While I was Away

Haven't posted much because until recently haven't run much.  Having more or less successfully completed 9 months of exercise physiology and major changes to my gait and stride I can now run pain free.  The weird thing is that I can't both maintain correct posture, gait and stride and my breathing all at the same time.  So its kind of a best 3 out of 4 at any one time.

I'm at the very end of the walk run rehab portion of my recovery where I tend to walk a bit every 12-15 minutes which isn't a lot different before I saw the doc in early 2015 after lumbering through a painful and not that fun New Orleans half-marathon with Matt Sag.

Three nice things to report running wise.  About a month ago, I finished the Chicago half in just under my lousy New Orleans but pain free, running better, and enjoying it more.

Second, I took advantage of a heavy domestic travel schedule and I ran in Little Rock, Providence, New Orleans, and Chicago all in a 12 day period! My main take away from this is that Little Rock has its River Run half right and man is Providence hilly.  Also fun to rerun the last half of the New Orleans actually enjoying it compared to January.

Finally, best wishes to Matt Sag who is running NYC this weekend for his third marathon in the past 7 weeks.  Truly inspired and crazy even by the standards of this esteemed blog.

Race Report -- Hudson Mohawk Marathon

Sunday, October 11, I ran my last marathon of my early 50s -- the Hudson Mohawk Marathon, from Schenectady to Albany along the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers.  I picked it for one set of reasons, and enjoyed it for an entirely different set.  The original concept was that a whole bunch of us from the South Brooklyn Running Club would go and use the race to try to qualify for Boston.  The race is small.  The course is pretty flat and net downhill.  What's not to like.  As we got closer to race date, however, the phalanx dwindled due to injuries and other health concerns.  By the time the race rolled around, it was just me and F.   Oh well, the few, the proud.

As I have detailed earlier, I'd been wrestling with various goals -- BQ, PR, 4 hours. . .  Quite frankly any of those would count as a success, but the question was which one to aim for.  Boston qualifying was the original idea.  In 2012 I ran 3:42 -- a freakish outlier and PR.  The qualifying standard for me for 2017 is 3:40.  That seemed vaguely within reach.  That is, until the qualifying standard for 2016 was announced to be 2:30 under the stated standard.  There's a big difference between a two minute PR and a 5 minute PR.  That knocked the wind out of my sails, along with the fact that I simply did not feel quite as fit as I was in 2012.

That said, I made a plan (in conjunction with my guru M).  Go out at a stead 8:20 pace (3:40), and if there's gas at 20, light the afterburners -- Hah!!  There were two flaws in this plan, and I knew them. It assumed: (1) that 8:20 was a conservative, rather than aggressive pace; and (2) that I have ever, ever, ever, in my life, run negative splits in a Marathon.  Oh well, go big or go home, right??

So that's what I did.  After a cold wait for the start, I lined up with the 3:40 pace group, and headed out.   While at the time, I thought (due to Garmin peculiarities) that we had gone out a bit fast, careful review of the data showed stead 8:15-8:20 miles from the start.  I felt good, comfortable, the weather was cooperating.  The course was spectacular -- first country roads, then the shores of the Mohawk River on a perfect fall day.  I hit the half marathon right on schedule -- 1:49.30 and held pace, mostly (okay, assuming 8 minute miles for the last 10K), through 20 (2:49.40) miles. Without going into the details, though, I slowed a little bit at 18-19, over a tough part of the course, gunned it to get back on pace at 20, and then blew up big.

It wasn't an injury blow up. I just ran out of gas.  My legs just wouldn't go anymore.  My heart rate dropped, and I lost my mojo.  I was okay doing the survival shuffle, but not much more.  I stopped to pee, I chatted with the other broken souls, and gutted it out.  End result, 3:55 and a bit.  Gotta say, that surprised me.  Out of defeat, a pretty nice victory.  Sub-4 hours, 9 minutes faster than last year, and in what I usually think of as my happy zone.  The vast majority of my marathons have been in the zone of 3:50-3:55, with the plurality in the vicinity of 3:54-3:55.  I am so _not_ complaining with that result.

Another one for the books!

Marathon Tune-up

Calf healed just in time for me run the Marathon Tune-up as a last long run before Hudson-Mohawk.  I ran a mile before the race, and then joined M who was leading the 4 hour marathon pace group as an official pacer.  His assigned goal was 9:09 miles.  I ran with the group for 12, then took off and finished at an 8:59 pace.  I felt good, finished strong, and was happy with it. I've been way faster at this distance, but whatever.  The odd thing was that my Garmin and the race had almost nothing to do with each other.  The Garmin measured the course as .5 miles shorter than the markers, and my pace as therefore considerably slower. I'm not sure what to do with that information.  I am going to go out on a limb, and assume that NYRR has a fair amount of experience placing mile markers in Central Park . . .

Flash Back Friday -- Barefoot shoes

On Tuesday I got inspired to dig to the bottom of my closet for my now vintage 5-finger shoes from 2012.  I've been working on reestablishing my quick cadence short stride form, and I used to find that a few miles in the Vibrams was a good form drill.  

I thoroughly enjoyed the run.  I kept my cadence above 180, my vertical displacement came down as did my ground contact time.  I worked on a relaxed smooth flow through.  I had planned to do a few laps of Cadman Plaza for a mile or 2.   I felt so good, and it was such a nice morning that I decided to run the Brooklyn Bridge.  When I was done with a three mile jaunt I felt loose and comfortable.  Big success.

Until, and, of course, this was to be expected, the next morning, when my left calf tightened up like gangbusters.  Oh yeah, that's what happened the first day I ran barefoot on Christmas morning 2011.  Oy!  I took yesterday off, and did a short run today, and it seemed to loosen up, but there's still a "spot."  Someday I'll learn not to make the same mistake twice . .. 

Why Runners Inexorably Slow with age

Interesting article in NYT Science Times today.  Spoiler alert, shorter strides due to changing muscle use.  antidote may  be specific form of strength training.

Pickletrophy!!

Thursday was the annual Superfund Super Run, sponsored by my friends at the South Brooklyn Running Club.

The race falls into the "goofy things runners do" category.  It starts at 10:00 pm and runs a 10K from one polluted industrial canal (Newtown Creek) to another (Gowanus Canal), finishing at one of our favorite bars (Lavender Lake).   There's no real course.  The challenge is to get from point to point as fast as you can.  There's a division of opinion as to whether the fastest route is the shortest, or the flattest, or just the one where you're least likely to get lost . . . 

The race sold out, but the field was slightly depleted due to, um, rain.  Still, about 50 folks showed up to run.  My training has been long and slow, so a 10K made some sense.  What the heck.  My goal was to try to run 8s, or as close as I could muster.  Three of us (Arvi, Caroline and I) agreed on that goal.  We did not, however, agree on route.  Caroline and Arvi planned to make a key turn at Gold (slightly longer, more complicated, but flat), and I had planned to turn at Washington (hill, but won't get lost).  We set out.  Caroline took off way too fast.  I know this because I went out way too fast and she went out faster.  I assured Arvi that we'd come back together, and we did, but we still ran the first mile in 7:45.  Yikes.  Then I got inspired, and kept going, blowing past the two of them, running the second mile in 7:50.  The field split pretty badly, and I found myself running by myself along deserted Brooklyn streets.  I slowed to 8 and change, and then Arvi and Caroline came back (or so I thought).  We ran together under the BQE, and then we came to the route decision point and Caroline (or at least I thought it was Caroline) turned toward Washington and Arvi continued toward Gold.  Rather than follow Arvi, I followed the person I thought was Caroline, but she got a few steps on me and picked it up.  I hung in behind her, keeping her in sight, but about 50 yards behind.  Our pace slowed pretty badly, down to 8:30 plus, and then, disaster struck.  At Atlantic Avenue Caroline (who might or might not actually be Caroline) caught the light and I got stuck -- for about 45 seconds.  Argh!! Then I took off and finished the last mile at 8:30.  As I was coming down Third Avenue a clutch of runners came up from behind, and I kicked it out with them, finishing in a pretty tight group.  I averaged 8:20 (I stopped my Garmin at the light), which is a little bit slower than I'd hoped, but it was dark, rainy and dark.  

The coolest part was that due to some good luck and a statistical anomaly or two, I achieved what may be a first for the blog:  Age Group Honors!!  I came in third for my age group and won a jar of pickles.  The race didn't have classic age groups, as there were only 50 runners, so they divided the field in thirds.  I was in the 38 and over age group.  Actually, I was the oldest guy in the race at 53.  Luckily for me, the next oldest guy, Joe, celebrated his 52d birthday by winning the race, so he didn't count.


 Oh, and it turned out that Caroline wasn't Caroline at all.  She finished a minute or so back, and I never found out who I'd been chasing. Arvi got lost, and was a few minutes further back yet . . . 

Anyway, that was probably the most fun I've had at night in the rain . . . 

What My Watch Says I Can Do

Just before doing the NYC Tri I bought a new Garmin Tri-watch.  As I mentioned before, it has a bunch of nifty features that are new to me, like a cadence monitor and a vertical displacement monitor.  These two measures, turnover and bounce have turned out to be useful to watch while I run.  My natural cadence seems to be about 170 footfalls per minute (85 steps).  But, if I can take it up to 180, my bounce goes down, and everything gets a lot smoother.  It also usually means I speed up, but I've also tried going slowly at a quick cadence and this turns out to be a pretty good drill.  My better runs in the last few weeks have had me averaging 175 footfalls per minute. The difference is not in pace.  I'm averaging about the same speed, but I feel less beat up at the end of the run.  Perhaps because I'm "galumphing" a bit less.

More recently, I've discovered a couple of other toys buried in the new watch's programming.  An estimated VO2 Max and a race predictor.  My first instinct was to consider both of these features to be sort of BS.  How can you measure VO2 max without, well, equipment.  But here's the interesting thing.  A few years ago -- the last time I was running well -- I went on line and looked at a few race predictors and an algorithm that estimated VO2 max based on race times and body weight.

Anyway, I remember that at the time, the race predictors pretty accurately matched my 5K time to my  10K time to my 1/2 marathon time.  They also predicted a marathon of just under 3:30 (which is a white elephant of mine).  As I recall, these same measurements generated an estimated VO2 max of 45ish.  That's nothing to write home about.  World class athletes measure up in the high 80s and low 90s.

Well, when I found the measurements, the watch had decided I was at 45 for my VO2 max, and was predicting times just a hair slower than what I used to be able to do.  Hmm. that was encouraging.

A few long runs and a few days of speed work, and suddenly it is telling me that I've bumped up to 48, with predicted race times in line with my former PRs.

I will admit that I'm feeling better than I have in a couple of years, but these times still seem quite ambitious.  On the other hand, I'll take any encouragement my watch chooses to offer me.

I guess my next measurement point is a club 10K in two weeks.  I'll report back.