Running

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No FEAR

After my recent achilles injury (the first of my short running career), I realized yesterday that I have been running in fear.  I think that I have known this all along, but it has gotten out of control.

Don’t get me wrong.  A certain amount of fear is good for a runner.  I know that I am not beyond getting a run ending injury, especially as I add speed and miles.  So when I say No FEAR, I don’t mean being stupid!  I mean that I’ve gotten to the point where I am so fearful of getting hurt that running isn’t fun anymore.  I spend much of my run literally doing mental checks of my body and making sure there isn’t something happening for which I need to stop my run.

So I am changing my attitude.  I will run and be careful, but not to the point of fear.  I will still soak my foot after my run and tape up, but I have decided to enjoy running again.  If I feel something that hurts, I’ll be careful, but if I stop at every ache and pain, I’ll never make my goal of a September marathon.

It is a new day!

Yesterday was hot.  TJ said real feel was 90, but I think with the heat radiating off the road, it must have “felt” hotter.  I use the Weather Bug app on my phone and as I saw storm clouds gathering, I kept checking the app for lightening.  It is really cool.  There is a part of the app called “Spark” that will tell you how far lightening is away from you.  It started 11 miles away and by the time I hit the 5 mile mark on my run lightening was 4 miles away.  I texted TJ to come home and I went inside.  5 minutes after TJ came in the door the storm hit.  I love technology.

Monday is a holiday so I am taking tomorrow off.  It is supposed to cool off and be a beautiful weekend.

I am going to enjoy running again!

No FEAR!

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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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Now we start training for the September marathon

Well I have somewhat recuperated from the 5K I ran on Saturday. It still amazes me how I can run a 5K at close to the same speed in my neighborhood and not feel badly the next day.  After a race however, I’m sore, tired and wonder if ill ever run again.

Maybe that’s a little over dramatic, but I have had pains where I never felt them before. My right shin woke me up in pain Sunday morning and my right heel hurt when I got out of bed. Both are already better, but it is crazy how a race can batter your body.  Glad I’m doing another one in under 2 weeks. 🙂
Yesterday was a purposely slow run. I had taken off Friday and Sunday, so I wanted to get going again soon. I got 4.8 miles complete when I accidentally stopped my app and then just walked home.  It wasn’t very hot according to the thermometer, but it was sunny and humid and I was tired.
Today is another easy run, maybe a little faster, then a workout on Wednesday.
The goal of our training (TJ, RS and myself)  now moves onto our first marathon in September.  We will run 5Ks during the summer, just for fun, but the marathon is the goal of all our running and workouts this summer. My goal for the marathon is 3:30, but I hope to do it in 3:20.
Time will tell.

 

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Spring Scramble 2013 5K race results – What a difference a year makes!

Wow, it was a fun race.  Although none of us (TJ, RS or myself) met our goals, we all did well.

Just a quick recap.  The Spring Scramble was the first race of any type we ran last year after we began running.  In fact, I had only run 3 miles a couple times before the race.  So this race has memories attached to it.  I figured I would first post how we did last year and then post this year’s results.

Last year’s race results were:

Me: Finished 83rd overall, last in my age group at 31:28 (10:07 pace).
TJ: Finished 11th overall, first in his age group at 22:27 (7:13 pace).
RS: Finished 90th overall, last in his age group at 32:35 (10:29 pace)

Really not bad considering I had only been running a month and TJ and RS had been running just a couple of weeks.  In fact, TJ ran in old sneakers that had to be glued the night before!

Okay, on to Spring Scramble 2013.

We arrived a little later than planned, but still had time to run our warmups and strides before the gun went off.  It was great seeing collegues from work and a couple of other new friends I’ve made on twitter lately.  I’m not sure they want their names listed so I am being a bit vague on purpose.

It was supposed to rain all day, but didn’t rain a drop.  It was very humid though which made things a little hard, but the temps were in the 70s and being overcast made it a good Spring race.

I did well.  I used my iSmoothRun app and wireless headsets to keep my pace.  I set the app for a pace of 6:30.  I was only 3 seconds behind after the first mile, but I knew by then I wasn’t going to keep that pace up.  The app did help a lot in keeping me running as fast as I could for the whole race.  Of course TJ was way off in front of me and RS dropped back behind me early.  I expected both, as TJ is a much faster runner than I and RS has just started getting over a virus that had him in bed for a week.  He did amazingly well as did TJ in this race.

I also decided not to wear my racing flats because I’ve only warn them twice and they killed my feet during my workout.  So I went with my Saucony Fastwitch shoes.  I love those shoes, but I wonder if I would have done better if I still had my A5’s.

Enough said… Here are our result for this year (the full results aren’t out yet, but this is what we know):

Me: Finished 5th overall, first in my age group at 21:42 (6:59 pace).
TJ: Finished 3rd overall – Wow!
RS: Finished ??? overall, second in his age group!

I don’t have TJ or RS’s times with me, but I will update this post after I ask them.  I know TJ was around 19 minutes and RS around 28 minutes.

So we all got metals, the first time that has happened.

For me personally it was a great race, even though I didn’t hit near the 20:00 mark.  I did PR my 5K by about 25 seconds.  Also, finishing 5th overall was just amazing for me.  Just guessing, there were probably 120 people who came.  I know over 170 signed up.  I think the weather kept some away.  So not a big race, but it was sweet to see the improvement we all had in just 1 year.  I am so proud of my boys!

That’s it for now.  I signed up for another 5K in two weeks.  I’m not going to push it for this one.  I’m just going to go out and have fun.  I don’t yet know if TJ or RS can get off of work to go with me, but I hope so.

Thanks for reading and for all the encouragement during my achilles injury!!!

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Spring Scramble 5K pre-race update

I had a great run yesterday.  5 miles with no pain and a lot of fun.  It was the perfect run to have right before my big 5K race on Saturday,.

I must admit that I am still a little nervous about Saturday’s race.  I really want to PR it and I would love to get below 21:00.  My race PR is 22:10 and my neighborhood PR is 21:29.  Time will tell.

Today is my off day before the race.  I usually run much better after an off day and I hope that will help.  The unknown is my running shoe.  My Saucony A5’s had to be returned with a hole in the sole, so I am going to be running in Asics Piranha’s for the race.  I’ve run in them twice so far.  Once was last week as we ran the course to get the lay of the land.  The other time was 2 days ago when I did a hard workout.  The shoes seemed to be sloppy on my feet and started causing a lot of pain on the bottom of my foot.  I think I had them tied too loosely and when I tightened them, they seemed better.  It is a little concerning though since I don’t want to be in the middle of the race and be in pain from and unknown shoe.

Tonight we do our pre-race routine.  Chicken caesar salads with macaroni and cheese.  I can thank by big brother for that since at a 5K we ran last year in Pennsylvania he and his wife made that for dinner the night before and we have eaten it before each race ever since.  We’ve since added watching Seinfeld, “The Race” during dinner – just to get motivated :).

TJ and I are healthy but RS and HM are getting over a bug as is my Lovely Wife, so I don’t know who exactly will be showing up tomorrow.  Either way, it will be fun and hopefully I’ll be prepared.  There will be several people running from my work and @bigbiggeek is coming so that will be fun.

I’ll try to post a short update after the race.

Tom

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Final running workout before our 5K

One day left to workout before the Spring Scramble 5K.  It’s funny, TJ likes to run the day before a race and I don’t.  My best runs are usually the day after a rest day, so I’ll be running today and taking tomorrow off.

Yesterday I completed a hard workout (finally).  I feel it has been forever since I was able to do a workout.

I started out slowly and got in my 2 mile warmup with no problems.  I remembered my KT Tape this time and was able to use my new headset which was nice so that I could see how it did before the race.  I also wore my Asics Piranha shoes for the first time in a workout.  I did my sprints to get warmed up and then started my 1/4 mile repeats.

There were a lot of distractions and obstacles yesterday as I ran my repeats.  School was letting out and buses were all over the place.  Kids were riding bikes and playing.  In fact at one point, I was running up to a 4 way stop and a little girl was in front of me riding her bike.  She started to turn around and noticed me and got distracted.  Right then a car turned onto the street and she did not see it.  I yelled, “watch out” and the car honked its horn and she got quickly out of the way.  It was scary for me, but gave me some adrenaline to run on for a bit.

I completed all 8 repeats and averaged about a 6:30 pace which is what I wanted to do.  It was tough near the end.  Also, I didn’t tie my shoes tight enough and half way through the repeats the balls of my feet started killing me as they moved around in the shoe.  I could tell I was getting blisters.  Good to find this out before the race.  So I paused my workout and tightened my shoes and started up again.

Finally after I completed the workout I ran a mile cool down and headed home.  My achilles did great until the cool down.  For some reason (probably the workout) I could feel some pain, so I stopped after one mile cool down and just walked home.  I immediately put my foot into a bucket of ice water and let it soak for 15 minutes.

So all in all it was a good day.  I’ll be glad when this 5K is behind me.  There is another one in 2 weeks I am interested in.  I may run it – just for fun. 🙂

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Running workout – Not yesterday!

The best laid plans…

I went out yesterday for my workout (1/4 mile repeats at 6:30/mile).  I was a bit hesitant since I had almost no sleep the night before and I was tired.  So I decided to set out for my 2 mile warmup and play it by ear.

Well I messed up.  I started way too fast.  About a half mile into my run I could feel my achilles again.  I got a bit overconfident and pushed to hard to soon.  By the time I got back home at the 2 mile mark, when I should have been putting on my racing flats, I decided the workout wasn’t going to happen.  My achilles wasn’t too bad, but I could feel a tug and I just don’t want to mess things up this close to the 5K.  I was wearing my Saucony Fastwitch shoes (which are becoming my favorite everyday shoe), so I changed into my Saucony Mirage since they have more support.

I did well for the next half mile – no pain and felt good.  Then I felt the tug again.  I threw in the towel.  I stopped at 3 miles, went inside, got a bucket of ice water and soaked my foot for 15 minutes.  TJ asked if I had used the KT Tape, which I hadn’t.  Not because I didn’t want to, but because I forgot.

So I will try my workout today if I feel up to it.  I did get better sleep last night, however my family is passing around a virus that I am desperately trying to avoid and I don’t want to wear myself down and take a chance at getting sick right before the race.  TJ has already gotten over his virus and RS just got it yesterday along with my Lovely Wife.  HM is still in the middle of his infection.  The bad thing is it gets into your chest, which isn’t good for running a 5K.

So I will try to stay healthy and not push too much.  After the 5K on Saturday I’ll probably take several days off and walk or (as Strive Balance suggested) ride a bike.

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Nice app for a race and new bluetooth headset

I have written in the past about the iSmoothRun app and how much I like it. I’ve learned to like it even more now that I have begun to understand the interval settings.

Rather than just use the interval option for “intervals”, I decided the other day to use it for my whole run.  So I created a warmup of 1 mile and then an interval of 1 mile at 8:45 a mile (this was while I was getting over my achilles issues).  I then set my app to 1 interval of warmup and 4 intervals of the 8:45 pace.

As I have said before, the app speaks to you to let you know if you need to speed up, remain steady or slow down to keep your pace.  I had thought this was based on the full interval, but I was wrong.  Essentially it seems to be based on your current speed compared to the last time it updated (which seems to be about every 15 seconds or so).  The nice thing about this is that if you are ahead of your pace, you can “bank” that time and still keep to your target pace.  The app actually tells you from time to time how far ahead or behind your pace you are.  So the other day I was “20 seconds ahead”, but the app still told me I needed to speed up to keep the 8:45 pace.  Therefore I knew that if I was able to remain steady, I would finish that mile interval 20 seconds ahead of my goal pace.  It also will tell you your stats for that interval when it ends which is helpful.

I can see how this would be invaluable in a race.  So I decided to purchase a pair of bluetooth headsets that are waterproof (for sweat or rain).  I don’t use headsets since I don’t listen to anything while I run, but I also don’t want to bother other runners in a race with the updates of my time.  This will allow me to hear my pace and keep on target while not worrying about others getting annoyed at me for having my phone speaker so loud.

Motorola S10-HD Bluetooth Stereo Headphones

Here are the headsets I purchased – click the picture to see them on Amazon.  I hope they are good, but time will tell.

Our 5K is just days away, so I hope this will do the trick.  I also hope to use them in my first marathon in September.

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Small change to my running form – Huge payback!

I found a possible key to improve my running this weekend.  I was reading an article on Friday about runner’s knee.  The article talked about people who run with their foot slightly turned inward which also means that their whole leg is slightly turned.  By practicing keeping the leg turned out as you run, this takes the pressure off the knee and relieves the pain.

I do have some knee pain as do many runners, but as I thought about this I realized that my right foot in particular has always had an issue of toeing in.  If I sit and hold my legs up, my right foot turns in at a 45 degree angle and my left foot at about a 20 degree angle.

So starting with my run Friday, I tried running and concentrating on keeping my feet pointing forward, especially my right foot and knee.  The result was quite amazing!  First, by doing this I was putting pressure on a different part of my achilles.  So even though the pain had already gotten better, I no longer have to fear pulling it again.

Second, I ran fast!  My run Friday was in the 8:15 pace range and Sunday I was running sub 8:00 miles.  I did have to cut my run Sunday short because of a pain in my left thigh, but I’ve had that problem for several weeks, however this is the first time it bothered my running.  I stopped just to be safe.

I think the reason I ran faster was because by pointing my foot forward, I was actually pushing off with the ball of my foot rather than the right side.  Imagine your foot toeing in while running.  You would no longer have as much power to push you forward. For me, when I pointed my foot forward, I was finally involving my whole arch in giving me a push as I run rather than the weaker right side of the foot.

No mater what the reason, it made such a difference.  I ran faster with much smaller effort. My run went so well, I knew it had to be due to the way I was holding myself.

Time will tell, but these type of positive changes are really exciting after a year of running.

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5K race prep – run the route to learn the route

It was a lot of fun running yesterday with TJ and RS.  We decided to run the 5K route that we will be running next week.  As I mentioned yesterday, it is immensely helpful to run the course before the race so you know what you are up against and can plan how to run it.

The race is in a medium sized town and it begins in the middle of the shopping district, so needless to say it was hard to begin since there were too many cars to run on the road and the sidewalks had lots of shoppers.  But we decided to run the sidewalks slowly and stay out of the way of shoppers as best we could.

The race starts on a rather large downhill run.  It gets your momentum going so that is nice.  In fact most of the first mile or so is either level or downhill.  As we ran, we made a turn onto a busy street with no sidewalks, that was a bit scary as cars were coming toward us.  Finally sidewalks appeared and we ran up and down over curbs and around obstacles.

About half a mile into the run we turned into neighborhoods.  This was nice as we didn’t have to run the sidewalks and we could just enjoy our run.  I had a map on my phone from last year that I used to guide us along the way and I also put my phone on “Map My Run” so that we could have the route for the future and I could give to others who will be running with us.

We wound through neighborhoods and eventually back on the busy street.  I’d say this is the flattest 5K we have run.  Some hills, but most are inclines and not really hills.  The biggest hill is at the end (of course).  No, not the hill we started on thank goodness, but just a medium hill that leads back to the shopping district.  Once you hit that street, it is an easy run for the finish.

All in all it was a really nice run.  It will be nicer next week as we don’t have to run the sidewalks and can run the streets.  If interested, here is a link to my run that I mapped http://www.mapmyrun.com/workout/277053771.

No problem for me running and I used my new racing flats.  Next week I hope to run under 21:00.  If I stay healthy, I think I will have a shot.

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Last post… about my achilles.

I guess that ice bath for my foot really helped.  I had no pain all day. I didn’t have to ice my foot (mainly because I didn’t even think of doing it) and when I ran, I had no pain in my achilles.  It was really quite amazing.

Also my run went great.  After the 9:00 first mile, I averaged 8:17 for the last 4 miles.  I wasn’t trying to run that fast, but it was so nice to be able to run and not feel that twinge.  Also I felt great.  I wasn’t tired and my legs felt great.  I could have gone on for more miles, but I am really wanting to continue to cut back a bit before our 5K next week.  I  want to run it well and don’t want to take any chances with getting hurt again.

Today TJ, RS and I are going to run the 5K course to see what it is like.  We ran it last year but it has been a while and it is always nice to know the course before the race so you know how to run.

I hope this is my last post on my achilles.  I am still getting KT Tape today and going to use it as a preventative.  I’ll probably not have time to ice my foot after the run today since we will be far from home, but it should be fine since we are only running 3 miles.

Thanks to all who have been so helpful over the past week of my injury with suggestions and prayers.  It has made a difficult experience much easier.