Monday, November 18, 2013

Philadelphia Marathon (race report)

I went to graduate school in Philadelphia and ended up being based there for 9 years, through 2006. So running the Philadelphia Marathon was a great opportunity to go back to my beloved city and see friends, many of whom also ran either the half or the full marathon. I didn't really run when I lived there, except for some occasional light jogging when I attempted (and usually failed) to keep up with my girlfriend (now wife). But it turns out that they put on a great marathon there, with a really good course, enthusiastic spectators, and excellent organizers. I was aiming to run under 3 hours but managed only a 3:06. Despite falling short of my goal, I'm surprisingly not disappointed. Here's how the race transpired, with my mile (from my Garmin) and official splits on the left next to splits from my previous marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon a year earlier:

Philadelphia 11/17/13   MCM 10/28/12
mile 1:   7:04                         6:53
mile 2:   6:37                         7:02
mile 3:   6:42                         6:50
mile 4:   6:44                         6:40
mile 5:   6:48                         6:50
mile 6:   7:07                         6:43
[10k:     42:01                       42:38]
mile 7:   6:34                         7:01
mile 8:   6:55                         6:47
mile 9:   6:45                         6:51
mile 10: 7:05                         7:10
mile 11: 6:47                         6:49
mile 12: 6:46                         6:51
mile 13: 6:55                         6:53
[Half:    1:29:27                    1:30:14]
mile 14: 6:49                         7:12
mile 15: 6:49                         7:27
mile 16: 6:55                         7:13
mile 17: 7:17                         7:20
mile 18: 7:36                         8:25
[30k:     2:08:42                    2:12:09]
mile 19: 7:29                         7:31
mile 20: 7:36                         7:39
mile 21: 7:36                         7:33
mile 22: 7:34                         7:41
mile 23: 7:41                         7:31
mile 24: 7:32                         8:14
mile 25: 7:39                         8:22
mile 26: 7:42                         8:02
finish:    3:06:26                    3:12:17

The splits in these two races do not look all that different. In Philadelphia, I was a tad faster in the first half, but the main differences come in the second half. At the 2012 MCM, I had a sharp stomach pain at halfway after eating a gel right when the course turned into a strong headwind. I immediately slowed down, attempted to regain my pace after the pain subsided a mile later, but then stopped briefly at a water stop (in mile 18) before settling into a pace in the 7:30's, which slipped over 8 minutes in the last few miles when the course turned into the wind again. That was a year ago. Yesterday in Philadelphia there was no wind to speak of and I never had any significant stomach issues. I stayed on sub-3 hour pace through 16 miles but began to fade in mile 17. In fact, I noticed again around halfway that my energy was beginning to flag, after running more comfortably in the first half than I was able to last year. But since I had eaten my second gel around mile 10 or 11, I didn't immediately eat another one when I noticed my energy flagging around halfway. I think I waited until around mile 16 to eat another gel, and by then it was too late. The wall came in mile 17, where my energy plummeted. I fell quickly from the 6:50's to the 7:30's within two miles, and the negative thoughts came rushing into my mind. All that hard training and the same thing is happening again! This is the last time I'm doing this crap! Am I even going to be able to finish? Of course there was also a steep hill right when I felt the worst. But at the next water stop I ate another gel, probably not more than 2 miles after the previous one. Those two gels helped me pull it together, push away the negative thoughts, and settle into a consistent pace averaging in the 7:30's for the rest of the race. When I tried to run faster, I felt fainter and worried that I wouldn't be able to hold the faster pace for long, and my calf muscles also threatened to pull. So I ran as fast as I could without those things happening. By mile 19 or 20, my head was back in it, I knew I could hold roughly that pace until the end, and I calculated that I would probably finish between 3:05 and 3:07. And so I did.

Why did I run 3:06 instead of 2:59? At this point, several explanations occur to me. The main one concerns fueling. Either I should have eaten more gels before hitting the wall (I ate gels with water at miles 5 and either 10 or 11), or I should have supplemented the gels I did eat with gatorade, which I began doing only after the wall came. Because of my experience last year at the MCM, I was afraid of irritating my sensitive stomach, and that led me to err on the side of not taking enough in. That, I think, was my chief mistake in Philadelphia. It's impossible to say what time I could have run if I had fueled better, but figuring out a fueling strategy that works better for me is at the top of my list of things to work on for my next marathon. The other explanations concern training, and here I have fewer determinate thoughts at this point. Last year I was sure, immediately after running 3:12, that I was in shape to run 2:59 if only it had been less windy and if my stomach hadn't gone out on me. But later I started to fault my training as well, mainly for incorporating too little marathon pace running, but also for some other reasons that I tried to address this time around. This time I ran more miles, but not by much due to my extended taper - the last couple weeks of which, however, I think went perfectly. I tried to incorporate some more running at paces faster than marathon pace, but I couldn't handle much of that, and that's why I needed to drop my mileage earlier than planned. I did get in some more running at marathon pace, but I probably need to do still more of that. I'm less sore and worn out after Philadelphia than I've ever been after a marathon, which I attribute to the half dozen 80 mile weeks I ran in the past few months. But no doubt too many of those miles were too slow - "junk miles," as people say - that may have helped my body recover faster but didn't help me much if at all in the marathon itself. I'm not suggesting that I should run fewer miles in marathon training, but that a higher proportion of whatever miles I do run should be quality miles if I want to run a faster marathon. My body couldn't handle any more of that this time around, but maybe it will be better able to do so the next time around.

But now it's time to rest, and to plan for the future. Each of the past two years, I failed to let my body recover adequately after a Fall marathon and ended up getting injured in January. This time I'm not going to let that happen. We'll see whether I actually take two weeks entirely off from running, as I earlier vowed to do. It depends on how I feel. But certainly I won't do any sort of hard running, whether training or race, for a month or so. When it's safe to start easing back into harder training, I plan to focus for a while on improving my speed at shorter distances. I'm not sure yet, though, whether I'll remain focused on that through the Spring or whether I'll do a Spring marathon.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

October 21 - November 17: The four weeks pre-marathon

Daily details:
Mo: off
Tu: 7
We: 8
Th: 24
Fr: 7 (in Providence, RI)
Sa: off
Su: 9
Week total: 55

Mo: 5 (back in DC)
Tu: 7
We: 20 (averaging 7:10/mi., with the second half steady at around 6:48/mi.)
Th: off
Fr: 6
Sa: 7
Su: off (skipped the Run For the Parks 10k)
Week total: 45

Mo: off
Tu: 7
We: 7
Th: 3 x 1 mile on the track averaging 6:13, with 800m recoveries (10 total)
Fr: 6.5
Sa: 12.5
Su: off
Week total: 43

Mo: 45 min. at 6:49/mi. (8 total)
Tu: off
We: 5
Th: off
Fr: 5 x 4 min. at 6:46/mi. pace with 1 min. standing rest between intervals (5 total)
Sa: off
Su: Philadelphia marathon
Total pre-marathon: 18

It turns out that I've done a kind of extended 5-week taper before the Philadelphia marathon, not entirely deliberately. After the Army 10-miler on October 20, I ran easy the following week but did one last long run at an easy pace (7:45/mi.). Almost a week later, I did my final hard long run, this time nailing the 10/10 workout that I couldn't quite pull off in early September. For the last 10 miles of a 20 mile run, I managed to hold 6:48/mi. pace, which is 2:58 marathon pace. It was difficult but gave me a lot of confidence. Afterwards I felt surprisingly ok, but in the subsequent days a tight calf led me to skip the Run For the Parks 10k and to take two days entirely off. Eventually I decided that this was caused mainly or exclusively by some new shoes (Adidas Adios Boost) that I had worn for both the Army 10-miler and the 10/10 workout. I was considering wearing those shoes in the marathon but decided to go with the stiffer Adios 2 instead. The tight calf worked itself out by the time I went to the track one last time for a few mile repeats at tempo pace in order to sharpen up and make marathon pace feel relatively slow. The next day a friend talked me into not doing a 17 miler the weekend before the marathon, as I had planned, and also suggested the schedule I'm following for race week, which is designed to lock me into race pace while allowing a lot of rest. I felt strong on Monday running at marathon pace for a quarter of the race distance, but obviously it seemed difficult to fathom running that pace for four times the distance. At this point, my main task is to prepare myself mentally for the marathon. I have no doubt that my body is ready for a sub-3 hour marathon. My workouts have shown that, and my training has been better than ever, even if these last 5 weeks didn't go as planned. Maybe the extra rest will actually be positive. But the marathon is at least as much a mental challenge as a physical one. I can't fathom running that hard for so long and need to break the race into small chunks, to stay focused on one small chunk at a time, and to remain confident that I can work through bad patches. The weather looks like it may be pretty nice: upper 40's to low 50's with a small chance of light rain. If winds stay light, those are nearly ideal conditions. I'm ready to go.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

September 30 - October 20: Weird weeks

Daily details:
Mo: 7
Tu: 14 on hills (last 4 miles 6:44, 6:42, 6:42, 6:42)
We: 7
Th: 4 x 1k in 3:46, 3:41, 3:38, 3:46 (10 total)
Fr: off (tight hamstring)
Sa: 7
Su: DNF at the Annapolis Striders Metric Marathon (but ran 18 miles)
Week total: 63

Mo: 7
Tu: 14
We: 7.5, 5.5
Th: 8
Fr: 7.5, 5.5
Sa: 8
Su: 6 x 1k in 3:51, 3:47, 3:48, 3:49, 3:47, 3:47 (12 miles total), 5 (pm)
Week total: 80

Mo: 5
Tu: 2 (felt burnt out)
We: off (back hurt)
Th: 8
Fr: 7
Sa: 5 plus 6 strides
Su: Army 10-miler in 1:02:49 (13 total)
Week total: 40

These three weeks did not go so well. I'm not sure exactly what has been going on, whether it's just plain burn-out or some more specific problem(s). Looking back over my training log, the problems seem to have started with not allowing my body to recover adequately from the Clarendon Day 10k on September 28. I didn't run well in that race and, as I typically do in such cases, I acted as if I therefore didn't need as much recovery as usual. So three days later I did a hard medium-long run, attacking up steep hills and (after getting kicked out of Rock Creek Park because of the federal government shutdown) running under marathon pace for the last four miles. My legs were still sore from pounding down the hills in the Clarendon Day race. Two days after that, I attempted to do a 6 x 1k track workout at the same pace (roughly 5:48-9/mi.) that I had run 6 x 800 two weeks earlier. Feeling weak, I couldn't handle the pace for more than a couple intervals and stopped early. Afterwards, my right hamstring hurt in the same way that it did at the end of August, again forcing me to take a day off. A couple days after that was the Annapolis Striders Metric Marathon (16+ miles), which I planned to run at around 6:45/mi. as a marathon pace training run. It was sunny and unseasonably warm that day, and humid way out in rural Maryland. My hamstring didn't bother me, and the pace felt easier than last year, especially for the first 10 miles or so. But after that, when the course started getting hillier and the heat began taking its toll, my strength deserted me. I averaged 6:46 pace for 12 miles but then fell off that pace precipitously. Shortly after the half marathon mark, I decided simply to stop instead of running myself into the ground on what was supposed to be a training run. So I walked and jogged back to my car without crossing the finish line. It was still a good enough workout, but my low energy all week was a sign that I needed to back off or burn out. For the next week, which happened to be quite rainy, I did easy and mostly short runs but still got in 80 miles by doing three doubles. At the end of the week, I figured I was ready for another workout and this time completed 6 x 1k at a slower pace (in the rain). But it was alarming that I simply could not run under 6-minute pace. Two days later I stopped two miles into an easy run and walked back home because I felt weak and burnt out. I just did not want to run, which is very unusual for me. (I almost always want to be running). The next day my lower back was a mess, probably from doing the track workout when my body remained in a weakened state. So I took another day off. By then it was clear that my 80 mile weeks are over for this training cycle. It's time for me to start resting more and get back to feeling strong again. I was worried that I may have blown it, since I've read that once you dig yourself too deeply into a hole there is no way to recover without taking significant time off. So I'm relieved to have run strongly in the Army 10-miler. I can't keep running only 40 mile weeks like I did this past week, but I think maybe I'll do a couple weeks in the 60's without any doubles and only very limited hard efforts the week after next (none this coming week). I suspect that one reason I've never run a marathon time that befits my times at all other distances is that I haven't let myself recover adequately from months of heavy training before a marathon. This time around I hope to feel fresh on race day.

Army 10-miler (race report)

The Army 10-miler is HUGE with some 26,000 people listed in the results, and the announcer at the start line was talking about 35,000 registrants. Its course shares some features with the Marine Corps Marathon, including a start/finish area by the Pentagon and the Bridge of Horror near the end of the course. This was my first time running it because for the past three years, since I got serious about running, I have done the MCM the following weekend instead. The only other 10-miler I've done recently (twice) is Cherry Blossom in the Spring. The Cherry Blossom course is flat and fast, though wind can be a factor by the Potomac river. By comparison, the Army course is slower because it is nearly as exposed to wind but hillier, and its size makes the course more congested near the start. Even though I was one of only 500 runners wearing a yellow bib, which was supposed to get me a place just behind invited runners at the start line, in fact I was surrounded by runners whose bibs were every other color (including colors that meant they were supposed to start in the second wave). Several minutes after the start I was still passing women wearing trash bags and groups of people running four across at well over 7 minute pace, and for at least the first mile I had little control over my pace. I ran about as fast as I could without expending way too much energy weaving between people. But just as I was about to conclude that this race is a poorly organized joke, like the RnR USA half, the runners on the course started thinning out so that I could pass more easily; and by the time I had finished climbing the most significant hill of the course on Virginia Avenue, I was ahead of pretty much everyone who had either started too far up or way too fast for their ability level. I had no real plan going into this race, not knowing what to expect after my DNF at the metric marathon two weeks ago and very uneven training since then. So in a way it was a good thing to be forced into starting slowly to see how I felt. I felt strong - not particularly fast, but not slow either. So after a few miles I decided not to push the pace hard but to run a moderate pace that I could hold steadily the entire way in order to make the race into a test of strength. As my splits below show, I passed that test. I did not quite run all out. When some turns and wind slowed my pace slightly in miles 7 and 8, I was especially pleased to find plenty of strength remaining to get back down to my original pace over the Bridge of Horror and through to the finish. Here are my splits this past April at Cherry Blossom side-by-side with my Army splits today:

               Cherry
Mile       Blossom       Army
1       -       6:11           6:21
2       -       6:11           6:14
3       -       6:05           6:13
4       -       6:04           6:15
5       -       6:17           5:58 (not right)
6       -       6:22           6:14
(10k split  38:52         39:02)
7       -       6:26           6:23
8       -       6:23           6:18
9       -       6:18           6:15
10     -       6:21           6:14
Finish       1:03:01      1:02:49

(Note that these may not add up exactly because the mile paces are from my Garmin, while the 10k split and finishing times are the official ones. Both courses measured 10.07 miles on my Garmin, which gives me average paces of 6:16 for Cherry Blossom and 6:15 for Army). Basically, I ran a little faster today, on a slightly harder course, with I think a more measured effort, by starting a bit slower and holding my pace almost steady the entire way. Unlike at Cherry Blossom, I negative split the Army course today: at the 5 mile marker my watch read 31:27, which means that I ran the second half in 31:22. The next time I run the MCM, I'll have to remember zipping over the Bridge of Horror today, where I passed dozens of people who were slowing down. After my DNF two weeks ago, I'm relieved that this race turned out to be a good sign for my prospects in the marathon four weeks from now. Though I'd like to run 10 miles faster than this, I don't need to be able to do it right now in order to run a 2:59 marathon in four weeks. What I need is strength, a lot of miles in my legs, and the right balance of rest and sharpening. I'm working on that last thing.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

September 2 - 29: Early Fall sharpening

Daily details:
Mo: 7
Tu: 14 on hills (last 3 miles 6:47, 6:42, 6:31)
We: 7, 5
Th: 7 mi. tempo @ 6:29/mi. (12 total)
Fr: 6
Sa: 7, 4
Su: 20 (first half progressing from 8 to 7 minute pace, then averaging 6:56 pace for the last 10 mi.)
Week total: 82

Mo: 5
Tu: 7
We: 7, 5
Th: 7 (plus 6 strides)
Fr: 7
Sa: Navy / Air Force Half Marathon in 1:24:39 (18 total)
Su: 7
Week total: 63

Mo: 7
Tu: 7
We: 12 on hills (last 3 miles 6:56, 6:53, 6:40)
Th: 6 x 800m in 2:59, 2:58, 2:54, 2:52, 2:51, 2:49 (10 total), 5 (pm)
Fr: 7
Sa: 8
Su: off (pain above left knee)
Week total: 56

Mo: 7 mi. tempo @ 6:28/mi. (12 total)
Tu: 7
We: 24
Th: 7
Fr: 7
Sa: Clarendon Day 10k in 38:05 (10.5 total)
Su: 12.5
Week total: 80

I had some good workouts and tune-up races this month, and only one minor set-back. My tempo runs extended to 7 miles in the high 6:20s, and I was able to hold that pace in the Navy / Air Force Half marathon. That's probably the end of tempos at that pace for this training cycle, as I shift to focusing on faster paces for shorter distances and marathon pace. I'm still just beginning to run the faster paces again. The one track workout I did this month went well but was only my first real attempt at speed work since Spring, and the 10k race the following week showed that I still have a ways to go in that department. The new stress of speed work also took its toll by forcing me to take a day off at the end of the third week this month, on a day when I had planned to do a long run. I bounced back just fine after the extra rest, but it did leave me with two lower mileage weeks in a row, since it happened the week after a planned recovery week. No big deal. As for marathon workouts, the big one occurred at the end of the first week. I set out planning to run some unspecified number of miles at marathon pace - I was hoping for at least 5 - at the end of a 20 mile run. But from the beginning I felt good, and the weather had turned to an unusually early Fall crispness. So I went for it and ended up attempting a 10/10 workout, which I'd never done before but have often read of others using as their peak marathon training run. The idea is to progress gradually from a slow start to marathon pace over 10 miles, and then to hold marathon pace for another 10 miles. Somehow I almost pulled this off at sub-3 hour marathon pace a full 10 weeks before my target marathon. It was tough but things were going ok until I reached a mile-long hill in the 17th mile. I was getting tired anyway and didn't even try to run fast up the hill, using it instead to recover enough that I could run the final 3 miles strong. Not including mile 17, which I ran in 7:56, my average pace for the other 9 miles in the second half of this run was 6:49. To run a sub-3 hour marathon, you need to average 6:52 or faster. That one slow mile brought my average pace down to 6:56 for those 10 miles, and my average pace for the entire 20 miles was 7:16. (My current marathon PR of 3:12 from last October is 7:20 pace). After that monster training run, I became worried about overtraining. So I spent the entire next week, which featured a mini-heat wave anyway, running easy and short before the half marathon, after which I spent another 3 days running easy to make sure I was fully recovered. Perhaps even that wasn't enough, since the scare that forced me to take a day off happened after I then returned to doing harder runs. (Two in a row probably wasn't a good idea just then). I've been fine this past week, though, so hopefully that's behind me. At the end of this coming week is my next major marathon workout: the Annapolis Striders Metric Marathon, which I'll try to run at around 6:45 pace. Besides that, in October I hope to finish bringing my speed back online with a couple of shorter races and some more track workouts. If all goes well, I'll probably stay around 80 miles per week only for another 2-3 weeks before starting to taper gradually toward mid-November. I find myself looking forward more to running fast in shorter races than to making another attempt at a sub-3 hour marathon. But that may be in part because those shorter races are sooner and frankly don't compare to the pain of running a marathon hard, which I'm not ready to start bracing myself for yet. When the time comes, though, I'll be ready.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Clarendon Day 10k (race report)

Well, that was a disappointing race. Let me go straight to my mile splits, which tell much of the story themselves:

mile 1 - 5:45
mile 2 - 5:32.5
mile 3 - 5:59
mile 4 - 6:12
mile 5 - 6:22
mile 6 - 6:30
finish - 38:05 (6:07/mi.)

It looks pretty obvious that running the second mile in 5:32, when I've never run a 10k faster than a 6:01 average pace, cooked me early on. And it did, but the course also had something to do with it. The Clarendon Day 10k course starts out downhill for the first mile and a half or so. The first mile is a net downhill but not steep. The second mile, however, begins with a steep downhill and then levels off. Knowing this, I just let myself roll through the first couple miles without straining or thinking about pace. My plan was to run 5:57s beginning in mile 3, which is sub-37 minute pace, no matter what my pace turned out to be in the first two miles. In the event, I noticed that my split for mile 1 was 5:45 just before starting the steep downhill. It felt like I coasted faster down that hill, but when I looked at my watch at the bottom of the hill it said 5:49 or something. So I didn't think I was going too fast and let the momentum from the hill propel me through the rest of that second mile at what felt like a fast but not uncomfortable clip. It wasn't until just before 2 miles that I looked at my watch again and realized that I was running 5:30 pace. Tall buildings and trees around the steep downhill must have prevented my watch from calculating the pace correctly earlier. But so far I felt ok, so after two miles I followed my plan and slowed to just under 6:00 pace. The 5k point on the course was not marked, but surely I got there well before my current 5k PR of 17:58, since I was at three miles in 17:16. After the downhill start, the course is mostly flat with low, rolling hills, a turn-around in the fourth mile at the top of a slightly bigger hill, and then an uphill finish. So everyone runs way faster on the first half of this course than the second. The latter two thirds of the course are almost right next to the Potomac river, and there was also some wind that somehow felt like a headwind no matter what direction we were going. Still, in spite of my faster pace in the early miles, I'm disappointed at not being able to stay under 6:00 pace from mile 3. In spite of having done only two speed workouts since March, I expected to be strong enough to run under 37 minutes today on this course and was annoyed that I didn't even get under 38. The three beers I had with and after dinner last night may also have had something to do with it. When it became obvious in mile 4 that I was losing it and saw the people near me start to pull away, I began thinking the same thoughts that often come to mind when I race poorly. How do those other people run so fast? I got 28th place overall, and I'm not delusional enough to think I could ever compete with the guys running sub-5 minute pace. But after those superhumans, there is usually a gap and then some mortals running in the mid- and upper-5s. I do compare myself with those people. It's not so much that I want to beat them as that I want to run with them, to count myself as one of them, partly as a sort of confirmation that, like them, I train hard and in the right ways. So when I see people running that sort of pace ahead of me after a turn-around or pulling away from me when I fall off the pace, my first thought is disbelief: how can those people run faster than me? There is no way they train harder or better than I do. Soon, usually after the race is over, this yields to a second set of thoughts: those people probably do train harder and/or smarter than me. The possibility that they may be more talented or younger than me doesn't detain me, since I choose to compare myself with them because I know that I can run their pace. (There are almost always people older than me who beat me anyway. Today there were four.) So eventually I settle into an attitude of respect for the hard work put in by the people who ran faster than me, and that motivates me to renew my own training efforts. It's useful to have a disappointing race now and then. But of course I didn't do it on purpose.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Navy - Air Force Half Marathon (race report)

This is the second year that the Navy 5 Miler has fielded a half marathon as well, and my second year doing it as well. The course covered the same ground as last year but in a different order. This year we first went up Rock Creek Parkway and then came back down through Potomac Park, while last year we ran through Potomac Park first and later up Rock Creek Parkway. I like the course itself slightly better in this year's order, but the downside is that this year faster half marathon runners had to share the road with slower 5 Miler runners for the last 4 miles of the race from East Potomac Park to the finish. It wasn't too crowded but did require a little bit of weaving and made it basically impossible for me to get water at the last water stop, which was overwhelmed with 5 Miler runners. No big deal, but I think that running the half marathon course in last year's direction was on the whole preferable, even though it meant running into the almost inevitable headwind from the Northwest off the Potomac river for longer. That said, I enjoyed this year's course and ran a solid race. My main goal was to run strong the whole way, unlike last year, at somewhere around the pace of my tempo runs lately, which have stretched to 7 miles in the high 6:20's. I achieved that goal and felt particularly strong in roughly the second third of the race. I held on to a good pace almost to the end, only slowing down somewhat in the last mile. Here are my paces for each mile, according to Garmin:

mile 1 - 6:27
mile 2 - 6:31
mile 3 - 6:26
mile 4 - 6:33
mile 5 - 6:29
mile 6 - 6:32
mile 7 - 6:24
mile 8 - 6:08 (!)
mile 9 - 6:20
mile 10 - 6:18 (official 10 mile split - 1:04:21)
mile 11 - 6:19
mile 12 - 6:30
mile 13 - 6:43
finish - official time 1:24:39, which is 6:27/mi.

I started out conservatively, in part because after the first mile we were running into a light headwind and the low rolling hills on Rock Creek Parkway involved slightly more uphill than downhill. After 5 miles there was a turn-around and I ate a gel (mainly to practice for the marathon). Once I got the gel down, I started picking up the pace. My eighth mile was not as fast a Garmin says - it included passing under the Kennedy Center overhang, which screws up GPS measurements. But I did run a bit faster there, maybe more like 6:18, in order to get clear of a group of a few runners, including the second place woman, whom I had been running near for most of the race to that point. One of them reappeared at the very end of the race and passed me going up a small hill in the last half mile, but everyone else I passed during the race stayed behind me. I kept up the faster pace until we rounded Haines Point and turned into the light headwind again just as I was beginning to fade anyway. That's when crowds prevented me from getting water and my stomach started feeling sour from a second gel I had eaten at 9 miles (this time solely to practice for marathon fueling) without getting any water afterwards. I felt pretty miserable during the last mile and definitely could not have run any faster than I did. My finishing time was a PR by 2 minutes and roughly what I thought I could run based on how my training has been going. I'm especially happy about how strong I felt during the second third of the race, without totally falling apart afterwards. My 10 mile split is the second fastest 10 mile time I've run, 21 seconds faster than my Cherry Blossom time last year (though I ran 1:03:01 at Cherry Blossom this year). And I also can't but notice that my pace is just a hair slower than 20 minute 5k pace (6:26/mi.). When I first started running seriously in 2009 (not including a little running I did decades earlier as a teenager) my goal for a long time was to run a 5k under 20 minutes, which I finally did for the first time in June 2011. (I also did it once in 1991 as a teenager, which is why that particular goal of beating my then-16-year-old self motivated me.) I made huge strides in 2011 and also broke 19 minutes for the 5k about a month later and ran my first sub-40 minute 10k a few months after that. I haven't been able to keep up quite that rate of progress since then, in part because of injuries in both January 2012 and January 2013 (a pattern that I hope to break this coming January). But it feels good finally to have run this particular pace for a half marathon in my first real Fall race of 2013.

Monday, September 2, 2013

August 12 - September 1: Transitions

Daily details:
Mo: 6 mi. tempo @ 6:30/mi. in Athens (11 total)
Tu: off (traveling back to the US)
We: 5
Th: 14 on "hills"
Fr: 6
Sa: 6
Su: 20k marathon pace run @ 6:49/mi. (15.5 total)
Week total: 57.5

Mo: 7
Tu: 13 (last 4 miles in the high 6:50's)
We: 7, 5
Th: 14 on hills (last 3 miles 6:54, 6:53, 6:41)
Fr: 7
Sa: 6 mi. tempo @ 6:27/mi. (12 total)
Su: 10
Week total: 75

Mo: off (tight hamstring)
Tu: 14 on hills
We: 7, 5
Th: 22
Fr: 7
Sa: 11
Su: track workout with 4 x 800 in 3:00, 2:56, 2:53, 2:55 (8.5 total), 5.5 (pm)
Week total: 80

These three weeks were transitional in several ways: I returned to the US and settled back in, my classes started in the third week but I was very busy and stressed with other work-related things (I'm up for tenure) for weeks beforehand, and running-wise I started shifting my focus to getting faster while maintaining my base. Along the way I had a couple set-backs, but nothing major. The first set-back was that I didn't recover well from the long trip back to the US. My weight dropped a bit and I had a migraine on the day before the Leesburg 20k. Often I don't run at all the day after a migraine, and I almost certainly would have skipped it if I had planned to race it all-out. But since the plan was to run marathon pace, I went ahead with it and just managed to stick it out, though it wasn't pretty. I felt fine for about the first third but tired out long before I normally would have and had to struggle to maintain a 6:49/mi. average pace. But I got it done. Afterwards I bounced back quickly and almost automatically found roughly that pace again at the end of both my medium-long runs the following week, which was encouraging. But apparently that and another 6 mi. tempo run were a bit too much too fast for my hamstrings. They were tight on one leg during that second week, and then at the end of the week the hamstrings on the other leg tightened up enough to force me to take a day off. Clearly running even a bit faster more often is the main cause of this, but I suspect that being really stressed out during the same period contributed as well. Most of the stress had passed by the third week, and I was also more careful then to avoid faster running for a little while. Though I'm still tighter than I'd like, by Sunday I was confident enough to go ahead with my first (baby) track workout since March. It was slow and short but served its purpose: to begin the process of slowly re-introducing my body to sub-6 minute mile paces, initially at very short distances. If I can work through this hamstring tightness, then I hope to do another tempo run and track workout in the two weeks before my first real Fall tune-up race, the Navy-Air Force Half Marathon. It's not going to be super fast, judging from my tempo runs lately. But my main goal will be to run a solid and consistent pace throughout, as opposed to last year when I fell apart early in the same race. I also hope to take advantage of the cooler weather that is forecasted to do a hard 20-miler next weekend with a good stretch of marathon-pace miles at the end. Otherwise, I'll keep putting in the miles but will mostly resist the urge to run faster in order to let my hamstrings loosen up. Even though my speed isn't back online yet, I'm feeling confident about the shape I'm in and what it portends for the Fall racing season. I keep repeating the first rule of running to myself: don't get injured.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

July 22 - August 11: Hellenic hills

Daily details:
Mo: 6
Tu: off
We: 14
Th: off (traveling to Greece)
Fr: 7 in Athens
Sa: 12.5
Su: 10.5 plus 6 strides
Week total: 50

Mo: 7
Tu: 5 mi. tempo @ 6:22/mi. (11 total) in Lefkada
We: 13.6 hard in the mountains of Lefkada
Th: 7 (am), 5.4 (pm)
Fr: 9
Sa: 20 hard in the mountains of Lefkada
Su: 7
Week total: 80

Mo: 12 in Athens
Tu: 7 plus 6 strides
We: 15 moderate-hard in the hills around Spetses
Th: 7
Fr: 20 moderate in the hills around Spetses
Sa: 7
Su: 12 in Athens
Week total: 80

I survived the Hellenic hills without reducing weekly mileage, not including the planned recovery week listed first here. Every time I come to Greece, which is almost every summer, I'm shocked again by how brutal the hills are - not in Athens, where I run on an almost totally flat coastal road, but basically everywhere else in Greece. In Lefkada, where I spent most of the second week, we stay up high in one of the mountain villages, and I run up and down hills from one village to another, stopping now and then to drink water from springs using my hands. Despite the hills, my average pace that week was again 7:48/mi., but on hard days I ran faster than I had been running in DC. On recovery days, however, I had to run way slower because there's no way to avoid the hills. In Spetses, I simply ran all the way around the island the morning after we arrived, which I'd never done before. There's just one road that circumnavigates the island, snaking through hills high above the water, down to rocky coves, and back up again over and over. So I started running in one direction on that road until I arrived back where I'd started after what turned out to be 15 miles or so. Then, two days later, I did it again but also doubled back to add 5 more miles. The hills there are almost as tough as in Lefkada. They're just as steep in places, but there are some longer stretches without brutal ascents or descents. The big difference is that there is no water anywhere except in the main town on Spetses, so I carried a half liter bottle of water in one hand as I ran. That caused me to run a bit slower, and because of our schedule I also took only one easy day between my two longer runs there. So I wasn't able to do the 20-miler there as hard as in Lefkada. But it was still a good, hilly long run. The one flat tempo run I've done so far was on the only significant flat stretch of road on the mountain in Lefkada the morning after we arrived there. It was again a bit slow, but I held on for 5 miles, which is longer than I had managed yet this summer. I'll do another tempo run tomorrow in Athens before returning to DC the next day. Mileage will be down a bit next week because of traveling, but not as much as in the week we traveled to Greece, and at the end of the week I'll do my first marathon pace run at the Leesburg 20k. My focus shifts now to getting faster while maintaining my base. The weather in DC seems to have been unusually pleasant while I was gone, unlike last year when I missed the worst of the worst summer on record. But it will still be a shock to come back to DC humidity. Fall weather is not far off!

Oh, and shoes. Before leaving for Greece, I splurged on a few pairs of new shoes in order to try some brands other than Brooks, which I've worn almost exclusively for years. One pair was of the Adidas Adios 2, which I decided to bring with me to Greece after a single trial run, along with a pair of my standard training shoes of late, the Brooks Pure Flow 2. The Adios are my new favorite shoe. For this whole trip I've mainly worn my Brooks on recovery runs. The Adios are fast shoes, great for tempo runs. But they also hold up very well on long runs. Best of all, they are super grippy and get fantastic traction on hills. I never realized how important that is, having run so much in slippery Brooks. I'll definitely use Adios for racing the half marathon and longer this Fall.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

July 1-21: base building

Daily details:
Mo: 6
Tu: 3 mi. tempo @ 6:31/mi. (8 total) - humid!
We: 14
Th: 6
Fr: 12 (miles 10&11 @ 6:54, 6:55)
Sa: 6
Su: 18
Week total: 70

Mo: 6
Tu: 10.5 (with 8 strides)
We: 14
Th: 6.5
Fr: 12 (miles 10-11 @ 6:52/mi.)
Sa: 6
Su: 15 (am), 5 (pm)
Week total: 75

Mo: 7
Tu: 14
We: 4 mi. tempo @ 6:18/mi. (11 total) - on treadmill, progressing from 6:30 to 6:00 pace.
Th: 7
Fr: 14
Sa: 7
Su: 20
Week total: 80

My weekly mileage for the seven weeks since the beginning of June has been 54, 60, 65, 63, 70, 75, and 80. I now have more or less the base that I'd like to maintain into the Fall. Surprisingly, I haven't had any significant aches and pains during this period. My muscles and joints have held up fine. The only minor issue occurred during the 75 mile week, when my weight slipped a little and I was low on energy for a few days. For me the key to maintaining an acceptable energy level during mileage build-ups is to make sure that my weight stays at or above wherever it was when the build-up started, even if it seems like I need to eat practically all the time to maintain my weight (which is typically in the mid/upper-140's these days - I'm 5'10"). So when it slipped a little that week and I started feeling more tired, I responded by gorging myself until my weight ticked up a bit and my energy returned. Then all was well again. Of course I've slowed down considerably during this period, in part because of the increasing mileage and in part because dew points have been consistently at or above 70 the entire time, with a particularly oppressive heat wave this past week. Last Sunday was the only day that the weather caused me to cut a run short, though. I tried to run 20 miles when the dew point was 74 and the temperature 88, but I overheated in spite of running almost 8:00/mile. So I went back out in the evening to finish the miles I wanted for the day. By contrast, today the temperature was about the same but finally the dew point was below 70 (it was 68), and I had no trouble running 20 miles at that slow pace. According to All-Knowing Garmin, my average pace for each of the past two weeks has been 7:49/mi., which is at least 30 seconds per mile slower than it was in the Spring. I haven't completely lost touch with marathon pace and a slowish tempo pace, but it's now time to shift my attention toward running gradually more at those paces (and bringing them down some) while maintaining the mileage I've built up to. I'm not ready to introduce anything faster than tempo pace yet. But, after a down week next week, the following three weeks - while I'm in Greece - will be a sort of transitional period during which I'll try to prepare myself to start running faster in late August. Greece is less humid and hillier than DC, so I'll push myself a bit harder in the hills and try to do some better tempo runs when I can find a flat course. I've run this mileage before but never so early in the year, so we'll see what I manage to do with it from here.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

June: back to base

Daily details:
Sa: 5
Su: 6

Mo: 5
Tu: 3 mi. tempo @ 6:25/mi. (8 total)
We: 10
Th: 6
Fr: 8
Sa: 5
Su: 12
Week total: 54

Mo: 5
Tu: 8 (plus 6 strides)
We: 11
Th: 6
Fr: 9
Sa: 6
Su: 15
Week total: 60

Mo: 5
Tu: 11
We: 6
Th: 3 mi. tempo @ 6:25/mi. (8 total)
Fr: 12
Sa: 6
Su: 17
Week total: 65

Mo: 5
Tu: 8 (plus 10 strides)
We: 10
Th: 6
Fr: 12
Sa: 6
Su: 16
Week total: 63

Month total: 253

With the Spring semester over and no races on my calendar, I switched back with pleasure this month to base training: running every day, almost all easy, gradually building mileage. Only once each week did I do any kind of faster running: every other week I did a 3-mile tempo run, and in the other weeks I did some strides after my run. My basic pattern has been two medium-long runs, one "speed" day, and one long run, with recovery days in between. I adopted this pattern from the Pfitzinger and Douglas book, Advanced Marathoning, because I found myself gravitating toward it naturally this Spring. In the recent past I had done (at most) two harder runs per week, with two or three easy days separating them. Now I'm mostly alternating hard/easy days, and the easy days are easier than in the past. I'm generally running slower now altogether, because it's summer and I'm building mileage; but my easy days are particularly slow, and they'll remain shorter than they had in the past even as my weekly mileage continues to increase. This enables me to get in three longer (but only one truly long) run each week, which suits my preference for emphasizing longer distances. I'm also doing those non-recovery runs on hillier terrain than I normally did in the past (except for when I've been in Greece). One medium-long run each week occurs the day after my speed day, which means that I start out a bit fatigued (from a tempo run) or sore (from strides) from the day before. I'm adapting well to this new pattern and plan to stick with it as I continue gradually turning up the daily numbers. Last year, although I was still doing races in June, I ran almost exactly the same number of miles as I did this June. But then I went to Greece on July 4, and my weekly mileage got stuck in the mid-60's as I struggled with the hills there. This year I'll head to Greece 3 weeks later, and I'm already running regularly on what hills there are in DC (mainly in Rock Creek Park). So I hope to get my weekly mileage up higher before heading to Greece this time around and to be able to maintain that higher mileage when I get there. I'm not concerned with speed right now - the tempos and strides are sufficient. It's too humid here to (want to) run very fast anyway. So I'm doing the Lydiard thing and focusing on strength this summer, especially early summer. When I feel good, I might pick up the pace at the end of a run to the vicinity of marathon pace for a little while, and I'll do some more of that as the summer wears on. The tempo runs will get longer as summer wears on too. But I'll stay away from faster stuff and from trying to sustain those paces for longer distances until late August. I've now posted almost all of the Fall races I intend to do under "upcoming races," except for the Annapolis Striders Metric Marathon, whose registration opens late. I plan to do that and the Leesburg 20k as marathon-pace training runs. The others I hope to race all-out. After the Philadelphia Marathon, I hereby declare that I will take two weeks entirely off from running. Right now, though, I'm really enjoying rambling around Rock Creek Park, in spite of dew points in the 70's.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Alexandria Running Festival Half Marathon (race report)

This was my first time running this race. The weather was almost perfect: around 55 degrees, sunny, with only a little wind. About half the course was on a straight road, starting out running into the light wind for a few miles and slightly uphill. The other half was a loop that we went around twice, with lots of ups, downs, and turns on different surfaces: mostly asphalt trail and sidewalk with some road and unpaved trail. I sometimes enjoy difficult courses, but in a couple of ways this course was somewhat poorly organized. First, before we reached the loop there was a turn-around and slower runners didn't get out of the way to allow faster runners space on the road, because there was nothing forcing them or even indicating to do so. This forced us onto a sidewalk for a while and caused us to miss a water stop by having to run behind it on the sidewalk. Second, on the second time around the loop, the narrow, curvy course was full of slower runners. So faster runners had to do a lot of weaving over those 2.5 or so miles. As for my own performance, I wasn't hoping for much, given my light training of late. But since my half marathon PR (currently 1:26:34, or 6:36/mi. pace) is quite soft, I aimed to beat it anyway. Though I failed by 30 seconds, finishing in 1:27:05, a 6:39/mi. average pace, this course was more difficult than the course on which I set my current PR. I also ran this race at a more or less consistent pace, as opposed to my huge positive split when I set my PR. So this must be ranked as my best half marathon to date, such as it is. I enjoyed running it too, in spite of the problems I just mentioned, mainly because I had a few other runners to compete with. One guy and I ran together for virtually the entire race, trading the lead at different points and pushing one another. In the 8th mile I started getting tired and actually stopped briefly at a water stop to make sure that I actually got water and got a gel down, since I had missed water at several earlier stops and remembered my bad gel experience at the MCM last year. It took me a couple miles to catch back up with the guy I had been running with, by which time another guy and the top woman were also running nearby. We were a pack of four, running in places 7-10, when we finished the second loop and returned in mile 11 to the long, straight road that would take us to the finish line. At that point, I figured that I was probably faster than the others and could beat them all in a sprint at the finish, after climbing and then descending a hill just before the finish, if I just hung with them until the end. That would have been the best strategy consistent with my stated goal of running to win or to place as highly as possible, since no other runners were close by. But I decided instead to test my distance chops by picking up the pace slightly for a long drive from two miles out. Pretty much right away I gapped the others and was unaware of what was going on behind me until I ascended the hill towards the end of mile 13, when the familiar guy I had been running with from almost the start passed me. I passed him again on the downhill, but he and the other guy passed me again shortly before the finish. Because of my long drive, I couldn't accelerate much at all at the end, but at least I ended up with a top 10 finish (9th) ahead of the top woman. Although my pace was pretty pedestrian and really should be about my marathon pace when I'm training properly, still this was a fun and encouraging run given my recent training. I'm not in a bad place to begin my build up for Fall marathon training. The night after this race, however, I came down with the (initially stomach) flu bug that is now a plague on my entire household. So I'll take a very light recovery week to get over this bug before resuming my gradual ascent in weekly mileage, after running 55 miles last week. It's not a bad idea to give my legs a little rest now anyway.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Update on the past month (April 21-May 22)

For the past month I've been very busy and running hasn't been among my priorities. One of the major turning points on the academic calendar that governs my life is graduation, which was this past Saturday, May 18. Prior to that, as far as running goes, I pretty much kept things easy when I managed to run at all, with very few exceptions. But I did manage to keep my weekly mileage at a tolerable level to begin marathon training off of in early summer. My mileage for the past four weeks has been 46, 51, 50, and 50. My longest run was 15 miles (at 7:12/mi. pace), but that was way back on April 26. Most runs besides that were either 6-8 mile easy runs or 11-ish mile medium-long runs, except for a 5-mile tempo around 6:30 pace on April 29, a 5k race (Public Service 5k) on May 5, and a 10k race (Capitol Hill Classic) on May 19. The 5k race was a weird experience: I won in a very windy 18:39, easily beating the 2nd place finisher who had finished ahead of me two weeks earlier at the Pike's Peak 10k, even though my pace was the same in both races. I would have preferred my first race victory to come with a faster time, but the wind was very strong and the competition very weak. I ran the 10k two weeks later at somewhere between race and tempo effort, finishing in 39:30. I should have run at a tempo effort from the beginning, since I'm in no shape to race a 10k. But at the start line I recognized Tera Moody, one of the top female marathoners in the US, lining up right in front of me. Inspired by the presence of such an athlete (according to a race report, she was in town for a sibling's graduation), I ran a bit faster than I intended in the first half but eventually slowed down instead of putting in the hard effort required to maintain that pace over the second 5k. It's already getting rather humid now in DC, so I appreciate not having to recover from a truly hard effort when running in this weather at all is difficult enough. This coming weekend, however, is forecasted to be cooler, and I am registered for a half marathon. I may be up to beating my soft PR at that distance, though my focus right now is not racing but getting serious again about training for races in the Fall, which I now have some time and energy to begin doing.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Summary of the past two weeks:

April 8-14: 50 miles (100% easy pace)

Monday: 5 miles very slow (no watch)
Tuesday: 7 miles at 7:24/mi.
Wednesday: off
Thursday: 7 miles at 7:18/mi.
Friday: 14 miles at 7:18/mi.
Saturday: 6.3 miles at 7:19/mi.
Sunday: 10.7 miles at 7:15/mi.

April 15-21: 30 miles (79% easy and 21% 10k paces)

Monday: off
Tuesday: off
Wednesday: 8.4 miles at 7:12/mi.
Thursday: 8.3 at 7:16/mi.
Friday: 5.3 at 7:25/mi.
Saturday: off
Sunday: 1.8 easy, then 10k race in 37:23 (see below)

The goal of the first of these two weeks was to recover from the Cherry Blossom 10-miler while running a fair number of easy miles. I intended to do a track workout on the weekend in order to prepare for the Pike's Peek 10k. But the weather changed this week. It suddenly became very warm, and the pollen finally made an appearance. So I ran with my allergy mask for most of this first week. It was very unpleasant, and I just couldn't imagine doing a track workout either in the heat and humidity (which I still wasn't used to) or with that horrible mask on. So I just kept running easy. But after Sunday's run (4/14), my left hip started hurting. That's not the hip I had injured recently, but the other one! So I took two days off, and during that time I decided to stop wearing my mask in order to test whether it was really worth it. It has been a year since allergy symptoms kept me up all night for weeks on end, so I had forgotten just how bad it can be. I decided to take my chances with the pollen. Luckily, when I started running again on Wednesday 4/17 (now without my mask), although I had plenty of the usual allergy symptoms, I managed to avoid the severe allergic reaction that I had last year. The daily pollen count still may not have quite peaked yet, but I think that I'll survive if I've made it this far. The reason must be simply that I started taking Allegra in February so that it was well into my system before the pollen appeared, which I did not do last year. Once the allergic reaction gets going, it's too late. But I managed to head it off this year. Mind you, I'm sniffling and sneezing as much as anyone you know, but I'm not up coughing all night this year. That's a big difference. It has not correlated, however, with harder training. In addition to last weekend's hip scare, I'm really busy at work right now and don't expect to have much surplus energy to funnel into running for a few weeks. I'll be lucky to get in one 5k-specific workout before my next race in two weeks. But the end of this busy period is now on the horizon.

PIKE'S PEEK 10K (race report):

This is the fastest 10k course in town, where I ran 37:48 last year. That stood as my 10k PR going into this race. Initially I was gunning for 36:30 as my goal for this year's race. But I didn't get around to doing any actual training faster than easy pace in the two weeks since the Cherry Blossom 10-miler, and I didn't do much before that either. So, although I started this race at 36:30 pace (5:52/mi.), I didn't really expect to be able to hold it very long. Here are my mile splits:

mile 1 - 5:51
mile 2 - 5:54
mile 3 - 5:58
mile 4 - 6:04
mile 5 - 6:10
mile 6 - 6:14
finish - 37:23

My finishing time was a PR by 25 seconds, and the first half of this race was the second fastest 5k I've ever run (18:20). So I can't complain. But looking at those splits, you can see that I didn't run a particularly good race. I slowed down at a pretty consistent rate after the first mile. My average pace turned out to be 6:01/mi. If I had run 5:57 pace from the beginning, could I have run a sub-37 today? Probably. But this is Pike's Peek, where one goes for a crazy fast time. I'm not sure that I worked as hard as I possibly could have today, but certainly 36:30 wasn't going to happen. Maybe I could have gutted out 36:59, but I never really gave up and am happy with a 25 second PR off of so little training. The first 5k was especially encouraging, given that my next race (in two weeks) is a 5k and today I was far from running all out during only the first half. If I can find time to do some actual training, then I can hope realistically to beat my still fresh 5k PR of 17:58. By the way, there are so many super-fast people at Pike's Peek that I ran 6.2 miles at 6:01/mi. pace and only got 96th place overall!

Monday, April 8, 2013

WEEKLY SUMMARY (March 31- April 7): 45 miles (78% E and 22% T paces plus 6 strides)
  Sunday: off
  Monday: 5 miles at 7:19/mi.
  Tuesday: 8 miles at 7:10/mi.
  Wednesday: 6 miles at 7:17/mi.
  Thursday: 8.4 miles at 7:04/mi. incorporating 6 strides
  Friday: off
  Saturday: 5.6 miles at 7:35/mi.
  Sunday: 2 E, then 10 mile race in 1:03:01 (see race report below)

You'll notice that this week has eight days in it. I wanted to return to a calendar with weeks beginning on Mondays and ending on Sundays, and this seemed like a good week to make the switch. By my old Sunday-to-Saturday reckoning, I ran only 33 miles this past week. But adding Sunday bumps it up artificially to 45 miles for these eight days. I had a migraine on the first Sunday, March 31. That's partly why I wasn't up to doing the track workout that I had planned for Tuesday. It was also a high pollen day and the first day in 2013 that I ran with my allergy mask on. I wouldn't have wanted to wear that thing for a track workout. On Friday I was just too busy to fit in a run. So the only speed I incorporated this week before the Cherry Blossom race was on Thursday, when I basically did a light fartlek run. I ran my usual easy pace but in each mile, except for the first and last, I did a short stride without stopping. That wasn't my original plan. I had just planned on doing a few strides after an easy run, but I ended up doing this because I didn't feel like stopping. I may start doing strides or hill sprints more regularly. At any rate I'd like to. Next week, since I'm pretty wiped out from the Cherry Blossom race, I'll concentrate on recovery at least initially. I'd like to run at least 50 miles (over seven days) and just keep things slow toward the beginning of the week. My only run faster than easy pace will be a track workout next weekend, which will be like the one I had planned for this past Tuesday: 5-6 x 1k hopefully at 5:50/mi. pace or faster. My next race is a 10k in two weeks on a fast course, and at this point I'm thinking of aiming for 36:30, which is 5:52/mi. We'll see how the track workout goes next weekend, though. My current 10k PR is 37:48 from the same race (Pike's Peek) last year.
CHERRY BLOSSOM 10-MILER (race report):

This may be my favorite race in the Washington area. Certainly it's my favorite big race. I've heard people complain that it's too big for the narrow roads it's run on, which must indeed be frustrating for people stuck behind slower runners. But both of the times I've run it, this year and last, I was able to start right up front in the first wave, just behind the professional and elite runners, where crowds are not a problem. The course is almost entirely flat but also interesting. The scenery is striking, even when the cherry blossoms themselves are mere buds as they were this year. The course circles back on itself a couple times early on so that you can see faster runners up ahead of you; and there are enough turns to keep the course from becoming boring but not so many that it slows you down a lot. The crowds and support are also great without being overwhelming. This year, however, wind was a factor, especially on the second half of the course in East Potomac Park, which is surrounded by water. When I first went outside and felt the wind the morning of the race, I expected that my more ambitious goal of finishing under 62 minutes was unrealistic and scaled my hopes back to my original goal of finishing under 63 minutes. Still, I felt good in the first part of the race and went through halfway in 31:07, almost on pace to hit my more ambitious goal. In fact, my Garmin misled me into thinking that I went through halfway under 31 minutes, probably because part of the course runs under the overhang of the Kennedy Center and screws up GPS reception, which caused my Garmin to tell me that I was .07 miles further along the course than I really was beginning somewhere in mile 4. Anyway, around halfway I started getting tired and would have slowed down a little even if we hadn't started running into a moderate headwind at that point, but together those two factors caused me to run the second half 47 seconds slower than the first, or almost 10 seconds per mile. After crossing the 10k mark in 38:52 I just tried to keep running fast enough to finish under 63 minutes, and I think I managed to hold my form together relatively well. By the beginning of mile 9 I was sure that I could manage a 1:02:59 and relaxed somewhat, though a sour stomach and some rude little hills in mile 10 required me to work harder at the end. When I crossed the finish line, I believed that I was finishing comfortably with 3-4 seconds to spare. But it turned out that I had miscalculated and actually finished in 1:03:01. Of course my first thought was that I could easily have run a couple seconds faster in the last couple miles if I had calculated correctly. But, really, who cares? I basically hit my goal for the race, and it's kind of dumb anyway to aim for such a nice, round number instead of simply running as hard as I can. That's what I get for relaxing in mile 9, I guess. My average pace works out to 6:18/mi., but I ran 6:13/mi. in the first half and 6:23/mi. in the second. Even without the wind, I don't think that I could have run under 62 minutes that day after all. Maybe 1:02:30 or so. But I'm happy with how the race went, and really it's pretty remarkable that I could run as fast as I did after training so little for so long now. I know that I have the legs and lungs to run significantly faster, certainly under an hour for 10 miles, if I just got my running act together and put in a significant block of harder training. It is kind of gratifying, though, to continue improving as I am without working very hard - this was a 10 mile PR by 1:41 or 10 seconds per mile.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

WEEKLY SUMMARY (March 24-30): 51 miles (88% easy and 12% tempo paces)
  Sunday: 8.4 miles at 7:12/mi.
  Monday: off
  Tuesday: 8.3 miles at 7:15/mi.
  Wednesday: 4 miles at 7:29/mi.
  Thursday: 3 E, 3 x 2 miles T averaging 6:14/mi. (2 min.), 1.3 E (10.3 miles total)
  Friday: 7 miles at 7:25/mi.
  Saturday: 13 miles at 7:14/mi.

This week went well in spite of a dud run on Wednesday, when I misjudged how hungry I was before setting out to run in the afternoon. On Sunday I intended to increase some of my easy runs to 8 miles from a typical 7 recently, but I ran too far because I was feeling good and forgot to turn around. Then I did the same thing again on Tuesday, apparently having established a pattern. Thursday's tempo run was great. I hadn't done more than 2 x 2 mile tempos for a long time, and when I had done more in the distant past it was at a slower pace. But after 2 x 2 miles I felt fine, even though it was a windy day, and I didn't feel any different after 3 x 2 miles. Clearly I could have kept going or run that distance faster. This workout has caused me to lower my goal for next weekend's Cherry Blossom 10-miler to sub-62 minutes, which is 6:12/mi. pace. With some more time I think I could realistically aim to run sub-60, but trying to run faster now would probably just lead to a blow-up. I added some more races to my Spring schedule, though, since my hip seems strong and I feel like I'm just starting to get into shape. So I'll have more opportunities to try to run faster soon at various distances. Next week, although I should rest up some for Cherry Blossom, I want to do another track workout (maybe on Tuesday) for the sake of the 10k two weeks later. This time I was thinking of trying a slightly shorter interval distance - 5 x 1k (600m) - in order to help me speed up the pace. Then I'll do a stretch of slow, easy days before Cherry Blossom, and my weekly mileage might be slightly lower if I don't do a medium-long run. The week after next I'll try to increase the mileage another notch to the mid-upper 50's and gradually lengthen my medium-long or long run proportionately (keeping it around 25% of weekly mileage). For some reason I arbitrarily call runs longer than 10 miles "medium-long" and only runs longer than 2 hours "long." If I do keep my longish runs at or around 25% of weekly mileage, which is also an arbitrary number, then at my current paces I'll have to get back into the mid-upper 60's before doing "long" runs again.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

WEEKLY SUMMARY (March 17-23): 50 miles (95% easy and 5% interval paces)
  Sunday: 7 miles at 7:16/mi.
  Monday: 7 miles at 7:15/mi.
  Tuesday: off
  Wednesday: 7 miles at 7:32/mi.
  Thursday: 13 miles at 7:18/mi.
  Friday: 7 miles at 7:17/mi.
  Saturday: 3 E, 3 x 1200m I averaging 4:27-8 (800m E), 2 E (9 miles total)

I'm happy to have managed 50 miles this week. The plan was to run easy until returning to the track on Saturday, and that's what I did. But I should have run extra easy on Sunday and/or Monday. I didn't do that because I figured the half marathon last Saturday didn't make much out of me, and I felt fine on Sunday's and Monday's easy runs. But after running, especially on Monday, my muscles were too tight. So I took Tuesday off and did the slower run on Wednesday that I should have done several days earlier. That did the trick of loosening things up and I felt strong on Thursday's medium-long run. Several times this week my hip reminded me that it's not entirely back to normal yet, but it was never a real problem. The weather is unseasonably cold and I wonder how much that affects it, especially when I run at dawn. Saturday's intervals were disappointingly slow - about 5:58/mi. pace, which is even slower than the last time I made it to the track two and a half weeks ago, when I did 2 x 1200m. But I think it was just an off day for me. I gave what I had and got through three intervals. In a little over a week I'll do that workout again but with four intervals, and hopefully it'll be a bit faster. I don't really need to train at a faster pace for the 10-miler in two weeks, but I'm also thinking about the 10k two weeks after that. Next week I plan to run 50-55 miles. The only workout will be a tempo run midweek that I'll try to make a bit longer than the previous one but at the same 6:15-ish pace, which is roughly the pace I'm thinking of trying to run in the Cherry Blossom 10-miler (to finish under 63 minutes). I'm happy to report that, although it's now late March, my allergies are still not bad at all. The irresistible coughing that prevented me from sleeping for weeks on end last year has not returned - at least not yet. Tree pollen was high for a couple days, and I noticed it, but it didn't last long enough to have a significant, cumulative effect. My hope is that when the weather does finally start acting like Spring it'll be too late for another really bad allergy season to get going. But I probably won't be able to avoid running with the allergy mask at some point soon.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

WEEKLY SUMMARY (March 10-16): 40 miles (55% E, 33% half marathon, and 12% 8k paces)
  Sunday: 2 mile warm up, then 8k race in 30:13 (see below)
  Monday: 6 easy at 7:34/mi.
  Tuesday: off
  Wednesday: 7 miles at 7:18/mi.
  Thursday: 7 miles at 7:17/mi.
  Friday: off
  Saturday: half marathon race in 1:31:16 (see below)

This week I didn't run enough miles, as usual for some time now, and too few of the miles I did run were easy. I did run the half marathon rather slowly, but still my average pace for the week was 7:06/mi. compared with 7:17/mi. for all of 2013 so far before today (Saturday). That's pretty much inevitable for a week with races on a Sunday and again the following Saturday. But this low mileage is really getting ridiculous. Next week I plan to run easy until the weekend, and the mileage just needs to get higher. Today's half marathon was a wake up call that I'm not in the shape I'd like to be in. My hip injury knocked me off course but it's doing well enough to run more now. Anyway, my injury wasn't nearly as bad as Michael Wardian's multiple stress fractures, and look what he managed to do today. (We're the same age, by the way). There are three weeks until the Cherry Blossom 10-miler, and it's time for me to get crackin'.
ROCK N ROLL USA HALF MARATHON (race report):

I screwed up and didn't get to the start line on time for this race. I mainly just underestimated how big it is and didn't plan to arrive early enough for an event of this size. This was the second year that this was an RnR race. Before that it had been the National Marathon, which I did two years ago. That event was much smaller than this one, and I failed to realize how much bigger it had become. It has now become comparable to the Marine Corps Marathon in size - which is to say, huge. I arrived at 6:30am, an hour before the gun, and promptly got into a huge bathroom line. I got out of the bathroom at 7:15 and still needed to drop off my bag in the bag trucks. Since they were right next to the bathrooms, and the start line was not terribly far away, I figured that I was still fine but would have to do a shorter warm up than planned. But the bag trucks were unbelievably poorly managed. They were organized alphabetically by last name instead of by corral or bib number, and for some reason you couldn't just walk up and hand your bag to somebody. The single volunteer at my truck (and every other one too, as far as I could tell) took a while to make sure that the last name on each person's bag fell into the right alphabetical range. This caused lines to form that were even longer than those at the bathrooms. The bag trucks were school busses parked front-to-back in a long row on the side of the road, and the line for my truck began five busses down the road. I arrived at the back of this line around 7:20, when it became clear that I was going to miss the start by a long shot. It seems that very many people missed the start of their corral for this reason, but I was supposed to be in corral one at the front of the race. Instead I ended up starting with corral seven or eight (I'm not sure). So from the beginning I was surrounded by people running much slower than I wanted to run. Long story less long: I finished in 1:31:16, which is a 6:58/mile pace and at least 30 seconds per mile slower than I had hoped for. Running even that pace took a lot more energy than it normally would have because, when possible, I was weaving through crowds of people from one side of the street to the other, hopping onto and off of curbs and medians, and sometimes running on the wrong side of the road toward oncoming runners when the course doubled back onto itself (which resulted in my 5k split being recorded about a mile earlier than it should have). Sometimes none of those methods of running faster than people around me was possible and I had no choice but to slow down to their pace, so that I was frequently speeding up to much faster than 6:58 pace and slowing down again to a much slower pace. This was worse in the early miles, because the crowds around me were denser then; but I was passing people at roughly the same rate for the entire race. Even though my finishing time was five minutes slower than my PR, which itself was set in a race in which I exploded by halfway and slowed down drastically over the second half, I'm still quite tired afterwards. Part of this is also because I'm not in very good shape right now, though. It is ultimately my fault that I missed the start, but the baggage truck mess was irritating, and it was worse after the race (for half marathoners, at least). When I arrived at my truck after finishing, there were maybe a dozen people in line ahead of me who said they had been standing there for 20-30 minutes, during which time nobody had been given a bag. I don't know what the two people working at the truck (volunteers?) were doing - it seemed like they were looking for those people's bags that whole time and couldn't find them. But after I had been there for another 20-30 minutes, runners started revolting and stormed the truck. The workers kind of retreated and gave up while half a dozen runners took over searching for and distributing bags. (I think similar mutinies occurred in other trucks as well, but I was pretty wrapped up in my own). Inside the truck, bags were somewhat organized by runners' bib numbers: they were more or less in piles by 2,000 digit increments, but within those piles there was no organization, and very many bags were in the wrong piles. Because bib numbers did not correspond to last names, and only bags from people whose last names fell within a certain alphabetical range were in each truck, there really was no way to organize the bags much better than that. Why didn't they assign bags to trucks by bib number instead of by last name? This mess really made me appreciate the mass efficiency and organization of the MCM, which I've done three times without ever waiting more than a minute or two on either end of the baggage check. Today I spent around an hour at the bag truck after the race, and it seems that some others were standing around shivering in sweaty clothes for longer. It's not enough to cause me to foreswear RnR events in the future, but I won't jump at the opportunity to participate in them. I like doing big races sometimes, especially marathons, as long as I get to start up front. But in the future I'll be sure to arrive earlier, and maybe I'll start taking more of an interest in less massive events in general.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

ST. PATRICK'S DAY 8K (race report):

This was my first race in more than two months, since before injuring my hip in January. I've done the course many times, since it was my fourth time running this race and the Jingle All the Way 8k in December is on the same course as well. I don't particularly like the course, but it's a biggish downtown race that kind of signifies the beginning of Spring racing season in DC. It didn't seem right to skip it and I wanted to shake off some dust before next weekend's half marathon. I aimed to run 5:58/mi. pace, which would have given me that ever-elusive sub-30 minute clocking at this distance. For the first half of the race I felt quite strong and was right at 5:58/mi. average pace after three miles. But then, as usual, I slipped quickly into survival mode and finished in 30:13 after dragging myself the last couple miles about 20 seconds slower per mile. My hip felt fine but my stomach was moderately uncomfortable, which (together with dying after three miles) can be chalked up to under-training. The race served its purposes, though: I shook off some dust, tested out my hip and found it to be ok, got in some hard running in advance of the races to come, proved that trying to run sub-60 at the Cherry Blossom 10-miler in three weeks would be too ambitious, and even somehow got a 17-second PR.
WEEKLY SUMMARY (March 3-9): 30 miles (95% easy and 5% interval paces)
  Sunday: 6 miles at 7:16/mi.
  Monday: 7 miles at 7:12/mi.
  Tuesday: 2.5 E, 2 x 1200m I @ 5:55/mi. pace (800m E), 2 E (7 miles total)
  Wednesday: off
  Thursday: 5 miles at 7:18/mi.
  Friday: off
  Saturday: 5 miles at 7:22/mi.

I didn't run much this week, though my hip has been doing well. On Tuesday I went to the track for the first time in a couple months but took things easy. I just wanted to do a couple longish intervals a bit under 6:00/mi. pace in order to get the feel of it again without wearing myself down. It was overdetermined that I wouldn't run on Wednesday: there was a big storm and I had a migraine. The latter explains my lighter run on Thursday too, when I also switched back to morning running after running in late afternoon (when I could) for most of the past two months because my hip seemed less tight then, in part because it's warmer. On Friday I didn't manage to run in the morning and so just skipped running altogether instead of running later. I'm not naturally a morning person at all, so getting myself onto a morning schedule requires drawing firm lines like that. On Saturday I still felt kind of stunned running in the morning and also took it easy because of the 8k race the next day. That brings my average weekly mileage so far in 2013 to 41.5. That's low in part because of my hip injury, but now I'm doing well enough that a low mileage week like this one is due to plain slacking. In the back of my mind I may also have been trying to get in a little rest before picking things up when Spring races begin (today).

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Summary of the previous three weeks:

February 10-16: 49 miles (100% easy pace)
  Sunday: 5 miles at 7:29/mi.
  Monday: 7 miles at 7:16/mi.
  Tuesday: off
  Wednesday: 7 miles at 7:14/mi.
  Thursday: 7 miles at 7:14/mi.
  Friday: 5 miles at 7:19/mi.
  Saturday: 18 miles at 7:20/mi.

February 17-23: 35 miles (89% easy and 11% tempo paces)
  Sunday: off
  Monday: off
  Tuesday: 7 miles at 7:24/mi. on a treadmill
  Wednesday: 7 miles at 7:15/mi.
  Thursday: 2.5 E, 4 x 1 mile T @ 6:16 avg. (1 min.), 1.5 E (8 miles total)
  Friday: 6 miles at 7:17/mi.
  Saturday: 7 miles at 7:17/mi.

Feb. 24 - March 2: 51 miles (92% easy and 8% tempo paces)
  Sunday: 16.5 miles at 7:21/mi.
  Monday: 6 miles at 7:20/mi.
  Tuesday: off
  Wednesday: 7.5 miles at 7:16/mi.
  Thursday: 7 miles at 7:12/mi.
  Friday: 6 miles at 7:35/mi.
  Saturday: 3E, 2 x 2 miles T @ 6:15/mi. (3 min.), 1E (8 miles total)

I've been very busy over the last few weeks. But now I'm on Spring break, even though it's not yet Spring and the weather is not substantially different than it was on Winter break. Over that time my hip initially seemed better, then slipped back, and now seems to be stabilizing again. By now I'm getting used to living with at least some tightness down there even on good days, which I don't expect to go away until I build up a stronger "core" in general over time. At the end of the first week, on Feb. 16, I was encouraged to make it through 18 miles at a respectable, easy pace. My hip felt strong throughout, and I began thinking about trying a faster long run the next weekend and running the marathon on March 16 after all. I took a couple days off after that run simply because I was busy, which - together with not doing my next long run until the following Sunday - resulted in that week's mileage number turning out misleadingly low. But I got in an encouraging set of tempo intervals on Thursday of that week as well, with my hip again feeling stable. The set-back was on Sunday, Feb. 24, when I attempted a 20-miler in which I hoped to pick up the pace after halfway. The main problem was that it was very windy, and the wind was coming from a direction that made me run straight into it for miles 11-13 and then again from 16-20, in addition to generally blowing me around pretty much the whole time. My hip hurt much of the way, especially during and after running into the headwind in miles 11-13, which dampened my hopes of speeding up after halfway. When I turned back into the wind after 16 miles, it was just too much for me and I ended up stopping and taking the metro home. My hip continued to ache for several days after that. It loosened up only after I took an especially easy, slow day on Friday, which enabled me to get in a solid 2 x 2 mile tempo run on Saturday. I think that last Sunday pretty much killed any chances that I had of running the marathon on March 16. It was less windy the following day, and if I had been able to wait and attempt that run on Monday then maybe it would have gone well enough for me to attempt the marathon. But as it is that was my last real chance to get in a hard long run before March 16, and I don't see the point of running my 6th marathon when I haven't been able to do any hard long runs for two months because of an injury. Realistically, I could probably do the marathon, run 7:10/mi. pace for 15 miles or so (3:07 marathon pace), and try to pick it up from there if things were going well, hoping for maybe a 3:05 at best and likely still beating my current PR of 3:12 at worst. But I respect the marathon too much to tangle with that beast when I'm not properly trained for it, and especially when my head's not really in it. I'm looking forward to a lot of other Spring races as well, and in my current state of fitness running the marathon would either risk jeopardizing those other races or essentially amount to jogging 26.2 miles at my easy pace, neither of which I'm able to get excited about. So I'm going to do the half-marathon on March 16 instead, thanks to the RnR policy that allows registered runners to decide up until race day which race they want to run. Of course, I'm not in great half-marathon shape either, but my tempo runs are starting to come along and at least I can see the half as good training for the Cherry Blossom 10-miler three weeks later. Before my hip injury I had dreamed of running Cherry Blossom under 60 minutes, but that seems very unlikely now. Maybe 62-3 seems possible now, if my hip holds together, but I'll see how the half goes before setting goals. I might do the St. Patrick's Day 8k next weekend (March 10) just to shake some dust off and test out 5:58 or so pace for 5 miles. Then in the RnR half I might start around 6:30 pace and, after some mid-race hills, try picking it up to bring the pace down into the low 6:20's, which would be a 1:23-4 finish. At least those seem like non-crazy goals. It's March now - almost Spring - and time to start thinking about running fast!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

WEEKLY SUMMARY (February 3-9): 43 miles (95% easy and 5% tempo paces)
  Sunday: 6 miles at 7:20/mi.
  Monday: off
  Tuesday: 7 miles at 7:20/mi.
  Wednesday: 2.5 E, 2 x 1 mile T @ 6:17/mi. (1 min.), 1.5 E (6 miles total)
  Thursday: 4 miles at 7:26/mi.
  Friday: 7 miles at 7:18/mi.
  Saturday: 13 miles at 7:21/mi.

Running has not been easy this week, but I think I am indeed on the road to recovery. With the help of the physical therapist whom I saw again on Thursday this week, I'm taking the long road to recovery that involves doing gradually more difficult exercises (in addition to running) to strengthen my weak and imbalanced hip muscles in hopes that whatever recovery ensues will not be short-lived. It now seems to me that the primary injury is to my right gluteus minimus and gluteus medius, with the TFL and psoas also affected. When I got acupuncture (for the first time) on Thursday, I realized that I had been unclear about exactly where the gluteus minimus is. It's one thing to look at it on an anatomy chart, to do stretches that target it, and so on. By when the PT delivered the charge to the needle that made my right gluteus minimus contract in isolation, it seemed to be at the very center of the pain and tightness that I've felt all through this injury. The more superficial gluteus medius attaches a bit higher on the iliac crest where I've had a pretty constant, dull pain since my 18-miler on 1/19. So it's clearly in a troubled state as well. But the deeper muscle seems to be the deeper problem, and the original pain that I felt several days before that 18-miler (but didn't worry much about) was lower and deeper at what I suspect may have been the lower insertion area of the gluteus minimus. So now I'm doing glute, hip abductor, and hip flexor exercises almost daily in order to bring those muscles back to life and to strengthen them all in a balanced way so that even the weakest of them (which is apparently my right gluteus minimus) can handle the running I do. I've slowed down my easy pace marginally this week in order to accomodate the extra stress of the exercises, but only slightly because the point is to get those muscles to cope by starting with very light exercises and gradually increasing the difficulty. At the same time, I'm trying to ease back into some harder runs. I did basically half of a tempo run on Wednesday and a medium-long run on Saturday that was almost twice as far as I'd run in the previous three weeks. My hip was ok during and after the mini-tempo, with only a little uncomfortable stretching in that area during the run that immediately went away when I stopped. But after Saturday's 13-miler there was some tightness and pain right where one would expect if the gluteus minimus is the main problem. I took ibuprofen and waited until this morning (Sunday) to stretch, and it seems fine. Next week I hope to continue on this trajectory. I'll still take things one day at a time, but I'm starting to think in weekly chunks again and hope to do a full 4 x 1 mile tempo run and another medium-distance run (maybe 11-12 miles this time) during this coming week while continuing daily exercises. If I run the 10k race next Sunday, then the best idea would probably be to treat it as a tempo run. The jury is still out on whether I'll be up for the marathon or half-marathon on March 16, which is only 5 weeks away. I won't run the marathon unless I can beat my current PR of 3:12, such as it is, but I'm not sold on whether I should run it even if I think I can run faster than that. At this point it doesn't really matter and wouldn't affect the sort of training runs I do, which are just aimed at nursing me back to general distance running health. By the way, when I was talking with the PT on Thursday it emerged that I had misunderstood one thing he said that I reported in my last post. The underlying lower back issues that he had in mind were effects of bad posture and nothing else. His point was that doing all these exercises and running with perfect form won't enable me to dodge injuries like this if I spend most of my waking life standing and sitting with bad posture. So trying to avoid that is the most important thing I can do.

Monday, February 4, 2013

WEEKLY SUMMARY (Jan. 27 - Feb. 2): 40 miles (92.5% E and 7.5% M paces)
  Sunday: 6 miles at 7:23/mi. on a treadmill
  Monday: 7 miles at 7:16/mi.
  Tuesday: off
  Wednesday: 6 miles at 7:21/mi.
  Thursday: 7 miles at 7:16/mi.
  Friday: 7 miles at 7:16/mi. on a treadmill
  Saturday: 3 E, 3 miles progressing from 7:00 to 6:30 pace, 1 E on a treadmill (7 miles total)

This week was less bad than I feared it would be, since I ran almost every day and felt by the end of the week like I was on the road to recovery. But I probably have some ways to go before I can do harder workouts again. Monday was the first day that I started to feel like I was clawing my way back to health. My hip didn't hurt when I ran, but that whole area felt weak and tight. Since that run seemed to go relatively well, and it was my fourth day running in a row, I decided to take Tuesday off in order to consolidate whatever gains I'd made and, I imagined, to feel better still on Wednesday. Instead my hip hurt more during my run on Wednesday than it had any other time since my injury. I was close to despairing, but it dawned on me that this was evidence that tightness was a large part of my problem. I hadn't activated my muscles in any way for 48 hours, and stupidly I didn't stretch before running on Wednesday. It relieved me somewhat to think that all this was caused only by tightness somewhere. But where? So many muscles were involved, but what was the root of the problem? That same day I read an article that led me to think that tightness in my psoas was the underlying problem, since apparently that can cause secondary tightness in all the other muscles where I was feeling pain. (Apparently you often don't feel psoas tightness directly because it's such a deep muscle). So I started doing psoas stretches before and after running. Perhaps coincidentally, my next three runs went ok. On both Thursday and Friday I felt looser and felt less (but still some) direct pain along my hip bone (iliac crest). On Saturday I headed to the treadmill without a plan but thinking that I might pick up the pace a bit if I felt ok again. After three miles in the 7-teens I felt fine, so I then went to 7-flat and gradually picked it up every half mile until I got to 6:30/mi. pace and three (more) miles. That's not very fast, but I did feel it a little in my hip as my form stretched out some. The next day (Sunday) I was ok, though, and ran 6 easy miles as normal. That was about the safest possible way to test whether my hip can handle running faster right now, and it was neither encouraging nor entirely discouraging. I'm going to have to keep taking baby steps forward. Today (Monday) I finally had my appointment with a physical therapist. I found a great (but expensive) running-specific PT who put me through various strength tests and videotaped me running on a treadmill. In addition to giving me tips on running form (my feet land too far in front of my body, and my arms swing unevenly) and posture (I slouch while sitting and shift my hips forward while standing, both of which put pressure on my lower back), he discovered significant strength imbalances in my hip muscles. Something has caused certain muscles in my right hip (especially my TFL) to atrophy. After finding my right side to be significantly weaker on some strength tests, the PT started probing around and said that he could feel the difference in the size and tension of certain muscles when comparing my right and left sides. "There's just nothing there," he said of my right TFL. Well, no wonder it hurts. A puny, atrophied muscle that isn't firing correctly will get tight and hurt when dragged through activities that healthy muscles can handle. So what has caused muscles in my right hip to atrophy? The search for an answer to this question was inconclusive. The PT looked for evidence of some underlying lower back problem, but it seemed to me that he must not have found the evidence he was looking for because at that point he started talking about psoas tightness, which is common in distance runners and squares with the tightness I've been feeling well above my hip just below my rib cage (where the psoas attaches to the spine). So he gave me some exercises to do to resurrect the dead muscles in my hip and asked me to come back (and pay more) for some acupuncture that might shock them back to life. I guess I'm relieved that he didn't find any major strain, but at the same time of course I'm annoyed to learn that my muscles are weak and imbalanced. When I was a kid, my dad used to wake me up - after I'd slept through the five previous attempts to wake me up - by quickly pulling all the sheets off me. (Ok, maybe he did it only a couple times, but it worked and I remembered it). I'm going to pull the sheets off those atrophied muscles in my right hip, and I'll even pay for acupuncture if that might help. Maybe this is also what I need to jolt me into regularly doing the ("core") strength exercises that I've known for a long time that I should be doing.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

WEEKLY SUMMARY (January 20-26): 16 miles (100% easy)
  Sunday: off
  Monday: off
  Tuesday: 6 miles at 7:19/mi. on a treadmill
  Wednesday: off
  Thursday: off
  Friday: 5 miles at 7:26/mi.
  Saturday: 5 miles at 7:30/mi.

I was feeling pretty confident when I wrote my previous post just after last Saturday's 18-miler. Things seemed to be going so well that I wondered what was going on. As the Stranger from California warned me several months ago: when things seem to be going really well, especially when they seem to be going too well, you might be right on the edge of falling apart. Indeed. The hip problem that nagged me last Saturday sidelined me this week, and it's too early to tell how far back it has set me. It seems to be a cluster of problems rather than a single injury, all centered around my right hip area. Hip flexors, glutes (especially medius), lower abdominal muscles (especially obliques), and maybe my upper IT band are implicated. When I first noticed a slight pain in that area around two weeks ago, it was on the outside of my hip near the top of my IT band. So maybe that's the source of the problem, or maybe not. I've had lower back problems for a long time, and hip issues are often related to back issues. But I don't know exactly what's up, and I'll try to get an appointment with a sports doctor soon. But I don't need to know exactly what's up in order to do what I've always done with injuries: rest if and only if the pain crosses the line beyond which running could make matters worse. I was clearly over that line on Sunday, the day after the 18-miler; and possibly on Monday, which I took off in any case because I just wanted the problem to go away. On Tuesday it felt better but not completely healed, so I ran on the treadmill in order to assess things while avoiding the stress of running on asphalt. My hip tightened up some as the run progressed, but it was no big deal. But afterwards and for the next couple of days it was worse. When I ran again on Friday (outside this time), it didn't feel much different while I was running than it did on the treadmill a few days earlier. Afterwards it felt worse again, but less so than before. So I hazarded running again the next day (Saturday) and felt marginally less bad afterwards. By then I was feeling pretty heavy (I've gained a few pounds this week) and out of shape from all those days off and from doing so little even on the days I did run. But my body still doesn't feel like it wants me to do any more. Today (Sunday) I skipped the half-marathon that I had registered for and went to the gym intending to cross train on the bike. But I ended up running 6 miles on the treadmill instead, stretching carefully both beforehand and afterwards. Cross training just isn't my thing. I'll do it if I have to, but I guess I haven't been driven quite that far yet. It has been a depressing week, though. Last year at this exact time I had a hamstring injury and skipped the same half-marathon that I skipped today. In fact, the race organizers were kind enough to defer my registration from last year to this year, but again I didn't show up. Maybe next year I won't sign up for any races in late January, or at least not that one. Next week I have no plan except to take things one day at a time.