Milestones

Milestones / Motivation / Races / Running — 1 Comment
10
Aug 10

Two months until the Chicago Marathon

Things always seem so far away when a journey begins, then time seems to accelerate as you get closer.

Well, August has begun and the heat from July has decided to stick around for one (hopefully) last hurrah. As of today, I am two months away from an attempt at achieving a lifelong goal: complete a marathon. The Chicago Marathon is on October 10, 2010, and I’ll be there toeing the line with roughly 44,999 others. I’ll be the one in running shorts.

This past Sunday was the longest run of my life: 17 miles. I was so nervous about it that I didn’t sleep well the night before and awoke in the morning long before my 5:30 alarm went off. After grabbing a quick bite to eat (my pre-long run traditional banana with peanut butter), a drink or two of water and doing some stretching, I set out at 6:05 AM. As I started down the road I live on, it turns east and I had a picture-perfect view of the moon with just the tiniest hint of a sliver. The sky was still pre-dawn dark blue and as I looked up at the moon I saw a meteor streak by. I figured that had to be a good omen. For the next couple of hours I wound through the streets of my hometown, try my damnedest to maintain a steady, even cadence and pace. All in all, my Garmin tells me I did a good job at that. At about mile 13, my wife met me to give me fresh, cold water bottles and good conversation to keep my mind off the running. Both the water and the talking helped a ton. I finished up in 2:33:03, or a pace of 8:59/mile. Now this week’s 18 miler doesn’t seem so daunting.

I’ve found running to be like a parent watching their children grow. The growth happens in tiny, almost imperceptible, little increments, every day. But every once in a while you get a glimpse of some startling, new capability and you just smile. When I could only run 30 seconds at a time without getting winded, 17 miles might as well have been to the moon. When I finished my run on Sunday, I allowed myself a little smile in recognition of how far I’ve come.

But, I’m not done yet. I’ve got more buidling to do if I’m going to make it to 26.2, so that little smile is all I get at the moment. Now it’s back to building up the milage in the heat and humidity of August.

Here they are, my stated goals for the Chicago Marathon, in order of priority:

  1. Finish the race without injury.
  2. Finish the race within 5 hours. (avg. pace:  11:25/mile)
  3. Finish the race within 4 hours. (avg. pace: 9:09/mile)

I believe I can attain all three of these goals, so now I need to do the rest of the work to get there.

Milestones / Motivation / Running — 1 Comment
29
Jul 10

July wrap-up, making progress

July has been an interesting month of running on a number of fronts.  Overall, I’d have to admit that it has been the most challenging month of running I’ve had since beginning this journey last September.  Now that it is nearly over, I can also say that I’ve made the most progress during July than any other month so far as well.  Here’s why.

  1. Marathon training really kicked into gear.  While my official training plan started at the end of May, I had already been running the types of weeks that the plan called for up until the end of June.  That last week of June and then all of July has been pushing further than I had gone before, both in terms of absolute mileage as well as the other aspects of training.  Towards the end of July, two of my long runs were personal records for me in distance since they both went further than the half marathon I ran in May.
  2. The weather.  I’ll admit it:  the weather kicked my butt for the first few weeks.  Since I only really began running last September, I had never experienced a real summer training.  So far I can say that I prefer the winter.  I’m an educated man, yet it never occurred to me that running in the heat and humidity would be more difficult.  I had a handful of runs that I just considered failures because I just couldn’t finish, and that really took a toll on my motivation and confidence.  As I sit here today, with just a couple days left in the month, my confidence is back and I attribute that to figuring out how to overcome this new challenge.  While I doubt I’ll ever love running in the oppressive Cincinnati summers, I now know how to handle it.
  3. Travel.  I’ve had to deal with fitting my training schedule around more travel than usual, so I’ve had to juggle days and times for my runs.  I do better when I’m on a more predictable schedule.

One cool thing that happened this month was a run through Central Park in New York City.  Running in Central Park and Golden Gate Park are two that I had put on my mental running bucket list, so I was very happy to make one of them happen.  I had to fit a long run (15 miles) into my travel schedule, so I figured, why not make it in Central Park?  When I run early in the morning at home, I may see one or two other runners out there but not many.  Running through Central Park was more like running in a race.  I got to the park at about 6:00 AM and I was shocked to find hundreds of runners out on the paths and their were dozens of cyclists too.  I had been worried about doing 15 miles all on my own without anyone for motivation/support/pacing, but with so many people out there, I always had someone to keep up with, or try to beat to the top of some of the long hills.  The time and miles flew by like they have during races.  Here’s my run:

Careful observers will note that the Garmin distance shows 14.82 miles, not the 15 I claim.  If you watch very closely, you’ll see a bit of a jump during mile 11.  I stopped to get a drink of water at the fountain, had to wait in a bit of a line, so I stopped my watch. When I started running again, I forgot to turn it back on for about 2 minutes, so I estimated that to be somewhere around a quarter of a mile.  MapMyRun.com helped confirm it.

So, now I’m looking forward to slogging through the heat of August and really getting up to mileage numbers I’ve never done before:  17, 18 and 20 miles.  I’m doing a half marathon in Columbus, OH on August 29th as well.

Gear / Milestones / Running — 1 Comment
4
Feb 10

First ten mile run

A huge milestone for me tonight, my first ten mile run ever.  I knew I was doing my long run for the week tonight (due to the impending winter storm) and I think I got a little too amped up and tied my shoes too tight!  About 7.5 miles in, I started to feel some pain in my left foot right where the laces tie, but I just decided to run through it.  About a mile later the pain was gone.  The rest of the run went well.

After consulting more experienced runners on DailyMile, I decided to use some Body Glide tonight.  Yep, that’s right folks:  too much nipple pain on the long runs for this guy.  The Body Glide worked like a dream and I can report my nipples as pain free.  I can practically hear the collective sighs of relief.

I also brought water with me for the first time and it really did help.  In yet another fine example of a rookie mistake, I went bounding out the door never having figured out how to get the water bottles off the belt.  So instead, I got to figure it out mid-run.  In the dark.  With gloves on.  “For I am Costanza, lord of the idiots.”

I also used my first energy gel, a Clif Shot (Razz flavored) after about 6.5 miles.  Tough to tell whether it helped a lot since I don’t have another 10-miler to compare against, but it did give me a bit of a boost, so I’ll take it.

All kinds of firsts tonight!

Milestones / Motivation / Running — 1 Comment
20
Jan 10

The Hulk

So after a terrible week last week, I almost slipped into a funk, but mid-run on Monday, I got mad.  At me.  And then I ran harder than I thought I could.  And my splits (for a 5 mile run) looked like this:

  1. Mile 1:  10:00/mile.  Feeling sorry for myself.
  2. Mile 2:  9:50/mile.  Still being an idiot.
  3. Mile 3:  9:37/mile.  Starting to turn green.  You wouldn’t like me when I’m mad.
  4. Mile 4:  8:58/mile.  Complete turnaround in attitude.
  5. Mile 5:  8:04/mile.  Felt like I could climb a mountain.

I think running (after some base level of fitness) is as much about your head as it is your legs/lungs.  It reminds me of a famous quote by Bobby Jones, the professional golfer:

“Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course…the space between your ears.”

I followed that run up with another 5.12 mile run yesterday with an average pace of 8:53 which is a new PR for me at any kind of distance.  And once again, I felt like a million bucks at the end.

Milestones / Running — No Comments
31
Dec 09

I got to 100

I had a short but quick run this morning so that I could get to 100 miles in the month of December. First run with a sub-9-minute pace too!