried to enjoy the rare occasion of company on a run. He's doesn't run anywhere near the miles I do so he's quite a bit slower. Sometimes it's worth it to trade a faster pace for good conversation.

Friday (9.25mi, 1h 8m, 7:25/mi avg) I planned to run between 11 and 14 miles after work but got a late start and my ankle / Achilles started bothering me so I cut it about half a lap short once I got into the trails. I took a slightly different route out to the Bridle Trails, going almost all the way around them clockwise and entering on the West side of the trail where the horse ring and water fountain are. I had one large water bottle with me and it was a hot enough day that the bottle was almost empty by the time I got to the Park (5 miles). I was holding a pretty good pace, averaging around 7:05/mi at that point despite the hills.

I refilled the bottle and rinsed off my head to cool down and got back onto the trail. I started feeling a little overheated after my brief water stop and had to slow the pace down a little bit to keep from blowing up. It only lasted about a mile and a half until I was ready to push again. I continued CCW around the perimeter of the park and rather than completing another half lap when I got to the NE exit, I just listened to my body and headed back toward work. My ankle has been feeling the odd twinge of soreness from rolling it running a week or so ago. It didn't really bother me at the time but I'll get the occasional reminder that something isn't quite right.

I held a strong pace the rest of the way back to work and ended a few miles short of my goal but happy that I got out for an hour no less.

Sunday (15.2mi, 1h 53m, 7:27/mi avg) I took Saturday as a planned day off and ran my scheduled 15 mile run on Sunday. I didn't have a plan on how to run the 15 miles, tempo, recovery, fartlek, hills, etc... I just wanted the time on my feet and more work for my legs. I felt pretty good as I was getting started so I headed out toward Sehmel drive to repeat the 15 mile run I completed a couple of weeks ago and see if I could run it faster. I hoped to run at least 8 miles in the first hour and then hold or beat that pace for the "and back" part of the route. There were only a few uphills on the "out" so I had little trouble keeping the pace in the low 7 min/mi and even high 6 min/mi range until just after the turn around. I made my 8 miles in the first hour (barely) and started to slow on the return. I had to stop for water earlier than I'd planned due to the heat and my pace.

I had a slower mile or two in the middle and recovered somewhat to pull the pace back down near 7:00/mi for the last 3 miles. Overall it was a good run and about a minute and a half faster than last time I ran this route. I felt like I was pushing the pace a little past the point of comfort the whole run. I'm not very in tune with my pace right now and I'm not sure what I should shoot for at Baker Lake in a month. 5 hours seems pretty conservative. 4:30 (well, 4:29 actually) would be a nice run and 4:15 would be a very good day for me. Tying myself to a distinct time seems silly though. I'm not out to win it and couldn't even if I was. I think I should working on coming up with goals in terms of enjoying myself out there.

Tuesday (6.0mi, 44min, 7:03/mi) I skipped Monday's planned recovery run. How's that for recovery? I felt that I needed to take another day off after hitting 50 miles again last week despite planning to drop my mileage. Tuesday I ran on the treadmill at the gym at work instead of braving the light rain and likely muddy trails around Redmond. I ran a mile of warm up at 8:00/mi and then ran 4 x 1mi with times ranging between 6:10 and 7:00/mi. Again I don't know what I should be running for mile repeat times so I just tested out different speeds. The first one at 6:40 felt pretty hard so I backed off a little for the next two and then started the last one at 7:00/mi pace but started bumping up the speed 0.1 - 0.2 mph every 30 seconds. By the end of the mile I was down into the 5:45/mi range and spraying sweat all over the treadmill as I struggled to keep my legs going. It felt pretty hard and my legs were tired by the end but it was good to get this workout into the books. I do speed work without a specific target pace. I'll have to work the pace out before I find a 10K to run later this year.

Wednesday (5.45mi, 45min, 8:16/mi avg)

A Big August, Tempo, Fartlek, and literally running an errand

2010-09-01T23:37:00.000-07:00

After hitting 190 miles in July I wanted to see if I could beat that for August. I'm happy to say that I found time to break the 200 mile barrier for the first time. I ran 24 days this month, the same as July but I averaged almost 8.7 miles per run to July's 8.0. My numbers for August are:

Miles: 208
Time: 28h 16m
Avg: 8:09/mi

My totals for the year so far are:

Miles: 930
Time: 127h 52m
Avg: 8:15/mi

I should be able to hit 1000 miles in September, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep up the 50 mile weeks that I've been doing this month. Summer is ending and the weather is turning wet. That means my main trail system (Bridle Trails) will soon be a muddy mess as is the norm most winters. Normally I'd hit the gym that's a block or so away but with 4 treadmills in the gym at work, less time walking to the gym means more time to work out.

So what have I been running?

Saturday (6.25mi, 57:50, 9:16/mi) I didn't plan to run on Saturday but with my wife and daughter away at a kids birthday party and Sunday looking packed with guests and a party of our own, A window of time opened up and I jumped on it. I loaded the boy into the BOB and got out onto the roads. My legs didn't feel that bad after running long on Friday evening. Definitely not fresh but not dead either. The only plan was recovery. I headed out to the Arletta store and then over to 40th ave, the local long steady climb. I ran up the hill with the jogger until I hit the 3 mile mark in the run and then turned around. I knew that I wouldn't have that much time before dinner time and the two corn-cakes I packed wouldn't last him long. I wasn't able to keep much of a pace up or downhill and just slogged along trying to stay loose the rest of the way home.

Monday (9.4mi, 1:15:39, 8:03/mi) I had another appointment with my acupuncturist in the middle of the day so I ran after work. I changed at work and quickly realized that I'd forgotten my water bottle. I drank as much water as I could stand before starting the run and then set out on a moderate pace through Redmond. I headed down to Grass Lawn Park where I stopped for a water fountain before heading up Old Redmond Rd. toward the Powerline trail that bisects the Bridle Trails park. It's a steady climb at a 5% - 7% grade. Not a killer but not very fast either. I trotted up the hill listening to an interview with Duncan Callahan fresh off of his Leadville 100 victory. My pace was slow and comfortable. Once on the Powerline trail I passed a few people riding horses as I headed toward the park.

I entered the park and began a CCW loop around the perimeter. I tried to stick to the outermost trail to maximize my run and because those are the trails that I know the best. I eventually found my way to the lower horse stable / ring where the only drinking fountain was. Again I drank all the water I could stand and set off going up the same trail I ran on my long run last week. It's short and steep and takes you up to the center of the park. From there I tried out a few trails that were new to me and had a great time exploring some different terrain. I love the lesser travelled paths and the narrow quick footing. It felt great to run fast and make quick decisions on which path to follow when the trail split, throwing my body left or right and committing my speed and cadence to that choice.

I found that I was speeding up as the run went on. As I was crossing the last of the South perimeter and coming up the East side of the trails I found myself keeping a pace in the high 5's and low 6's (min/mile) as I sought out good footing on the rooted trail. I was feeling good enough that I was even pushing off of the uneven terrain so that I'd float over the small potholes and gullies. Much to my surprise I found a great groove of speed and agility as I ate up the trail.

I exited the Bridle Trails, crossed the street and headed down the corridor trail back toward Redmond. I kept the pace fast and my heart rate up as I negotiated the two short steep descents and one ascent. Once the trail flattened out near the golf course I was starting to feel the burn from the fast pace but I could see the street that lead back to work so I kept the pace under 6:00/mi until I hit the street. I pulled the plug there and slowed to a recovery pace the last 3/4mi to cool down from the hard effort.

Tuesday (5.25mi, 40:00, 7:37/mi) It was raining hard all morning and the co-worker that I was going to run with forgot his shorts so I was on my own. I debated a run in the rain but decided to use a treadmill at the work gym instead. I was lucky that I got there when I did because three of the four treadmills were already taken. I didn't have a plan in mind (intervals/recovery/tempo/etc) so I warmed up for 10 minutes, then did something I've wanted to try for a while: a 10/10 time trail. I've read about some of the hardcore ultra runners doing 10 minute time trails on treadmills at 10% incline as a friendly competition. They're able to cover between 1.5 and 2 miles in 10min. I've been curious how I would compare for 10min at 10%. I didn't think that it'd be so hard to run at a 10% incline. I started out at 7:30/mi pace and after about a quarter of a mile realized that there was no way I could hang on for 10 minutes at that pace. I dropped the speed as I continued to struggle with the incline. I settled into a decent pace that hurt but was maintainable and finished the 10 minutes with a paltry 1.15mi.

I recommend that everyone try this and see how deep in the pain cave you can venture. Of course this will now be a benchmark that I try to beat occasionally. It counts as hill training, right?

After the 10min time trail I dropped the treadmill back to 2.5% incline and eased back into a recovery pace for 2 miles before speeding up to a 6:30 and then 6:00 pace. This was more because I was running out of workout time than my desire to run fast. I capped it off with the last 1/2 mile at a 5:55 pace. On my training log I called this a Fartlek day, something I don't do often enough.

Wednesday (6.2mi, 50:00, 8:04/mi) I wanted to get out for a relatively easy run but I wanted to stay away from the trails which should be nice and muddy after yesterday's rain. I needed to pick up a padlock to use at work now that the gym is open and I can leave my stuff in the day-use lockers there. Google said that there was a Target store in Redmond so I got the walking directions to the store, wrote them down and promptly left them at my desk. Luckily the route was simple. The route was all on streets and was about 2.9 miles each way. That would be about as far as I was willing to run to at lunch. I calculated that I could run down there, grab a lock and run back in well under an hour.

The route started out going down a fairly steep 1.1 mile hill on the bike/foot path that goes from 51st street down along Hwy 520 to the edge of downtown Redmond. It loses 300 feet and went by quickly run on the way down. From there I was able to run a block on the sidewalk and then cut over to a different bike/foot path and run almost the rest of the way staying off the roads and sidewalks. The path dumped me out on Redmond Road about a block and a half from the Target Parking lot. One long stoplight later and I was at Target. I headed toward the school supplies, grabbed the first Master combination lock that I saw and jumped into an open checkout lane. I paid in cash, declined a bag and ran back out of there with my water bottle in one hand and the lock (in it's plastic packaging) in the other.

I waited for probably 2 minutes at the first stoplight and then was back to the path admiring the wild blackberry bushes as I ran. The path lead me to the street I wanted half a block from the bottom of the big hill. I waited for another long stoplight and when it changed, I attacked the hill. I kept a strong pace that was probably somewhere in the low 8:00/mi range judging by feel. I've driven down the hill many times but this was the first time I'd run up the hill. It wasn't nearly as steep as I thought it was. I was still breathing hard and my legs were complaining about the effort but it was never bad enough that I wanted to stop or felt like I was going to blow up. I saw another runner near the end of the path at the top of the hill when I was still about 2/10ths of a mile away. I pushed as hard as I could and made up some ground on him but I ran out of room and had to settle for catching him as he jogged in place waiting for the light to change. (I'm still not sure why people jog in place at stoplights, I'm usually running hard enough that I'm happy to take a break when I stop for a light.) In any case, from the top of the hill it was just a short easy cool-down jog back to work to shower and get back to my desk. I only wish I'd brought my Garmin watch on the run to get the actual numbers.

My bad knee is a little sore after the back-to-back-to-back big mileage weeks so maybe an easy week is in order for me. I'm all set and on track for the Baker Lake 50K in October and a 1K race with my daughter (her first) in two weeks. Those two races and a 10K later this year are the only things on my race calendar. I still haven't found a 10K to enter though. I know that there's one in Gig Harbor on Thanksgiving morning (that I ran last year) but it's pretty hilly and not a good one for breaking 40 minutes. I need to do a little more searching to find a flat easy race for the speed attempt.

Long run after work on Friday

2010-08-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

With two kids' birthday parties this weekend (including my son's first) I knew that I just wouldn't have time for a long run on either day. I figured that my options were either to run before work Friday or Monday, or after work on Friday. I wanted to get it out of the way so Friday after work it was. I left work at 4:30 and went down to the new fitness center in the basement of my building. It's been open for about 2 weeks but they have towel service available now, so it's a viable option if I'm going for a run and don't want to fuss with my regular gym a block and a half away.

I got changed and filled up my two large hand-bottles and stuffed my pockets with gels, powder, and S-caps and was on my way by about 4:50pm. Just for reference, the picture above is what I had to carry.

A few words about nutrition... I was trying out a few new gel brands/flavors:

Clif Shot (Double Espresso) - The flavor was horribly bitter and I had to choke it down quickly and swish my mouth out immediately to get rid of the after taste. They worked well enough and delivered the pep and energy though.

Power Gel (Chocolate) - This had 1 shot of caffeine in it and the flavor wasn't very good for chocolate. I prefer Hammer Gel for flavor. I didn't get the rush that the Clif Shot gave me but they worked as well as most other gels.

Hammer Gel (Apple Cinnamon) - They're very sweet and taste exactly like the filling from a Hostess Apple Pie to me. They're just calories in a sweet form.

I ran with 100 Kcal of CarboPro and two Nuun tablets in each bottle to start. That lasted the first 13 miles or so and I refilled at a water fountain with the same thing in one bottle and 100 Kcal of Heed in the other bottle. I only had 1 Nuun tablet for each bottle this time. The CarboPro w/ Berry Nuun tasted fine but the Lemon/Lime Heed with a Lemon/Lime Nuun tasted awful. I dumped most of it and just drank water instead. Maybe those two versions of Lemon/Lime aren't compatible.

I took one S-Cap every hour and never cramped. I'd say that my nutrition went really well on the run. I watched the time closely and had a gel every 30 minutes which did the trick and never left me hungry. With the constant stream of CarboPro in my bottles and the Gels I was taking in between 250 - 300 Kcal every hour. This worked out great for me. The CarboPro isn't sweet and doesn't thicken the water so you forget that you're drinking it.

The route:
I had 22 miles on the schedule after my last long run of 18. I normally don't jump up 4 miles between long runs but I'm on a tight schedule. I'm looking at a 26 mile long run in two weeks. I set out around the streets of Redmond as I would if I were running my long Tempo loop Clockwise only this time I wasn't pushing the pace much. I wanted to run at least 7 miles every hour with 7.5 as a stretch goal. I wound my way around the streets with the big downhill and soon after the matching uphill until I reached the NE corner of the Bridle Trails at the 4.5 mile point of the run. I knew that once I left the Bridle Trails that it'd take me 3.5 miles to get back to work. This meant that I had to run loops around the trails until the Garmin hit at least 18.5 miles. The perimeter of the trails was about 5 miles so I ran a figure 8 route twice which adds another 1.4 miles (0.7mi Powerline trail that bisects the park twice per loop) for two loops and then ran about 3/4 of a normal perimeter loop with a few side trails thrown in. I hit the north exit of the trails at 19.25 miles, a little more than was necessary. From there I ran North to Old Redmond Rd. and followed it East and went down the long hill past Grass Lawn Park and made a right onto 148th ave which took me almost all the way back to work. I stopped the Garmin at 22.8 miles in 3:05:52. I made my goal of hitting 21 miles in just over 2:59 thanks to the fast descent on miles 20 and 21.

The run: I felt pretty good. I took easy at the start and eased into a pace that drifted between 7:45/mi and 8:40/mi. depending on the terrain. I definitely had some low and high points while running. My iPod wasn't charged so I left it at the gym and ran without music or podcasts for the first time in a while. I had a few rough patches where my hips and quads were hurting but within 10 minutes I'd bounce back and return to good form with little trouble. I'm excited by this and hoping that I can run a slightly more conservative race at the 50K so that I'm not dead with 5 miles to go like I was at Mt. Si.

The run put me over 900 miles for the year. Not a great total so far but a pretty good comeback from where I started out.

Time: 3:05:52
Dist: 22.8mi
Avg: 8:10/mi
Garmin's wacky altitude math: 9231' (I'd be surprised if it was even 3000')

As an addendum to my last post, this is what I get to wear for my Tendonitis (though not when I run):

Yep, I'm wrist brace guy.

Nudging the ball down the field

2010-08-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

Tuesday: (5.1mi 44:40 8:45/mi avg) After Monday's slow recovery run I didn't feel quite recovered so I set the dial for recovery pace again and ran down to the Bridle trails. On the way out to the trails my legs didn't feel very good and kept my pace down. I was hungry and sluggish. It was one of those runs where you plan to turn around and end it early if things don't improve after a mile or two. It wasn't bad enough that I was ready to throw in the towel at the midway point so I kept going and tried to stay on top of my hydration as I entered the Bridle Trails from the North end of the Powerlines road. My mood and legs started to improve once I was on the trails running amongst the tall trees. My pace improved a bit and I enjoyed the shaded trails until I left the park and headed back toward the gym. It was warm enough that I was able to enjoy running with my shirt off. I relaxed and focused on the run, shutting out everything else except the path in front of my feet. Not a spectacular run but the best way I could find to spend my lunch hour.

Wednesday: (6.0mi 41:14 6:52/mi avg) I wasn't looking forward to the tempo run that I pushed from Tuesday to Today, I had an uneasy stomach which was probably was nerves about how fast I would be able to run. I ran the work loop Counter Clockwise, the slightly slower direction. It was 85F and felt every bit of that from the start. About 1/10th of a mile into the run I hit a red light and noticed that my legs felt heavy already. I decided at this point that I wouldn't look at my watch during the run and turned the live display off. I hoped running blind would take some of the stress out of my busy brain. I don't know why I have any stress about running in general, much less a once-a-week tempo run that only matters to me. Internal competition with my past times I guess, but you can't PR every time out there. My first mile was slower than usual for this route. I'm usually hitting the first mile in about 6:00 even but today I got there in 6:17. I kept losing a few seconds per mile but still managing to suffer just fine. Gasping for breath I was able to start picking up the pace along the back stretch which just upped the suffering a little as I chugged on.

My legs weren't doing that well and by the time I went down the big hill and back up the other side I started to feel the heat of the pavement through my shoes. It wouldn't have been a good day to try barefoot running. I did my best to keep the pace up for the last slightly-uphill mile back. When it was all said and done I had a decent sub-42 min. time for the record books. I hope the tempo runs and intervals will help my pacing for running a 10K later this year in a quest to go under 40 after I turn 40.

Other things of note:

After running out of water twice on my last long run I went to REI to look for larger water bottles to run with and found some. I bought a larger replacement bottle for my Ultimate Direction holster thing that holds 4 more ounces. I also reluctantly picked up a Camelbak 24oz hand bottle. I liked the ergonomics, the insulated lining, and especially the nozzle but they only had them in pink. I bought it in pink rather than trying to find another color in another store or online. Maybe it'll help my ego to carry a pink hand bottle. Either that or I'll tell people that it was dark when I packed for the run and I accidentally grabbed my wife's bottle my mistake. :-)

Also, I had an appointment at the physical therapy office yesterday. I am now the not-quite-so-proud wearer of a custom-formed plastic wrist brace to help with a bad case of De Quervins tendonitis that I've been suffering since I returned from Hawaii back in May. I thought it would go away on it's own if I took it easy on my wrist. Here I am 3 months later and it hurts more than ever. Having a job where I sit in front of a computer most of the day doesn't help a bit.

Good run and recapping the week

2010-08-22T23:48:00.000-07:00

Great run today, but more about that in a minute...

Continuing with last week's runs:

Thursday: (8.85 1:13 8:19/mi avg) I couldn't get out to run at lunch so I ran after work. I ran the standard loop out to the Bridle Trails and back. I took a pretty easy pace to save my legs for speed work on Friday. Nothing too special about the run.

Friday: first run: (6.0 0:44 7:20/mi avg) I went to the gym for mile repeats on the treadmill. I did a short warm-up and then ran 4 x 1mi @ 6:00 pace. The pace was pretty hard for me and worked up a good sweat with the lack of air rushing past my head as I spun the hamster wheel. I was walking for a quarter mile between the repeats to recover. I just didn't have the energy to jog between them this time. I'm torn on what pace to run mile repeats at. 6 min/mi would be great for a 10K pace but totally unrealistic for a marathon pace. I'd be better off running at 7 min/mi for marathon training. I want to concentrate on 50K and longer events but still want to retain some speed. I guess it comes down to thinking about what I'm training for at the time and my ego.

Friday: second run: (9.9 1:24 8:32/mi avg) I had the chance to run more on Friday so I did. I ran a "recovery" 10 mile run out past Grass Lawn park and then around to the Bridle Trails for a loop and then back to the gym. It wasn't much for recovery but was mostly just to pad up my weekly miles and get a weekly number in the range of 50 miles. I'm hoping that running 50 mile weeks consistently will help me better handle longer races. The run itself felt pretty good. I ate enough and even carried a gel flask with 3 shots of Hammer Gel in it. (Espresso flavor, my current favorite) to see how uncomfortable it was (a little).

Sunday: (15.0 in 1:53 7:32/mi) I'm between long run weekends so I had 15 on the schedule. Having taking Saturday off from running I planned to see if I could complete the miles in under 2 hours. I ran an out and back to Sehmel rd so that I could even go for a negative split if the legs felt good. I started out with a little pain on the bottom of my left foot but that went away after maybe 2 miles. My legs felt really good today. I easily kept all of my mile splits under an 8:00/mi pace except for the second one which went up the Tunnel Trail. My back and shoulders felt relaxed and never bothered me. I had no trouble pushing myself to keep the pace going up the hills.

I tried to keep on top of my nutrition today as well. I carried a flask of gel again and put 100 Kcal of Carbopro in my bottle along with a Nuun tablet for flavor. I carried a bag of 100 Kcal of Carbopro and a Nuun tablet to refill later when I got to the store for more water. I at about 600 calories on the run which is a pretty good ratio for my weight. I'm reading about Nutrition and run across articles stating that most people can process at most 240 Kcal per hour during continuous exercise. I know that it's much easier to process liquid calories than calories from solid food. Thus my plan to get calories from either liquid or gel sources today. My stomach doesn't work as hard and doesn't have to divert energy away from running / sweating to digest those solids. I burned about 1250 Kcal / hour but only replaced 300 of them. The "unlimited reserve" of calories from Glycogen and fat stores worked like a charm. So did the large portion of homemade Strawberry Shortcake that I had after dinner.

Weekly miles: 50.25
Monthly miles: 147.7 with 9 days to go.

If I can average 6 miles a day I'll break 200 for the first month ever. Bring it on!

Catching Up and a new fast time for Redmond Streets

2010-08-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Sunday (18.1mi 2:38:40 8:46/mi Avg) It was around 90F out on Sunday and the only time I had to get out for a run was at noon meaning I'd be out for the hottest part of the day. My hastily put together schedule to prepare for Baker Lake 50K calls for long runs pretty much every weekend until the race. I hoped that the heat would be good training to toughen me up. I lived inland of Los Angeles when I started running 20 years ago. It was > 100F and bone dry all summer. I got used to the heat pretty quickly and didn't know enough o bring water with me on my runs. I've always done pretty well i the heat so I wasn't too worried. I started the run out with my cousin who was visiting. She had run 10 miles the day before (she's training for a half marathon) so she was only up for 4 miles.

We started out with the One Store Loop, heading up the tunnel trail and out to Ray Nash rd. It was great to chat with her and start out at a slower pace to really warm up properly, something I rarely do with my limited time to run. When we got to the store, she headed back to the house and I split off toward Fox Island. I didn't plan out a route so I headed toward Fox Island. I figured that I could run up to the top of the hill on the island and stop at the store if I needed any water. I had two bottles with me, so I figured I could make it up to 12 miles before needing to refill. I did pretty well on the way up the hill on fox island, switching sides of the road depending on where the shade was. At the top of the hill I still had a full bottle left so I figured I could make it back to the Arletta store to refill so I kept going, picking up my slower-than-usual pace on the way back down.

I crossed the bridge back to Gig Harbor and went East up the hill to take 70th ave up to 40th. It was a little bit of a struggle with almost no shade, but once I turned to go down 40th, it was shaded the whole way (about a mile). I ran out of water on the way down 40th with maybe a mile from the store. At 12.4 miles I finally arrived at the store. The woman working behind the counter joked about me burning up running on such a hot day. I refilled my bottles and took another S-cap and a gel and was back on my way. I headed out Ray Nash in the opposite direction and out toward Kopachuck State Park. I knew how far it was from the top of the Tunnel trail home so I planned to run an out-and-back to eat up some distance so that I could finish close to 18. Unfortunately the out portion was almost all uphill and sunny. I hit my turn-around and was almost out of water again. I stopped at a Middle school on the way back figuring that I'd fill up at one of the many drinking fountain I'd find there. I looked all around the school, around every building and every playground but didn't find a single fountain. When I was in primary school there were fountains on almost every side of every building. I left disheartened and thirsty.

I came back to the Tunnel Trial and was still feeling pretty good running in the shade of the trail. The trail dumped me out onto the road where I drank the last of the water with maybe a mile and a quarter to go. I eased up the pace and finished with a partial lap around the block to make sure it was just over 18 miles. It was a little slower than my usual long run but it was also about 15 degrees hotter. I'm happy with my performance.

Monday (0, nothing, nada, zip)

Tuesday (5.1mi, 57:45, 13:57/mi avg) I planned a recovery run and ran it with a co-worker who's not terribly interested in running as anything other than a way to burn calories. Our paces aren't that close, but he's a good guy and I enjoy the company once in a while. I felt pretty good but he was having a bad day. He didn't eat enough, and started cramping up about half way through the run. We started taking walking breaks depending on how bad the cramps were and then with about 1.5mi. to go just walked the rest of the way in. We still burned the calories and got the exercise. Recovery accomplished.

Wednesday (5.4mi, 35:04 6:29/mi avg) Today was a day for a tempo run. I looked at the splits from the last time I ran the Redmond Streets route and compared them to what I was hitting on today's splits. I was one second faster after the first two miles, but I felt like I was going maybe 5% easier than last time. I was still gasping for breath on some of the uphill pitches and struggling to recover after cresting them, but I didn't feel that I was quite as deep in the cave for the first couple of miles. I planned to go out a tiny bit easier and then make it up in the final 2.5 miles.

Today's run also took me over 100 miles for the month. It's a little slower than I'd hoped to reach 100, but I still have a good chance at hitting 175 this month if I can keep my long runs on track.

Another week goes by

2010-08-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

Looking back to the last 6 days of running, I didn't end up getting the 17-18 miles I wanted last Sunday. I just ran out of time during the day and finished last week with 37.8 miles. I'll give the details below:

Sunday: 8.15 in 59:15 (7:16/mi avg) I didn't have time for a good run during the day so I settled for an hour after the kids went to bed. I wanted to do a few hill repeats so I want out to 40th, a one-mile long hill at about 8% grade and started running hard uphill for 2 minutes, then turning around and coming back down slowly to recover for 1 minute. I zig-zagged up and down the hill until after the 5th hard burst (Fartlek?) uphill I reached the top. I decided to keep the pace up on all of the rest of the hills as I ran down to 70th and then came around past Fox Island and back home. I pushed hard on the uphills, tried to stay fast and loose on the downhills and steady but a bit slower on the flats. I knew the run would be around 8 miles and wanted to see if I could finish 8 in under an hour. I was happy about that even if I didn't get the 18 I hoped for.

Monday: 4.8 in 42:09 (8:47/mi avg) Recovery day for the body. I just ran lazily out to the Bridle Trails for a short loop. I wanted to run at least 5 but I misjudged the route when i was in the forest and turned around too early.

Tuesday: 6.0 in 43:52 (7:19/mi avg) I wanted to run Intervals so I sucked it up and ran on the treadmill at the gym. I ran 4 1200 meter repeats at 6:00/mi pace with a quarter mile @ 9:30 pace rest interval between and a mile cool-down at the end. I struggled to keep 6:00/mi pace after the first two. I thought it would be easier but I learned that I'm not in as good of shape as I hoped.

Wednesday: 5.15 in 44:21 (8:37/mi avg) Another recovery day for my legs. I felt pretty good but there was definitely some soreness in my hamstrings that I wanted to work out. The easy running plus using the massage stick and a foam roller helped.

Thursday: 5.4 in ~50 min (slow pace). I ran with a guy at work around my Redmond Streets course. He's a really good mountain biker but doesn't get into running much. I don't think he enjoys running except as an effective tool to lose weight. He was good company to talk to on a run that I planned to be at recovery pace anyway. Later that day at work, he IM'd me and asked "So what'd we run, about 3 miles?" Funny guy.

Friday: Run 1: 6.05 in 40:33 (6:42/mi avg) along the Pro Club route Clockwise. I went after it on this one. I ran the first two net downhill miles in 5:53, then 5:50. I paid for it on the next two miles but picked it up again for some nice low-6 miles to finish it up. This time barely breaks my previous record for the route (by 9 seconds). It's something, I'm approaching 40 min!
Run 2: 8.10 in 1:12:01 (8:53/mi avg) I ran the standard Bridle Trails full loop as a recovery run after work to sneak in a few extra miles and give my legs a chance to go easy. I didn't push the pace at all during the run and I rolled my ankle about 1/2 way into the lop. I was running down a trail that formed soft of a shallow V-shaped trench in the middle. I was running about 6:30/mi pace and I rolled my left ankle with immediate searing pain and a loud grunt escaping my lungs. I did my best to stop quickly and came pretty close to falling over and tumbling down the rest of the short hill. I got control and hopped to a stop on my other leg. The pain was pretty bad for a minute and then I walked it off and didn't dare untie my shoe. I continued on at a slower pace and made it back to the gym without any further problems. I iced it when I got home which helped and it's almost back to normal now so hopefully I'll get a chance to test it out for about 2.5 hours tomorrow.

So far I have 35.5 miles for the week and would like to hit 50 again. We'll see what Sunday (with many house guests) holds for my running. In other news I'm planning to sign up for the Baker Lake 50K trail run. It wasn't my first choice for a 50K but it's close to some relatives that I can likely stay with up in Bellingham. Now if I can only stick to my training schedule...

Weekly wrap up

2010-08-07T20:34:00.000-07:00

I'm having trouble finding time to blog regularly so I'm just going to wrap up this week's totals:

Monday: Went to the ER at 5:30am with a sick kid and worked from home, didn't have time to run.

Tuesday: 6.0 mi in 41:06 (6:51/mi avg). I wrote this one up already.

Wednesday: 5.05 mi in 48:48 (9:40/mi avg). I don't know what happened here. I hadn't been getting much sleep and my legs were spent from Tuesday's tempo run so I just ran how I felt, which was apparently really slowly. At least the Bridle Trails were nice to look at as I barely slogged around them.

Thursday: 5.4 mi in 43:57 (8:08/mi avg). Another semi-recovery run on my Redmond Streets route CCW. My legs and body were doing a little better. I'm still not getting enough sleep. I would have kept a slower pace but another runner started out 30 seconds ahead of me following the same route for the first 2 miles. When I got to the longish uphill I just had to pick it up and pass him. Silly ego.

Friday: 5.4 mi in 36:05 (6:38/mi avg), then 7.8 mi in 1:07 (8:35/mi avg). Double run today just because I could and I wanted to pick up a few more miles for the week. At lunch I ran the Redmond Streets route CW at tempo pace which ended up pretty fast. My legs weren't feeling fresh but I was able to suffer pretty well through the initial hilly part (6:09 first mile) and then hold a good mid 6 pace until the descent which I had trouble really opening up the pace on. I'm happy with 36:05 but I think I could aspire to sub 35 by the end of the year if I start doing some hill sprints and track intervals. I can't live on tempo alone as my only fast running. After work I ran a loop around the Bridle Trails from the gym at a recovery pace which ended up being faster than I thought my legs had in them. Very enjoyable run on dry trails with no one riding horses to run into.

Saturday: Still lacking sleep, spent the day with the family. No run. Saving up for Sunday's long run.

Just under 30 miles for the week so far and I hope to get in another 17 or 18 on Sunday if the timing works out.

Quick-ish

2010-08-03T17:25:00.001-07:00

8/3/10. 6.0mi. 41:06 (6:51/mi) I took Sunday off after 7 days in a row and didn't run Monday due to family stuff (an infant who takes teething seriously and wants company at night when he can't sleep). Today I was back at it planning a fast tempo run with what should have been fresh legs. Oddly my legs were heavy and sluggish almost from the start. I ran my standard work loop counter-clockwise hoping for a fast time. I ran the net-downhill first mile in 6:17 and then turned onto the corridor trail where the legs started to complain. I struggled to get up the two sharp inclines but still managed under 12 min. to the Bridle Trails entrance, a good benchmark for me.

I continued south at what I felt was a 90% effort. Toward the end of the southern stretch I slowed and struggled to keep a high turnover to the big downhill. I opened it up on the descent and saw my Garmin drop to a 4:56/mi pace for a few seconds. I don't know how real runners can keep that kind of pace on flat roads.

Whatever I gained on the fast descent I gave back on the following ascent up to 148th ave. I struggled to keep a pace under 9:00/mi up the hill as I reached the top. I turned onto 148th with 1.4mi. to go I saw 31:17 on my watch which gave me little hope of breaking 40 min. for the run. I steamed on up the gentle incline toward the gym and spotted another runner a few hundred meters ahead. I used him as a carrot to keep me kicking toward the finish. I passed him and gave as much as I could with a 6:45 final mile and hit my start point in 41:06.

I'll take another shot at a sub-40 next week. I didn't feel like I was able to give it everything today.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

End of the month summary

2010-08-01T00:36:00.000-07:00

7/31/10: 7.85 miles 60 min (7:43/mi avg) I was worried that I'd have to skip my run today but again managed to squeeze it in after both kids were in bed. I'm on call for work so I had to either run close to home or bring my laptop. I ended up just running 3 loops to nearby Forest Beach and back. I ran past the house every time to see if work had called (light in the sun room on meant that they did).

The run was decent. I started out feeling sluggish and tired but finished strong. I think my body just needed time to warm up or something. The highlight of the run was a big hawk buzzing me about 10' over my head and landing in a tree as I ran past it. Seeing a hawk was a bit odd as I almost exclusively see Bald Eagles, Great Blue Herons, and Crows around here.

The run caps off 7 straight days of running and bumps my monthly mileage up to 190, which is the biggest monthly number I've put up yet (22 better than the previous best). My legs feel tired but I'm not injured, just a little down on sleep I think. I'm not sure if the increased mileage will help me as I ramp up to my next race (probably another 50KM race in a month or two, haven't settled on one yet) but I hope it helps with the late race fatigue that I struggled with earlier this year at Mt. Si.

Finally, just to geek out on stats that I keep, my average pace for the entire month (total time running divided by total miles) was the same as last month, 8:13/mi. I'm hoping to improve that by at least 14 seconds.

July 2010
Miles: 191.66
Miles/day avg: 6.39
Days running: 24
Miles/run avg: 7.99
Miles run Barefoot: 11.15
Time spent running: 26:15:07
Avg Pace: 8:13

I took 7 days off of running, 3 due to my own dumb mistake of running barefoot on a hot day and getting blisters all over both feet.

Special evening run

2010-07-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

Run 1) 5:4mi in 36:48 (6:50/mi avg) I did get out for a run at lunch. I ran a route that I mapped out and first ran last week. I went out the Corridor trail to the entrance to the Bridle Trails and then ran along the should of the road that goes from NE to NW corner of the park. I turned off to the North about 1/2 way across to follow a dirt trail for a few minutes out to the road that Grass Lawn Park borders. I took that down to 148th and then back South to the gym for a rectangle with one wiggly side.

I ran really easy last night so I ran hard at lunch. The hilly bits weren't too bad so I just squeaked under a 7min/mi average. I'm not as fast as I was at the end of 2009 and into the spring of 2010 but my stride is much different than it was then and I'm still getting used to it and trying to figure out what type of shoe will work best for me now. I felt like I put a 90% effort into the run which is great but I wonder if I'll ever be able to push myself hard enough to throw up. I don't know why that would sound at all appealing but the idea of pushing my body to absolute failure once sounds intriguing. Runing until I fall across a finish line knowing that I've left absolutely nothing out there. I need to get past my mind to unlock that last 2% - 3%. I think Chris has been that far into the pain cave. I'd like to see the back of the cave once.

Run 2) 4mi at what felt like a 9:30 - 10:00 / mi pace. My schedule worked out for me to drive over to Fleet Feet in Seattle after work today (almost didn't make it with traffic, 1h10 min to drive 13 miles!!) to get there at 6pm for a group run that the store puts on every Thursday. Today there was a special guest joining the run, new Close Personal Friend Of Mine ;-) Scott Jurek. A short list of his accomplishments would be:

7 time Western States 100mi Endurance Race winner
3 time Spartathlon 153mi race winner
2 time Badwater 135mi Ultramarathon winner
Newly crowned American record holder for 24hrs with 165.7mi
numerous other race wins, course records, and running awards

He's been there and won that. I'd like to just finish some of the races that he's won which is about as high as I can aim. Last week Scott Tweeted that he was going to be at the store tonight for the Thursday night group run and I planned accordingly. He showed up, gave a few announcements and we all (about 40 people) went for a short slow run. Scott ran at a painfully slow pace near the back of the group and talked with whoever was running near him. I started out at about a 9:00/mi pace and he never caught up to me. I started slowing down and taking my time at street crossings and I got further back in the group. I was probably running 10min miles and still never drifted back far enough in the 4 miles for him to catch me. Most people sped up a bit and ran ahead. I'm not much of a star chaser so I didn't want to stop on the route and wait for him to catch up just so I could blab to him about nothing.

Back at the store after the run he stuck around and glad-handed with anyone who wanted to. I got a picture with him and talked for a few minutes about running and the product he pushes: Green Magma which I'm curious to try now that I have a handful of free samples. Ditto for Udo's Oil. He was as expected an incredibly nice guy and at 6'2", taller than I thought he'd be. He spent a good hour there talking to everyone in the place and signing autographs, taking photos, handing out schwag, etc... before I left. Also, Brooks held a raffle for some free running gear. I got lucky and won a Pro Tec roller massager stick that I'm going to try out in about 10 minutes.

It was a nice way to spend the evening and reminds me that I should run with a group once in a while to spice things up and get out of my little bubble. I used to run with the Palo Alto Running Club years ago and while 80% of the people at the group treated it like some kind of elitist social club that I was apparently not cool enough to join, the running was great. I made it my tempo run for the week and tried to keep up with the handful of sub 3hr marathon guys and sub 37min 10K guys. It sure made me faster to compete like that every week. I hope to get back into that sort of thing when I eventually move to Seattle.

Thanks for sparing us some of your time Scott, and thanks to Fleet Feet for hosting it and Brooks for giving away some nice stuff.

Easy goin'

2010-07-29T11:10:00.001-07:00

4.95mi, 42:59 (8:41/mi avg) I missed my lunchtime run yesterday to go out to a good local Sushi restaurant, a choice I stand by. I was lucky enough to get out for a run immediately after the kids went to bed. I ran up to Kopachuck State Park and back via the tunnel trail. I kept a smooth easy pace and called it recovery.

Today I hope to get out for my normal run at lunch and then get a special run in after work that I'll write about later if it happens.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Back to Tempo

2010-07-27T17:44:00.001-07:00

6.0mi in 41:41 (6:57/mi pace) I ran at lunch today and felt that I should get back in the habit of running a hard tempo run each week so I set out on the standard work loop from the gym. I went Clockwise which historically has been faster for me than CCW. I figure that's just the way the hills are laid out with a short easy hill at the end going CW instead of a long easy hill when it's run CCW.

The run started out good but devolved quickly into hard and painful. I realize that I'm not in tempo running shape since I've stopped running these fast runs every week like I used to. I didn't have the lungs and stamina to keep a faster pace for the 6 mile route. I felt good with my time today as I nipped under my personal gold standard of 42 minutes. I think I can probably cut about 2 minutes off of that time in the next few months.

My splits weren't half bad. Take out the steep uphill that I can only hold about a 10:00 pace on and I'm looking pretty good
:
6:23
6:38
8:09 (steep hill)
7:05
6:51
6:36

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

No time

2010-07-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

Now that the Tour de France is over and every other commercial doesn't feature Lance and his ego, he'll have some free time to focus on spinning his "truth" and revisionist history during the doping investigation that's finally catching up to him. In the mean time I'll find some time to write about running.

So it's going pretty well. I've been consistent this month and my knees are handling it pretty well. I've only missed a few runs here and there due to blisters from being stupid or as was the case last Friday, work getting in the way. I had planned to find a nice trail to run at Cougar Mountain after work but I got wrapped up in someone else's emergency that turned into my opportunity to stay late at work and forget about running.

So to recap the last few runs briefly:

Wednesday: 10.5mi in 1:20:30 (7:40/mi) After the recovery day I went hard on a somewhat hilly route around Redmond after work. I ran out to the Bridle Trails, around them, then South to catch the rest of my regular work loop. Despite the hills I still came home with a good average pace.

Thursday: 5.4mi in 47min (8:42/mi) Another easy recovery run after the tempo run on Wed. I ran mostly on the sidewalk around Redmond. It was a new route that I mapped just before heading out so it wasn't boring.

Friday: 0, nada, nothing. Worked late.

Saturday: planned day off, went to the Zoo with the family.

Sunday: 14.65mi in 1:57:00 (7:59/mi) I wanted to get a 2 hour run in and planned a boring out-and-back route through Gig Harbor. About a half mile into the run I chucked the plan and decided to make up the route as I went. It'll be a while before I can whip up a great route in my head like Chris would when we rode together in CA but I felt good about putting together a route on the fly that came within 3 minutes of my time goal.

I pushed the pace a little at the start and went for a strong effort up 40th st which is a steady one mile long hill on a ~7% grade. I kept the pace down the other side and sped up a bit as I turned toward the water and over another hill toward Cromwell. It's a nice route to get down to Cromwell but running back involves a half mile section at a 12% - 14% grade. It's a very labored slog uphill at what feels like a 15 min/mi pace. The grade softens up a bit but continues to climb for almost another half mile until you get a break before hitting a short descent and then two more climbs.

At the 10 mile mark I was close to home and hit the Arletta Store to stop and refill my UD hand bottles with cold water and dump the rest over my head and shoulders. It felt great and I was able to catch up on my hydration a bit. I headed out on a reverse "one store loop" route from the store. I ran up to Kopachuck State Park, turned around to head back down the Tunnel Trail and back home. My legs were still feeling pretty good but my feet and the rest of my body was starting to tire. I managed to record a solid set of splits, keeping them between 7:11 and 8:52 (the steep hill in Cromwell) but I didn't slow down at the end. I think I could have done better and run this route a little faster, especially in cooler weather but I can't complain about getting out for a 2 hour run on a beautiful day.

Summer is finally here and the weather was warmer than it's been in a long time. I got out for the run around 10:30am and it was already in the mid 70s with clear skies. I brought two UD hand bottles with me, one with HEED, and one with HEED and CarboPro. It was my first time using CarboPro which is just a sugar based carbohydrate source with a very mild flavor. I see it as just calories to add to whatever else you're drinking. 1 Scoop = 100 calories. I had plain HEED in one bottle (100 cal) and HEED plus 3 scoops of CarboPro in the other (400 cal). I alternated bottles every time I drank. It worked out for the first 5 or 6 miles but as the liquid warmed up, the flavor wasn't enough to keep me drinking as much as I should. I also had a little bit of stomach distress from the concentration of calories in the CarboPro bottle. Next time I'll lighten up the calories to 300/bottle at most and use something else to flavor the bottle. Gatorade or Nuun, something with more flavor than HEED which is itself very mild. I forgot to bring any S-caps or Enduralytes with me, so I'm sure I was a little more dehydrated than usual which added to the distress.

Today 4.85 in 47:00 (9:41/mi) I went to the gym to run on the treadmill. I didn't feel up to running around the streets and dealing with traffic, so I set the treadmill to a semi-hilly 10K program. I kept the pace mostly at 9:22/mi (6.4mph) and went with the varying elevations the Treadmill would choose. It got up to 8% at the steepest. My legs felt pretty good and I hope they'll be rested enough for a tempo run tomorrow.

Sunday's run set my weekly mileage at 50.8, the second best I've recorded with first being 65.5 miles back in 2002 the week that I ran the Helen Klein 50 mile race. I'm almost to 160mi for the month which feels like a pretty good start. I'd like to get a couple of 160+ mile months in a row and then fit in another 50km run this year. A 50 mile run would be even better if I can get the training in.

Double Monday

2010-07-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update:

Monday: 5mi. on the treadmill @ 8:27/mi at lunch then 10 miles after work out at the (you guessed it) Bridle Trails. I don't remember the last time I ran a double. I was pretty beat for the first 4 miles until I ate a gel. I picked right up after that and finished well. 10mi. 1h24m.

Tuesday: back out to the trails near work for 5.3mi in 49:30. I tried to run it as a recovery run (ie: slow) and make sure to keep my HR low. I walked up the short steep pitches.

I hope I can keep up the miles this week.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Back on the road after a big week.

2010-07-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

After a much needed nap this afternoon I got out for a run. I hoped to go for about 2 hours as I took yesterday off. The nap ran a little bit long so I settled for 1.5 hours. It was odd getting out for a run right after waking up. I felt a little foggy for the first few minutes. I didn't plan a route so I decided on the fly to run out to the top of Fox Island and back, then around to the top of the tunnel trail, down it and back home. I thought I'd get between 12 and 13 miles. It ended up being just under 12 miles and I added almost a half mile of cool down running around the block near the house. I felt pretty good, I kept a pretty steady pace the whole run, felt strong up the long climb to the top of Fox Island and ran well overall.

Time: 1:34:58
Dist: 12.2
Avg: 7:46/mi

My slowest mile was up the hill with an 8:10, the fastest was a 6:52 coming back down it. Otherwise I was keeping them between 7:43 and 8:00. It's not as fast as I'd like to be if I were going to run a marathon (no plans currently) but it is a little hilly around here which adds a bit of time to my splits.

This run gets me over 100 for the month pretty early. Last week I ended up running 47.4 miles which is the highest mileage week I've had since running the Helen Klein 50M in late '02. Wow.

good morning

2010-07-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

I had to drive in to work today so I got up at 4am and missed traffic so that I could get to the gym early and get a run in. This was my 6th day in a row of running, something I've seldom done in the past even before knee surgery. I'm trying to put together some higher mileage weeks and get my body to the point where a 50KM race isn't so taxing. I was pretty beat up after the race I did a few months ago. I was doing about 30 mile weeks at the time. I want to get to 45 - 50 mile weeks but that might be a long shot with the amount of spare time I have. Having a job and a long commute really cuts into my free time. :)

Today I ran through Redmond similar to the start of my 6mi tempo loop through the streets and sidewalks until I reached the south east corner of the Bridle Trails. (yes, again with the Bridle Trails, they're the only trails to run here) The trails are laid out over a big rectangle with a couple of small rectangles cut out of it (center north and south west). I usually run the perimeter of the area to get the longest route I can out of it. Today entered the trails in the south east and headed north for a CCW loop. I wanted to get a 10 mile run today so I planned to run one full loop of the perimeter which would finish at the southeast corner and then run up the east side for a lap and a quarter before taking the corridor trail back to 148th ave and then back to the gym.

I felt good for the first mile of the run and then the spring in my step slowly faded as the soreness in my legs from the last 5 days of running started to surface. I was happy just getting out to run and even working to keep a 8:30/mi pace on the trails was enjoyable. By comparison the trails were really busy this morning, I passed by 3 other runners while I was out there which is 2 more than I pass on a good day. I felt like I was barely dragging along for big chunks of the run and I'll be glad to take tomorrow off. I'm hoping to get a 2 hour run in on Sunday to hit 100 miles early this month. With good health I could easily hit 150 miles this month and take a crack at beating my historical high of 168 miles back in 2003. 168 isn't that high but without going to 2-a-day runs I just don't have the time to break 200 mi/month. Should my monthly mileage even matter? I love to run and want to spend my free time doing it. I don't care that much about mileage other than in a self-competitive satisfaction way. Sometimes I get into a "I'm in great shape, look how many miles I ran" mental space. That and I love the Dopamine boost that running provides.

Time: 1:30
Dist: 10.6mi
Avg: 8:29/mi
~

Repeats

2010-07-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

I got tired of waiting for my blisters to heal so I went against everyone's advice and drained the two worst blisters before bed. I was a little worried that I might have made it worse but it felt the same when I woke up this morning. By lunch my feet were feeling much better.

I went to the gym at lunch to run on the treadmill because I wanted to run mile repeats. I ran 5 x 1mi. @ 6:58/mi (the treadmill will do either 6:58/mi or 7:03/mi but not 7:00/mi) with a 1/4 mi. Slow jog between each mile. I felt fine for the first 3 and then a little winded for the last 2. I barely noticed the blisters and was soaked by the end of the run. I forgot how hot you get running fast on a treadmill indoors with no air moving around you.

Dist: 6.35
Time: 47:00

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Easy does it

2010-07-15T07:19:00.000-07:00

I went for an easy recovery pace run to the Bridal Trails at lunch yesterday. I'm not recovering from anything other than the stupid blisters on my feet. I'd love to run some tempo or intervals but that'll have to wait until the blisters stop hurting when I walk.

I'd like to pick up my training and peak for another 50K race this year and possibly volunteer as a pacer at a longer event. I need to sit down and look at the calendar to pick a race and plan the training cycle.

So the run was good, temps in the mid 70s, my HR was in the 130s on the run and I felt pretty good other than the blister.

Dist: 5.3
Time: 46:17
Avg 8:46/mi

Step ouch step ouch...

2010-07-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

I had myself a little recovery run today on the treadmill. I set the hamsters to a 9min/mi pace and trotted it out. It was an easy pace with the exception that the blisters just south of the ball of my left foot hurt every step.

There were 6 big screen TVs in view from where I was running and none of them were playing the Tour. It was all failed oil spill clean up news or the George-Steinbrenner-Is-Dead Show featuring maybe 30 seconds of footage looped over and over again. Now that we all have DVRs who even watches this horrible programming?

People who like to suffer on treadmills apparently.

Dist: 5.0
Time: 44:49
Avg: 8:58/mi

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

back on my blistered feet

2010-07-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

My feet are still healing from the blisters (all 5 of them!) that I picked up on my hot barefoot run last week. They're squishy little bags of fluid that quietly whisper "stupid!" with every footstep. It'll be a little while before I can run barefoot again. My feet felt good enough that I could have run on Saturday but I had wall-to-wall family obligations from 9am - 9pm. (I live such the life, right? not really).

With Saturday taken up I was able to squeeze in a run on Sunday, the catch being that I had to take kid#1 with me in the BOB stroller for her nap. She didn't want to nap (as usual) but we came to an agreement. She naps while I run and when she wakes up, we stop at one of the local mom & pop markets for chocolate milk and some peanut butter cups. She kept up her end of the bargain so we stopped and sat on a bench outside Island View market. We watched the birds fly over the water while filling up on chocolate in solid and liquid forms. It's a small price to pay and a great way to get her to come with me for the odd run on weekends. It's great running and talking to her as the miles pass by. "Why are you breathing so hard Daddy?"

I ended up putting in:
10.4 miles
1:29
Avg: 8:36/mi

That time might be a little fat though. I didn't stop my watch any of the 20 or so times that I had to pull off the road and wait for a car to pass by.

I felt ~~good~~ great after Sunday's run so I ran again today. I had to go to an auto-auction in the middle of the day today so I couldn't run at lunch as I usually do. Instead I got up early and drove to the gym near work to run before heading into the office. I wanted to run an easy 10 miles but my legs didn't share that desire. I knew within about 5 minutes (the time it took for my aging Garmin to find a signal) that my legs weren't nearly recovered. I tried to run easy without blowing up. I really slowed down on the climbs and tried to just focus on slowly running up them rather than walking. When I got into the Bridle Trails I tried to pick up the pace for the first mile but gave up pushing it and went by feel. The mud on the trails had almost completely dried up, leaving them in great condition.

It's so much easier to run when you're not constantly working to find a path through the mud, hopping side-to-side to find precious solid footing. About 5 miles into the run my legs started feeling a little better and the pace picked up for the rest of the run. I got back to the gym spent with heavy legs and a grin on my face from the Dopamine rush.

I didn't get in the miles I wanted but I came close:
7.9 miles
1:04
8:12/mi

On a good day I'll do this run in under an hour easy, especially on dry trails. I'm happy with this run after yesterday's run and only getting 4.5 hours of sleep last night thanks to the Tour De Lance. I watched the yesterday's TdF stage last night before bed. The action on the last two hills was so good that I was glued to the TV. I loved watching the old man pop off the back of the peloton. The look on his face as his tour changed from a competitive tour to a farewell tour was great. Maybe it's a sign that he's riding this tour clean.

A bad idea

2010-07-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

It looks like Summer is finally here in WA. The temps this week shot up into the mid 80s and the clouds are nowhere to be seen in the afternoons. It's a great time to get out and run. I've been running my fair share lately and loving it. I ran yesterday at lunch with the plan of running out to Grass Lawn park for a few miles barefoot around the rubber track. I left the gym and took my shirt off about a half mile into the run. It felt great and hey: extra Vitamin D!

I turned to run down the corridor trail beside the golf course and passed a dad pushing his daughter in a stroller on the dirt trail. About 200 meters after passing him with a "hi" I saw a brightly colored infant chew ring toy on the trail. I thought about it for a split second and stopped to pick it up. I turned around and ran back toward the two. When I caught up to (and startled) them I asked if they had dropped the toy. The man said "no. I saw that on the trail back there but it's not ours." I just started laughing and told them to have a good day as I turned around to continue on my run. I dropped the toy on the grass beside the dirt path about where I found it and kept laughing to myself thinking about the choice I had when I came upon it. Leave it there and wonder if I'm a cold unfeeling jerk or run it back to the guy and make someone a little happier. I hadn't thought about the possibility of running it back and it not being his. I got a laugh out of it in the end.

I continued down the trail all the way out to 132nd and headed over to Old Redmond Road. I ran East from there holding an easy sub-7 pace down the slight hill. I'm pretty happy with how much smoother it feels running since I started transitioning to a mid-foot landing. The lack of knee pain is great in it's own right. I got to Grass Lawn park and on to the track. Once there I took off my shoes and socks and put my feet down onto the scorching hot track surface. I started running the two miles barefoot that I had planned. The track was hot enough that I started running on the thin concrete strip between the fake turf field and the sponge track. I tried to run on the field but the turf was even hotter than the track was. Part of the track was a little shaded so I moved back and forth between the 6" wide paved strip to the track and back. It was hurting my feet but I didn't think it was too bad.

Normally I'm pretty smart and somewhat conservative about my training but this was a case of being pretty dumb and ignoring the pain. I finished the two miles (8:20, 8:01) and grabbed my shoes to run back to the gym barefoot as I had done last week. I ran about 1/4 mile and stopped at a bus bench because my feet were hurting so much running on the sidewalk. I put my shoes and socks back on but my feet were still really sore the rest of the run.

Since then, just walking around has been painful. I looked at my feet this morning at the gym after using the cardio equipment (because my feet were too sore to run.) I found three large blisters on my right food and some tender raw skin on my left foot. I feel stupid to have done this and now I'll get to take a few unplanned days off from running to pay for it. I'm loving the barefoot running lately but that was pretty dumb of me to run through the pain. With my perfect hind-sight, I should have put my shoes right back on when I felt how hot the surface of the track was.

Next time...

6.5 mi (2.25 mi. barefoot)
53:09
8:11/mi avg

Not worth it.

Just a short run before bed

2010-07-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

I thought about taking a day off yesterday as I'd run 4 days straight (go Knee!) but I changed my mind after getting the kids to bed with enough time for a short trip around the neighborhood. After a slowish run on Sunday I decided to try some tempo pace last night. I haven't been doing any focused tempo or speedwork in some time and I'd like to still try to break 40 in the 10K after I turn 40. I headed out to do the standard "One Store" loop as it's the closest route to the house and contains a bit of trail to run on. I kept a good pace from the start, running the first few miles in the low 7 min range. I felt good but my legs were tired from the previous 4 days.

I was trying to hold a sub-7 pace the whole run but I found that there were hills during the first 4 miles of the course that would slow me down enough that I couldn't stay sub-7 pace the whole mile. I couldn't make up for it on the resulting downhill sections either apparently. I did finally pull off a sub-7 pace for the last 1.9 mile section as it had some longer flat stretches. While I was pushing the pace and breathing hard I was also trying to relax my body and evaluate how relaxed each part was (head, neck, shoulders, back, arms etc...) to see if it helped my form. I did feel a little smoother and fluid with my stride. I hope to try to dial this in more in future runs.

After arriving back home gasping for air I ran a half mile cool down loop around the block at a much slower pace.

Getting a run in before bed: a great way to end the day.

Time: 47:39
Dist: 6.4
Avg: 7:19/mi (not incl. cool down)
Alt: probably 1000'

Recap

2010-07-04T15:07:00.000-07:00

I've been busy with work and family lately and had a cold thrown in on top of that so I haven't been posting. Apologies to my three semi-regular visitors who never comment and to Melissa who does. (also to Chinese spammer guy who tries to comment all the time.) It's the 4th of July and both kids and the wife are napping, so I've got a tiny window to recap the last few days:

My cold started developing last Wed night so I took Thu - Sat off of running. When the cold still didn't go away I figured I'd just run through it.

Sun: 4.35mi in 40 min Ran the One Store Loop near home.
Mon: Exercise bike + stretching at the gym
Tue: 2mi in 16min on the Hamstermill at the gym and some stretching
Wed: off
Thu: 6.4mi in 48min. Ran to the park near work for some barefoot around the track.
Fri: 5.7mi in 42min. Bridle Trails short loop from the gym.
Sat: 10mi in 1h23min. Ran with kid1 napping in the stroller to a local school for barefoot running.
Sun: 9.6mi in 1h40min. Ran with kid2 napping in the stroller near home.

Notes on the runs:

One new thing that I tried last week was barefoot running on the streets. On Thursday I ran out to a park near work to run barefoot on the soft rubbery track. After 3 miles around the track I gambled and carried my shoes while I ran the 1.5mi back to the gym barefoot. This was my first attempt at barefoot off of the track / grass. The sidewalk felt okay on my feet but crossing the street was a little rough. I tried to run on the white lines in the road where I could to minimize the pain. My feet are still relatively tender on the bottom I guess. Maybe I'll try a run next week and leave my shoes at the gym.

On Saturday I ran 4 miles barefoot while kid1 slept in the middle of the field in the jog stroller. My splits were: 7:20, 6:50, 6:43, and a cool-down mile of 8:33. Not bad for barefoot.

My knee is a little tender right now, but that doesn't seem to matter when I'm out running. I've had almost no knee pain while running. I'm happy with my little experiment of changing my running form. Four days in a row running. I can't complain about that.

The miles keep coming

2010-06-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't had enough running yet. I got up early today (thanks kids!) and got to the gym with plenty of time for a run before my class started. This is one of the nice things about being in a class all week, I can get up early and run in the morning. The part where I drive a little over an hour each way to get there isn't so great though. I followed a plan similar to yesterday's run and left the gym to run out to the Bridle Trails for a few miles of dirt running. Instead of running around the perimeter of the park I just ran in through the middle, up the center powerline trail and then back out of the North entrance of the park. (this all must be terribly exciting for the casual reader who's never run in Redmond, WA).

I had time today to head down to Grass Lawn park and take off the Transistors for 10 laps (2 miles) of barefoot running. My hamstrings and calves were a little sore but the barefoot running still felt pretty good. I felt efficient and smooth with very little upper body movement. I noticed that holding a 7:30/mi pace felt easy except for my calves. I felt like I was barely breathing hard at all. I timed my two miles around the track at 7:31 and 7:14. The shoes went back on and I headed back to the gym to finish up and get showered.

The last few times I've run barefoot I've noticed that after I put my shoes back on and start running again I feel really awkward, especially my ankles and surrounding joints where the Tibia / Fibula meets my Talus bone. It takes about a minute or two of running for my feet to feel normal again when this happens. It's not surprising that it takes some time getting used to the barefoot thing and that the transition isn't seamless. Sure is fun to run barefoot though.

I read an interesting theory/rant from Josh over at Barefoot Josh about how "wedge" running shoes (ie: ones with big built-up heel cushioning) might have evolved. It's unresearched but an interesting read no less.

So today's numbers:
Dist: 10.0
Time: 1:21:00
Avg: 8:06/mi

My average was over 9:00/mi for the first half of the run but the last few miles really brought it back down. Day off tomorrow or continue the streak?

Almost a double

2010-06-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm in a training class all week so I don't have access to a gym at lunch and thus can't run in the middle of the day. I wasn't going to run yesterday at all until my wife suggested that I go after the kids were in bed. It was about 8:15 when she said something like:

"Why don't you go for a run now... if you can be back by 9."

Ummm. sure! I hurried to get changed and grab a bottle of Ultima electrolyte drink (disappointing stuff but I can't stand to throw it out after paying $16 for a small tub of it) and headed out the door. I had about 35 minutes to run so I just did the One Store Loop. Nothing spectacular other than how it felt to be running. I kept a faster than usual pace but didn't bring my watch to time it. I should find a cheap digital watch that I can use as a stopwatch when I don't want to hassle with the Garmin. I made it back at about 2 minutes after 9pm, happy and winded.

Dist: 4.35
Time: ?? 32 min?
Avg: probably around 7:30min/mi

This morning I was up early with plans to get to the gym before the class started. I was out of the house well before 6am for the hour drive in little traffic up to the gym. Luckily the training center is only about 10 min from the gym / my office. I changed quickly and was out on the road to do half of the work loop with a foray into the Bridle Trails for some soft trail running. The mud has dried a little in all but the worst sections of the trails. I was tapping out a pretty good cadence though my legs were feeling a little tired from running just 9 hours earlier. After a few miles of trail I came out the North entrance of the park and saw that I was almost an hour into the run. I hoped to be a little faster so that I could head over to Grass Lawn Park for a few miles barefoot to cap off a good run. I didn't have time to take the barefoot detour and still get to the class on time so I just headed back down the corridor trail and back to the gym.

It feels great to get a longer run in before work (class). It's better than coffee to keep me awake during the day. With such a short time between the two runs it almost felt like a 2-a-day, especially considering the soreness in my hamstrings and calves this morning. I'm excited to start putting bigger monthly mileage numbers up again.

Time: 1:06:52
Dist: 8.4
Avg: 7:58/mi

Vatertag

2010-06-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

I had a great Father's Day today, good stuff to include:

Sleeping in
Breakfast in ~~Bed~~ comfy chair
Great card and a pound of Macadamia nuts from my daughter
Some of my favorite cousins and their kids visiting
Getting out for a short run with one of said cousins
Good food (incl. homemade Guacamole and brownies... eaten separately)
Taking the brood to the beach

No complaints about the day really, I could mention the boy waking me up at 4am but I'd rather not.

The run was pretty pedestrian, just my local "One Store" loop with my cousin. I do probably 96% of my running alone so it's nice when I can get out for a run with someone else. It was great talking the whole time and showing him the roads / trails I run so often. The run goes by so quickly when you have so much to talk about the whole time. I didn't bother with the Garmin so I'll just have to guess that we were around a 9 min pace. It didn't feel slow, just very comfortable. I'm loving the mid/forefoot running style that I'm developing as is my knee.

The only downside was that I only managed time for 4.3 miles. I'll have trouble getting runs in next week as I'm in vendor training and won't have much spare time to run. I'll just have to bring my gear and hope for the best I guess.

Time: ??
Dist: 4.35
Avg: 9:00/mi ??

One thing of note is that this run put me over 500 miles for the year to date. Nothing spectacular, but on track to break 1000, something I haven't done since 2004. I'd like to hit 1500 miles for the year now that I can do back-to-back days again. With my limited time to train I'm happy with 500 so far. Not to mention that I only managed 29 miles in May with my knee recovering from the 50K and the trip to Hawaii:

Jan:    89.9
Feb:   78.2
Mar:   140.1
Apr:    92.9
May:   29.2
Jun:    70.9

back to back to back

2010-06-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

For the first time in several years I've been able to run 3 days in a row. Since getting knee surgery in 2008, I've had problems running two days in a row. My knee has been feeling better and better since I've started transitioning to the mid/forefoot running and after running on the treadmill on Wednesday, I ran yesterday at lunch. I felt good enough on my way over to the gym today that I decided to test things out again. It went really well, but I'll start with yesterday's run.

Thursday I ran from the gym to the corridor trail and then all the way to the Bridle Trails. Instead of entering the trails I turned North and headed to Old Redmond rd and then East to end up at Grass Lawn park again for some barefoot running on the track. I stripped the shoes and socks off and headed out for 10 laps (2 miles) around the track. My pinky toe with the blister was a little sensitive to the sponge track so I moved over to the turf next to the track and ran there instead. I wanted to run at a more reasonable pace than I did on Monday so I didn't look at my lap splits. I ended up running the first mile in 7:50 and then turned around and ran the second mile clockwise around the field in 7:39. Perfect. The shoes went back on and I headed back to the gym to finish things off. It was a good smooth, easy run.

Time: 49:07
Dist: 6.0 mi
Avg: 8:11/mi

Today I jogged a few steps on my walk over to the gym and had zero pain in my knee so I laced up and got out for an easy run. I ran out the corridor trail again and this time continued into the Bridle Trails. The trails were still really muddy and required a good bit of hopping around to avoid the puddles and the crap. Always with the horse crap on those trails. I put Lose Yourself on the iPod and matched my cadence to the beat. Pure joy to run those trails even when it is muddy. After another song or two I turned the iPod off and just tried to relax and enjoy the scenery and find my way around the interior of the park. When I have more time I stick to the perimeter trails as they offer the longest route, but today I just had time to run to the center of the park and then take a different path back to where I started.

The weather today is sunny and warm with a light breeze. Rain is forecast this weekend so I ran a good portion of the run shirtless to enjoy what little summer we're having this year. The one thing that I didn't do is time or measure the run. If I had to guess based on feel and history, I'd say:

Time: 43:45 ?
Dist: 5.0 mi
Avg: 8:45/mi ?

Not really a training run, just junk/recovery miles but I'm treading lightly on this increase in running frequency. So far so good.

Treadmill miles

2010-06-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

Since I have a bit more of my commute to sit through (as a passenger) I might as well write about my run at lunch today. It rained lightly all morning so I stuck with the treadmill at lunch instead of going out for a wet run. I decided to either do 5 one mile repeats or just run 5 miles at a 7:00 pace. The later won out because the new fancy treadmills aren't as programmable as the old ones were. The pre-programmed runs that I had to select from didn't work out for me as I couldn't set the exact pace for the mile repeats.

I set the manual mode to a 6:58 pace (closest setting to 7:00/mi) and with a 2% incline and went for it. The pace was taxing but not exhausting. I ended up lowering the incline a bit every mile until it was down to 1% at the end of 5 miles.

I ran a half mile at 9:00 pace to cool down and then cleaned the machine and called it a run. I felt good today and my Brooks Cascadias handled the rugged treadmill surface easily. :-) no problems with the blister thankfully. Maybe I'll be able to get out for some barefoot running on Friday.

Time: 39:30
Dist: 5.50
Avg: 7:14

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Recent runrecap

2010-06-16T10:44:00.001-07:00

I was on call for work last weekend so I had to stay close to home or bring a laptop with me where ever I go. I went for a run with kid #2 in our brand new BOB jog stroller (in a nutshell: buy from REI, their return policy is amazing) on Sunday. Rather than run with the laptop I stayed close to the house, opting to run a few out-and-back loops.

First I ran a 2 mile loop going to the West to Forest Beach and back. I continued past the house to the East and headed to the tunnel trail and turned around when I hit the muddy section of the trail for another 3 miles.As I was passing my street for the 2nd time, I stopped to feed the (now-awake) kid. Following his lunch I headed back toward Forest Beach for another couple of miles. After finishing that loop I again headed toward the Tunnel trail. I made it as far as Horsehead Bay rd before he started squawking and telling me that he'd had enough with the running.

I turned around and picked up the pace to make it back home with fewer than the 10 miles that I wanted but close enough that I was happy with the effort. My pace was a bit slower overall but I'll blame that on the hills and jogging with the Stroller. I was just looking to get out and run rather than get out and train.

Time: 1:21:54
Dist: 8.83mi
Avg: 9:17/mi

On Monday I wanted to see how my knee would handle back-to-back runs now that I'm slowly making progress toward being a mid-foot striker and noticing less pain in my bad knee. It's nice thinking less about my knee while running and in daily life. It isn't quite back to the point it was before the torn Meniscus and honestly I don't expect that it ever will be. I'll be very happy if in the future I can run 100 miles on it at some point and so far I'm optimistic.

In any case I went for another lunch time run on Monday. Starting from the gym I ran down the corridor trail and out to 134th ave, turned right and then ran down Old Redmond rd to Grass Lawn Park again for some barefoot running on their sponge track. I used the jog to the park as a warm up at easy/moderate pace and then ran two miles barefoot on the dry track. I tested out my legs on the track, running the first mile in 6:41.

I didn't feel like I was taxing myself that much so I gambled on the second mile and pushed hard to see if I could break 6:00. Looking back, this may have been a little stupid in bare feet. I'm not used to the mid/forefoot running yet and while my upper body feels more efficient and less bouncy than running shod, my legs / stride don't yet feel natural. I was experimenting with lengthening my stride slightly and increasing turnover to pick up my pace on the track. I ended up just missing my goal, finishing the mile in 6:06. Very respectable for me considering how little time I've been experimenting with barefoot running so far. The track is only a 320 meter (1/5th mi) circuit so calculating my splits to run a 6:00 mile made for some odd math in my head as I ran (72 second laps).

The price of the effort wasn't soreness or injury but a nice blood-blister on my left pinkie toe. Maybe I'm using my toes to push off with the side of my foot as I go around the track counter-clockwise. The blister hurt enough to make the cool down mile and a half back to the gym (and walking around the last two days) painful. I decided against draining it and as of this morning I can barely feel it. I'll wait a few days before my next barefoot run.

Great weather and a good couple of miles on the track minus shoes.

Time: 41:00
Dist: 5.56
Avg: 7:22/mi

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Early to rise...

2010-06-12T00:17:00.000-07:00

I got up at 5am today and out of the house by 5:30. I drove up to work and hit the gym first to get a run in. I was on the road by ~7:15. I ran around the gym loop but ventured into the Bridle Trails when I was heading down the back straight instead of staying on the road. I almost slipped in the mud within the first 10 steps on the trail. That was a good indicator of what I was in for.

It was pretty bad, even when there wasn't standing water or churned up mud. There was still a slippery layer of mud coating the dirt/gravel on the trails. I had to be extra cautious and found myself constantly looking for ways to step around the mud and water puddles that spanned the width of the trail. I did pretty well bouncing back and forth across the trail looking for a spot where my shoes could find some traction. I should have brought the Cascadias for their extra tread instead of my road-friendly Defyance shoes but that didn't happen. I slipped and slid around for the next few miles on the trail and was relieved to get out of the trails and head back to the gym for a shower.

I'm not sure why but I was really tired and had some stomach cramp issues. I'm usually not worn out until I've been running a few hours but today I started to feel sluggish and worn out about 3 miles into the run. Lack of sleep and compensating with coffee perhaps?

As always, a less-than-stellar run sure beats the regret of not going for one. In other news, the forefoot striking is feeling more and more normal as time goes on. My knee has been feeling pretty good lately as well. (knock on wood) I hope it continues to improve.

Time: 1:11:26
Dist: 8.45
Avg: 8:28
Alt: maybe 1000'

barefoot progress.

2010-06-10T18:07:00.001-07:00

I got out at lunch yesterday for another run in the rain. We're having quite the wet summer so far. I don't remember it being sunny for more than 2 days in a row yet this year. I figured that the bridle trails would be a mess with all of the rain so I ran the first half of the corridor trail and then straight over to Grass Lawn park to use their track.

I took off the shoes and ran a little over 2 miles on the track. Going around the corners was a little sketchy with all of the standing water but I managed to stay upright. I ran the first mile on the track easy and picked up the pace for the second. I was surprised how easy it was to hold a sub-7 min. pace barefoot. I ended up running a 6:28 mile sans shoes. Not blazing fast but pretty good for my current fitness level and the conditions.

I felt really good running on the track. It felt like less effort than running on the trails or sidewalks. When I put my shoes on and headed back to the gym I suddenly felt sluggish and tired. It could have been the slight hill leaving the park or the trackwork catching up with me. I took it somewhat easy for the mile and a half back to the gym and called it a good run.

No plans to ditch the shoes and go barefoot full time. It sure is fun once in a while though.

Dist: 5.6mi.
Time: 43:11
Avg: 7:43/mi

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Back to the Bridle Trails

2010-06-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I was at REI and saw that they had a surplus of Vasque Transistor FS shoes on sale for $70. On a lark I checked the sale rack and found that they actually had them in my size. I tried them on and walked around the store and over their fake rock structure several times. I even went as far as to pull up a recently posted review on my iPhone from a blog that I follow. They felt pretty good on my feet, especially for a lighter less cushioned shoe. Everything pointed to positive so I bought them.

I took the new shoes straight out on Monday for a run before work. I didn't go anywhere special, just out the corridor trail and down to the Bridle Trails for a few miles in the sloppy mud. It's funny, in January at the Bridle Trails Winter Running Festival, the mud was very minimal. Now it's the start of Summer and the trails are a sloppy mess from all of the rain recently. The shoes felt great and I did my best hop around the big mud puddles where I could. Naturally my feet still found a few good steps in gooey deep mud unavoidable.

I was trying to concentrate on my running form (straight back, stand tall, land mid/forefoot, lift the knees, good leg follow through) instead of focusing on speed or time. I had the iPod on and Eminem's Lose Yourself came up on the playlist during the run, so I sync'd up my cadence to the 182 BPM of the song and enjoyed my run just a little bit more. I skipped the section of trail that parallels 132nd st as that's usually the muddiest area with the tightest shoulders around the trail.

I was a little tired on the way out of the trails and back to the gym but I tried to keep a decent pace while working on my form. I was surprised that I kept the pace < 8:00/mi. I expected to be much slower while relearning my running form. No complaints though. Overall I really liked the Vasque shoes. I hope to try them out again tomorrow at lunch and get in a few barefoot miles at a park near work, the same one I ran last week.

Overall, a great way to start the day. I wish I could do a run like this before work more often.

Time: 1:01:39
Dist: 7.6
Avg: 8:08/mi
Alt: Much less than the Garmin-claimed 3374'