Monday, May 20, 2013

10 miles on WODT

This past Sunday was my day to do 10 miles on the Washington and Old Dominion Trail.  Well, it wasn't mandated that I run there - I just picked that trail to run because it wasn't hilly and I wanted to do 10 miles.

The area that I live in is at the top of a  hill, so no matter which way I go, I'm always finishing uphill, which is fine in many ways - great for training purposes for example.  It seems that every route in my immediate area has no measurable distance that is more or less flat; I'm either going up a hill or down one.  Again, it is good training, and I can feel it in my legs - in a good way.  It's a great work out.

So back to Sunday: I wanted to get 10 miles in, but wanted to "just run"... thus the WODT.  This was only my second time on it and I still kind of like it.  It's reasonably safe traffic wise, except for when you have to cross a road and you have to guess whether or not the car waving you across is actually not going to run you over - and it is well taken care of.  Go early enough and you have the trail pretty much to yourself.

The path runs under high-tension power lines, which is a little weird in a way.  I'm an EE engineer by degree, and I remember my Fields and Waves classes... just exactly how many Gauss are we exposing our bodies to anyway?.. Clearly a topic for a different blog or forum.

But my point with the power lines is that it was a foggy, then misty, then drizzly morning (7AM-ish) and the lines were buzzing, which adds to the weirdness of the run.

Overall it was a great run - but not altogether flat; I had a few minor (very minor) hills to tackle, but nothing that I had to focus on.  I ran an out-and-back (5 miles out, turn around and run back - no opportunity to quit: my truck is at the end of the run....).  It's always easy to run the first 5 miles, it's the last few miles that get hard.

The best part - the part that I totally love - is what I call the breakthrough:  almost always during a long run I'll enter a tired phase and most of the time it just sticks with me until I'm done with my run.  But every now and again I'll get a breakthrough; it's like running through a curtain and I am no longer tired. It's like I am (temporarily) re-infused with energy - and it feels sooo good.  It is impossible to know how long it will last (usually at least a couple-three miles), but never longer than that.  But when it happens it is the greatest feeling ever.

On Sunday I got that breakthrough right at mile 8 and it was awesome.  I cut almost a minute off my next mile split, and then another 30 seconds off of that for my last mile. I got PB's for my last two mile splits (the nerd that I am tracks his splits on a spreadsheet....).  When I got to mile 9 I felt so strong that I just got on the balls of my feet and just ran.  It was as effortless a run as I can ever remember.  It was like suddenly I was running the way the guys at Newton Shoes were expecting me to run with their shoes....

I do remember thinking, as I was approaching the mile 10 marker, that I would not be able to keep up that pace for  very much longer, but I was able to just long enough.  It was a blast and I felt great about it.

Overall I averaged an 8:49 min/mile pace over the 10 miles, with my first mile being the slowest (planned it that way) at 9:56 and the last mile being my fastest at 7:45.  It was good tempo training.  My pace is still considered "slow" and I won't win any medals, but so what... I'm just running for me.

 160 days to the MCM!

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Mid-foot running - yeah, right..

About 270 miles ago I purchased some Newton running shoes with the idea that they would help me become a more natural mid-foot runner, which of course is supposed to be more efficient that any other kind of stride...  But as all runners know, everyone runs a little bit different simply because no two people are built exactly the same.

The net-net here is that after 270 miles, I'm realizing that I'm not a mid-foot runner; I'm more of a "flat foot" runner, trending towards fore-foot, but definitely not a true mid-foot runner. In other words, I'm not landing on the balls of my feet, but rather further back. Ok - so does that really matter?  Not really.  At least I don't think so.

I've probably spent a large portion of those 270 miles trying to run on my forefoot, i.e. land on the nubs on the bottom of the Newton shoes.  But it just never felt right, I could not get into a good cadence, and I definitely could not keep it up for miles on end.  For short distances, I was definitely running faster, but my stride could never quite get into it.

I finally sort of just let myself "run" and tried to pay attention to how I was running. I naturally lean ever so slightly into my run, but I also consciously think about making sure that my hips are forward. This keeps me from slouching and getting sloppy in my posture. I try to imagine that I'm driving my hips forward, almost like I have a wire attached to to the mid point of my hips and it is pulling me up the road or trail.  The net result is that my feet follow and by conscienciously making sure that my feet are always landing under my hips, I don't heel-strike.  But it's also not a forefoot stride - it's really more of "forward-flat-foot" stride.

My knees, hips, and ankles seem to be ok with it - I can do this for many miles, although I do mix up my stride a bit on on long runs just to ease my leg muscles.  I'm also finding that I'm a tad faster.  It may be an illusion right now (I haven't run any events, like a 5 or 10K to confirm it), but my splits seem to be better.

So what's the point of this?  Simple: I like the Newtons and I think that they are helping me run better.  But I also believe that I'm running better because I letting myself run naturally and not how someone is suggesting that I run.

166 days to the MCM!

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Miles


I’m doing 20-25 miles a week as I do my pre-training for the Marine Corp Marathon in October and once I get into the heart of my training routine I’ll probably peak out somewhere close to 40 miles during certain weeks.  And to me, that’s a fair amount of running – and time…  And I started to think about other people that I’ve met or read about that do 30-40 miles per week just on a regular basis, then amp it up to 60+ for their marathon training. Some of these runners are running multiple times a day.  The question I have to ask is: do these people have a life outside of just running? Do they have jobs, errands to run, a house to take care of, have kids, a spouse, or friends?  You know… a life?  Do they go out for a beer on Friday or Saturday nights?

Perhaps it’s just me, but an hour’s run actually consumes more like 3 hours of my day if I take my pre and post run routines into consideration.  All told, those 20-25 miles take a reasonable, but very enjoyable, chunk out of my life.  So for those folks that are consistently doing 30-40 and more miles per week, either they run really, really fast or running is basically pretty much all they do.  And I’m pretty certain that when they are not running, they are cross-training…

So my point here I guess is that there are varying levels of running fanaticism. There’s the guys like me that want to run, like to run, and want to be better, but are constrained by the different priorities and pulls of a “life”.  And then there are those that live to run.  I have this image of those that live to run literally wearing running gear under their work clothes and then do the phone-booth Superman transformation (ok – they probably do it in a bathroom or perhaps their car).  Of course I’m assuming that they are actually working….  There was a story in Runners World about a guy who kind of had that way of life: as soon as 5:00 hit, he'd change clothes and be running down the road by 5:05 and then order pizza while running to be delivered to some corner so that he'd have something to eat for the run back to his car.  But guys like that are so not the norm.  C'mon man...

But nevertheless, I am hammering out my miles in the relentless effort to become more fit and physically capable of accomplishing a difficult goal.  I struggle with balancing training-time and other-things-I-need-to-do and I know that I'm not alone.  But in the end the personal reward is tremendous.  It’s something that I can’t describe to anyone and I’m sure that other runners feel the same.  And it’s more than just accomplishing something.  It’s almost like it’s an internal digestion and reaching for a certain “zen”, whatever the heck that is.  

I can’t wait for the MCM.  I’m excited and I hope that I am fit and can toe the starting line healthy!
176 days to go.