first Marathon baby step

Twenty-nine weeks to go until Fargo. My first goal is to work up to 35-39 miles per week by the end of November. I'll end up with 24 miles this week and plan for 26 next week. So far so good. But yesterday it was 34 degrees for my 6am run. And this is Minnesota so there is a lot of colder weather ahead for me.

Basic plan of increasing mileage using the '10% rule':

Week starting	mileage
21-Oct	24
28-Oct	26
4-Nov	29
11-Nov	32
18-Nov	35
25-Nov	39

Fargo Marathon in 2008

It will be my first marathon! Training starts in a just a few months! Thinking about running my first marathon is exciting and scary at the same time.

--Mark

Back again (pun intended)

I hurt my back last Friday and the pain was gone for my race on Sunday. In kickboxing class Wednesday the pain came back. I left the class immediately and just walked for awhile. I suppose it will be a few weeks or so before I'm back to kickboxing. Running must not bother those particular back muscles because it was not an issue in the race and my back was fine afterwards too.

I have some exercises to do for my back and I'll be kicking again soon enough.

--Mark

Twin Cities 10-mile

TC-10

Humid and pretty hot today. Much hotter than the 10 mile trail race I ran 3 weeks ago. I learned what happens when you start out too fast.... You end too slow. :-(

The first 5 miles I averaged a 7:17 pace. I would be happy with that any day. The last 5 miles my average was 8:14. I think another primary factor in my slowdown was dehydration caused by the heat/humidity as well as my running hard. Dehydration increases heart rate and if I was trying to keep heart rate constant, the slowdown would be a natural side effect.

Almost a 1-1/2 years ago I had my anaerobic threshold tested at 160. I know it's higher than that now. I've been thinking that it's about 165. Then why in the world did I maintain the averages I did? The first 2 miles averaged 159 but you see my max in that segment was 170. It was already too late and there was not much chance of running at a lower rate now. I tried to keep my HR at 172/173 and held on for the ride. Unfortunately, the ride shifted into low gear at the half-way point. My form was good, I felt good, but I knew if I ran any faster my HR would shoot through the roof. Like it wasn't already.

Lap Ttl-Time Lap Time_ Max Avg Min Dst min/mile
1. 0:14:00.0 0:14:00.0 170 159 111 2.0 7:00
2. 0:21:15.6 0:07:15.6 175 171 167 1.0 7:15
3. 0:28:35.4 0:07:19.8 174 171 165 1.0 7:19
4. 0:36:23.3 0:07:47.9 175 172 169 1.0 7:48
5. 0:44:42.9 0:08:19.6 174 172 168 1.0 8:19
6. 0:53:14.1 0:08:31.2 176 173 168 1.0 8:31
7. 1:09:36.9 0:16:22.8 178 173 168 2.0 8:11
8. 1:17:33.1 0:07:56.2 180 175 173 1.0 7:56

I ended up finishing 374th out of 5080 which puts me in the top 8%. I can't complain about that.

TC Marathon

After my race I showered at the club and went back to watch the marathon runners. I parked and walked about 2 miles to my friends house. I figured the walking would be good for me. I think it was. I watched the marathon for about 45 minutes. At this point I'm seeing the 4+ hour runners at around the 24 mile mark. Many were doing well. Many more were not. As I was walking back to my car, a runner came off the road, sat down, and fell over. Three other runners and myself came to his aid, as well as several nearby volunteers. I'm glad the guy lived because I thought he was going to die right there. He was non-responsive to verbal questions and he could barely see. He started to come around with some water, sports drink, GU, and salt. One of the runners who stopped was a nursing student. The positive was that three runners stopped to help. The negative was that the volunteers didn't have the proper phone number list immediately available. The ambulance came and provided additional assistance. He was talking and thanked us all for helping. I wasn't able to help much but at least I knew to check the back of the guy's number tag for emergency contact and medical info.

--Mark

Pain in the back

I'm running the Twin Cities 10 mile race tomorrow. Doesn't it figure that yesterday afternoon I had a shooting pain appear in my lower back? It's not gone yet. :-( It won't be gone tomorrow. I've had a lower back spasm happen a few years ago. That time it took about 3 weeks to get better. What I have now is nowhere near that bad. I'll be able to run tomorrow but with the relatively high humidity and temperatures in the forecast, along with my new back pain, I won't be making my stretch-goal of running 7:10s.

--Mark

W.H.O.Rs in the night...

The middle of the night is when we passed the Women High on Running (W.H.O.Rs) in the 208.2 mile Great River Relay race held in August. The Great River Relay is from La Crosse, WI, up the east side of the Mississippi/St. Croix rivers to Stillwater, MN, and then to Minneapolis. The W.H.O.Rs have a great video of their race experience. I hope to meet Jen next year. I chased her up a HUGE hill in the middle of the night and couldn't catch her. Maybe next year I can.

--Mark

Recovering after racing

I've read that recovery takes a day per mile. I was searching on the internet for info about recovering and found an article that states recovery takes 4 to 6 days per hour. Using 5 days per hour for me seems about right after reading the article.

My example is my Afton 25K race on July 7th. On the 19th I posted that I was recovered from the race. That is 12 days later. Taking my race time of 2.33 hours multiplied by 5 rounds up to 12 days. It's right on.

Here is a like to the article: Recovery after Racing by Gale Bernhardt
--Mark

Harmon Farms 10 miler

I ran the first annual Harmon Farms 10 miler trail race in Inver Grove Heights, MN on Sunday, September 16th. The race is held in Salem Hills Park on mountain bike trails. Being a first year race, there were 100 or so registered to run. In the end, 89 finished.

The race director asked people to line up according to their speed. I wanted to be near the front but there was only one lone guy at the front of the pack. Just before the start, several others joined him. I felt better, because by the looks of the crowd, I was not going to finish in 2nd place. At the starting horn we were off. I think there were 6 guys in front of me as we took off. The first .75 miles was in open parkland and paved walking trails. Then we entered the park mountain bike trails for most of the rest of the race and the finish was the reverse of the start with .75 miles of open park / paved trails again.

The morning was cool in the low 50's and there was a slight breeze. Pretty nice weather for a race but I had been freezing my butt off before the start in my sleeveless shirt and light, long-distance running shorts. I knew I would warm up soon enough. At mile 1 I hit the split on my watch and noted a 7:16. Pretty fast for the terrain. Mile markers were not placed at every mile so I couldn't keep track of my pace very well. I was running by my heart rate and knew I was testing my threshold for a 10-mile race.

For the first 5 miles there was a 17 year old running right behind me. Nobody could run side-by-side as it was all single-track bike trails. I chatted a bit with the young guy and he knew he was first in his age category. I didn't know if I was or not. I'm in the 40-49 age group and was hoping not many of those in front were in the 40's. There was a guy about 100 feet behind me most of the race. I thought he just might be in the 40's so there was no way he was passing me. You see, they were giving out awards for the top three in each age/sex category. After mile 5 there were 10 runners in front of me including the 17 year old that passed me because I took more time at the water stop to have a little GU and water.

Near the end of the race I caught up to the 17 year old and the guy tailing me was still right behind me. I increased my pace so he couldn't catch me and I stayed right with the young guy to the finish. My finishing time as a new 10-mile PR for me at 1:14:28 for a 7:27 pace. I was 11th out of 89 finishers. The results got posted and I was 4th in my age group. Ugh. But wait... They had an award for the first male/female finishers from Inver Grove Heights (I was not) and he was from my age group. They didn't give double awards so they moved me up and gave me the third age-group award. Yes! I'll take the $20 certificate to one of my favorite running stores! It almost paid for the entry fee!

It was a great race for me and I'll do it again next year.
--Mark

Only 275,000 footsteps to go

I ran the Great River Ragnar Relay on August 24th and 25th with 10 other team members. Our team name is "Only 275,000 footsteps to go". That's about how many I figured it would take. The race was originally planned for 198 miles this year from LaCrosse, WI up to Stillwater and then to Minneapolis. With the 35W bridge collapse and then some police lines from a chase/shooting Friday night, sections were re-routed and the new mileage was 208.2.

We had 12 team members. Six in each of two vans. How it works is that starting in LaCrosse, each of the six in Van 1 runs their legs. Then Van 2's runners run. It switches back to Van 1 then Van 2 for two more times. Each runner has to run three legs in the race from 3 to 8 miles each. I ran 7.4 at 11am then 8.2 at 10:30?pm then 7.1 at 6:30am. My total was 22.7.

Oh... At the beginning I said 10 other team members. Van 1 was planning to leave for LaCrosse at 6am Friday. Well, at 3:58am one of the team members called and cancelled due to a leaky water softner in his house. Three others on the team had to run his legs in addition to their own. We sure didn't plan on that.

Most on our team have said this has been the best running experience of their lives. I think that says alot. Our finishing time was 28 hours, 40 minutes, and 31 seconds which is an 8:16 average pace. We finished in 17th place overall out of the 99 teams that finished. We can't wait until next year.

My average pace was a 7:57. I can't complain about that.

--Mark

Urban Wildland half-marathon

Saturday, August 4th was the Urban Wildland half marathon.

I decided to run the first mile at 8:45 and then every mile speedup by 5 seconds. Well, water stops and slow runners put a little kink in the plan but I didn't care. And in the race I saw a woman cheering people on that I used to work with 20+ years ago. I stopped to chat for 20 or 30 seconds. It made the race FUN. It was AWESOME trying to keep to my plan of running negative splits every mile. Every mile didn't work out exactly like I planned but I ended up at 1:49:05 instead of around 1:48. My first mile was around 10:20 due to me starting way back in line and being in the traffic jam of people. One woman fell when she stepped in a hole in the grass in the first 0.25 miles. It looked like a very, very, bad spain or maybe worse. Around mile 4 I kind of got back on my pace plan. It was great just passing people on and on as each mile I ran slightly faster while others were slowing down. I would do this again when I'm not going for a PR.

Here are my paces:

mile	Planned pace	Actual pace	Fast or slow?	Ave HR for segment
1	8:45	10:17	1:32 slow	130
2	8:40	8:06	0:34 fast	141
3	8:35	9:14	0:39 slow	138
4	8:30	8:46	0:16 slow	147
5	8:25	8:14	0:11 fast	152
6	8:20	8:18	0:02 fast	152
7	8:15	8:20	0:05 slow	155
8	8:10	7:51	0:19 fast	160
9	8:05	8:27	0:22 slow	156
10	8:00	7:28	0:32 fast	167
11	7:55	8:07	0:12 slow	162
12	7:50	7:39	0:11 fast	171
13	7:45	7:28	0:16 fast	175
13.1	0:47	0:45	0:02 fast	176

My next race is the Great River Relay on August 24th and 25th. Twelve-person teams run 198 miles from LaCrosse, to Stillwater to Minneapolis. Each person runs 3 legs of 3 to 8 miles each. Mine are 6.1, 7.6, and 6.1 miles for a total of 17.6 miles. I wonder how the 7.6 mile leg that I will be running at 2am will go?

--Mark

Recovered from Afton

A few weeks before Afton, I strained a hamstring during a fitness class. Of course, I kept running on it and each day it was a little better than the day before. Going into Afton I felt it was at 95%. That wasn't enough and I was hurting bad after the race. So... I quit running completely to let the damage heal. I've been doing some aerobic exercise - spinning, swimming, kickboxing and also some moderate strength training. I've also spent some time walking on a treadmill with short bursts of moderate speed running sprinkled in. Right now, I feel about as close to 100% as I can get. Next Tuesday I plan to start running again outside. I can't wait but I feel it's better to do just a bit more cross-training before getting into running mode again. Next race: Urban Wildland Half Marathon on August 4th in Richfield, MN.

--Mark

Afton 25K 2007

I've been wondering when a race would break me. It happened at the Afton 25K trail run on July 7, 2007. I ran with my friend Christine on that very hot and humid day. Christine and I stayed together for 13.5 miles. It was awesome to run with someone the same speed as I am. I think we both pulled and pushed each other to run faster than we would alone. After mile 13.5 Christine pulled ahead, or more likely I fell behind. I finished with an excellent time of 2:19:56.

This is the first time I took GU in a race. I tried it a few times during practice runs at Afton. There are 5 water stops in the 25K. I decided to just drink water at the first stop and all later stops I was going to take half a GU packet along with water. I had been reading that a half packet along with a typical drink of water during a race gives the correct ratio of GU/Water. Right or wrong? I don't know. That combination worked for me.

That run wore me out. I tried running with a friend two days after the race and had to quit after 0.25 miles. I was just too sore. I feel much better tonight, and will take a kickboxing class in the morning, the 4th day after the race. Although we have a family vacation planned for next year this time, I look forward to another Afton 25K in two years.

I record my heart rate during exercising. An anotated chart of my run is shown below. I'm not exactly sure where my anaerobic threshold is now. A year or so ago I had it measured at 160 on a treadmill.


--Mark