One step back…


Posted by Kevin

Chilly 45 degrees at start so wearing wool jersey, wool bib knickers, and wool socks.

A nagging pain in my lower left leg intensified last week.  When I tried to go for my Thursday run I was limping so I had to abandon it.  I have been off of running for four days now and the leg is feeling much better but not entirely healed yet.  I may test the waters tomorrow.  On Friday I attended a spin class and worked my cardio hard for an hour.  It was my first cycling in about six months and I could tell!

Yesterday I used my new found “free-time” to catch up on my work list.  I cleaned the garage and fixed the dishwasher so that it would quit falling forward out of the cabinets.  I also tuned up my cyclo-cross bike and put on a new bash guard and chain catcher so that I wouldn’t lose my chain on bumpy off-road riding.  A cycle-cross bike is road style bike with fat tires and better brakes.  I built mine from scratch using used parts found online.  Of course the main use for a cross bike is cycle-cross racing!   My son Alex and I did our first race last fall and plan on entering a few more this year.

This morning I decided to try and approximate a long, moderate pace run workout on my bike.  Of course, I wanted to test out the new parts and tune-up too!  I did 35 miles, mostly on forest preserve trails and I kept my heart rate  at the same level I would have maintained for an 18 mile, moderate pace run and for the same length of time… a little over two hours.

Since this was my first real ride of the season, this was not an easy task.  I needed my “cycling” muscles to be able to work hard enough and long enough to keep my cardio system at a high enough level of work.  With these muscles not being properly trained, I was definitely feeling the challenge. My legs held out for about 90 minutes, delivery enough watts to keep my cardio system taxed but then they just started to become exhausted.  The watts reading on my power meter captured the negative trend line but I could already tell by my inability to turn the pedals without dropping gears.

It turned out to be a great workout and a great ride.  I was reminded how much I really like cycling and I am looking forward to getting a couple of rides in a week through the summer.  The great thing about cycling is that, because of the low impact, recovery time is minimal.  In other words… I can keep running!


Running Through History


Posted by Kevin

Finally some inspiration for a new post!  Although I haven’t been posting for a few weeks, I have been training. Other than lower milage weeks for a couple of trips skiing in Colorado, I am still building a good base of around 60-65 miles per week.  After running 14.5 miles yesterday with the Dick Pond TrailHeads at a moderate effort, I needed some extra inspiration for my long run for the week today… 18 miles.  I decided to drive down to Channahon, IL to run on the old towpath for the Illinois & Michigan Canal.  It is a beautiful crushed stone path that runs between the canal and the Des Plaines River.

It was a sunny but cold day… only about 42 degrees during the drive down.  But this didn’t stop me from putting the top down!  I turned on the seat heater and cranked up the heat.  The brisk wind in my face was invigorating as I drove the back way following historic Route 66.  By the time I arrived at Channahon State Park where I would access the trail, I was feeling great.  I decided to run a negative split run which means that I would come back faster than I went out.  I was surprised how good I felt.  So when I arrived at the 9 mile turn around point and my average pace  showed 7:10 min/mile on the Garmin, I decided to try and run a pace on the way back that would bring me in at just under 7:00 min/mile pace for the whole run.  Each mile on the way back I would inch my heart rate up a notch so that with three miles left I was at lactate threshold pace and then I went just over lactate threshold for the final three miles.  I ended up running the last 9 miles at an average pace of 6:47 min/mile which brought my overall average in at 6:59 min/mile for the 18.  A good, solid effort but one which I should still be able to recover from before my speed work session on Tuesday.

 

Running along the canal I imagined the men who would have led mule along the towpath.  When I passed the lock tender’s house I wondered what it would have been like to live there in the late 1800′s and operate the lock for the canal boats. Or what it would have been like to be one of the many Irish immigrants who came to build the canals.  I bet they didn’t need any “long-runs” to keep in shape!  I thought about the men in the Civilian Conservation Corps who restored the locks and built the recreational trail in the 1930s.  My grandfather was in the CCC during WWII as he was a conscientious objector.  My grandfather had a rough childhood.  He was raised in south Chicago by a drunken father in the shadow of the slaughter houses.  So when he left for Michigan at a very young age to cut lumber, he eventually met my grandmother and joined the Church of the Brethern. However for the rest of his life he continued to go by his Roman Catholic confirmation name, Adam.  The Church of the Brethern is known for being one of the Historic Peace Churches.  There were lots of poor men who needed work that  joined the CCC and left behind many of the parks and byways that we enjoy today.

Early in my run,  with the Des Plaines River in full view to my left, I began to pass a large barge heading in the same direction as me.  Just as I was pulling even with the front of  barge, I could tell that the barge was starting to go faster and matched my pace.  I looked back at the towboat pushing the barge and I could see a man on the deck holding up his hand and pushing down with his thumb as if starting a stop watch!  The river narrowed somewhat in this section which is probably what caused the barge to speed up but maybe they bumped the throttle too.  I picked it up a bit and left the barge following me.

Some history of the canal from wikipedia…

The Illinois and Michigan Canal ran 96 miles (154 km) from the Bridgeport neighborhood in Chicago on the Chicago River to LaSalle-Peru, Illinois, on the Illinois River. It was finished in 1848 when Chicago Mayor James Hutchinson Woodworth presided over its opening; and it allowed boat transportation from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. The canal enabled navigation across the Chicago Portage and helped establish Chicago as the transportation hub of the United States, opening before railroads were laid in the area. Its function was largely replaced by the wider and shorter Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in 1900 and it ceased transportation operations in 1933.

The lock tender's house near my turn around point

This is a great path for running and biking and it would be an excellent destination for families with children.  I only had to cross one road during my entire run and there wasn’t a car on it so it is very safe.  The kid’s could also get a great history lesson and a great engineering lesson at the same time!


In communion


Posted by Kevin

 

My Cathedral

Like two cathedral towers these stately pines
Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;
No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
No sepulchre conceals a martyr’s bones.
No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!
Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship with out words.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

 

 

With plans to attend our parish Lenten Mission Rally and Mass in the evening, Amy and I decided to go for a mid morning run on Sunday morning at one of our favorite locations, Waterfall Glen.  The main loop at Waterfall Glen is a 9.5 mile, very hilly, dirt and crushed rock path.  The path works its way through prairies, savannas, maple-oak forest, and pines.  Thanks to the Wisconsin glacier about 20,000 years ago, there are many bodies of water and wetlands to be seen including the namesake waterfall.

Amy is recovering from a recent marathon so the plan was to meet up with friends and Amy would run about half the loop with them and then walk the remainder.  My training schedule called for 16 miles at a moderate intensity so I would set off by myself.  Amy took a camera and captured some great photos of this beautiful place.  I ran in the opposite direction on the loop so that Amy could take my picture when I passed them.

It was a beautiful, sunny morning.  The temperature was around 30 degrees but it was windy in unprotected areas with gusts over 30 mph.  The trail conditions were difficult with snow and ice or frozen, “rutted” mud covering the shaded portions while soft, wet mud covered the places where the sun was shining.  By the end of my run the backs of my legs were covered with thick caked-on mud.

Within a few miles I began to settle into the rhythm of the run.  I became aware of the peacefulness of the trail.  Although I would normally be attending Mass at this hour, my sense of communion with God was no greater than at this moment and in this place.  Running has a meditative and prayerful quality for me.  It is one of the few times that I can really think and concentrate uninterrupted.  Very often God speaks to me when I run and I often return with new resolve to improve some area of my life that is lacking.

When I finished my miles, I returned to the car and changed into a dry shirt and put on my jacket.  I walked about 3/4 of a mile to meet Amy at the end of her loop and we walked back to the car together and talked.  As we walked my leg muscles were screaming from the over 900 feet of elevation gain and loss that the hills provided during the workout.  It was good to walk them out a bit before sitting in the car to drive home.  I went home physically tired but mentally and spiritually refreshed.  It was a very good day to be alive.  I look forward to returning to this sanctuary again soon.


Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials


Posted by Kevin

I stayed up too late last night.  Amy had gone with her friend Jamie to run a marathon in Maryland.  I had been reading Once a Runner by John L. Parker, Jr. before bed for the last couple of weeks and I decided to go ahead and finish it.  It is a very inspirational book that Runner’s World magazine called “the best novel ever written about running”.  My favorite part of the book is when the mentor, Bruce Denton, of the main character, Quenton Cassidy, has Quenton run an unimaginable sixty quarter mile intervals in a single work out.  Quenton is only told about them twenty at a time and when he finds out about the last twenty and questions whether  or not he can do it the following dialog takes place.

“Quenton.” He smiled for the first time all day. “You can do very nearly anything. Haven’t you figured that out?” “Yeah.” “Look, runners deal in discomfort. After you get past a certain point, that’s all there really is. There is no finesse here. I know you can do this thing because I once did it myself and when it was over I knew some very important things.”

I woke up this morning dreading my weekly long, moderate pace run.  I had a slight headache and felt somewhat nauseous after eating some breakfast.  I had not slept very well for the past two nights.  And now not sleeping well for me is not just some subjective idea.  Not sleeping well for me looks like this… a sleep score of only 66 on my Zeo.  My best sleep score is an 85.  I really wished that I had slept an “85″ last night.  My legs were tired and sore from the increased intensity of the past three weeks.  I wanted to do anything but complete this run.  But three things kept entering my mind:  my wife who was hurting from a sore knee would be setting off to complete a full 26.2 mile marathon this very morning,   the words of the fictional Olympic gold medalist, Bruce Denton when Quenton Cassidy was facing twenty more quarter mile repeats after having just finished forty, and my goal.  These were enough to make me put on my gear, fill up my hydration belt, and head out the door.  I thought about what went through Quenton’s mind when he was being asked at a dinner party about the secret of his success,

What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared, to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heartrending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials.

My last two long, moderate pace runs were each 14 miles long.  I ran them at a target heart rate of 165 and I finished them at a 6:55 per mile pace.  This week the distance had been increased to 16 miles.  I accepted the fact that I would likely finish in a 7:00-7:15 pace range… if I was able to keep the wheels from coming off the bus.  I resolved to try and just get my heart rate up to 165 and keep it there no matter how bad my legs were hurting. I would’ t focus on pace or try and match the 6:55 from the previous runs.  We all are going to have bad days now and then and there is nothing that can be done.

Although it was a sunny day with a comfortable temperature of around 33 degrees I headed south into an 8-10 mph wind.  Since it was an out and back run, I felt lucky that I would have a tailwind for the final 8 miles.  My legs felt heavy and I only managed to average about 162 heart rate for the first half… I just couldn’t will my legs to turn over faster to push my heart rate up.  My effort felt like it was a similar level of difficulty to the previous runs but I was sure my pace was suffering.  I began a typical mental game usually reserved for boring runs on the treadmill where I focus on running just half the distance to the end and then half of the remaining and so on until I have only a mile or less left.  I couldn’t wait to get home.  I kept my heart rate slightly higher on the second half and ended up averaging 163 bpm for the entire run.  With four miles to go I knew I could finish, I hadn’t been sure of this up to that point.

I finished the run and went into the house.  I put my Garmin by the computer to upload my data.  I went into the kitchen and made a hot chocolate powder, milk, protein, and ice smoothie.  Taking the smoothie into my office, I sat down to see the damage and upload my data for my coach’s eventual scrutiny.  I opened the file.  This can’t be right.  There must be some glitch.  Perhaps a loss of GPS signal.  I opened up the details to see the mile splits and see where the problem occurred.  But they were quite even, the last eight being slightly faster than the first eight but all relatively consistent.  I had run the same course many times over the last few years so I knew my total distance was accurate.  The Garmin was right.  I had just run the sixteen miles at a 6:38 pace.

I had my son Alex take this picture of me because I wanted to remember this day.  When difficult days come up in the coming weeks and months, and they will, I want to look at it.  I want to look at it when the chips are down and be reminded that the wildcard I might be forgetting is the fact that I have improved since before and that the training is working.  On days like this I can relate to Quenton Cassidy’s thoughts on running,

Running to him was real; the way he did it the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension. But it also made him free.



Rockin’ It Old School!


Posted by Kevin

Today is the end of week two of training under the guidance of my new coach, Luke Humphrey.  Sunday’s are my “long, moderate pace” run days for the week.  I like to get these runs done early but since it was only about 14 degrees this morning I decided to wait until after Mass.  Since the temperature was still under 30 degrees, I needed to wear tights. Unfortunately my “go to” pair were covered in mud and dirty.  Truth be told, I had already pulled them out of the laundry pile once for a “re-wear” and even I didn’t have the stomach to wear them a third time without a washing.  So I dug deep in my pile of old running stuff and pulled out these bad boys shown in the photo.

I put them on and went downstairs to gather my fuel belt.  Unfortunately my 14 year old son was standing at the bottom of the stairs and immediately started to laugh.  Then he said, “Hey, Mom!  Come and look at Dad!”  Mom said that I looked good in them :) .  I then told my son that these tights were purchased during college over 20 years ago.  He was amazed!  Then he commented about “how shiny they still were” and something about being “Old School”.  I headed out the door hoping that none of the neighbors would be outside.  The sun was shining and although there was a cold wind, I felt good.  I pushed my heart rate up to 165 over the first mile and held it there for the next 11.  I then let it drift up to 170 for the final two mile stretch home.  The fourteen miles went by at a 6:54 average pace and I enjoyed the knowledge that I could have never pulled that off back in college.

My training these past two weeks has consisted of six days of running a week and three days of strength training.  I run one hard interval day to work on speed (1000 meter to 1600 meter repeats so far), one tempo run day at sub marathon pace, a long moderate pace run, and three days of easy pace runs.  My total milage the past two weeks has been 55 miles each week. Next week this gets kicked up to 59 miles with two more easy miles and two more moderate miles.  Although the total miles isn’t greater than what I have been running, the intensity of many of the miles is much higher.  I’ve managed to achieve the dreaded “dry heaves” on several of my speed intervals… that will teach me to learn how to pace myself better.  I feel like this is working and I am excited to see what the coming weeks have in store.


35 Miles for 35 Years for Families of Fallen Soldiers!


Posted by Kevin
Video of Dr. Andy finishing 35 mile run for his 35th birthday.

Watch the Video!

Today is the 35th birthday of U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Andrew Baldwin, M.D.   Dr. Andy is a Physician, Humanitarian, and Navy Diver currently serving as a Family Medicine Resident at the Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton.  Dr. Andy is the founder of Got Your Back Network.  GYBN connects with military families who have lost a spouse or parent while serving our country. Their goal is to give comfort, answer a special need, offer guidance and bring a brighter day.

For Andy’s 35th birthday today he decided to run 35 miles to bring awareness to this wonderful organization and to raise funds.  Andy has requested for anyone who is able,  to please donate $35 to this worthy cause.  If you are able, please join me in sending Dr. Andy and GYBN $35 today!  You can follow the donate link in the upper right corner of the GYBN website to make your donation via Paypal.


Liar, Liar. Pants on Fire!


Posted by Kevin

What is harder than training to run a marathon?  On some days, trying to raise four boys is much harder.  In marathon training you enjoy the benefit of having an extended period of time to prepare for the race.  You expect to make mistakes and course corrections along the way.  However, raising children is “prime time”, all of the time.  It is the actual event and you have to be as prepared as possible.

We had an incident this week with one of our sons.  After forgetting to turn in an assignment at school, he decided it would be a better choice to forge his mother’s signature on the parent notification form instead of actually owning up to his mistake.  Bad idea.  His teacher was very quick to pick up on the ruse.  I’m reminded of one of many quotes my old boss would repeat on these types of occasions, “I may have been born yesterday, but it wasn’t last night.”

By the end of the next day we thought we had put the issue to bed but then the following day the same child was caught in the midst of another lie. This lie involved a certain hard toy projectile which struck his younger brother in the chest.  The good news is that several minutes after his mother and I announced that we did not believe his story, the same said child came forward and confessed.  There was also a fair amount of wailing and anger expressed prior to the confession (from both child and parents).

Integrity.  It is sometimes easier to see the lack of it in someone else than in your own life.  Following the second incident, as I was having a calm discussion with my son about what life would be like if no one trusts you, a mirror of self-reflection began shining on my own life.

I recently finished reading Running the Edge: Discover the Secrets to Better Running and a Better Life.  This book was written by Olympic runner Adam Goucher and his former teammate at Colorado University (think Running with the Buffaloes) Tim Catalano.  Integrity is an important subject in this book.  In fact it is one of six “mirrors” that the authors suggest using for self reflection not only in your “running” life but also in the other aspects of your life.  The other five mirrors are initiative, responsibility, determination, adaptability, and person-ability.  The authors also make a strong argument that all aspects of your life fall into one of five “life stories” that you are writing throughout your life.  These stories are your education, your career, your friendships, your family, and your passions.

Through stories from their own lives as elite athletes, parents, spouses, coaches and everyday people, Tim and Adam provide an excellent structure for improving yourself… your whole self.  I like that the authors are sincere and that they readily discuss their own failings as well as their successes.  I am finding that reflecting on my own life stories through the six mirrors is making me more keenly aware of how others see me and how I can become more consistently the person that I want them to see.  I can relate to a quote the authors use in the book:

The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at. – Jesse Owens

As I use Adam and Tim’s techniques to reflect on how I handled the issues this week with my son, I am proud of 75% of what I said and did and would do 25% differently next time.  Believe it or not,  I see this as an improvement.  I am going to be a better runner for having read this book but, more importantly, I think that I am going to be a better person.


I’m starting to see a pattern here.


Posted by Kevin

As I start my new training plan, I want to learn more about how my body is responding.  Am I getting leaner?  Am I getting heavier? Am I getting fatigued from over-training?  How am I sleeping?  How does the quantity and quality of my sleep impact my training performance?

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to quickly track things like pulse, weight, blood oxygen saturation, blood pressure, fat percentage, body mass index, amount of sleep, and quality of sleep?  What if you could see the trends for these statistics over time and identify specific relationships between them and your actual training performance.

Although the equipment to measure all of these things has been around for a long time, the method has been far too cumbersome.  To accomplish what I have described a person would have to write down each of these readings each day and then enter them into software for analysis and also manually link the data  back to training logs.  Not a problem if you are an elite athlete with access to a complete physiology team who is doing all this for you.  But way to hard and time consuming if you are an age grouper just trying to improve yourself.  The good news is that through technology there is now a better way! I am going be using some great new tools to conduct a grand experiment on myself over the coming months and I will be sharing with you what I find out.

Let me introduce you to tool number one.  The Withings Body Scale ($159).  This scale has Wi-Fi built in!  Every time you step on it, it sends your weight, body mass, and body fat measurements to your online account.  More than one person in your house who want’s to use it?  No problem.  It automatically detects which person is standing on it and uploads the data to that persons account.  And since every measurement is date and time stamped you can focus on morning measurements as opposed to evening measurements and consider those trends separately.

The second tool is the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor ($129).  Plug it into your iPhone or iPad and your blood pressure and pulse are automatically trended on the device and upload to your account for further analysis and data sharing.  Given the inherent variation in reading blood pressure, you can take multiple successive readings and they are automatically averaged for you.  Like the scale all measurements are date and time stamped so comparing your morning blood pressure to your evening blood pressure or your pre and post workout readings is no problem.

And the third tool is the Zeo Sleep Manager – Mobile ($99).  Put the base unit by your bed and plug it into your iPhone or iPad.  Put the comfortable headband on and go to sleep.  While you sleep the device monitors your brainwave activity.  When you wake up how many hours and minutes you slept, the amount that was light sleep, the amount that was REM sleep, the amount that was deep sleep, how many times you awoke, and how long you were awake will all have been automatically uploaded to your account online.  How does the amount of sleep I have had and the quality of it the week prior to a race really impact my performance?  If I have a cup of coffee in the afternoon does it make a difference? If I take allergy medicine before bed is there any impact on my sleep?  If I split a bottle of wine at dinner how well am I going to sleep?  Wouldn’t you like to know?

Since these devices are all using web enabled technology they are working with training sites like TrainingPeaks and RunKeeper to link all of this data with your reported training information and the data from your GPS or HRM devices and tools to make it easy for you to identify how these items are correlated.

In coming posts I will be talking about my experience with each of these devices and what I learn from them.  I am going to need every tool at my disposal if I am going to achieve my goal of a sub 3 hour marathon.


Definition of Insanity


Posted by Kevin

Most people have heard of the quote that “the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result.”  In order to move from a 3:30 marathon runner to a sub 3:10 runner I had to make a lot of changes: addition of speed work, strength training, leaning out, educating myself, etc.  I believe the same is even more true in trying to move from a sub 3:07 marathon PR to a sub 3:00.  The low hanging fruit has been picked! I need a new plan.  It isn’t about throwing out what I have been doing… although there will be some of that.  It is about squeezing every last ounce of benefit out of the training.

What I have come to realize is that I am not knowledgeable enough to ensure that I can make this happen and it takes a lot of work which I would be better suited spending on actual training than planning my training.  What I figured out is that, although I am nowhere close to being an elite athlete, I am trying to achieve what is for me an “elite” performance. I need to start emulating… borrowing… stealing shamelessly from what actual elites do to prepare themselves.  I need a coach.

So I hired one.  I hired Luke Humphrey who run’s Hanson’s Coaching Services.  Luke is a member of the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project which is based near Detroit, MI.  Luke is an actual elite athlete… a  2:14 marathoner.  He is also an educated exercise physiologist with a master’s degree in sports exercise.  I sent Luke some background information on my previous performances and training and asked him if he thought my goal was possible.  He said that it was so I hired him.  (He is clearly no dummy!)

Luke put together my February training plan which I will start next week.  His immediate feedback on my training is that my speed-work was “in no-man’s land” and that I wasn’t doing any real threshold or tempo runs.  I was glad to hear that he saw immediate room for improvement and I am looking forward to beginning to work with him in the coming days.  The plans are setup through Training Peaks and I will upload my training performance data for Luke to be able to analyze my progress and make corrections to my training.


A New Beginning


Posted by Kevin

In the spring of 2010 I set out to qualify for the Boston Marathon.  I needed a time of 3:20:59 or better to accomplish this task.  My previous fastest marathon was just over 3:30 and it was in 2003 when I was 34 years old!  To make a long story short, I managed to qualify for Boston at the Chicago Marathon in October 2010 with a PR of 3:08:30.  I made a lot of changes to my training in order to drop that much time.  Some of the details of those changes can be found in the Background page link above but I will be sharing more specifics about those changes in future posts.

In 2011 I did my first triathlon training and completed a few triathlons.  Although I like biking a lot, I learned to tolerate swimming.  Triathlon helped remind me of what I like about running:  it is hard, it is simple, and it doesn’t take near as much time as triathlon!  In May of 2011 I fell running down a hill and broke my sacrum so I was unable to run until almost August.  I focused on a December marathon when I started to train again and I managed to run a PR of 3:06:46 at the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, AL.

Encouraged by this new PR, I decided that I wanted to focus on running a sub 3 hour marathon in 2012.  The purpose of this blog is to document my journey.  I will be sharing training techniques and changes that I make to try and achieve this goal.  But I will also be sharing things that happen to me along the way.   Writing this post today I am not at all certain that I can ever achieve a sub 3 hour marathon but at 43 years of age I know that trying now has a better probability of success than waiting until next year.  I also am old enough to realize that as good as achieving this goal will feel, the real victory is in the process of reaching for the goal.