Category Archives: My Running

Marathon Training: Week 12

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What a roller coaster of a week.  After a terrible run on Tuesday I was able to come back and PR in the half-marathon distance on Saturday.  I’m glad this week is over and looking forward to more good weeks of training.

Monday: 4-6 easy miles. I extended my downtown-Park Ave 4 mile loop to make it close to 5 miles and ended up running 4.83 miles in 40:21.  It was 66 which felt great even with the higher humidity.  I took it nice and easy for my first run after 20+ miles on Saturday!  I was a little tired and sore but felt pretty good.

Tuesday: 8-10 mile threshold workout. This ended up being a downright brutal workout due to the heat and humidity. I think it was in the mid-80’s with near 100% humidity. It was raining north and south of us but not on us.  They gave us a progression workout for a 10 mile run.  The plan was 2.5 easy, hydrate, then 2.5 at Marathon Pace, turning around and running 2.5 at Half-Marathon pace, water stop and then recover for awhile do a mile at 10K pace and recover to the start.  No one in my pace group did the 10K pace section.  We ran along the East River Parkway, next to the Mississippi River, but the scenery didn’t help the run any.  Also the East side of the river is significantly hillier than the west, so our downhills out made for some tough uphills towards the end of the half-marathon pace.  I should note that I was outside most of the afternoon, but tried to stay hydrated.  We ran the first section in 20:21 (8:01 pace) and completed the marathon pace section in 17:46 (7:12 pace).  So far so good –  MP for me is 7:15. I ran the half-marathon pace section in 17:21 (7:03 pace Goal Pace would be 6:54), during this section our group of 5 got strung out pretty good.  We stopped for water and I hit the porta-pot.  When I came out the group had a small lead, but I was never able to catch back up – which I think hurt mentally for me.  I finished the last leg in 20:05 (8:13 pace) and was glad to be finished.  We commiserated about how bad we felt and went our separate ways.  I got home, showered, ate a quick dinner, and was asleep by 9pm.

Wednesday: 5-7 easy miles. I didn’t wake up until 7:30am which is really sleeping in for me.  I still felt really drained and all around terrible.  I finally managed to drag myself to work, thankful I was going in late due to working later than normal yesterday. I drank a lot of water and by the evening felt like I should give running a try.  I wanted a little motivation so I went to Pike Island and ran on the scenic dirt trails around the island that marks the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers.  I wanted to take it easy and just run how I felt. I ended up running 4.3 miles in 34:10 and felt really good.  I picked up the pace for a little bit when a group of college runners went by, but kept reminding myself to slow down! I’m glad I motivated myself to go and it was nice to just run and enjoy the scenery.

Thursday: Rest Day. A much needed rest day, even though I bike commuted it felt good.

Friday: 6 miles at marathon pace. An unscheduled (kinda) rest day.  I was still back and forth about racing over the weekend so I knew that if I ran it wouldn’t be the scheduled workout.  I had to go to work earlier than normal and thought I’d be able to run in the early afternoon.  That ended up not working out, but taking the day off shouldn’t hurt too much since it is a stepback week.

Saturday: 10-12 miles In his notes Hal Higdon says this would be a good week for racing a half-marathon.  A group of people from my team were racing a half-marathon so I went with them.  Am I glad I did. If you read the introduction then you know that I set a new PR.  Breaking my 3 year old PR by about a minute and a half! Quite an exciting race.  I felt terrible for the middle – last part of the race so I was delighted to see the clock showing a PR!! It was a perfect day to race – temps in the mid-60’s, low humidity, a fairly shady and flat course.  My watch had me at 1:33:22, which was also my official chip time.

Sunday: Cross-Train. We rode our bikes to church and the Minnesota State Fair for a total of 13.3 miles on the bike and several miles wandering around with the hoards of people at the fair.

Weekly Mileage

Running – 32.1 miles

Biking – 53.4 miles

Hal’s Tip of the Week: There is no such thing as “bad food,” only bad choices. There’s even a place for burgers, fries and shakes in your diet. You just need to balance everything you eat. If you eat a well-balanced diet, that includes ample fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains, you can avoid expensive supplements. Tape these words to your refrigerator: “Eat a wide variety of lightly processed foods.”

[tags] Hal Higdon, Marathon Training [/tags]

Week 12

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Running in Africa

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Mwamanongu Village water source, Tanzania. Image via Wikipedia

My experiences with running in Africa are quite different than those that I have every day here in Minneapolis.  First, the temperature was hot – but there was no air-conditioned room to retreat to post run.  Not a lot of people were running for recreation in the areas of Ghana and South Africa were I was at, especially Americans!! Running in an area always provides a little different perspective than driving around in a car.

South Africa

Since I was part of a team there were a couple of us who went out on several occasions for short jogs.  Here we were fed fairly nutrious meals and were shielded for the most part from some of the nastier aspects of water borne illnesses, etc.  It was also not oppressively hot during the days.  The recollections I have of running there are few, but I know we ran in a group and not for very long or far.  I only recall running during the last week of our stay when we were at a compound that was down the street from another compound of the same ministry. So we ran between the two sites and took a dip in the swimming pool afterwards.

Ghana

This was a much different all-around experience as I was the only American and was living more at a similar level as the regular villager up the street.  Our meals were mostly carbs (a lot of empty carbs) and I often left the table hungry for more.  Water was also an issue as it was harder to get pure “nsu” in large quantities.  I had brought some power bars with me for the trip and ate them on occasion. It was quite hot during the day and the only reprieve was sleeping under the fan at night. I think I ran 2x’s during my 8 week visit.  It was hard to time the nutrition, weather, and quality of sleep for optimum running. The times that I did run were on the dirt roads away from the village and I got some weird looks as I waved at the “neighbors.”

Needless to say running is a sport that everyone takes part in around the world with the same fervor.  I felt while I was running that it was crazy to be “wasting” so many calories when some of the people I was running by were calorie deficient.  Little children are able to run around because for the most part they are little bundles of energy – but what happens after not eating for a week? or two?  Not to mention hydration. I mentioned pure drinking water – it is available most everywhere but costs a little extra then ground water.  I sipped a little ground water once and was quite blessed not to get full-blown diarrhea.  I did get some intestinal discomfort because of my mistake. It was my first week there and I was sweating and exhausted.  We were meeting with the headmaster of a school and he offered water. So I took it. Ooops!

Water that causes diarrhea and calorie deficiency causes thousands of people to die each day.

3,800 children die every day from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. Source: UN World Water Development Report 2, 2006

There is an easy solution to that. World Vision and many other organizations are providing the resources for villages to get safe drinking water.  World Vision is digging wells, educating the community about maintaining the well and the water quality, and providing safe storage containers. Digging a traditional well costs World Vision $5,390 which gets safe drinking water from 60ft underground. In some parts of the world, wells must be dug much deeper or through bad ground conditions.  These deep-water wells can cost $18,000 to dig.  Either of those figures may sound daunting, but your gift to Team World Vision will be joined with other gifts to help tackle problems like safe drinking water.

Please take a second to support my efforts in my first marathon by making a tax-deductible and secure donation to Team World Vision.

Thank You!

Follow-up Video

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77Mv8pauMKc

Team World Vision

Team World Vision is a fund raising arm of the organization which uses ordinary people like me, to get ordinary people like you involved in ending poverty and injustice across the world. I have decided to commit the 26.2 miles of my first marathon to the memory of and in honor of the children I have met during my international travels. I can’t remember all of their names, but I have many pictures and stories.

On the right side of my blog there is a widget that will allow you to support me during this race or you can visit this secure page. I have set a goal of raising $2,000 which will help children have a chance at living to become adults across Africa.

[tags]  World Vision, Team World Vision, Africa [/tags]

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Reflections of a 20 Mile Run

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Image from stock.xchng

The first 20 miler maybe the toughest. That was the topic of discussion at the end of the run as we all stood around recovering from a nice 21 mile run.  I was the novice in the group as this was my longest run ever and everyone else has several marathons already under their belt (with some impressive times to boot!) I think we decided that the first one might be the hardest, but they never really get easier.  Not overly encouraging as we have 2 more 20 mile runs in the upcoming weeks.  But their points were well taken At this distance it is easy to have a bad day and feel it. Runs of this distance require a little more thought and preparation than an easy 10 miler.  I plan to prepare well for all of my upcoming long runs!

Preparation – We spent a pretty quiet evening at home on Friday night, eating Pasta and watching the Olympics. I can’t say I hydrated excessively, but felt pretty hydrated.  I actually woke up Saturday morning with “pre-race jitters.” I hit the bathroom several times and ate a bagel with peanut butter and half a bowl of oatmeal.  Then I hopped on my bike and rode the 2.75 miles to where we were meeting. It was a nice easy ride on a cool (low 60’s morning).

The Route

The Route

Run Time – I loaded up my shorts with a package of cola flavoredClif Shot Blok and off we went.  The plan was to take a Shot Blok every 5K.  I managed to do that and felt like that was a good mixture for most of the run. We actually did take the pace nice and slow as we started out.  We had a group of about 10 runners which was a nice size.  We started approximately at the 1.5 mile mark of the Twin Cities Marathon. We followed the course pretty accurately hitting the official water-stop around mile 3 where I picked up some CLIF SHOT Energy Gel of the Chocolate persuasion – they offered both Chocolate and Double Expresso. They did this for all the runners about a month ago.

We made some course deviations to throw in some soft trails but hit the hills along Minnehaha Parkway so we wouldn’t be surprised by them during the race. That was actually a good thing because I didn’t realize there would be any on that part of the course, so now I can plan for them. We hit them about 7 miles into our run which places them approximately in the 8-9 mile range.

Pace Chart

Pace Chart

Coming back from the turn around point I noticed on my Garmin that we were in my Marathon pace range (my goal is 7:15 so Marathon Pace runs would be between 7:30 and 7:00).  The pace chart shows us hitting 7-flat for a brief moment of time in the 9 mile range.  I wanted to stay with the group but also knew we had a long way to go still so I was willing to let them go, knowing eventually we’d catch up.  I never really got gapped by the group and had someone to run with for most of the run, which was nice!

The trails were quite crowded on our return run as many training groups were out there hitting the roads. On the return we “closed” the lakes – running around them on the opposite side so that we essentially ran around the entire thing. I started feeling bad when we got to Lake Calhoun, it had been about 5 miles since the last water stop and I was tired.  I stopped to pee real quick and caught back up to the group at a water fountain.

We then swung by the Marathon Water Stop at 17.25 already 1.25 miles farther than my longest run.  I grabbed 2 cups of water, a cup of Powerade, and ate a Chocolate Gu (I didn’t eat the first one).  I had gotten a little hungry somewhere in the early teen miles, but not the hunger that can really be satisifed while running.  I over did it at the last stop and felt it within the next mile. I was still moving along fairly well but could feel my hip flexors getting tight, my toes getting blisters, and my stomach was a little off.

I hung in there and finished at the consistent pace we had been going.  I ran the last mile pretty much by myself, with a group right in front of me and a guy behind me who later said, “My GI tract finished the run before I did.”

Reflections – Those are my thoughts from my first 20+ mile run.  Here are my take-aways:

  • Eat a bigger breakfast,
  • Don’t try to “cram” for the final miles,
  • Be consistent with nutrition on the run,
  • Steady pace throughout the run, try to avoid spiking the pace,
  • Relax and have fun!

Here is a list of my mile splits if you care! Oh, I guess I should note that my Garmin had the run at 20.5 miles but pretty much everyone agreed that it was at least 21.

  1. 9:00
  2. 8:14
  3. 8:20
  4. 8:14
  5. 8:11
  6. 8:12
  7. 8:03
  8. 7:49
  9. 7:47
  10. 8:12
  11. 7:33
  12. 7:54
  13. 8:03
  14. 7:55
  15. 7:37
  16. 8:00
  17. 8:05
  18. 7:59
  19. 8:14
  20. 8:01
  21. 3:52 (8:07 pace)

[tags] Running, 20 miles, Reflections [/tags]

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Marathon Training: Week 11

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A pretty good week that ended with my longest run ever! I definitely started to feel the load of building up the miles this week though, especially on the hills.  The weather has been great for pretty much all the runs so that is really nice.

Monday:4-6 easy miles. 5 mile recovery run. It was nice and slow as I was feeling yesterday’s race. I ran around Powderhorn Park doing laps around the lower level until I got to 3.5 so that I would hit 5 on the way home.  I finished the run in 42:05. The temperature was around 60 with high humidity, but it was cool enough that the humidity wasn’t much of a factor.

Tuesday:8-10 miles with hills. 8.6 miles at Hyland Hills again. This time we didn’t run up the ski hill, but it didn’t matter too much because my body was quite tired.  I really felt all of the previous hillwork and racing on hills during the run.  Hyland is a great place to run because it has a lot of options for hills and flat spots too. 1:08:30 was our overal time on a pretty good evening to run.  We got the run in between some major deluges, so it was pretty humid and around 75. Surprisingly the trails weren’t really that wet.

Wednesday: 5-7 easy miles. I had planned to run 6 miles today but ended up only running 4.  I felt pretty wiped out and didn’t want to push it too hard.  I was suffering a little bit from Olympic sleep deprivation and this run is always pretty tough anyways. I did my Downtown via Park 4 mile loop in 33:22.  It was a nice 61 degrees but 94% humidity made for a nice sweaty run! I seemed to hit a lot of red lights today – which I didn’t complain too much about!

Thursday:Rest Day. I did a pretty good job of resting, but I did bike commute 8.6 miles, but I tried to keep it at an easier pace.

Friday:10 miles. A nice 10 miler to start the weekend off! It really would have been nice to get out on some trails but I did what has become my normal Friday loop of running around the Minneapolis Riverfront – Boon Island, Nicollet Island, and the W River Parkway.  I tacked on some miles running through the University of Minnesota East Bank Campus and made it home in 1:22:20 for the run.  I wanted it to be an easy run as the 20 miler loomed on Saturday, so that definitely fit the bill. It was in the low 60’s and humid for this run as well!

Saturday:18-20 miles. Ta dah, my longest run ever and the route-maker made it a little long, thanks Nathan! Couldn’t have asked for a better day for this run and a great group of about 10 people to run with for it.  We ran almost the entire first half of the Twin Cities Marathon Course and got a waterstop provided by the marathon. We ended up running 21 miles around the Lakes for a pretty decent run.  We finished in 2:45:22 before it got too hot.  Temps started in the mid 60’s and were in the mid-70’s when I got home. We felt the heat on some of the exposed areas around the Lakes but much of the run was shaded! I felt good for the first half and struggled more in the second.  After the last stop at 17.5 I started feeling bad for awhile (I had taken too much water) and finished valiantly with a long slow uphill in the last mile. My hip flexors and toes hurt the worst!

Sunday: Cross-Training. I rode my bike to the YWCA and swam a total of 400 yards.  I did my best Phelps impersonation and failed miserably! I did swim 200 yards without stopping – alternating freestyle and backstroke.  I didn’t feel too sore upon waking up so that is a really good thing! It was nice to sit in the hot tub though!

Weekly Mileage Totals:

Running – 48.6 miles

Biking – 52.2 miles

Swimming – 400 yards

Tip of the Week: Occasional racing may be important for marathon success. Particularly this is true for Novice runners who have raced infrequently–or not at all–before catching the Marathon Bug. One reason for racing is to test your fitness: to get an idea of how fast a pace you will be able to carry in the marathon. Another is to test all your strategies from the shoes you’ll wear to grabbing fluids at water stations. Leave nothing to chance. Too much racing, however, can lead to overtraining, so don’t overdo it.

Week 11

[tags] Marathon Training, Hal Higdon [/tags]

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Race Review: MDRA 15K

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Sunday was an excellent, pretty much perfect day for a race. I woke up a little tired from seeing the in-laws off last night and slowly worked out some of the kinks on the warm-up.  The temps were right around 60 – which almost felt cold! It was great.

The MDRA 15K is the state masters and open 15K championship as well as being part of the USATF-MN Team Circuit.  So needless to say there was some competition at the front! It otherwise would be a fairly small race which included a 5K.  The 15K saw 9 new records this year! According to the final results the winning time was 48:00 a little bit off my official time of 63:24 which is a 15K PR.  This is also my first road 15K, the rest were all part of the DINO Series in Indiana.  I finished 4th on our team this week.

It was a good race – we started about 400m in front of the 5K start, so each loop was a little over 5K. I’m very pleased with my race, I finished approximately on the same pace as last week’s 10K. The race started towards the top of one of the major hills along the course and finished behind the start at the bottom of the hill, ensuring an overall elevation loss.  The course while on the road was fairly scenic winding through Braemar Park, a residential area, and along I-494 and US 169. The first mile was mostly downhill winding past the indoor driving range and parts of the golf course.  The road actually went through the golf course where mile 1 was located. I decided today to hit the split button on my Garmin so I could actually read my mile splits and not have to do the math in my head! This produced a little discrepency since the mile markers were a little off according to Garmin.  I’ll list the split times I clicked.  6:24 for mile 1. I felt pretty good with that split but thought it would be best to slow down a little so that I wasn’t totally wiped out at the end of the race. It was a little hard to let a pack go, but I new it was the smart thing to do.  I continued cruising along as we went through the residential section hit a couple small hills and grabbed some water along the way.  I remained comfortable and ran mostly by myself coming through mile 2 in 6:38. We have left the scenic portion and ran the next mile mostly on frontage roads alongside the interstate so not too exciting.  We also hit the first major hill of the course along this stretch.  The hill wasn’t steep enough to make you winded but it was a fairly long steady uphill. The downhill felt good as we came back by the parking area, crowds, and water stops.  I came through mile 3 in 6:54. The first 5K was 20:29.

Up the hill we go passing the starting line.  I got a couple people on this long steady hill, even though I was trying to keep the pace under wraps. We wound back down the hill and two guys came by at a decent pace.  I decided to go with them for awhile thinking they would help pull me up to the next big pack.  We never caught the pack and I stayed with them for a mile or so.  Mile 4 was 6:50. They didn’t really help my overall pace too much as I’d let them go a little bit and then surge to catch back up. This got a little tiring and finally they just pulled away as we went back into the residential area and hit the small hills. I grabbed some water again and went through mile 5 in 6:49. Back up the long frontage road hill, still feeling pretty solid along the way. I caught a few people on the hill even though I remained at a steady pace.  i came through mile 6 in 6:56. And through the 10K in 41:36 (that 5K was 21:07). That split was actually faster than last week’s 10K and only 8 seconds off my 10K PR. Wow!!

Somewhere in here a woman came into the picture – I can’t remember if she passed me or if I caught up to her.  But going back up the hill I was able to put some distance on her even though I remained at a steady pace.  She caught back up to me heading back down the hill though and we continued battling the rest of the race.  It was nice to have a little motivation to keep pushing hard. I came through mile 7 in 6:58. I remained in front but she was right there and I could here her breathing and footsteps as we hit some of the small hills in the neighborhood.  I figured if I could keep her behind me I would be fine, but didn’t want to get into a kicking match too far out.  I was finally starting to feel the pain of the miles and some pain in my right buttocks.  I came through mile 8 in 7:01. I skipped the final water stop and focused on pushing through – there was a pack a few hundred yards ahead of me.  I started trying to focus on them but also kept an ear out for the woman behind me.  She did pass me coming out onto the frontage road and I stayed right with her.  As we started climbing the hill I started picking up the pace a little bit and was able to go by her pretty easily.  Along the way I caught a Slab City runner and kept picking up the pace or at least the intensity. I came through mile 9 in 6:53. 3/10ths of a mile is a pretty long way to kick and I had no idea what she might try to do so as soon as I saw the 9 mile marker I started picking up the pace and steadily increasing it.  I came through the last 0.3 miles in 1:55 (5:57 pace).  The final time was 1:03:23 (1:03:24 officially) with the last 5K at 21:46. Not even splits but not too much of a spread either, in my opinion.

I felt good and felt like I recovered pretty quickly.  The woman I was racing, Laurie Hanscom finished 9 seconds behind me, so I waited and thanked her for a good race and told her she did a good job. I joined some of the other guys on the team to cheer our female teammates on to the finish.  I finished 58th overall and Laurie finished 4th overall for the women.  I can’t complain too much about the day.

I finished it off with a chiropractic treatment, chiropractors in Franklin.  At first I thought it was a massage which would have felt great on my tight lower back.  I decided to go ahead and give it a try since it was free! It was my first time and was a different feeling.  I think I will stick to massages for now!

All in all a good day!

[tags] MDRA, 15K, Race Review, Edina, USATF [/tags]



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