April, part 2- …and I ran

April was an improvement on my abysmal running performance in March though not the return to form I’d hoped for. The momentum I’d gathered in the last days of March ebbed, with only two runs on the unpaved trail near my home the first week of April, both around 35 minutes for 3 miles each.

I hit the Brick Reservoir on the 8th for 4.8 miles in 57:37, a 12 minute-per-mile pace. I did my yoga workout on the 9th, the first time in 6 weeks. The 10th saw a standard 8 miles on the Manasquan Bike Path in 1:39:23, a 12:25 pace. Then I reeled off some quicker runs on my local trail each of the next three days, 3 miles each, in 33:53, 34:36, and 33:33.

The next week I screwed up. Monday the 14th was a rest day since I was planning my first interval workout in YEARS for the 15th. I went up the reservoir to try the following: run a half-mile in 5 minutes, jog for a quarter-mile, run another 5-minute half-mile, jog the .35 miles to the start/finish, then start the loop again. The half-miles clustered around 5:00, between 4:54 and 5:07. I was shocked my body still knew enough about that pace to keep it close to the goal. The in-between jogs were at what felt like a more normal pace. The overall result was that I ran 4.8 miles in 51:35, a 10:45 pace. That’s 6 minutes faster than I’d done the same distance one week earlier. It was tiring to be (relatively) speedy for once but I felt pretty good. I still felt good the next day, too! So, since my in-laws watched my daughter on the 16th, I did a few hours of cleaning out our small fishpond and gardening. All the stooping and squatting made my leg muscles ache but it subsided after an hour of yoga.

On the 17th, I tried a superlong run. I was sore in my legs but not tight. I managed to clear 10 miles in 2:03:40, a 12:22 pace. That seemed pretty ordinary until I realized that it was my longest run since February 29th. Clearly, I’d turned a corner! Speed work, a busy “rest” day, then a gentle 10-miler! This could be my first 25-mile week in a while if I just didn’t hit the wall.

God smiled on me while He laughed once again at my plans. He let me sleep through the whole hitting the wall, but when I awoke on the 18th I could hardly walk. The delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) that was stalking me jumped on my back like an invisible weight. I clicked and cracked through every step for several days after. The only thing that got loose was my training schedule.

I didn’t run again until the 26th. I’m not sure if I was punishing my body or giving into the panic of being so far behind my fitness goals, but I ran 10 miles again, this time in 2:04:21, a 12:26 pace. The last run of April was a gentle one on the 29th, 4.8 miles around the reservoir in 58:01, a 12:05 pace.

The total for the month was 57.4 miles. It was certainly an improvement over my 24.6 in March, but my two 10-milers were nearly a third of the total. My rule of thumb is that my four longest runs should constitute between 30 to 40 percent of total mileage in a month. A lower percentage means I’m not doing enough long runs; a lower percentage means I’m putting too much into the long runs and not doing enough short runs around them. My four longest runs (L4) in April came to 32.8 miles. That’s a little over 57 percent, way out of range.

Still, improvement is better than laying around wishing I was fitter. Speed did not kill (on its own, anyway), there were 2 10-milers and an 8-miler in April, and I was still recovering from a near standstill after my shingles incident. It’s not so bad to go forward in fits and starts, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for more starts than fits.

April, part 1- Health, fitness, and doctors

While I’m not sure that anybody has read this blog twice, I feel I should apologize for not blogging for the past few weeks.

*AHEM*  I apologize for not blogging the last few weeks. Thanks.

April included some new wrinkles for my training:

• Fewer short support runs (not good)
• My first “speed” workouts in years (good at the time, but…)
• Bad news from my doctor (not good)

Let’s take the last one first. I had my regular 6-month checkup scheduled for 9:15 on April 11th. I had bloodwork done in a lab on the 4th. On the 9th, my doctor’s assistant called to let me know how concerned my doctor was with the results. She asked if I could schedule an appointment to see the doctor to discuss these results. Um, how about 9:15 on Friday the 11th, the appointment I already made? We agreed to keep the appointment that precipitated the bloodwork in the first place. This gave me the opportunity to stew about the appointment for two days.

My current doctor took over the practice from my previous one when he retired last September. The previous one was sanguine, not at all an alarmist, and more than happy to let me be a partner in my own care. While he was sure that running was crazy, he was pleased that I was exercising. Under his care I managed to finish a marathon, a half-marathon, several 5-mile races, and countless training runs. However, we went round and round on medications for treating my general metabolic disorders, including Type II diabetes, high cholesterol, and borderline (high-normal) high blood pressure. As we added drugs to combat each I gained about 5 pounds. After two years of treatment all my numbers were excellent except the one between my feet on the scale. I’d gone from 180 pounds to at least 205. I felt terrible, looked flabby, and I made an emotional decision instead of a rational one. In February 2003, I let all my prescripitions expire without consulting my doctor.

It went well at first. I lost 10 pounds the first month, then 10 more over the next two months. I felt better, I looked good, I had more energy than I’d had in a while. I ran 10 miles in 100 minutes for the first time in years. If I could go back to the doctor as a fitter person with no symptoms of diabetes, perhaps we could find another course. Instead, I never called the doctor. Who calls their doctor to say, “I’m really healthy. Can I have a checkup?” I still didn’t call when I started to get some neuropathy (nerve pain) in my hands in the fall of 2003. By Christmas, my hands were so numb that my shoes would not stay tied- I couldn’t pull the laces tight enough. On New Year’s Day 2004, the pain exploded beyond what ibuprofen could mask.

For those unfamiliar with neuropathy, the problem is that there are no outward visible signs. There is only pain in the nerves. Before, the pain was severe but localized, usually started from a benign touch, then it faded over minutes. On a scale of 1 to 10, the worst it had been was a 4 or 5. This new pain was about 8 on the pain scale. I could barely sleep or eat. It felt like my hands were being squeezed in a vise, burned, and frozen, all at the same time, all the time. The pain crept up my forearms into my elbows. If it got any worse, I would have gone to the emergency room for morphine. That’s my 9. 10 on my pain scale is unconscious.

My old doctor saw me two days later. I explained to him what I’d done and the colossal amount of pain I was in. I sat there with my hands curling into claws and waited for a lecture. Instead he filled out new scrips for my old drugs, plus one for Tylenol laced with a mild narcotic to ease my pain enough to let me function by day and sleep at night. And when he left he shook my hand gently, looked me right in the eye, sternly but without malice and said, “Don’t stop taking your meds again.” I said, “Yes, doctor”. We never spoke of the whole thing again. The neuropathy cleared very slowly. I was unable to play bass guitar for months. I took 6 “special” Tylenols a day, the max, at first, and i didn’t get back to zero per day until July of that year. It’s hard to tell if there is pemanent nerve damage; if so, it’s minimal.

I tell you all this to point out that I miss my previous doctor, that the pain of shingles or shin splints is no big deal compared to that bout of neuropathy (even a hip pointer and a briefly dislocated knee were minor in comparison), and that I’m not screwing around with my health. Now I have to prove how serious I am about my health and fitness to this new doctor.

At my April 11th appointment, my current doctor, whom I have seen only twice before, told me my numbers (fasting blood sugar, hemoglobin A1c, cholesterol, and triglycerides) were all elevated. Not crazy high (untreated, my triglycerides have been in the thousands), but enough to make him wonder why everything went up. I told him it was likely linked to my lack of exercise while I had shingles, well documented in this blog, a concern I voiced during the shingles diagnosis. Then, he switched my cholesterol medication and told me to come back in two months instead of the usual six months with another round of lab workbeforehand.

I find this situation aggravating. Not the least of which because I have to write this long post that has not talked about running hardly at all (runs like no?). There is pain in my left shoulder which is either left over from the previous shingles attack or the precursor to a new one. Moments ago, I took my blood sugar reading. It’s 200. Every condition I have is related to stress. Much of my stress comes from managing these conditions. My doctor is asking me if I fasted before my lab work was done, like I don’t know any better. I don’t blame him for doubting me. I just hope it’s the last time he has to doubt me.

Doctors like to keep things normal. What’s normal? I’m going to try to run 12 miles or more tomorrow. Is that normal? I never smoked. I haven’t had a drink in seven years. Is that normal? If I do things one way, my blood sugar is in the “normal” range; when I do the same things again, they’re out of that range. Is that normal? I just wrote a thousand words that no one else may ever read. That ain’t normal.

I’m going to chill out now. April, part 2 will be along shortly to discuss my running both for and in spite of my health during April.

Looking back and moving forward

With three months of 2008 in the rearview, this is a good place to see what my goals for running were and see how they were or were not achieved. The trick here is to remember that a black swan named “shingles” knocked me flat before judging the results of 91 days too harshly.

The January goal of 100 miles run was met with scary precision. In retrospect, it almost looked easy: set the distance, see the distance, run the distance, repeat. I was elated to see a nice round number filled in completely, but it was supposed to be a beginning, not something from which I needed to recuperate. I found that February is where elation goes to die.

I’ve said before that February is the longest month of the year. The chronologically short month seems much longer, like the purgatorial wait for the doctor to see you. February is the waiting room for sunny spring. No one even has the energy to pronounce the first “r” in “feh-brew-eh-ree.” (This goes doubly so for those who say “lie-bear-ee” and “new-kew-ler”) Since this particular February had 29 days, I tried to juice up Groundhog Month with a goal of 110 miles run. It was here where the best-laid plans went awry.

Instead of 110 miles run, I covered 50.2 miles. I ran only 7 of those 29 days, compared to 20 of 31 days in January. At least they were longish efforts: one 10-miler, two 8-milers, nothing less than 4.8 miles.  At least March would be a fine place to rebound.

Or not. March made February look like wall-to-wall Mardi Gras. The shingles outbreak really sucked the life out of me for a few weeks. I again ran 7 days in a month but this time the longest run was 4.8 miles.  I ran on the 1st and 4th, then essentially slept for 11  days before running 11 days later on the 15th, then essentially slept another 11 days before firing off a string of four 3-milers from the 26th to the 29th.

March’s original goal of 130 miles, set on the last day of 2007, was going to be scaled back a little bit since February had been such a setback. The result was actually 24.6 miles run, a deficit of over 105 miles. The result was further off the March goal than the entire result of January. I have finished three marathons, which means I’ve run more in ONE DAY than I did this March.

Let’s take a moment here to look away from the numbers and count my blessings. One of my favorite sayings goes something like this: Instead of whining about what you wanted but didn’t get, think about all the things you DIDN’T want that you DIDN’T get. I had shingles. I did not have a stroke, get hit by a car, or witness the planet’s demise. Nothing is over. Tomorrow is another day.

So, for April, I’m going to take a whack at 100 miles again instead of the 150 miles I penciled in as the goal during “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve.” It may wind up being 80 miles or 70 miles, but the chances are slim that it could be less than 25 miles. Right?! I already ran 3 miles today, April 3rd, in 34:57, an 11:39 pace, which is in line with the streak I pulled off last week.

I don’t know if I can cover 97 more miles before May Day. But I do know three things. 

• We are promised nothing.  
• The sun does not go down. 
• When you look forward, that is generally the direction you travel.

March comes in like a gnu

The goal I set for March back in December was 130 miles run. After the letdown of February (goal: 110 miles; result: 50.2 miles), a lower goal for March seemed in order, but I wasn’t sure how much lower to set the bar. Then, while I was trying to set it, I tripped over it and impaled myself. Allow me to explain.

The day after my 10-mile bow on the last day of February, I ran three miles through the woods near my home. It is a bike path in name, but is more like a cross-country trail now, what with the colossal gouges from reckless ATVs and terrain that goes through mud, loose sand, cinders, railroad gravel, and the occasional low-bridge branch. On Saturday March 1st, it was windy and I got a faceful of a cloudburst of wet flurries at the start. I should have taken the hint ands stopped right there. Instead, Kid kept complaining about the pace while Coach kept saying I was lucky to moving at all within 24 hours of a 10-miler. After a lot of back and forth, it was three miles in 35:51, an 11:57 pace.

An angry bunch of small bumps appeared on my left shoulder soon after. This was not surprising considering the amount of time I was spending in cold, sweaty clothes of late. What was surprising was how painful it felt, not unlike a sunburn. I am not a hypochondriac, so I mostly ignored it. The “rash” was responding, I thought, to Benadryl and ibuprofen. I didn’t run on Sunday the 2nd or Monday the 3rd while I tried to ignore these bumps. On March 4th I ran three laps around Brick Reservoir for a 4.8-mile run in 56:51, an 11:51 pace. Despite being tired and having some skin irritation I was doing OK.

Then just before dawn on Wednesday the 5th, I awoke to what felt like a cross between a snakebite and a jellyfish sting in a line of lumps that had spread from the point of my left shoulder all the way to the left side of my neck to just below my ear. Between that nerve-jangling pain and the doctor appointment at noon, Wikipedia told me first what my doctor later concurred with- diagnosis: shingles. $h!t on a shingle.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s diabetes on first, borderline high blood pressure on second, high cholesterol on third, and shingles on… my shoulder. Four chronic, incurable, but treatable conditions simultaneously. It’s every boy’s dream: a grand slam in early spring training.

The drugs to manage shingles, an antiviral for the virus plus an antidepressant(?) for the pain in the nerves where the virus resides, kept me in a fog that I am only now, over three weeks later, emerging from. At first, I found myself sleeping ten hours a night and taking a two-hour nap in the afternoon. Driving my daughter to preschool- a 30-minute round trip- seemed like a real workout. Operating heavy machinery, like, say, my legs or my eyelids were a chore. I will say that the pain was very well-masked throughout, but after enduring peripheral neuropathy from uncontrolled high blood sugar a few years back anything less than a broken bone would not beat that older systemic nerve pain in my memory.

The virus did not spread further beyond a brief scare that it had spread to nerves in my left inner ear. My wife, who has never (knock on wood) had the chicken pox from which shingles occur, stayed far away from me. My 5-year-old daughter, who also has been free of all poxes, had to be kept at arms length for a while. Being treated like a leper by loved ones, while standard procedure, may have been more painful than the outbreak itself.

Meanwhile, no one has explained to my satisfaction how two weeks of chicken pox one summer over 30 years ago can be locked away in the body for decades without being bombarded with antibodies before recurring. Nobody seems to know what triggers an attack, exactly how many attacks one person may be visited with, or whether nerve pain may occur without the telltale blistering. If the nerve pain that has radiated through the my shoulder several times over the past few years with no other symptoms, a pain that has at times mimicked symptoms of heart attack, a pain that may linger for up to a month, was shingles, it may be that this is not my first shingles attack, but my seventh or eighth. Now I know what the antidepressant is for.

Now you know why I hadn’t been running or writing about it. I don’t think readers of this blog are interested in my writing about “so I didn’t run again today”, so I’ve been recuperating quietly. I did manage one run on March 15th, shortly after I finished the antiviral medication. It was three more laps at Brick Reservoir in 57:56, a 12:04 pace.

As I write this I’m on a little streak. I’ve run four consecutive days, all 3-milers on the “bike” path near my house, in 35:51, 34:57, 36:11, and 35:20. All of them had the walking breaks every fifth minute. I really hate those walks but they are necessary for now while I continue to recover. Overtaxing myself may be what brought this attack on; I’m not keen on being in pain or fogged in with drugs to avoid the worst of the pain. (Instrumental version of “Comfortably Numb” should play here.)

In future, I hope to blog post more often and run more often. I’m starting to regain the ability to use heavy machinery like my brain and these here Interweb tubes, not to mention this bar I keep trying to set. I’d say that’s good gnus.

Finishing February- 50 miles run

The remainder of February was quiet, though it did start to look good at the end.

As I said earlier the original goal of running 110 miles in February was all but mathematically impossible. With no goal to shoot for, I was much less compelled to get out to run. My energy was not rebounding. I only ran 3 more times in February. At least they were all long.

On Thursday the 21st, I ran 6.2 miles (10K) in 1:18:11 at the Manasquan Bike Path. It was just below freezing out, generally unpleasant, a typical February day. The 12:37 pace didn’t really make me feel any better.

I went to the Brick Reservoir on Tuesday the 26th to see what would happen. A two-lap run seemed more likely than a four-lap run. So, of course, I rolled off five laps. Maybe it was because the temperature was close to 50 degrees; maybe it was the general lack of mileage compared to January. Anyway, it was five eight miles in 1:37:22, a 12:10 pace.

I did some gentle yoga on Wednesday, expecting to run on Thursday, but Thursday was sub-freezing with colossal winds. I ran on Friday the 29th instead. I had to pick up my daughter from preschool at lunchtime so my time was limited. The most I could run was 10 miles, which I certainly wouldn’t do. Except I did. I ran 10 miles in 2:04:43, a 12:28 pace. I even managed to pick up the pace in the last two miles to stay close to the 12:30 pace that seemed easier to maintain just a month before.

The (not-so-) grand total was 50.2 miles for February. After a 100-mile month, a 50-mile month felt puny, especially when the goal was 110 miles. The only bright spot is that I ran 50.2 miles on just seven runs, an average of over seven miles per run. It was something to take into March where an even larger goal loomed, along with an unforeseen but foreshadowed obstacle.

 Note: late edit in 4th graf because five 1.6-mile laps equals eight miles, not five. Where is Math when I need him?

February goal- Run 110 miles

This one is not going to happen. Before I tell you why it won’t happen let me tell you why I thought it would.

It is unwise to increase distance too quickly. From many sources over the years, starting with Joe Henderson of Runner’s World, I’ve learned that distance runners should not increase their mileage more than 10% week over week. My plan is more conservative than that; mileage would increase 10% every TWO weeks. January had a 22-mile week followed by a 20-mile week, THEN a 24-mile week. It stands to reason that I could build up slowly and schedule 110 miles as the goal for February. It’s only 10 miles more than January, yes, but February is two days shorter than January in this leap year.

Mathematically, it’s possible. And therein lies the rub. Mathematics is a representation of reality, but it is not reality. The map is not the territory. Plans of action are not action.

So I took off Friday February 1st after my 10-mile finale for January, then popped a very fast (for me) 8 miles around the reservoir on the 2nd. Every lap seemed too fast. The fifth and final lap was fastest of all at 18:15 for 1:34:03, an 11:45 pace. Six weeks before, I was keeping my fingers crossed just to finish each long run, maybe at a 12:30 pace. Here I was pushing the pace down by 45 seconds per mile over an 8-mile run. And this was two days after a 10-miler! It might be a piece of cake for a runner, but for a gnu? This was unsustainable.

My wife and daughter had been passing a cold back and forth for over a week before I finally caught it myself. When I get a virus, my body attacks it with absolutely everything. This cold was no exception. I felt not-so-good in the afternoon, bad at night, felt a bit feverish at bedtime, broke the fever in my sleep, and woke feeling like a battlefield on which a major skirmish had been waged. I don’t get sick often, but the older I get the more likely it is that the sickness and its cure pass through like a summer storm. Being sick has no “coming on” or much “here it is” for me. It’s all “holy $h!t” and cleaning up fallen trees in an atmosphere that smells of ozone.

I didn’t run for nearly a week. The following Saturday, the 9th, I foolishly thought I’d try a long slow run. I should have tried a shorter one first. I was too eager to get out and run. I started out somewhat quickly just like the previous week, though this one was on the Manasquan Bike Path. I figured 8 miles was a lock since I still felt good after 5 miles went by in a little more than an hour. Then I hit the wall.

No. I think maybe I hit the wall, then it fell on me. At 6.2 miles, the 10k mark, there was suddenly a marked lack of oxygen in my fresh air. For the next half-mile I ran and walked, ran and walked, and I was done. I finished 6.8 miles in 1:24:55, a 12:29 pace. The speedy start kicked my legs out from under me in the end, so the 12:29 pace is just an average that does not tell the tale of how great I felt at the start and how terrible at the sudden end.

I felt tired and occasionally nauseous in the days after that. The next run on Thursday the 14th was tentative. I kept it shorter, three laps around the reservoir, for 4.8 miles in 58:20, a 12:09 pace. Being Valentine’s Day, I thought I should not be so overtaxed to refuse a romantic dinner and evening with my wife because I ran even one step two far.

Saturday the 16th was like Saturday the 2nd all over again. I started too fast, stayed too fast. This time I stopped short at 6.4 miles in 1:13:51, but the pace was ridiculous at 11:32 per mile. Every lap was 18 minutes and change. In December 2007, it would have been suicide to go faster than 20 minutes a lap and hope to make it 8 miles.

I am not THAT improved THAT fast. I want to be able to keep going past February, past March, past 2008, 2010, 2020. To do so, Coach, Math, Doc, and even Cynic have to hold Kid back before we all wind up in the hospital.

The real world is asserting itself, as it should, with its demands on me. If nothing else, my record here is up to date. The improvement of this particular gnu continues even though the success curve has flattened a little. It will rise again.

So I will not be running 110 miles this month. At this time, late on February 18th, I’ve got 26 miles in the bank on four days of running. There is no way I’m attempting 84 miles in the next 11 days, even though, RIGHT NOW, as I’m typing, Kid is saying “But what if you did? How cool would that be?!” The answer: pretty cool. But I’m going to play it by ear, see how I feel. 75 miles for February is not out of the realm of possibility. Hell, anything is possible in an implausibility of gnus.

Running to the finish

January 28th was a Monday. You can look it up. It was windy and sub-freezing. And dark. And Monday. I ran zero miles that day. Now I had to push 16.4 miles into three days to make a 100-mile month.

I went back to the Brick Reservoir again to try for as much as 8 miles, figuring to cover 3.3 on Wednesday and 8 on Thursday. Wednesday would normally be a rest day, but normal is relative when you’re trying to push beyond your, uh, normal range. However, the rain that was to begin in the afternoon started instead at about 10:15 in the morning, during my third lap. The more I ran, the heavier the drizzle got. Since it was only 30something degrees out, it seemed better to truncate the run one lap short to avoid catching a cold. So I stopped at 6.4 miles in 1:17:08, a 12:03 pace.

Wednesday, the 30th, my in-laws took my daughter for the day while I sulked. I was sulking because the rain and wind continued most of the day. By the time the weather started to clear in the late afternoon I had already decided to pin everything on a 10-miler on Thursday. After all the work of the month so far, I was anxious about completing 10 miles, especially since my last attempts at 12, 8, and 8 miles turned into 8.4, 6.4, and 6.4 miles, respectively. My longs were starting to pull up short.

If the long runs start breaking down, the mediums and shorts don’t seem shorter anymore. Conditioning starts to deteriorate, endurance fades. Then I find myself either running strings of monotonous shorts which invariably get too fast because “hey, it’s short” or I try to hit home runs by running too far with no support runs. Some people can do that. Dr. George Sheehan ran 10 intense miles every other day and was winning his age group at a very late age. I’m still trying to work up to that 35 miles a week so it’s not an option yet. Plus, I still need a little more variety. It would be an ego boost to run 10 miles just one more time.

Not that 10 miles would be impossible. I did have a 12-miler and three other runs of 8 miles or more already in January. The goal was to take it easy and not choke. Besides, no one would get hurt if I got close and didn’t make it, right? Except Kid, the runner inside, of course. I wasn’t sure how many more minor injustices he could take.

The 31st was a cold morning with temps in the low 30s at best. That meant running in sweatpants, which I hate. My legs are thick and can keep themselves warm when it’s cool out but I don’t mess around with wind chills below 30 degrees when I’m going to be out there over two hours. Better to be too careful than wind up with the flu. Still, sweatpants me feel so dumpy and constricted at the same time. And I know where you’re going next: tights. I’ve grown my hair clear down my back and pierced one ear but the day I roll on some tights will never come.

With all the nerves and the urge to just get it done I’m sure I started too quick down the bike path. Sometimes it feels one way but is, in fact, the other. This why I wear a watch. (It also keeps Math and Coach busy.) The watch doesn’t feel fast, slow, or any emotion about what is going on. The watch is there to tell the truth, ugly or otherwise. The truth was that the pace was just under average, just below 12:30 a mile. If I’d learned nothing else this month, I’d learned that 12:30 is a pace that I could sustain indefinitely as long as my joints, tendons, and blood sugar held up.

I did my little loops and took water 2 or 3 times. The pace remained steady just below 12:30 a mile. At seven miles, then eight miles, I was still feeling fine. At 8.8 miles, I had just 1.2 miles to go, a little out-and-back from my truck/water stop. By 9.4 miles I was pretty mellow, just rolling along. That’s when it hit me. All I had to do was get back to my truck and I would have my first 100-mile month in…I don’t know how long. This revelation was an elevation to elation. And in that last half-mile, Kid beamed, and I sped up just a little.

On January 31st, I ran 10 miles in 2:03:55, a 12:24 pace. With a few hours to spare, I had run precisely 100 miles in a month. None of it was fast. Little of it was pretty. All of it was good enough. The goal for February and the rest of the year and on and on- that could wait a day.

Week 4 goal- 24 miles

What is it with me and Mondays? I just can’t get out of bed at 5:30 without someone dangling either a really juicy carrot in front of my nose or a thick switch over my… anyway. Since neither appeared, I slept in two more hours and ran no miles on January 21st.

I got in 4.4 miles on Tuesday the 22nd while my daughter was at preschool. It was slow and even, 54:14, a 12:20 per mile pace. It was intended to be easy, leading into a rest day on Wednesday. I didn’t get around to the one-hour yoga workout I’d done the previous 2 Wednesdays. That may have been a factor in my stumble on Thursday.

It wasn’t an actual stumble but the 24th was the first long/superlong run I didn’t finish this year. It was a planned 12-miler, but I started feeling poorly around the 6-mile mark. It was cold, I was sodden with sweat, and the pace was de-evolving toward 13:00 a mile. Now, I know that I’m not fast but, for me, a 13:00 per mile pace, regardless of the distance is demoralizing. I can take embarrassment and shame. Check out all these 12:something paces so far. Writing a 13:something over a run is not something I want to look back at from the future. Plus, I know my body enough that I’m not going to get a second wind after 90 minutes and run another 60 minutes at a better clip. All the voices in my head agreed that cutting it short would be best. I stopped at 8.4 miles in 1:48:22, a 12:something pace, 12:54, to be exact.

I got in a 2.2 circuit by my home on Friday the 25th, a freezing 25:44, an 11:42 pace. Saturday saw a trip to the Brick Reservoir for a 4-lap excursion, 6.4 miles in 1:17:55, a 12:10 pace. See how easily I can type those 12:somethings?

Sunday the 27th ended the week on a good note. It was a simple 2.2 ’round the ‘hood in 24:28, an 11:07 pace. It felt good to be quicker for once, for a gnu.

At the beginning of January, I had pencilled in 24 miles for this week. The resulting 23.6 miles was close enough. It still disappointed me. I had hoped to do more to save me from squeezing in under the wire. To make my 100-mile goal, I’d have to clear 16.4 miles in the last 4 days of January. If I had made that 12-miler on Thursday, it would have been 12.8 to go. It just goes to show how one bad day can mess up the math. Still, I wouldn’t bet against Kid and the rest pulling me through.

Week 3- 19.4 miles

Week 3 began with a whimper. I could not get to sleep after the Giants win against Dallas so I slept in as late as my daughter would let me on Monday the 14th. Besides, this would be a scheduled easy week of 20 miles.

Tuesday, I doubled up and ran 4.4 miles by my house in 52:36, an 11:57 pace. The first 3 miles were pretty even and sedate. The last mile was faster to take a shot at getting it in under a 12:00 per mile pace. Wednesday, I took the scheduled rest day with an hour of easy yoga since that had worked so well the day before the previous week’s 12-miler.

Thursday the 17th was a seasonable 41 degrees. The goal was 8 miles. This was a test of how well extending the long runs did in making shorter runs seem like a snap. After a 12-mile run, 8 miles should seem more like “only” 8 miles than “8 miles? I don’t know about this!”

It turned out to be “only” 8 miles. Before I started with yoga, I used to carry a lot of tension in my feet and my neck while running, cracking my toes and popping my vertebrae every walking break. Now, everything stays loose as long as I’m not pushing the pace. A 12:27 pace wasn’t pushing the pace exactly, but it’s a little quicker than normal for me. 8 miles in 1:39:38 put it just under the 100-minute goal. Not that I was looking to be fast. I’m just happy to be here, Coach.

The 2.2 miles on Friday were a little slower because of windy conditions. With the serpentine course, the wind shifts every minute or two. It may just be a personal thing with me, but I’d rather have the wind steady on an out-and-back course than be blown sideways over and over, left and right. You can lean into a headwind. You can’t run leaning sideways; the gusts stop and *BONK* you’re eating a strange mailbox. (”Ethel! That curly-headed running kid is choking on our catalogs! Get the hose!“) I finished in 27:13, a 12:22 pace, keeping just a nodding acquaintance with those mailboxes.

I headed back to the reservoir on Saturday the 19th for at least 3 laps, which turned out to be exactly what I did in 57:56, a 12:04 pace. Nothing special, but I didn’t feel comfortable pushing the distance or pace, not with that energy bill outstanding. Sunday, I didn’t run. I did go bowling early with my family, then moaned through the Giants/Green Bay game later, until Tynes finally put it through the tines. (Scott Norwood, your name came up again.)

It was a week that came as advertised. 19.4 miles were completed against a 20 mile goal. Nothing was too fast or slow. Nothing crazy occurred. No injuries. Even the voices in my head were pretty quiet. OK, Critic told me I was gonna eat a mailbox with a side of hose water, but things were quiet otherwise. Week 3 made it 60 miles even in 20 days.  Which means…wait…40 miles in the remaining 11 days? Where’s my damn Easy button?

Momentum ends Week 2- 25 miles

Friday, the 11th, was an easy followup of 2.2 miles around the neighborhood in 25:52, an 11:45 pace. I was surprised at how easily the run went. I was certain that Saturday’s run would be slow and/or short. Still, I went up to Brick Reservoir on the 12th to enjoy the remnants of unseasonably warm weather and see what happened.

What happened was a near repeat of the previous Saturday. I felt good, loose, and (for me, now) fast. I blew through the 1.6-mile first lap in 18:56, then in 19:15 and 19:30. After 4.8 miles I was thinking of running 2 more laps for 8 miles total. Coach jumped into my head to short circuit that daydream with my calendar in my mind’s eye. There was a big “12!” circled in red just two days ago, the longest distance I’d covered in over two years. The target for this whole week was 22 miles; if I ran 8 miles on this day, it would be 22.2 miles IN THREE DAYS!

No matter how good I feel on any given run I know that if I overdo it there will be a bill to pay down the line. The next day, week, maybe even a month down the line, the energy bill comes due. That’s why I calibrated each week in the first place. I mean, why not run 100 miles in one week, then put my feet up until the groundhog pops up to meet the press? Because it’s crazy, of course. Racking up the miles too early when it was feeling good would cause a manifold increase in problems later on just as surely as going out too fast in a marathon will cause a marked decline in the pace coming to the finish- if you even last that long.

So I let the momentum carry me around once more, and once only, in an 18:55 lap for 6.4 miles and 1:16:36 total, an 11:58 pace, same as the previous Saturday’s run. The difference is that huge difference on the preceding Thursdays- 3.2 miles on the 3rd and 12 miles on the 10th.

Sunday, the 13th, the energy bill seemed due, but it never showed. I took the 2.2 jaunt in 25:01, an 11:22 pace, a little too quick on the way out and even quicker on the way back. It made 25 miles even for the week, a solid accomplishment 3 miles above the goal. That put me at 40.6 miles, slightly ahead of the 40-mile goal. Not bad at all. Maybe I’d get out of paying that energy bill after all.