10,000 Miles

I started keeping track of my running & walking mileage in 2004.

I count any and all miles on my feet that I can record and obsessively add them to my spreadsheet.  In addition to data from the Garmin or treadmill, I also go to gmap-pedometer.com and trace walks to dinner and any walking I do while traveling and site-seeing where I don't have my Garmin.

This week, I crossed a total of 10,000 miles since I started keeping track.

Those 10,000 miles have destroyed 20 pairs of running shoes over 7.5 years in 16 countries, and include 13 10Ks, 31 half-marathons, and 7 marathons (with another 10K and marathon coming up in the next 2 weeks.)

Not bad for someone who used to believe that they didn't like running.

I think it's safe to say I've changed my mind.

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CIM week -2

43.9 miles for the week.  The highest mileage week of the year, and very unlikely I'll beat it given where I'm headed. Mostly great, with a few over-training hiccups.  All-in-all, I'm ready for my taper and the race.  Also, it's time to start the weather dances (C.I.M. -- Cool. No. Wind. No. Rain...!).

Monday: 6 easy @ 10:02 avg. but with the last mile at 9:01 + 0.16 walking c/d.  Not bad.

Tuesday: Treadmill interval attempt.  3X 0.5 @ 8:00/mile @ 0.5% incline with 0.25 walking recovery @ 15:00/mile and it just felt wrong, tight, overloaded, and likely to hurt myself.  I stopped the 4th interval at 0.25 and walked the last 0.75 @ 2.0%.  When I got home, I realized this was my 8th day of running in a row without a break, the most mileage I'd done in 7 consecutive days in over a year, and I had 2 more days of running on track before I had a rest day.  Yup, I felt good about my decision.

Wednesday:  2.75 w/E @ 9:46 + 0.48 walking c/d in the AM.  Bikram, full series, all poses in the PM.  This day showed me that I was in *much* better shape than I'd been in for quite some time.  It also felt like a reward for my discretion on Tuesday.

Thursday:  Easy run with my old running buddy who's finally returning to the game.  It was so great to catch up with her and enjoy the easy (cold!) AM miles.  0.17 walk; 3.52 @ 10:43; 0.13 walk c/d.

Friday:  Rest.  30 minutes PM Yoga with E.  First day off running in 10 days.  Longest streak in a year. (I'm not really a running streaker, can you tell?)

Saturday:  4 @ 9:26 while listening to my audiobook.  Heavenly.  Easy breath and effort.  For the first time, I started to trust that maybe, just maybe, my goal of 9:30 average mile pace for the marathon wasn't in crazy town.  0.12 walk c/d.

Sunday:  Jen and I did 22.6 total including the walking cool down.  We'd planned for 20, but there were some bathroom and water fountain detours that extended the route.  This is the big issue with a point-to-point.  Once you are committed to the starting point and the end point, you are committed, and even if you detour off the most direct route, you still have to get to the finishing point.  This is very different from an out and back or a loop where you can modify, which is good to remember.  The actual so-called *run* portion for me was 20.81 @ 11:08 with all the walking breaks.  When I drop the walking breaks, I get to 20.08 @ 3:34:08 or 10:40/mile.  Medium effort.  Not bad at all.  I'm feeling tentatively confident for CIM, which is a *huge* improvement over just a short while ago.

2 weeks to go, wish me luck!

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Unexpected Gift!

On Trac just dropped a package.

I opened it and found the most unexpected and appreciated gift.

Even better, I can think of several people who would know that I could really use this, but I have no idea who it is from!

Hey unexpected gift-giver who knows me well -- Thanks So Much!   You Made My Day!

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CIM week -3

In the homestretch and this was the best running week I've had in long time.  Possibly the best in the last year.

I had a great interval workout, a solid mid-length pseudo progression run, and yesterday, a *beautiful* run with Jen.

Yesterday's weather report predicted AM showers, but it was wrong.  I arrived at Cesar Chavez Park to crisp, beautiful blue skies and clear views of the bay, the Golden Gate bridge, the Bay Bridge and the various parks and trails along the way.  I ran around the park twice to try to pre-load my run and I managed 2.87 before I saw Jen.  Then, we were off and babbling at each other for just a little over 2 hours.  We knocked out a steady (but more important *enjoyable*) 12 miles.

Despite never having met in person, we had tons to talk about and the time just flew by.  I haven't met a blog friend in the meat world in a very long time (not since 2006).  This was definitely the highlight of my week.

We split up at the very end and I closed out the last little bit to get myself to the total 15.  All told, I averaged 10:53, with the earlier miles on the faster side and the later ones relaxing into a more mellow pace.  This 15 was *so* much easier than the 15 two weeks ago. Pysically, but also, emotionally and mentally. Solo long runs are often hard for me to do. Running is supposed to be the thing I do to rest and recover from the stresses in my life, but some parts of the solo long runs may be contrary to that goal.  I'm thrilled to have a new running buddy.

Last night was E's birthday.  C's in town, so she offered to be my sous-chef and we made 3 lasagnas and a gigantic bowl of steamed broccoli.  With 10 people (11 if you count babyG), it was the largest sit down dinner we've ever hosted outside of family thanksgivings.  We replaced the coffee table with the kitchen table and the folding table in an L shape.  We used sheets for table cloths and mixed our kitchen chairs with an office chair and folding chairs. It was a great time and so much fun and I very much appreciate all of the folks who made an effort to join us on a Saturday evening.  I was very happy to give E a birthday party I know he enjoyed as his birthday present.  Major wife points for me!

And then, to cap it off, this morning, I drove over to L's at 8 AM and we knocked out 3 miles while chatting at an average pace of 9:27.  The ease of this AM's run the day after 15 miles plus a party of heavy food and wine was a big help to my confidence, which is *exactly* why I mucked with my training plan for CIM.

41.74 miles total this week (most this year), 6 consecutive days of running, and I'm feeling much, much better about the race.

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Wacky Day

Yesterday was a wacky day.

I had to buy a typewriter to solve a random client emergency.  They still sell them at Office Max.

Because of the random client emergency, I didn't do nearly as much work as I'd like, so today is going to be an annoying Friday.  I'm *definitely* going to get my invoices out today.  The 9th is *much* later than I like to get them out, but sometimes work and life just get in the way and I just have to deal with it.

Given the work madness and the rain yesterday, I seriously considered bailing on my 8 mile run.  Finally, I made a deal with myself.  I'd go to the gym.  I'd do it on the treadmill.  And I wouldn't give myself any grief if I had to do some walking because getting the midweek 8 under my feet was important this close to the marathon.

Thanks to the audiobook Life, I was reasonably well entertained and I think it was a pretty good workout, even if it involved several pauses to walk to the water fountain and was much different than the 8 without stopping I'd imagined on our local trail.

1 @ 10 min/mile; 0.5% incline; bathroom break
1 @ 9:50/0.5
1 @ 9:41/0.5
0.1 @ 4.0/0.5 walk; water break
1 @ 9:31/0.5
1 @ 9:23/0.5
0.1@ 4.0/0.5 walk
0.25 @ 9:14/0.5
0.25 @ 9:05/0.5
0.3 @ 8:57/0.5; water break
0.25 @ 4.0/0.5 walk
1 @  8:57/0.5; water break
0.75 @ 3.5/1.0 walk

Total = 8 miles, in a weird, broken up progression run format.

When I got home, I was starving.  For red meat.  I like meat, but I tend to eat at least 50% vegetarian.  I don't intentionally space out my meat consumption on any schedule, I just eat it when it sounds good, which is much less often than it does for the average American.  For some reason, it must not have seemed remotely attractive in a while because when I did the mental check, I realized I hadn't had any animal protein since the lox bagel after my 20-miler on Sunday.  And, I hadn't had any red meat since, well, I actually couldn't remember.  It had probably been at least a week and a half.  So I called in an order for Thai pepper beef, Tom Yum with shrimp, and E and I devoured it with gusto.  Even so, I woke up this AM still starvin' like Marvin.  

Like I said, yesterday was a weird day.

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A Great Way To Watch The Election

E had a business dinner tonight. I had 10 X 400 at 7:24/mile on my modified schedule.  Yikes. I hadn't done a speed workout that intense in at least a year.  Possibly longer.  (FYI -- FIRST wanted me to do 10 X 400 at 1:49 or 7:16/mile)

I felt great today.  And it was only 2 days after my longest run so far this training cycle.  (Note to self: icing the sore bits after a long run is a *very* good idea.)

Thanks to daylight savings and work, there was no way I was getting to the track before dark. Instead, after a long day of work and a 1.1 mile walking warmup phone chat with my childhood best friend R, I headed to the gym and slogged my way through all 10 reps on the treadmill while the states changed colors on the TVs, making sure not to start measuring each interval until the treadmill was up to 8.1 mph (7:24 min/mile) so as not to cut the distance short.

It was a good, solid workout.  Difficult, but totally doable.  I probably could have done more and/or faster. And that's the whole trick -- Successfully completing training at levels that are sufficient stimulus to cause improvement without overtraining or injuring yourself.

Man, my confidence just needed this workout.  Also, this AM before lunch and PM after the workout I confirmed that it's not a fluke, I've actually dropped about 2 pounds in the last 2 weeks.

All of this makes me feel very happy about recognizing that I needed to modify my training approach despite the minimal amount of time left in the training cycle.

Onward.

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CIM Week -4

First week over 40 miles this year?  40.55 including some walking?  Why yes, I'll take it as the 2012 high water mark, thank you.

Today's US half (my 8th time starting this race in a row) plus additional mileage was instructive, and I think I have a good set of *reasonable* CIM goals now.

I seem to be struggling with gastrointestinal issues this year in a way I haven't in the past.  It started in February with my enjoyable failure at the Kasier Half Marathon. Nothing traumatic on any occasion, but it's been happening on a semi-regular basis this year on long runs and races and when it does, it sure slows me down.

Today, I took a 5 minute bathroom break at the turn-around point at the Golden Gate bridge, including an extra 0.25 miles of jogging and questioning the non-English-speaking run volunteers for directions, which was super frustrating, because I knew Wei(4) and Jian(1) but I had forgotten the middle tone and syllable.   Thankfully, after a while, repeating "toilet, please" and doing a suggestive dance seemed to do the trick.  The silver lining is I doubt I'll forget wèishēngjiān (Mandarin for toilet) ever again. 

I'm going to do some historical research to figure out what I'm doing that's different than in years past on my races and long runs, in terms of food.  From what I've found so far, when I was younger, food just didn't matter.  I mean, on my 31st birthday I did a Sub 2 half after a multi-course Italian dinner of celebration, pasta, cheese, truffles and wine. Ahhh... to be young again.  This time, I struggled after a dinner of pasta pomodoro and non-alcoholic beer.

I do know that a lunch of a light salad and soup or a sandwich, with a bit of easily digestible protein and spicy broth-based noodle soup for dinner is probably the best pre-race option for me.  I'll try to make that happen for CIM. 

Today's long run was good.  1.5 miles easy jogging to the start.  The Garmin claims the race was 13.38 @ 10:47 including a 5 minute pit stop and some slower hills and crowded aid stations.  If I remove the pit stop it was 10:12/mile.  Not bad at all since I reigned myself in because I knew I had several more miles at the end -- almost all of the running was at 10 min/mile or faster, including 4 miles at sub 9:45.  My final miles were 0.5 jogged back to the hotel slow and then the remaining 3.65 on the treadmill as 1.5 miles @ 10 minutes/mile; bathroom break; 1 mile @ 10 minutes/mile; 0.15 walk; final 1 mile @ 10 min/mile.  The 0.25 walk to and from brunch got me over 19.

All told, 19.23.  Not the scheduled 20.  But I feel very good about it.  In particular, I was glad to do the last bit on the treadmill near the bathroom (because I needed it *again*) and because the TM is very helpful at forcing you to keep the pace. Also, I was sore enough to ice twice today (so far).

I understand that this race is quite lame compared to last year's 2:06 for the same race.  But, I didn't *race* and it was much warmer (high of 79F vs. last year's high of 59F).  Even so, there weren't any bridge construction slow downs or the extra hills at the turn around this year.  The reality is, I am nowhere even *close* to the level of fitness I was at this point last year.

So, my new CIM goals are as follows:

1.  Eat to avoid any race-day digestion issues.
2.  Run an even or negative split race.  I'm trying to decide between starting with the 4:10 group or the 4:25 group or going it alone somewhere in the middle.  I'll likely have to decide this one closer to the actual race based on pacing for my last 20-miler and the remaining mid-length tempo runs.

Wish me luck.

Also, send good thoughts to those on the east coast recovering from Sandy.  I was proud to be a runner while reading about how well the running community dealt with the news of NYC's marathon cancellation (despite the fact that it should have been announced earlier).

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