5K

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CityFest 5K: Cancer survivor, Biggest Loser and a Masters

The CityFest 5K was quite an event for me.

It started while in line to pick up my bag and bib number. I met a woman behind me who was running her first 5K. She was a cancer survivor and said that running a 5K was on her “bucket list” of things to do while she was in recovery. Evidently she had leukemia and almost died. Now she was running her first 5K and even her doctors were amazed. I regretted not getting her name or picture so I could put it in the blog, but it was very inspirational.

Then the race. My Lovely Wife and JR came to cheer us on and TJ, RS and I ran warmups around the track and got ready for what we knew would be a tough course. TJ didn’t race, but paced me and kept me motivated. I really needed his help several times. The first was at the start. All the adrenaline of the start got to me and I began by running under a 6 minute mile and my goal in the beginning was to run a 7 minute mile. TJ kept saying, “You need to slow down”. I felt like I was walking by the time I slowed down enough.

Although we started at the front of the starting line, there were about 10 people ahead of us. We passed a few in the first quarter mile and one other teen about half a mile into the race. After that, we were on our own. There was another teenager ahead of us the whole way and I was passed by a teen about 2 miles into the race, but I was able to hold my own up and down all those hills. Not bad for a 50 year old.

As we got to the stadium where the finish included a lap around the track, TJ remarked that I was only 3 seconds way from a PR. Wow, that was exciting. Then the only bad part of the run happened. A gate was open going into the stadium and so we headed for it. Then a nice runner who was making his lap around the track saw us and shouted for us to run further around the stadium to find the entrance. So we had to stop and turn around and get back on the road that lead around the stadium (I noticed later that the gate was closed). So I lost a lot of time and missed a PR by over 30 seconds. It totally threw me off.

We entered the track and ran the lap and TJ peeled off and I finished 6th overall. It was a fun run. TJ went to find RS and help him to finish strong. After a few minutes we saw them entering the stadium and we cheered RS to a strong finish. Not a PR for him either, but 2 minutes faster than two weeks ago and he was running on 4 hours sleep because of work.

We all went in the gym for the giveaways and the awards ceremony. It was neat because Gina McDonald from “The Biggest Loser” was the MC. As many of you know my Lovely Wife has lost 86 lbs and I have lost almost 100 lbs in the past two years. Gina lost 113 in her quest. So it was a cool thing to hear her story. We don’t watch cable since I don’t think it is worth the price, so we didn’t know her when we saw her. But I can see why she was chosen. She is very vibrant and energetic and obviously worked hard to lose her weight. So that made things a lot of fun. My Lovely Wife got to meet her after the event was over and tell her how much she had lost. Very encouraging.

Okay, so overall I came in 6th and won the Masters division age 40 and up! I finished at 22:19 (36 seconds off my PR). RS came in 16th overall and 3rd in his age group with the only two others who beat him also beat me. Once again, I can’t thank TJ enough for all his help and motivation during the run. And it was fun seeing Neill Tyler @BigBigGeek (who came in 3rd in his division!) and @David_Topping at the race. It is always fun to run with friends.

I will definitely run this race again next year!

Now to marathon training. TJ says I need to get into the 50 mile a week range, so that is my goal for this week. I’ll see how it goes as it isn’t supposed to be as hot this week as it was last week.

Running never stops!

Neat view of beginning of race (circle around TJ and me and arrow pointing to RS)

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5K CityFest summary – More tomorrow

Yesterday’s race went really well.  I don’t have time today to write, but I will in the morning.  Suffice to say that it was the first time I won the overall masters 1st place (age 40 and up).  I couldn’t have done it without TJ pacing me and encouraging me to keep going.  RS won a medal as did @bigbiggeek. Congrats!

Anyway, check back tomorrow for a recap.  I think you’ll enjoy it, the dog did. 🙂

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Excited about our 5K today

I’m all rested and ready for today’s 5K.  I didn’t run or walk yesterday, just to give my body a break.

I woke up excited about the race today.  I don’t know why.  Maybe because it doesn’t really matter how I do since I just ran a 5K two weeks ago.  I’m not trying for a PR, however…  I would like to do well and will try.  TJ, as I said, will pace me and RS will run also, but had to work really late, so I don’t know how well he will be able to run on 4 hours sleep.

I am excited about my marathon training and trying coconut water for hydration.  It is going to be a long summer, but also a fun summer of training.

One thing about running, every day is a new adventure!

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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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Pre-race hangin with the dog

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Hanging with the dog, waiting to head out the door. It was storming earlier, but is just overcast now. Race starts in 2 hours and 5 minutes

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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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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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The saga continues – achilles pain vs a 5 mile run

I made the decision yesterday that I would try to run.  I felt well and my achilles felt fine, but I didn’t know what would happen as I got out on the road.  The day before I had to cut my run 3 miles short, not because of pain, but just a nagging tinge in my achilles.

Yesterday as I began to run, I decided that if I couldn’t make my run because of pain, I would just stop the rest of the week and give my injury time to heal.  Of course as I ran I was super conscious of any discomfort from my achilles.  A few times I wondered if I felt something, but then decided it was just “normal” pain.  What I mean by normal pain is that I always have some type of pain while I run.  Either my hip or my thigh or, yes my achilles.  I used to think that the achilles pain was heel pain, but now I know differently. Also normal pain goes away and real pain does not.  So while I ran, if I thought I was having any type of pain, I would relax and make sure I wasn’t running too fast and eventually I felt fine again.

So to finish this story… I finished my 5 mile run.  It wasn’t a PR by any stretch of the imagination.  I ended up running a 9:00 pace, which is just about where I wanted to be.  Slow enough to not get hurt, but just fast enough to feel like I ran.

I got to the last tenth of a mile and I had a tinge of pain in, yes, my achilles.  It was more than just phantom pain, it was real, but it went away and I slowed way down and finished the run.  I got home and elevated my legs and played with the dog.  No I didn’t use ice. Sadly I forgot, but I will today just to make sure all is well.

My goal the rest of the week is to keep at the 5 mile mark until I run several days with no issues.  Sadly our 5K is coming up next weekend and I really wanted a PR.  This may impact that, but it might help by giving me some much needed rest.

All in all, yesterday went well and I can run again today.

I just need to take it one day at a time.

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Updates on running and dieting

Training has been a bit hard lately.  Not too bad, but I’ve increased my mileage this week quite a bit from last week.  Most people say to only increase 10% over your previous week, but I am trying to get back to my 35 – 45 miles a week.  I figure that I was only out of running 2 weeks, so it really shouldn’t be that big of a jump to go from last week (my first week back) running 23 miles to this week running 35 miles.  Overall it has gone well.  I am back to sub 8:30 pace and am taking no anti inflammatories or fish oil.  I really am trying to run without any meds now that I am in the low 180s in weight.  So far so good.  I am a little sore, and have a little hip pain, but that is all.

Next week I begin training to run my next 5K.  TJ has some workouts for me to do that he has been doing since last week.  I have just over 2 months to be able to bring my 5K time to 20:00.  As I’ve said before, this is my goal and I hope to achieve it, but if I don’t, that’s okay.  I just need something to shoot for that will motivate me to do these workouts.  Also, these workouts will help my overall running time and that will be crucial as we kick into training for our marathon beginning in July.

Just an FYI on my weight.  I finished my diet at 177.  I got as high as 183 over the weekend which was rather depressing.  So this week, I have worked hard at trying to stay away from the carbs.  The main carb I eat is a piece of bread before I run, which seems to really help.  So I am, as of this morning, back down to 180.  That is exciting since I was afraid my body was dictating that it wanted to go back to the high 180s.  I hope to get back in the mid 170s if only to keep my hips and back out of pain and not need to go back on pain meds.

Keeping motivated!

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3 days running and back on pace!

Getting my running legs under me again.  Yesterday was my third run since I took 2 weeks off and lost 20 lbs.  I felt really good running and felt my stride was longer and easier to maintain.  Ultimately I ran just over 9:00 pace on Monday and just over an 8:00 pace yesterday.  I did feel like I was pushing it a bit after the first mile, but I knew I was running well and wanted to see what I could do.

The good news is I am still not taking and anti inflammatory meds or fish oil.  I think that is my biggest success from my time off.  I used to be in a lot of pain with my hips and back that I had to be on meds everyday.  Now I really have almost no issues other than after my run yesterday my left hip hurt for a while, but the pain went away on its own.

I am trying to keep to my run plan.  Today and tomorrow I up my mileage to 4 miles each day and then Sunday I go up to 6.  I hope by next week to be in the 5 mile a day range again.  I just didn’t want to take things too fast.  Also, I didn’t have any muscles pulling as I ran yesterday so that was great.

Our next race is a 5k in May.  It was our first race we ever ran and it will be fun to compare our progress.  TJ has a training plan worked out for me when I get myself back to normal running.  My goal is to finish in the 20 minute range, which would be a miracle.  But in the past year I have seen a lot of miracles happen because of my running.  I wish more people could experience what I experience.