Hard run

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Boston, Boston, Boston

Summer, I have decided, is not a running season – at least for me.

Yesterday I had a run where I had to constantly remind myself why I am doing this.  Some days are wonderful and it feel like I can run a thousand miles.  No runs this week have been wonderful to me.

I hesitate here because I don’t want to sound like I am complaining on this blog.  I write it for me to remind myself from where I have come and where I hope to go.  FYI, I come from a 5’9″ 278 pound man and I hope to qualify for the Boston Marathon this September (i.e.: 278toBoston.com).  That is what I had to keep reminding myself yesterday as I ran.

I started my run in my old Saucony Mirage 2 shoes.  Not old in mileage – they only have 78 miles on them.  They are the shoes I loved before I got my Saucony Fastwitch shoes that I have been using during my achilles recovery.  Why did I switch yesterday?  Mainly because they are heavier and have more support and I thought that they would help me not push as hard as I did the day before.

I got less than a mile into my run and felt a sharp pain in my achilles.  I thought to myself, “run relaxed and keep your form”.  As I ran a bit more – another sharp pain.  I thought at this point that perhaps I should head home and change shoes.  By the time I got home (5 minutes later) I had 2 more sharp pains.  Ugh.  I don’t want to have this problem again.  I just felt like I was getting over it.

I went inside and put on my Fastwitch shoes and headed back out.  After that point, I had one more minor pain and then I was pain free.  Well, I thought to myself, I guess I have another pair of lawn mowing shoes (thinking of the Mirage).

I don’t know what he difference is between the shoes except that the Mirage is stiffer and pulls more on my heel.  Either way I was elated that I could continue with my run (which didn’t go much better after that).

It was hot outside again.  The heat index was 90.  At least there was a breeze.  Then it rained.  Not a bad thing, but it rained just enough to get the road wet and then the sun came out again.  The sun and heat radiating off the road shot the temperature up at least 10 degrees.  I made it to 7 miles with a 9:12 average pace. My last mile was close to 10:00.

I’ve decided it is going to be a long hot summer and I had better get used to it.  I run in the afternoon because I leave for work at 5:00am and just can’t get up early enough to get my mileage in.

So, I guess I did complain some.  It was actually one of the roughest runs I’ve had in a long time.  I run one more time today and take tomorrow off to get my body ready for the 5K on Saturday.  Then it is marathon training until September.

Boston, Boston Boston.  I have to keep my eye on the goal.  Summer will eventually turn to fall and then I can have some fun.  Then the Spring and hopefully Boston!

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A great running weekend!

It was a productive weekend running wise.

I got to run 7 miles on Friday, 7 miles on Saturday and 10 miles on Sunday.

Friday’s run was fun.  I ran a mile warmup, 5 miles close to marathon pace and a mile cool down.  I was really pleased, as that was the first time I ran 7 miles since my achilles injury.

Saturday was spent running with TJ and RS.  The three of us got up early and ran the 5K route we will run this weekend for the CityFest 5K.  Part of the run is on a busy road with little shoulder room, so it is rather difficult to run.  All three of us ran the route at about an 8:40 pace.  Then TJ and I decided to run it again at my 5K pace to see the best way to deal with the hills.

We rested up and then started our run. It really isn’t too bad of a course until you start the second leg of the busy road.  That is a pretty big uphill, then a run through a neighborhood with a couple big hills.  I did well until the last hill.  Suddenly my app stopped my run, which was annoying.  Then seconds later my shoe lace came untied.  TJ said, “I guess you wont forget to double tie your shoes on race day”.  True.  Then the downhill started.  The entire last mile is either downhill or level.  I did well until the end that I thought stopped at the stadium.  As we reached that point, we still had about half a mile to go.  I know on race day that we run into the stadium and around the track, but I was psyched to stop at the stadium.  So I did well until the last 10th of a mile and at that point, I lost it.  All in all, we ran just about 45 seconds slower than last week’s 5K which isn’t bad.  I’m looking forward to the race.

Sunday was my long run and considering I ran so much Friday and Saturday, I decided to run 10 miles with a 60 second walk in between each mile.  I don’t know if that helped or not, but it wasn’t easy.  I ran okay, but I could feel the effect of the miles on my body by the time it was over.

On to this week…  We have 3.5 months until our marathon in Pennsylvania.  It is slowly creeping up on us.  TJ and I were talking training last night and I think I am beginning to develop a training plan.  More on that another day.

All in all I’d say it was a great running weekend.

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The dreaded hill/trail/hill run

Some days you head out to run and things just click.

Some days you head out and it is just a normal run.

Other days are like yesterday…

TJ, RS and I decided to try out the 5K course of the CityFest 5K that is happening a week from Saturday.  Being a new course to us and an area we hadn’t run before, it was exciting to see how to run this race.  Now understand it was nearing 90, but this was a rough 5K.  Almost every 5K I have ever run starts with a downhill in the beginning, not this one.  It has a slight upgrade for about half a mile and then the hills start.  I’m thinking about 2 miles of up and down hills and not necessarily small hills either. TJ remarked that this course is not a course to set a PR on.  I guess I’ll keep to my original plan to just go out and have fun.  I know though that the competitiveness in me will come through and I’ll want to do well.  We will see.  There is a masters award given (40+), I’d like to win that.  My thought is that those who aren’t expecting this course won’t be able to keep a good pace.  I just have to figure out a strategy and then run the plan.

After the course, RS went home as he didn’t drink enough water for the heat.  I don’t think I did either.  I thought I had 96 ounces of water, but it might have been 64.  Anyway, TJ and I decided to run a trail that goes down to a park.  Not a good idea.  After the hills and a gravel trail for a mile, I was shot.  At the end of the trail we had a choice to make.  One was to go back via the trail and the other was to run up a rather large hill with traffic and very little shoulder (actually no shoulder, just lumpy grass).  We went for the hill as I couldn’t face the trail.

After the hill we just ran the neighborhood home.  Not bad, but at the top of the big hill my heal / achilles / something started hurting.  I was all taped up, but I found out after I got home that the tape didn’t hold for some reason.  So I concentrated on relaxing my foot and not pushing off but using gravity and actually had a good run at the end.   I was glad to stop and go soak my foot in ice water and drink Gatorade.  TJ went on for another 5 miles.  I had nothing left.  The hill/trail/hill run took everything out of me.

All in all it was a hard, but good workout.  I realized that during the summer I won’t be pushing speed as much as distance (except for speed workouts).

It seems summer is finally arriving a month or two late.

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Records, goals and a great running app

I’m excited!  I had a record month for running in April.  My last record was 151 miles.  April 2013 – 176 miles!  Wow am I sore!

Really though, I am excited to know that I can run that many miles in a month.  That isn’t much for a lot of runners, but for me, it is amazing, especially since I have only been running only 13 months.

Yesterday I had a goal to reach.  My goal was to run 6 half mile intervals at a 7 minute pace.  I have not done well with half mile repeats.  They are hard and for some reason every day in the past month that I run them (usually Tuesday) it has been the hottest day of the week.  Yesterday was no different, however it was cooler than last week.

So I decide that in order to reach my goal, I would have to increase my recovery time between my intervals and slow down, even to a walk if needed to recover.  I really want my body to get used to running that fast.  It worked.

I ran my intervals and jogged slowly and walked in between.  I was able to get all 6 completed and averaged 7:00 overall.  My total time for the full 7 mile run was just under 9 minutes, but that didn’t matter to me.  With our 5K approaching in 18 days, I really wanted to get my speed down a bit and intervals are a great way to do that.

Just a word of advice.  If you run with an iPhone and don’t use iSmoothRun, you need to get it.  It really is the best running app available.  Not only does it keep up with your runs, shoes, miles, weather, etc., but it is invaluable doing interval runs!  It tracks each interval and recovery between intervals.  It even tells you audibly if you need to speed up, slow down or stay steady during the interval.  No more looking at the phone or just hoping to get the right time.  When you are done with each interval, it gives a recap of your time so you know how you did.  Finally it doesn’t have a connected website, but lets you export to about 15 different sites (like Nike+ and Runkeeper) and to Twitter and Facebook.  I wholly recommend it.

So that was my day.  I am sore today and my hip isn’t doing the best.  I will do an easy run this afternoon in the rain.  I am glad to get my speed workout behind me and move on with the week.  I’m looking forward to our 5K.  It should be a lot of fun and I have a lot of people from my work going to run it with TJ, RS and myself.

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Sometimes the hard runs are the most important – Never give up!

Wow, yesterday’s post was the most popular ever on this blog!  It is so funny, as I had originally written about my horrible run and then decided to delete the post and write something positive.  There is a lot of good in running and it doesn’t depend on how you feel.  In fact, I would say that most of the time I don’t feel great while running.  Weeks like this week make me wonder why I run.  But I must say, even though this week has been a rough run week, I still went out and ran.  Even though I felt like my legs are full of concrete, I still did my 7 miles a day.  That is why running is so important to me.  It builds endurance, perseverance, patience and determination.  These are qualities I didn’t have a year ago when I started.  But now I look at my world through these qualities.

Yesterday was another “ugh” run.  I decided early on that I would mute my iSmoothRun app and just run at whatever pace I wanted to run.  In fact, in the beginning I told myself that I would run the slowest run I have ever run, just to take the pressure out of it.  It didn’t help much.  By mile 3 I was ready to head home and cut my losses.  Then I thought that I could just run one more mile.  Then I ran another.  By that time I was far enough away from home that I ran home and hit my goal of 7 miles at my driveway.

Here are my thoughts on why this has been a difficult week for me.  Yes it has been hot.  Yes it has been humid.  Those things will make a huge difference, but I don’t think that is why my running has been off.  The reason I think it has been a rough week running is because I am not 30 anymore.  What I mean by that is, a 30 year old can run 14 days in a row and not feel it as much.  A 50 year old, not so much.  As you may recall, on my Monday off day, TJ and I went for a 4 mile run.  Not only that, but we ran 2 miles in a hilly neighborhood.  Not only that, but I went for a 2 mile walk that afternoon.  That was my off day.  Now I am paying for it.

Going back to the beginning of this post.  Even though my legs hurt, my knees hurt, my hips hurt and each step is difficult, I still go out each afternoon and run.  I have to.  It is engrained into me now.  Tomorrow is only a 4 mile day, so I have decided ahead of time to take it off so that I will feel better by my long run day on Sunday.  Looking back, 2 years ago I couldn’t even get out of a chair to take a walk.  A year ago, I was running 2 miles in 24 minutes.  Yesterday I was disappointed at running 7 miles in 1:03.

Yes, I am thankful for all I’ve learned over the past year.  I am thankful for each of the 1,300 miles I’ve run since a year ago last March.  Everything has changed and most of it is good.  Not many people can say that they feel the best, are in the best shape and are the healthiest when they turn 50.

I just hope it continues.