slow runners

Break on Through

Being a slow runner is really annoying. It feels really frustrating to still be slow, even after making progress. Like when I dropped almost 3 minutes from my 5K time in a little over 2 months, that was progress. But I was still running well into the double digits for my pace, and I still will be at the end of the month when I run my next race.

But I have noticed things, little breakthroughs, that have improved over time.

Hills aren’t so hard. The same hills that I used to huff and puff and struggle my way up, or partially walk up, are hills I can manage a lot better now. I’m not gliding effortlessly up them, of course, but I’m not walking them or gasping at the top. This only applies to hills on the road routes I run, currently. I haven’t been on the trails at all.

My lazy pace is faster. I was running yesterday and was completely zoned out for long stretches of time, and still finished at around a 15 minute pace (a little over including stops, a little under if they weren’t included.) My zone out pace used to be more like 16 min miles.

My average times on repeated routes are decreasing. Because I wasn’t doing a lot of road running for awhile, I wasn’t running the same routes. It’s hard to compare one run to another when there are so many variables in terrain (on trails) and in topography (for trails and road) between routes, especially in a hilly city. But I’ve seen my averages on the same routes go consistently down from where they were a couple months ago.

Short runs feel short now. I used to think four miles was a commitment and five miles was a long run and had to be saved for the weekend. Now I can do a 7 mile run on a weekday, not because I’m significantly faster, but because I have a different mindset and I have more patience.

I’m still worrying about cutoffs when considering races for next year, and still wondering if I’ll ever break 30 minutes for a 5K, but at least I’ve got a couple of imperfect metrics to remind me of my progress over the past 10 months.

Life in the Fast Lane

Now that I’m done with my half marathon, and done with the recovery period (that wasn’t very long, it only took 3-4 days to feel normal again), I’m going to try another 5K. I’m doing the Gobble Gallop on Thanksgiving, which I think will be my last race of the year. There’s another 5K the following weekend, but I don’t want to do two 5Ks in two weekends, I don’t see the point. I guess if I have a really crappy race or get sick or something I can sign up for the other one at the last minute.

I haven’t run a speedy race since July, when I ran the Park Point 5 Miler and sucked. I wish there was another 5 mile option, or maybe a 10K, where I could get redemption, but there’s nothing around here and I’m not in a position where I can travel for races. Too much school stuff going on, too many car issues, too much laziness.

I don’t plan on following any specific training plan, since the race is one month from today exactly. I’ll just do one speed workout a week and play the rest by ear. Last week I ran about 23 miles, including a run on the Lakewalk, 6×800 on the treadmill, and two medium-length trail runs (Jay Cooke on Saturday, Hawk Ridge Spur Trail Sunday). My goal is to start building a base of 30 miles per week over the winter, before I start training for my spring goal races, which are to be determined. Tentatively it looks like I’ll be doing longer spring trail races, shorter summer road races, and longer fall trail races, but which races I do depends on where I get a job upon graduation in December.

I am not going to lie: I have unrealistic expectations for improvement in this 5K. I mean, I don’t expect to run 29:59 or anything like that. My personal best is a 34:21, and if I don’t beat that in a big way, I’m going to be disappointed. This is based on no data or anything concrete, so I could be way off on my current abilities. I don’t really care. I haven’t invested a huge training cycle into this race, so if I don’t meet my somewhat unreasonable expectations, it won’t be a massive letdown like the Park Point 5 Miler was. Or so I tell myself.

Post-Mortem: Harder ‘N Hell Half Marathon

Now that the race is over and I’ve had some time to think, I have thoughts about what worked and didn’t work about the training cycle. Overall, a lot of things worked, since the race went well for me.

Refreshers
Race Report
All Harder ‘N Hell Half posts

Good Things
Hill work. I really think running up and down the hills at Chester Bowl was helpful. My legs felt extremely strong and I felt confident going up hills. Running hilly trails helped, too.

Running the entire course at once in training. I don’t need to do this every time, but since I’d never raced a half marathon, I wanted to make sure I was capable of it. It really boosted my confidence, especially since I’d been sick only a week or so before I did it.

Running by feel for most training runs. Since my GPS watch hasn’t been working very well, I used my phone to track my runs and just tucked it away somewhere. That means I had no idea what pace I’m running until I finished the workout. This helped keep me from “racing my training” or getting hung up on the pace, so my runs were more relaxed. I ended up kind of running by feel during the race, too, thanks to not starting my watch on time.

Running my own race. Yes, I noted when I passed people. But I didn’t make any special effort to get by anyone, nor did I worry if anyone passed me. I got passed at the end and didn’t really care. I got passed by a million people at the beginning and didn’t care.

Bad Things
Testing out only one source of food. Because when that food made me want to barf I thought I was in big trouble. It ended up being fine as I just ate at the wrong time in the race, but I should have had some other options for refueling.

Obsessively running the course. I ran the first few miles of the course way, way, way too often. I was obsessed with those stupid stairs, and they were a non-factor. I took them more slowly during the race than I had the last time I ran them, because guess what, other people took them slowly! It’s like I was surprised I wasn’t the only slow person in a race packed with elites. Test-running the whole course was good, but running it too often made me a little bit sick of it. One shouldn’t be sick of trails, they’re too freaking gorgeous.

Not warming up. I was too worried about other things and didn’t take the time to even run a half a mile to get some kinks out. The slow beginning helped me warm up, but there was plenty of time for at least some strides.

Abandoning strength training. I can’t believe my back didn’t hurt during the race! I was doing so well with yoga, but of course I had a lot more time during the summer. There was no reason I couldn’t have done push-ups on a daily or near-daily basis, at the very least.

There are other things, of course, if I want to nitpick every last detail, but these are the first few things that popped into my head. I worked hard in training; I was lucky not to be injured or sick (too often) and to have great race day weather; and there are things I can work on for next time. I didn’t come away from this race thinking “I’ll never do THAT again,” and I smiled almost the whole race. I’ll call this race a victory.

Harder ‘N Hell Half Training: Week 12

Race week!

Monday: 4.3 mi, paved trail (Lakewalk)
Tuesday: 4.2 mi, paved trail (Lakewalk, 6×400 @ 9:51 average)
Wednesday: 2.9 mi, road + trail (Chester Bowl)
Thursday: rest
Friday: rest
Saturday: 13.5, trail (RACE!)
Sunday: rest
Total: 25.2 mi

I took it easy this week, obviously. I only did a little bit of running on unpaved trails, and the Chester Bowl trails aren’t exactly technical. It was a little bit chilly Monday when I ran on the Canal Park end of the Lakewalk (I’ll be going there more frequently now as I like the path, the tourist season is basically over, and parking is free again), but I was more bundled up than usual, wearing long sleeves and tights. It was actually misting but I wasn’t bothered that much. The wind was a bit strong at times but I was planning on going slowly anyway so I didn’t care if it slowed me down.

Tuesday I probably ran a little too hard. 9:51 average pace for repeats the week of a race? Yeah maybe that works for non-slow people. That’s over a minute faster than my 5K pace. Although between that workout and the fast-ish end of the race I threw down (11:40 over the final half mile or so), I’m excited to see what I can do in a 5K. I felt fine after the race, except I got back to Brighton Beach in the dark. Time to invest in a headlamp, or plan better.

Wednesday I tried out a couple of pieces of gear I’d purchased. I was worried about getting cold so I bought some over-the-calf socks and some old man gym-teacher style tube socks to use as arm warmers. I wanted to try both pieces out to see how they’d work. The socks (the ones I wore on my feet, I mean) didn’t chafe and felt fine but they didn’t stay up. They were around my ankles pretty quickly, which also happened during the race. So much for keeping my calves warm and protected from itchy grass. The arm warmers worked fine, but I chickened out and wore a long-sleeved shirt on Saturday, which was dumb.

The race, I already covered.

Sunday I felt ok, but my hips and knees were achy. In fact, it’s 3 days after the race now and I’ve just finally started to feel like I’m not lurching around looking for my oil can like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. I have a massage scheduled for tonight and then I plan to start running again tomorrow. I’m trying to get my watch charger replaced and my heart rate monitor fixed, and then I can start really working on my base-building for next year.

Harder ‘N Hell Half Marathon Goals

Tomorrow is the race. I’m not sure what to think. On the one hand, whatever, I know I’ll finish the race, and I know I won’t be blowing anyone away with my speed. On the other hand, I want to do well. I don’t want to bonk, I don’t want to slow down too much on the hills, I don’t want to slip and fall on wet leaves, I don’t want to freeze during the race.

My plan is to be in last place, or very close to last place, at the beginning. Since I’ll be one of the last finishers, why not start there? Then I can take the stairway to hell at my own pace. I bought a bag of Halloween candy so that I have bite-sized Snickers to bring along with me. Then I don’t have to fumble with wrappers, I can just unwrap the whole candy and stuff the wrapper back in the pocket of my hand-held. I also hope to not stop at any aid stations for longer than I need to fill my water bottles. And I really, really, really hope I don’t get passed by too many of the 50k runners (they start earlier).

Time goals? Eek. I am going to be mostly running on feel, but I’ll have my watch on me to check my average pace. The problem is, I don’t know exactly how long the race course is. I don’t think it’s 13.1 miles exactly, I think it’s longer, or at least my various GPS devices have measured it longer. So if it’s 13.3 miles or 13.6 miles, then I’ll have slightly different average paces I need to hit. Whatever. So, here we go.

A Standard: 3:59:59
B Standard: 4:20:00

I ran the course in 4:23 back in September, so I rounded down to 4:20 for my B goal. On fresh legs, I can surely shave 3 minutes off my time.

Under 4 hours might be a pipe dream, but hey, I like to challenge myself. Assuming the race is 13.5 miles long (that’s what my Strava measured), that’s a pace of 17:46. I ran a pace of 19:28 back in September. So that’s a big chunk of time to shave off. Oh well.

As long as I finish strong, don’t accidentally trip the 50k front runners as they blow by me, don’t barf or have an upset GI system, and don’t hurt myself, I will be happy. Ok if it takes me 6 hours I won’t be happy. But it won’t.

Harder ‘n Hell Half Training: Week 11

Not a notable week.

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 6.4 mi, road
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: 4.9 mi, trails (Hartley)
Friday: 4.8 mi, road
Saturday: rest
Sunday: rest
Total: 16.2 mi

Ugh. Not the best, but I ended up not being too sick. I am told this is normal taper nonsense, but I think it has more to do with school stress ending than with tapering. Sunday I did go to Itasca State Park before leaving Bemidji, but I didn’t do any serious hiking, just enjoyed time with my family on an unseasonably warm day.

My brother and me crossing the Mississippi

My brother and me crossing the Mississippi

I’m pretty excited for the race, but also nervous. I want to do well. I don’t think I’ll do as well as I want to. I don’t want to freeze my butt off, but I also don’t want to get too warm. I don’t quite know what I’m going to wear but I am zeroing in on it.

I would have preferred another 9-10 miles on my legs last week, but rest trumped extra miles. Like I said last week, there’s not much more I can do to improve my fitness from here on out. Good sleep, good nutrition, and no grueling activity. Figure out the logistics. Breathe. Etc.

In Sickness and In Health

I have a cold, kind of. I think. Right now I have a cough, feel tired, and feel like I have the beginnings of a stuffy head.

I am also a less than a week out from the Harder ‘N Hell Half Marathon.

These two facts are incongruous.

I’m writing this late at night from a hotel room in Bemidji (I’m here for a short hockey road trip) and I am either going to wake up with a full-blown, grotty, snotty, feverish illness, or I’m going to wake up feeling better. I can’t remember the last time I had a cold/sinus/whatever illness that didn’t cut me down hard, so I am thinking I’ll be miserable tomorrow.

Naturally this means no running. In fact, I probably didn’t shut myself down soon enough. I had a stressful past few weeks, academically, which culminated in a fantastic day on Thursday. I was full of adrenaline and riding high after my classmates and I nailed a presentation we had given (this sounds silly but it was for our senior design class and was kind of a big deal), and then Thursday afternoon I kind of crashed from the excitement. But still went out running for an hour and a half, in a bit of drizzle. After that I felt tired and cold, but not sick.

Friday I still felt ok, just incredibly tired. And I was sneezing some, but I thought it might be allergies. I was planning a very short run, until the night’s hockey game was canceled (there was a power outage at the arena, it was very bizarre) and I had significantly more time than I thought, so I ran 5 miles. My nose ran a lot but it always runs when I’m running. (Ugh that last sentence was stupid but I’m not sure how else to put it.) I found that I couldn’t really get warm once I was home, even though it wasn’t that cold in my house, and I ended up going to bed early and turning on my electric blanket to warm up.

This morning I woke up planning to run a short route before we headed off to Bemidji. I still thought I felt kinda ok, then I got up and realized that I should probably rest. Especially after I read the text from my friend who is running the race with me. He said he finished his run over the second half of the course in less time than he thought, and I looked at his time and it was… way better than what I can run. I am really glad he’s successful but also envious of the ease with which he runs. So I didn’t run today, which was a great decision because I’ve been feeling run down since the early afternoon.

I’m shutting myself down until I’ve shaken this illness. There’s no workout I can complete that will improve my fitness for this race, and I need my body to focus on healing itself. I hope that I’ll be well enough for at least a couple short runs later this week, but if I don’t run again until race morning, that’s fine. As long as I reach the starting line healthy and energized, the rest doesn’t matter.