1st Race Back

            With the Irish Jig next weekend, I decided to head over to Jerome’s home town and run a little tune up at the Leprechaun Loop 5k. Racing longer distance races requires a completely different mindset and pain tolerance than racing 5k. My fall racing schedule consisted of 3 half marathons, a marathon, and 8k so I really wanted to race a shorter distance to knock a little rust off. As Jerome and I were driving to Port Huron, Jerome went on to tell me that Port Huron had gotten 4-5 inches of snow. I honestly didn’t really believe him, but sure enough, we arrived at his mom’s house with snow all around.

The next morning we viewed the course which was simply an out and back that was primarily run on the “board walk” (essentially a sidewalk that’s twice as wide as a normal sidewalk). Jerome and I warmed up on the course to see what the conditions would be like and the boardwalk was plowed, but it was covered in ice. Being as I took a spill on a morning run earlier in the week and I already had a sore knee, I was less than thrilled and contemplated not running the race. I really didn’t know much about the competition other than there was a 1:49 800 runner in the field. The first ¾ mile was on street and sidewalk where I thought I’d be able to open up my stride and really try to run fast. I took the first mile out pretty hard with a couple guys running for the Elite Feet Team. After about 600 meters I took the lead completely and came through the mile in 4:49. The last ¼ mile of the first mile was extremely slow. To put it in perspective, Jerome was running the 10k and he was running 4:57 pace at the ¾ mile mark, but once he hit the snow and then boardwalk, he ended up hitting the mile in 5:10. I’m not sure what type of pace I was running the first ¾ miles in, but I would guess somewhere around 4:40? The second mile was a 5:22 and I really was just trying to stay upright while maintaining a lead. I almost took a digger shortly after the turn around. The race was simply wild after the turnaround. While the icy boardwalk made it challenging to run, the race did have a couple hundred people in it and everyone was looking down and watching their footing. Needless to say, that made coming back against traffic in the opposite direction very interesting. Fortunately, major collisions were avoided, but I definitely had a lot of stop and go running. Coming off the boardwalk, the guy in second place was making a surge and I believe he caught me and was right on my heels. At that point in the race, I was pretty tired and completely out of rhythm so I just focused on reestablishing the pace and was able to hold him off. I believe my last mile split was a 5:10. While I was a little down that this mile wasn’t a little faster, I do have to keep reminding myself that there were a few sections on it where I essentially had to slow down to near stops to avoid collisions. I think my final time was around 16:01, but the race was good tune up for me. It really makes you appreciate how great of a job the people running the Playmakers races do. This race was definitely memorable and actually ended up being a lot of fun. The pub crawl afterwards was a pretty good cap to the weekend and the mental break was definitely needed. All in all, it was a pretty fun weekend.

March 5th Post

            As seasons change, there is one important question that needs to be asked. Is this the season that we once again back down or is this the season that we get after it and really go for it? Yes, you know what I’m talking about. I’m sick of those red-winged black birds and I’m sick of backing down. They’re the size of my fist, but yet they think that they can just buzz around my head while flapping their wings and pecking at my head. So what are we going to do about it this year? A lot of ideas have been tossed around. Do we do nothing? Maybe we should write a letter to the city and petition to allow for their extermination? Should we run with rocks in our hands? Tennis racquets? Should we organize group runs with the MSU tennis team? I understand the birds do not want people within x feet of their nest, but why don’t they just build them in places away from sidewalks or paths? Does anyone have any more good ideas here?

            On other notes, I posted my racing schedule. If you’re going to be at a race that I’m at, you should let me know so I can keep an eye out for you. I also posted a poll asking what people consider to be an elite time for both male and female US marathoners. I think it’s really interesting to see what people perceive as elite for both sexes and I hope people respond.

Summary of my training week:

            I have finished my 7^th week back from running and every workout to this point has indicated to me that I’m in at least as good of shape as I was at this point last year or maybe even better. The workout that I ran this week was identical to the workout that I ran this week last year. It was the Mt. Hope Cemetery fartleck workout. Lansing is a pretty flat area and one of the better places to incorporate hills into a workout is actually a cemetery. The workout is quite simple. On flat stretches or uphill segments, you run hard while you recover on the downhill segments. It’s really a taxing workout. To my astonishment, we had 11 guys from Team Playmakers Racing show up for the workout. It was absolutely awesome. It was my first workout with the team in quite some time. I was overly excited for the workout and I went out too hard. I hadn’t run any hill workouts this year, while I was running hill farlecks every week last winter. Despite the lack of hill training this year, I ended up finishing workout 38 seconds faster. It seemed that most of the guys at the workout also made the most of the day and ran quite well. Needless to say, I was pretty excited for both myself and the team. It was pretty cool to see a group of guys just getting after it.

My legs are starting to feel a little sore/tired from the process of getting back to running. My main focus this past week was to make the average pace of each run faster than the prior weeks while running about the same mileage as last week. I’m getting to the point where my easy runs are in the 5:50-6:15 range which is a good sign for me. Everyone has different strengths as a runner, and I believe mine is to run efficiently at faster paces while my body recovers. I hit 87 miles this week with two 5.5 mile a.m. runs. I really don’t have a mileage plan or workout plan mapped out and really am enjoying the process of running how I feel.

Spring is almost here!

Whew! It really just occurred to me that I’ve only been running for 6 weeks after a 3 month injury. However, to my amazement, my workouts are indicating that I’m in at least as good of shape as I was at the end of last February. My workout this week consisted of 5 x mile repeats with 0.26 mile recovery. Due to the footing this week, this was an ideal workout because our apartment complex does an excellent job plowing and salting the parking lot. I have a 0.5 mile loop where I measured out a mile consisting of close to 2 laps. I really didn’t know what to expect going into this workout. The weather was around 30, not much wind and good footing. I ran the first repeat in 4:54 and really didn’t feel very good, but I was able to hit 4:56, 4:56, 4:55, 4:56 for the last four repeats. I really thought I struggled through this workout but the repeats seemed to get easier as I went on which is a good sign. For the sake of curiosity, after the workout I checked the variation on the resting time and to my surprise it ranged from 1:54-1:56. While I’m very happy with the workout, my muscles are very imbalanced and my stride feels extraordinarily awkward. Swimming was instrumental in maintaining my aerobic fitness during my injury, but I have decided that I need to give it up for now and replace the swimming with morning runs and core work to help get my weight down, improve running efficiency, and balance my muscle strength. Hobbling around for 3 months really did not help my athleticism, balance, and balance of muscle strength. All and all, I really can’t complain and I’m really just enjoying being outside.

This past week consisted of mostly easy running where I implemented 2 two-a-days and ended up hitting 84 miles. The next weeks should really indicate where my current fitness level is as I’m going to repeat a workout that I ran at this time last year and also hop in my first post injury race (5k). The Twin Cities Marathon was my last race and I missed the time that I was shooting for, but I’m the most motivated that I’ve ever been. The next few weeks of training should be a lot of fun to see where I’m at and get back running with some of the guys on our club team. It’s snowing outside today, but it’s getting to be that time of year where the weather should start warming up a bit. Here’s to enjoying the transition. Hope training is going well for everyone else. Looking forward to seeing people out this spring. It's been too long.