616 – 620, and more Brooklyn

Today my legs felt decent, so I did a 4 mile jog. I just took it slow and listened to a podcast. Nothing too exciting.

I forgot to mention yesterday that when I was getting ready for the race Saturday morning, I realized I didn’t pack my watch, or my headphones. I had never run a race without a watch on, and I’ve enjoyed listening to music during races for the past year or so. I was kind of curious how things would go without these 2 things, since they are a pretty consistent part of my daily runs.

It turns out not having a watch was basically a non-issue. There were clocks at every mile, and I found myself actively trying to avoid looking at the clocks because I wanted to focus on getting into a groove, as opposed to obsessing over mile splits. The only thing that was kind of a pain was that I had to do some subtracting from the “clock-time” to figure out “my time”, since I didn’t cross the starting line until the clock was at 4:17. I also ran nearly perfect splits without the watch, so I guess I didn’t really need it.

As far as not having music, there were some pros and cons. The pros were that having 2 free hands (I carry my iPod in my hand) made it a lot easier to grab water. I also think that having both of my hands free make it a little bit easier to shake out some tension, whenever I felt like that was necessary. There’s also the argument that you can “listen to your body” better without music. I don’t really know about that, but I did a pretty good job of monitoring what was happening without being distracted by a death metal song or something. The cons are that obviously music helps pass the time, and a good song can be motivating. I think overall listening to music might have made my day a little bit better, just because I was having a hard time finding another gear yesterday, and I do a good job of picking up the pace to certain songs.

So, overall it was interesting to experiment. Not sure how I’m going to use the information going forward, but it’s good to have it.

I also wanted to make note of the fact that I did a really good job yesterday of keeping my rough spots reasonable. I’ve had some rough spots in races, where I ended up walking for like 5 minutes. Yesterday I walked for probably 30 seconds both times I stopped, and that is literally 10 times better than walking for 5 minutes. It’s ok to have bad stretches in a race, but managing them is critical, and I did a pretty good job not letting the tough spots ruin the day. Alright, see ya tomorrow.

603 – 616 (Brooklyn Half)

Today I had a pretty good day at the Brooklyn Half Marathon, and finished in 1:37:57. I didn’t really feel like I was in good enough shape to run a personal best, so I was just hoping to run hard and break 1:40, and maybe drop the hammer if I felt good enough. It was nearly perfect weather, and what I thought was a pretty easy course, but my legs just weren’t there for me today. I had to battle pretty much the whole entire race, and actually ended up walking through 2 water stations. I fought really hard, though, and ended up running my 2nd best half ever.

I had to wake up at 4:30am, which was terrible, and spent way too much time on the subway, and got to my corral around 6:20. I got loose a little, but mostly just stood around. I started pretty comfortably, and was kind of just waiting for my legs to loosen up. I kept moving and we went into a few miles of rolling hills, which I thought would wake my legs up, but for some reason it just didn’t. Around mile 6 I was feeling pretty terrible and was thinking about walking or quitting. I kept moving though, and finally at the water station at mile 8 I walked for like 30 seconds to drink some water and eat a Gu. I picked off 2 more miles, and then walked again through the water station at mile 10 to drink some water, and then got into a little bit of a groove after mile 11, and just tried to attack the finish as hard as I could. I was pretty dead at the end, but just felt like I exerted a ton of effort and never really got lucky enough to feel like I had some spring in my step.

Despite some short walking, my 5k splits were really even. They were as follows

At the 5k, I was at 23:00,
at the 10k I was at 46:06 (23:06 split),
at the 15k I was at 1:09:35 (23:29 split),
and at the 20k I was at 1:33:02 (23:27 split)

I’m pretty sure those 20 second differences were when I was walking, which means all my 5ks were exactly even which is nuts. My place was also pretty good. I finished 2,269 out of 21,378. It was a good day, but not a great one. I think it’s a really good thing that I’ve found a way to fight my way into having races that I am content with, and not just being resigned to either running a personal best or having a total meltdown. It’s also pretty good that I was able to start talking myself into not quitting around mile 2, and then kept it up for like another 80 minutes. There’s something to learn from every race, and today I learned how to battle your way into doing something decent when you can’t do something great.

Alright, might jog tomorrow depending on how I feel. See ya!

598 – 603

600 miles!!

My week, for a change, has not gone as planned. I figured I would find a way to run Monday-Thursday, but that did not happen. I went to a concert Tuesday, failed to wake up early on Wednesday, and then went to trivia last night. I wasn’t supposed to run that much this week anyway, since I’m racing Saturday, but it would be nice to stick to my schedule for the first time in forever.

My 5 mile jog tonight went fine. I didn’t time it, and picked up the pace for maybe 10 minutes trying to chase down a girl ahead of me who unfortunately turned before I got to her. I’ve been doing a terrible job trying to drop a few pounds, so I’m going to be about 5-10 pounds heavier than I would have liked, which is significant, but not the end of the world. I’m having a really hard time deciding what shoes to wear. I’m most comfortable in the Brooks shoes I train in, but they are heavier, and the laces constantly come undone. My Kinvaras are fine, but I think my legs are not quite used to the different impact of wearing lighter shoes. I think I have to go with the Kinvaras, just because there’s no way I can risk having my shoes come untied again. I also think I get too comfortable pounding the pavement in the Brooks shoes, and the Kinvaras will force me to pick my legs up.

The next 48 hours are crazy hectic for me. I’m going to AC in the morning for a seminar, then I have no idea where I’m going after that, but have to end up in NY at some point, and then wake up insanely early to get to the starting line and be in my corral by 6:30am on Saturday, then run the race, and then I have plans with my family Saturday night. It’s gonna be nuts. I might do a real short jog tomorrow, depending on how the day goes. See ya after the race!

571 – 581, 581- 595, 595 – 598

My first ever 3 run post!

This weekend I did a lot of running, but was not near a computer, so I am combining my Saturday, Sunday and Monday runs into one megapost.

So, on Saturday I woke up to drive to Astoria, because I was letting my sister borrow my car for the weekend. I didn’t have time to map a run, but I knew that if I ran from my sister’s into Roosevelt Island, and ran around there for a while, it’s close to 10 miles. I also figured 45 minutes out and back would be about 10. So, I just jogged pretty comfortably, and turned up the heat for a little bit, and ended up running 86 minutes or so. It would be pretty tough for me to map it because Roosevelt Island was weird, but I’m pretty confident it was very close to 10, and it was fine. It was also supposed to rain all day Saturday and it didn’t so that was great.

I went out and got kinda drunk on Saturday night, but woke up Sunday feeling decent. We went and got breakfast, and I planned to run around Washington Heights and the Cloisters, and then down the Riverside Highway. I’ve never run in this neighborhood but I kinda knew where I was going because I walked it last week. There were some pretty tough hills in the first hour or so, but it was beautiful out so that made things better. The area around the Cloister is a really, really insane hill circuit, and that was super tough. I haven’t thought about stopping during a run in a really long time, and I was close to walking because I was so gassed out. I continued, though, and then just spent most of the next 90 minutes going from about 215th on Riverside Drive down to 108th, and then coming back to Washington Heights. I once again didn’t map this run because I can’t map what I did in the Cloisters, but it was about 2 hours and 2 minutes, which is how long it would take me to jog 14, so I’m fine calling it that.

Today I just jogged 3 miles. My legs were pretty tired and I’m trying to take it easy this week going into the race. I’m going to probably not have time to jog tomorrow night, so I may try to jog Wednesday morning. See ya then!

 

563 – 571

Today was probably the most dedicated I’ve ever been to completing my planned mileage. I planned to run 8 miles, and figured I would squeeze it in after work. While at work, I made a 7pm haircut appointment, and plans to watch basketball afterwards. I got out of work at 5pm, hoping to be home around 5:40 to run 8, hustle to my haircut, and then get to my night. I ran into crippling traffic, and didnt get home until like 6:10. So, I did a really fast 3 mile run, showered, went to my haircut, came home, changed insanely fast, ran 5 more miles, showered again, changed, and then started my night. It’s the the first time in my life I’ve done two workouts, and it wasnt that great.

I negotiated a million times in my head to run less miles, but I am trying to make up for lost time. I’m planning to run 10 in the rain in Queens tomorrow, and then 14 in better weather on Sunday. See ya on Monday probably.

553 – 563

Hello.

Well, an unfortunate theme here lately is my absence. After doing 16 on Sunday, I decided to take Monday off to give my calf some rest, and then made the same decision Tuesday, and I have no time to run on Wednesdays. So, here I was on Thursday having run no miles this week. I’m also in a position where Spring weather, which seems like it just started, will be ending soon and the summer inferno will start. So, my plan is to do a ton of miles the next 3 days to actually have a long week, and then do some tapering next week in preparation for the Brooklyn Half next Saturday. For now, I’m thinking 8 tomorrow, 12 Saturday, and 10 Sunday ,which would put me at 40 for the week. That is ambitious, but I really want to put the miles in. All of them will be easy miles, because I ran pretty hard for some of my run tonight. Let’s talk about that.

I knew I was running 10 today, and I knew my route, but wasn’t really sure how fast I was going to run. At some point I settled on it being a progression run, meaning that I would just try to get gradually faster until I was going at race pace at the end. I went through the first mile in about 9:10, and then kind of just locked in for a while at a comfortable jog. I was never really checking my watch, but started picking up the pace around mile 5. Around mile 7 I really opened my stride and felt like I was racing, and then miles 9 and 10 I was just all out charging at full speed. The last 3.2 miles were in about 23 minutes, and the last 2 miles were in 14-15 minutes. Those are estimates because I wasn’t really trying to pay too much attention. I did all 10 in 80:27, which was pretty fast, considering how slow the first half was.

I am running tomorrow night, and then doing long runs Saturday and Sunday, but won’t be around to write about them. So, I will be doing runs, but not sure I’ll be writing a ton. Hopefully I write about all of them everyday, and if not I’ll write when I can. Ok, see ya!

531-537, 537-553

So this was perhaps the sparsest week ever at Blog Dog, since this is only my 2nd post this week. I ended up totally bailing on the 10 mile jog I had planned on Thursday for no legitimate reason, did a 6 mile jog in NYC on Friday, spent a long time walking around on a lot of hills near the Cloisters on Saturday and figured that was enough of a workout for the day, and then ran 16 miles today ,13.1 of which was pacing the Long Branch Half Marathon. I’ll write briefly about Friday, and then today.

Friday night I went straight from work to NYC to see my lady friend, and I got there at like 6:30. I ran from her apartment which is in Washington Heights at 189th street by Broadway, over to Riverside Drive, and down to 134th street and back. It was the first time I’ve ever run on Riverside, and it was pretty cool. The first half was really smooth, but on the way back I had a pretty bad calf flare up. There were also some crazy hills, but that was actually kinda fun. I just jogged it in and iced for a while. As I mentioned we walked around a lot on Saturday, and didn’t want to risk injuring myself for today.

This morning, I woke up at 4:45am, which was disgusting, and got to the starting line around 6:15am to be the 2 hour pacer for the half marathon. Like last year, there was another pacer with me, and the guy I ran with today was awesome. He was really enthusiastic, and yelling stuff to get people fired up, so that was really fun. I don’t want to be boring with a million splits, so I’ll just say I hit 5 in about 45:35, which was 10 seconds fast, and I hit mile 10 in 91:02, which was about 28 seconds fast, and finished in 1:59:43, which was 17 seconds fast. My goal was 1:59:30-2:00:00, so I hit my goal. There were some really nice people in our pace group, and we helped a lot of people reach their goal to break 2 hours, so that was awesome. After the race I jogged back to my car, which was about 3 miles away.

I was hopeful that this would be a super high mileage week, but I guess it’s good that I got in 30 miles despite only running 3 days. It’s probably been a few years since I only ran 3 days in a week, but I’m doing my best to get workouts in while having a very busy schedule. This week I have to keep training but my long run will probably only be 10-12 or so, because I’m racing in 2 weeks and I’m supposed to be resting my legs a little. But then again, I haven’t really been burning myself out, so maybe I don’t have that much need for rest. Anyway, I’m jogging tomorrow. See ya.