Where I'm At

Today's Koala/Lukes Locker/Houston Striders 1/2 Marathon was an excellent opportunity for me to take stock of not only where my fitness is but also whether the two injuries I've been dealing with were behind me. This past week I didn't run at all due to continued discomfort in my right hamstring. I ran four days the week before last, for a total of 30 miles, culminating in an 11 mile run last Saturday morning. But none of those runs were tempo or speedwork and the 7:27 pace I held for the 11 mile run was an effort. So I knew I was nowhere near the fitness level I had attained over the 800 miles of training I did from May through August, but I didn't know exactly how much things had regressed. Now I do.

My pre-race estimate of where I'd end up turned out to be slow by five minutes so obviously I was in the dark. I really didn't plan to race today, just run, and therefore thought I might come in around 1:38 (a 7:29 pace). I honestly didn't think I had any sub seven miles in me, but miles one and two were both around 6:50 and didn't feel too fast. I had another one deep in the race, maybe mile nine or ten, right after a 7:04 effort. In fact, I sorta caught my second wind somewhere late in the 2nd loop, which was a pleasant surprise. Upon finishing I initially thought I had run a negative split on the back half but after reviewing the stopwatch (no Garmin today) I realized that I was just a bit slower in the 2nd half, though not by much.

Even though today's chip time of 1:33:05 (I think - I glanced at my watch at the finish but forgot to stop it) is nearly ten minutes off my PR, it was still five minutes better than my pre-race guess, and even better, my right leg wasn't an issue. Slightly uncomfortable and a little tight this afternoon, but at no point did it compromise what I wanted to do. Since this injury wasn't related to running I might have been able to run on it the whole time - who knew? I plan to begin training again this week in earnest, though my wife is out of town for a few days later in the week, meaning I'll have daddy duty for my two little cavemen and won't be able to train much Wednesday through Friday.

The only downside this morning was for the competitor in me to see all those guys well in front of me that I should be beating, knowing that if I was 100% I'd be giving them a run for their money. The interesting thing though is that I'm signed up for the Houston 1/2 in Jan., 12 weeks from today. Peel one week of for taper and I have 11 weeks to see how much I can bring that 1:33 down, provided my right leg truly is going to be okay to run on.

Slip Sliding Away

That's what my fitness level has been doing, slip sliding away. As I stated in my last post, if I don't have anything good to report I tend not to post.

The last six weeks have sucked for running. First I couldn't run for four weeks because of the pulled muscle/cracked rib in my side from the work I did out at Rice U. Then a couple of weeks ago my right hamstring and the muscle going across my glute were really tight. Not sore or painful just really tight, like I needed to do about two hours of stretching. I'm sure it was from all the work I did replacing the tile in our entryway and kitchen. Then this past Sunday I caught a cold and felt like crap the last couple of days.

The cold was better today and my leg wasn't too tight, and the pain in my side is virtually gone, so I laced 'em up and headed out around 7:45 PM for some miles. It's amazing how much fitness I've lost in just six weeks. I tried to keep a good steady pace and did manage to run negative splits. But I did 7.19 miles at a disappointing 7:27 pace. I've got some work to do. I'm signed up for the 1/2 marathon a week from this Sunday but don't know if I can even equal my underwhelming 1:28 last year. Probably not if tonight is any indication. I've got like, what, 10 days to get in shape? Sure.

What a shame. I was on a roll. But if there's any bright side, I was about at this point a year ago and still managed a 1:23 1/2 at Chevron Houston. But I don't see going to Dallas in December and trying to lower my marathon PR. Like I said, what a shame.

Sometimes You're The Windshield, Sometimes You're The Bug!

I don't blog much if I don't have anything positive to say and the last three weeks have not been good as far as running. The sore muscle or pulled muscle or whatever it is has continued to bother me and limited my training tremendously since running seems to worsen it. I've also been involved in replacing the ceramic tile in our kitchen and entryway. Lastly, my two boys are playing soccer now and the oldest is in Cub Scouts so my plate is more than full.

As I often say, you get out of running what you put into it and the last three weeks have not seen me able put much into it, which is unfortunate because I was doing well. The dramatically reduced training was exposed yesterday at the Tornados Cross-Country relay. I ran the third leg for the Striders Mens Masters team and I was passed by two teams we were beating. In the long-run (no pun intended), we weren't going to win anyway, since both those teams beat us by 2 minutes and I know I didn't give up that much to the two, but I still felt like I let the guys down when they saw me take off ahead of those two teams but have them come in before me.

I'm leaving town Wednesday morning for a four day fishing trip and will have no opportunity to run other than getting something in Wednesday morning before I leave and maybe late Saturday night when I get back. Given that schedule and the shape I'm in now I may have to bag the 10 miler in Clear Lake in 2 weeks. I won't race if I'm possibly going to lay an egg.

Ouch!

I did the BENeezy 10K in Alvin this morning and the "ouch" refers to a couple of things - one being how I felt and two being how I did. Naturally the two are related.

My week leading up to this race went well except for a couple of things. I backed off the training so that I wouldn't be overtrained, had a strong week last week, hit my strength-training pretty hard, especially legs, and was well-rested. The two things that I couldn't check off though, were my weight this morning, which was 2.5 lbs. more than I like to race at, and the second area where I missed the mark was what I did yesterday, the day before the race. Professionally I'm in sales for a free-weight company (the fitness industry - I love it!) and yesterday I had almost 8000 lbs. of dumbbells being delivered to the new Rice University Student Rec Center. My sales manager and I went out there for the install and we realized early on that we bit off more than we wanted to chew. It was back-breaking manual labor for six hours and I managed to pull a muscle on my right side - probably the 135 lb. dumbbells we were having to throw around. I got almost eight hours of sleep last night but this morning the legs were dead and I was sore all over. To make matters worse it hurt every time I took a deep breath.

I knew at the starting line that the cards were stacked against me but figured I'd make the best of it and see how things went. I hit mile one in 6:05, which didn't feel bad, but I realized in mile two that the pain in my side and the dead legs were going to prevent me from any sort of competitive 10K this morning. This race allows 10K runners to opt out and just do the 5K, even during the race, but I was determined to, if nothing else, get in a good 10K tempo run. So that's what I i did. I hit the 5K mark at about 19:30 and was okay with that. I was already hurting enough due to the pulled muscle without trying to run red-line. I even had something left for the final mile and finished in 40:26 Not bad considering it was basically a training run other than mile one and mile six.

Remainder of This Week

This was a good week of training. On Tuesday I did 8.94 miles after work with Assynt Macleod at a comfortable 7:35 pace. Then Wednesday I did another round of speedwork, but this time with Brian King only, who is at the top of his game these days and who reset his 5K PR earlier this summer at 17:51. We also changed things up a bit and went back to the .7 mile loop around the lake here in New Territory. We did five repeats, with times of 4:02, 3:58, 4:02, 4:02 and 4:02. That was the best five rep set I've done on that course and it's August. On Thursday I got in a 3.50 mile run before work then 7.87 miles that night. Then last night I met Brian King over in Greatwood for a slow 16.2 mile long-run. Today, to close the week, I headed out for a five mile easy run but the body was too sore and the legs dead so I headed back with a 60 mile week complete.

Monday Speedwork - 08/24/09

With some races on the calendar and my schedule weekend after this one I want to fine tune my speed and overall fitness these next two weeks. With that in mind I plan two speedwork sessions this week as well as 60+ miles.

Tonight I went over to the .4 mile oval for some interval work. It's been awhile since I've done these (a couple of months) and since they were the first speedwork I ever did I have a long history with this oval, which makes it an ideal gauge for my fitness. My best lap on the oval is a 2:04 a couple of years ago, and when I did this workout regularly I got to where I could get most if not all six of the laps down to 2:10 or better. But given that I haven't done these in some time I wasn't expecting anything like that. But I did do better than I expected.

When I got to the oval there was a sprinkler on in someone's yard that would have drenched me each time I went around so instead of doing a 4 mile cool-down I decided to do a 4 mile warmup. By the time I got back I was warmed up plenty and the sprinkler was off. Time to rev the engine. Here are the six fast .4s that I did, with a .2 jogging interval in between:

2:13
2:09
2:13
2:12
2:12
2:05

I left it all out there on that last one. Everything felt great tonight and I was pleased that I was able to find the energy at 8:30 PM to get these done. Easy miles tomorrow followed by more speedwork on Wednesday or Thursday.

18 Miler This Morning

I met Assynt Macleod and Brian King at the end of my driveway this morning at 5:30 AM for what was to be an 18 mile long-run.

We never discussed pace but all settled into a groove that felt relatively brisk for a long-run but not something I thought would be difficult to maintain. At 5.43 miles we passed up our first opportunity for water or a bathroom break since no one needed either. At seven miles we passed up our 2nd chance at water because again, no one needed any. This is an out-and-back course and there's no water between mile seven and the turnaround at mile nine, which meant we wouldn't have another shot at hydration until we got back to the seven mile mark, which would be 11 miles into the run. That stop is an elementary school with two cold water fountains. I had also gone last night and planted nearly frozen Gatorade by the school.

So when we got to the school, eleven miles into the run, we were thirsty. Assynt and I took a GU and we all drank our fill. The break lasted three minutes exactly and we were off to finish the final seven miles. With 5.43 miles to go we passed the park with water fountains and bathrooms but none of us felt like we needed it so we crossed over into the point of no return (or point of no more water until the finish, unless you count my son's elementary school one mile from the finish and you'd have to be desperate to stop there with only a mile to go).

Up until the three minute water stop we were holding a 7:29 pace and I was hoping that in the final seven miles we might chip away at that three minute penalty we had on the clock, since I don't shut the watch off for breaks. With Brian leading the charge we made a pretty good stab at it. A final mile of 6:50 helped considerably but just about emptied my tank. The total time was 2:15:44, a 7:32 overall pace. Here are the mile splits:

8:00
7:37
7:23
7:27
7:18
7:18
7:30
7:24
7:27
7:29
10:31
7:30
7:23
7:14
7:05
7:12
7:07
6:50

These are my kind of long-runs - all business, not a lot of unnecessary stopping, a decent pace, and negative splits. If we can do this in mid-August I can only imagine what we'll do on those November 22 milers.