The tough part on my ego is that you don’t go into a race like this as well rested as you would a goal race.  Tapering for a goal race is typically a two week process to make sure you you enter the race on fresh legs.  This won’t be the case for this half marathon.  I am easing back just a bit this week, but will by no means be rested.

I think I’m capable of running a 1:40:00 half marathon, so that’s the goal I’ve set for myself.  My personal record for the half is a 1:42:43 set at the Heart Mini Half Marathon last March, so shaving nearly three minutes from a half marathon time is a pretty tall order.  If the weather cooperates and I have a good morning running, I think I can do it.

I do need to keep in mind that this is not my goal race and that doing something stupid that sets back marathon training would be a mistake.  The plan I’ve put together has me going out kind of conservatively for the first two miles (8:05 pace), picking it up a bit for miles 3-10 (7:40 pace), then see what I’ve got left for the final 5K. If I’ve still got something in the tank and can crank it down to 7:20s, I’ll make my goal time.  If I don’t have it, I don’t have it.

The year started pretty slowly as I was recovering from a knee injury sustained during my run at the 2010 Chicago Marathon, but I was feeling better and had started training for the 2011 Flying Pig Marathon in earnest.  While Cincinnati isn’t known for having brutal winters, January and February were pretty tough.  Lots of snow and lots of ice.  But training went pretty well.  At the end of February, I had a great time running with 11 other runners at the Ragnar Relay in Del Sol, Arizona, and surprised myself by turning in 3 consecutive legs averaging under 8:00 minute miles.  That little confidence boost lead me to give myself a bit of a fitness test in March by running the Cincinnati Heart Half Marathon to a PR:  1:42:43.

When May rolled around I felt ready to tackle the Flying Pig.  Everything in my training lead me to believe a sub-4:00 race was more than doable.  In the end, that race left me face down in the gravel after mile the 16 mark, and with a huge question mark about my health.  Things turned out OK, though, and I got the go ahead to continue running, with a strict proviso that I pay keen attention to my hydration levels.  Much to the dismay of my entire family, I made the decision to turn around a week later and run the Toronto Good Life Marathon.  My reasons were many, and although I was a bit afraid too, I’m glad I made the decision to do it.  I finished in just over 4 hours:  4:00:40.

I spent the summer training for the fall marathon I had on my schedule:  the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC.  While I had turned in a solid performance in Toronto, I knew I had a better time in me, so I got to work trying to make that happen.  At the beginning of the MCM training cycle, I made to the decision to try something new with my training and signed up with coaching from the Hanson-Brooks Distance Project.  I worked directly with Luke Humphrey, who is running in the Olympic Trials Marathon in just a few weeks.  Their thinking on marathon training plans are a bit different from most, but honestly, that’s what I wanted.

By late summer, I knew I was improving.  Double digit tempo runs no longer scared me, and my strength and speed runs were solid as well.  My peak mileage got up to about 60 miles per week and I was handling it well.  I went into the race feeling pretty confident.  My goal was to run a 3:45:00 and I ended up bettering that by 3 minutes:  3:42:00, an 18 minute PR!  I also got to run with a bunch of great people, many of whom I had met in person at the Ragnar race in February.  Getting to meet a bunch of people I had only known online was an incredible treat as well.

A smile at the finish of the Marine Corps Marathon

This last part of the year has been spent recovering a little bit from a wonky hip, but it’s mostly been spent setting my goals for 2012.  I’ll get to that in a post in a few days.

I’ve learned a ton this year and look forward to more of the same next year.

Writing a running blog and having just a few days left in 2010, I’m pretty sure I’m required to write a year-end recap.  I’d like to keep my membership standing in the Writers Writing For An Audience of One Guild (or the WWFAAOOG), so here we go.

2010 was filled with a dizzying array of ups and downs, first time accomplishments, complete failures, and more than anything else: learning.  I learned a ton about myself as a runner, a father, a husband and a friend, and I can attribute a lot of that learning to my dedication to running.

The year started out high hopes and lots of goals.  I had just begun to run in September of 2009 and before that year was done, I had managed to go from sitting on the couch (both literally and figuratively) to running my first 5K, a second 5K and a 10K.  I was hooked, and I was loving every minute of it.  OK, not every minute of it.  December is cold.

By the end of 2009, I had decided to set two running goals for 2010:  complete a half marathon, and if that went well, train for a full marathon.  One of the nice things about the earliest parts of running is that you can set new personal records left and right since there’s no long history to compare.  Run 5 miles today?  New distance PR!

As January bled over into February, I began to ramp up mileage as I prepared for the Flying Pig Half Marathon.  During that same period of time, I learned about YakTrax, how much I hate running on a treadmill, and the need for nutrition during longer runs.  All new things to me.  By February, I had also put together a plan for the year, or at least for the major races.

As February gave way to March, I also got to have my first run in a different country:  the Bahamas.  This was a make-up trip for the one we had to cancel in November of 2009 when my older son got the dreaded H1N1 flu the night before the trip was to start.

This also started a period of time that was personally very difficult.  My father-in-law’s health had begun to decline pretty rapidly and there was a lot of worry about what was going on.  It was very tough for my wife to get good information about what the doctors were saying from 2000 miles away.  As the month came to a close, my wife was in Florida to be with her dad, who passed away on March 28th.  I’m not sure I’ll ever feel good about not making it to be by her side in time.

April was spent learning what the longer runs would feel like, and I even threw in a half marathon distance run to see where I really stood.  I also faced my very first taper leading up to the Flying Pig Half.  I think I can confidently say that I’m not a fan of the taper.  I’m surprised I wasn’t kicked out of my house.

On May 3rd, I ran my very first half marathon.  I completed the race in 1:56:14 which was just over a minute longer than I wanted it to be.  I learned some great lessons on that first big race about pacing, running through pain, the effects weather can have on performance, and, yes, about pride.  This would be the first big race where my sons and wife got to watch me run.  They, too, braved the rainy Sunday to cheer me on and it made a huge difference to me.  Reuniting with them after the race was one of my favorite moments of the year.  Seeing the pride my boys had for what I had worked hard to accomplish was priceless.

Having put together a respectable run at the Flying Pig, I turned my attention to marathon training through the summer.  The summer months went by in a blur of heat, humidity and baseball!  Both of my boys play baseball so we spent the majority of our time going to and from baseball fields all over the Cincinnati area.  My running continued to progress although I had to learn some hard lessons about running in the heat.  I also took some time to work on my form and even went to a sports nutritionist to find out just how badly I was doing fueling my body.

August brought two bright points to what was otherwise a long, hot slog through the summer:  deciding to run the Chicago Marathon for the charity Run For Dom, and my second half marathon, the Spirit of Columbus Half.

September started with my one year of running anniversary and the two 20 mile training runs that preceded the marathon.  I left the month feeling confident that the goals I had set for the marathon were within reach and that my training was right where it needed to be.

October turned out to be an extraordinary month.  It started with the Chicago Marathon on the 10th.  While I did complete the marathon, my performance was hampered by a knee injury that occurred a little past the halfway point.  Having never dealt with any type of training injury, I was thrown pretty hard by this.  I managed to gather myself and push through the final half, but I needed to alternate walking and running to get it done.  The highlight of the year for me was finding my family in the runner reunite area and being tackle-hugged by my boys and my wife.  My sisters, mother and father also surprised me by traveling to Chicago to cheer me on.  While I admit that my first reaction to my race performance was bitter disappointment, it didn’t take long for me to see just how much I gained from the experience and just how much I and my family learned from the road it took to get there.

Having to stop running for 6 weeks to let my knee heal seemed like a prison sentence when the doctor gave me the news.  But I took the opportunity to work on two areas I hadn’t spent any time on before:  cross training and strength training.  The rest of October and the entirety of November were spent improving those areas and staying away from any impact on my knee.  As I’ve been able to get back to running everyday in December, I can already see some positive results.  I’ve never felt better or stronger as a runner.

December 27th was the first day of marathon training for the Flying Pig on May 1, 2011 and I’m feeling good about being back on a plan.  It looks like I’ll finish 2010 having run 1362 miles.

I’m a pretty stubborn person, just ask my wife.  There are good aspects to being stubborn (like not backing away from a challenge) and bad aspects (like ignoring what’s best for you).  Had I not injured my knee in October, I’m certain that the stubborn side of me would have simply continued doing what I had been doing:  logging miles.  Don’t get me wrong, logging miles is an important part of distance running and something that can’t be skipped.  But, it’s only one part of what it takes to improve as a runner.  And prior to my injury, I pretty much ignored three other very important aspects that could have helped me get better.

1. Cross training.  Prior to the injury, I did none of it.  I simply ran and ran and ran.  Anyone who has payed attention to running at all knows that cross training is very important.  It works muscles that aren’t used as much during running (even in your legs) and it reduces the amount of wear and tear on the tendons, ligaments and muscles in the hip, knee and foot.  Because I had to go a full month before I was allowed to run again, I was forced to give cross training a chance.  While I didn’t learn to love it, I now know I can put in time on the elliptical, bike and pool and benefit from it.  And maybe enjoy it, just a little bit.  My current training plan now includes cross training every week.
2. Strength training.  Again, I pretty much ignored this while training for Chicago, and it may have played a part in the knee injury.  Underdeveloped quads (common to for runners) can allow the kneecap to float around too much under stress and cause injury.  And, at the end of long runs, I could feel my form starting to go south as my upper body and core strength were just not up for multiple hour efforts.  When your form deteriorates, you start to compensate  and you become far less less efficient.  Your injury risk  increases too, because compensation usually leads for terrible form.  Which brings me to …
3. Running form.  This past summer, I attended a seminar on Chi Running, one of the handful of running form methods that attempt to help runners move from heel striking (and the injuries that can result) to midfoot/forefoot striking.  While I loved what I learned there, at the time I felt that I was hip-deep in marathon training and didn’t want to risk making a wholesale form change.  Looking back, maybe I should have.  As I have eased back into running, I’ve given myself the time and focus to change my form.  I wouldn’t say I’m 100% there yet, but it’s feeling more natural every day.

An interesting thing happened on the way back from injury.  Since October, I’ve really spent a lot of time cross training, strength training, and as I’ve eased back into running, getting my form right.  And wouldn’t you know it, my results are already reflecting those changes.  Last week alone, I had two 4 mile runs and a 7 mile run under 8:00 min/mile average pace.  To compare, prior to that, I had only ever had one run in my whole life with a sub 8:00 average.

It shouldn’t have taken an injury layoff to realize these things.  They were there, right in front of me all along, but I bullheadedly kept doing the same thing.  Someday, when up is down, and black is white, and dogs and cats peacefully co-exist, I’ll learn to be less stubborn.  Until then, I’m enjoying the benefits of teaching this old dog some new tricks.

The recovery from my knee injury has been going far better than I expected.  I’m now at the point where I’m wondering if I’m taking it too slow.  It’s a tough call to make because if you push too hard to get back to logging the miles you want to be doing, you can end up needing to keep off your feet for even longer.  The runs I have had toward the end of November have been great, and I can tell that the cross training and strength training are beginning to pay dividends.  The pace of my runs have been down below 8:30 pretty consistently, and I haven’t been trying to push the pace at all.

I had planned to run the Thanksgiving Day 10K here in Cincinnati since it was my very first 10K in 2009.  When I woke up that morning I was very dizzy.  So much so, I actually tipped over while walking and bumped my head against my TV.  I decided to skip the 10K, but the dizziness persisted most of the day.  My wife nailed the reason:  I had gotten out of the habit of keeping hydrated.  When I was marathon training, I always had water with me and was doing a great job of keeping my water intake pretty high.  I think I didn’t equate the work I’ve been doing in cross training or strength training as needing as much, but I was wrong.  I’m back on that bandwagon.  The dizziness finally went away in the late afternoon, so that evening I ran my own personal 10K in the wind and freezing rain.  Glad I did.

I’m very excited for December as I get to go back to a schedule that includes running more often.  I’m still keeping the mileage reasonable, and I’m still doing lots of cross training, but I also know I’ll be happy to be outside logging time and miles on the road.

The knee injury that smacked me across the face in the middle of the marathon continues to improve.  I’ve had two runs so far, both of them very easy, short intervals.  Very much like what I was doing when I started this journey last year.  The great news is that I’ve had no knee pain so far on these little runs.

Because I knew I wouldn’t be running consistently for a while, I decided to try to do two things to improve my running long term.

1. Get better about cross training.
2. Improve my overall strength.

Cross training has been much more of a mental battle than anything else.  First of all, I’ll admit that I am a bit of a running snob.  I’m really not interested in doing any of the other activities particularly well, so I thought that I really didn’t need them.  The hard lesson of being temporarily away from running has opened my eyes to the fact that cycling or using the elliptical will actually improve my running.  First of all, they both allow you to maintain your fitness level without giving your knees, shins, ankles and feet a pounding like running does.  Secondly, I’ve found that there are leg muscles that get far more engaged when doing those activities than they do during running.  A consultant might call that a win-win.  I might punch him in the face for being consultant-y, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’d be right!

As I got toward the end of marathon training and was running the long (15+ mile) runs, I began to notice that it usually wasn’t my legs that gave out first, but my form, particularly from the waist up.  So, having forced time away from logging miles gave me the perfect opportunity to begin work on strength training.  Admitting that I didn’t know the best way to do this was the first step, and then recognizing that, like running, this will take time before I see improvement was a necessary second step.  So, I’ve been working with a strength trainer for a couple of weeks, and I have to admit I’ve loved it.  I really feel like I’m getting my ass kicked every time I go, but it remains the “good” kind of pain.  He’s also a marathon runner (yes, I can now say also) along with being a certified strength trainer, so the plan he’s put together is specific to what I want to accomplish.

A few weeks ago I was talking to my boys about how it’s important to get over the fear of being embarrassed by being a beginner at something, because everyone starts somewhere.  As usual, that’s an easy thing to say but harder to live by.  On day #1 of strength training, the trainer said, “Get down and give me as many pushups as you can.”  Eight.  Eight pushups was all I could do, and calling that eighth one a pushup was a gift.  I was mortified, then quickly laughed at myself, as I was there on the training mat living exactly what I had been preaching.

My current plan is to continue to easy back into running through the end of November and hope that by then, I feel confident that I can go back to a more regular regimen.  And yes, I’ve already been “caught” by my wife looking for spring marathons.

A friend asked me if I’m afraid to start running again for fear of injuring my knee again.  I hadn’t really given it much thought prior to the question being asked, but I guess I am a little bit.  I still don’t have any clarity at all as to why this happened when it did, and because of that, I don’t know what to do to prevent it from happening again.  That’s a bit scary.

In the mean time, I’ve taken the time I’ve had to begin to improve other areas of my fitness.  I started working a strength trainer over the weekend, and he’s pretty much kicking my ass.  I think I believed that because I had trained hard enough to run 26+ miles that I must be fairly strong, but strength training is showing me just how much attention some areas of my body need.  I’m sore in places I never expected to be, but it’s the good kind of sore.  I’m going to continue the strength work twice a week for the next few months and see what kind of improvements I can make.

I hated June.  It’s not really June’s fault, but the weather around here was tough to run though.  Many, many hot and humid days and I’m sure I’m not alone in saying it’s very difficult to breathe in those conditions.  Lots of rain, too, just to keep things interesting.  I know that this is good for me to tackle, but I’ve got to say that I found it much easier to run through the winter than I am finding it running through this heat and humidity.

Shoes.  After having finally found shoes that I love, the Pearl iZUMi SyncroFloat III, I was told that they are discontinuing the model in preference to the SyncroFuel model.  I tried the SyncroFuel for a few runs but didn’t like them at all, so, I hopped on Zappos (a site I love) and ordered 2 pairs of SyncroFloats to at least get me through the Chicago Marathon.

Back in February, I wrote about my penchant for killing iPods.  I can only assume that my brain must be fuzzy due to lack of oxygen at the end of a run.  I killed another iPod this past week.  I’m worried because I had ordered 4 refurbished Shuffles from Apple and I’m now down to only one!  I like the previous generation Shuffle much better than the recent one, so they’re no longer making them.  Panic will set in sooner or later.

After  having a few too many runs where I found myself getting light-headed, I decided to seek some help from a nutritionist.  I was a bit floored by the results.  I got an analysis of my metabolism, my body composition and my caloric needs.

• My body composition was measured (three times) at 7% body fat and 93% lean weight.   Which means of the 172 pounds I weigh, 12 lbs is fat, 160 lbs is lean.  While I shouldn’t lose more weight, I can up my lean body weight.
• My resting metabolic rate is about 2300 kcal/day.  This means if I did nothing else but lay in bed all day, I’d burn about 2300 kcal per day.
• If you average in typical daily activities, I’m currently burning about 700 kcal per day.
• My workouts have me burning about 650 kcal per day (when averaged across the week).  That will increase as the marathon training progresses into more weekly miles.
• When you add that up, I am burning roughly 3650 kcal per day.
• Here’s the bad part:  I am only eating about 1800-2000 kcal per day.

So, it should be no surprise that I have been getting lightheaded occasionally.  I’ve been under fueling by nearly half of what I need for quite a while.  So, I am beginning a whole new dietary plan that will not only get me how much I need, but what I need, when I need it.  I’ll report back once I see how this new eating program progresses.

Something else I’ve begun to work on is mental toughness.  Pushing through the times where my body is telling me to stop.

Finally, a couple of suggestions:

1. Follow Sara Santiago on Twitter. (@sarasantiago).  Absolutely brilliant and just hilarious.
2. Read Runnrgrrl’s blog.  Great stuff.  Always opinionated.  Always tells it like it is.  A must read.

So, I’ve been spending my time doing three things.

1. Working on my form.  After reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, I’ve really started to think about my form.  I’m not trying to get performance, necessarily, but I am hoping for longevity.  I plan to be running 20 years from now, so I want to do what I can to avoid injury and breakdown.  I’m about one week into focussing on shortening up my stride, landing on my midfoot with my my foot directly beneath my body, and a higher kick.  No conclusions yet.
2. Healing my heals.  What an odd place to get cuts; there’s just no easy way to allow them to heal and still continue running.  Almost there, though.
3. Working on my strength, especially my core.  I know if I don’t get stronger there I’ll never make to the end of 26.2.

Well, I got my ass kicked.  I need to remember that I need to build up slowly, like I have with running.  Today we did cable chops, reverse chops, band twists, and bicycle crunches with a medicine ball.  The bad news is that I had no idea I was so weak in those areas, but the good news is that I have nowhere to go but up.

Now where is that Advil…