Chicago Marathon Training (week 10)

Another week done. The plan for this week called for 0-4-9-4-0-9-19. Actual was 0-4-6-6-0-19-9. Monday through Wednesday I actually got up early and went for a walk Monday and ran Tuesday and Wednesday. Then Thursday and Friday I went back to staying up too late and not getting up early. I enjoy getting up early and getting my exercise in but I also enjoy staying up late. I wish I needed less sleep.

 

My 19 mile run was a challenge to say the least. It was raining for the first half and 19 miles is just a long way to run. Since it was raining and I knew I was going to be running for 3+ hours, I was concerned about chaffing and blisters. Besides the normal band aids on my nipples and Body Glide on areas known to chaff, I put a little Aquaphor on my toes and balls of my feet. No blisters so at the least, it didn't hurt. I did have some chaffing on the left side of my back from my heart rate strap and/or shirt. It was bad enough that my shirt turned pink from blood. Lesson learned there. I took pictures but decided to spare you all. You're welcome :-).

I did cheat a bit on my MAF training and let my heart rate go into the mis 150's instead of the mid 140's that I usually try to maintain. I figured that in the race, I'll be letting my hr go up so I might as well do it on my long runs. 3+ hours is a long time to run. Long enough that I started getting sore during the run. That's no fun and made me question why I'm even doing this. I suppose that is normal thinking when running the furthest I've ever run on pavement, logging my biggest mileage week ever and being on pace to have my biggest running month ever.

That said, I'm hungry, like all the time...

Grill two, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, amd corn.

 

Grill one. Bacon pork kabobs.

 

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Week 5 - Marathon Training

The plan this week was 0-3-7-3-0-7-14 actual was 0-0-7-0-0-14-7. I worked late Tuesday and traveled Thursday but got my medium and long runs in. I guess if you are going to miss two runs, it might as well be the two short ones.

Besides the mileage, I had a couple mental toughness runs this week. Wednesday I was in Solon Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland) at my remote office and set out for a run after work. The hourly weather forecast said 0 % chance of rain but there were rain showers popping up in the area. About 2 miles from the hotel, it started sprinkling which then turned into a moderate rain. No lightning and no SAG support so I kept going. A half mile later I turned around and started to head back playing the rationalization game in my head of "5 miles is close enough to 7". Then about 15 minutes later it stopped raining so I added 2 miles back on and hit the 7 on the plan.

Saturday I set out for my 14 miler about 10 am and it was already in the mid 80's with humidity just over 70% putting the heat index around 90. By mile 3 I was pretty much drenched in sweat and by mile 6 I was a little dizzy and started the rationalization game again. This time i was working on convincing myself that if I did 11 and followed up with 11 more on Sunday it would be the same as the planned 14 and 7. When I got to my first water refill point at mile 8, I poured a bunch of water over my head and started to perk up a little.

Broken water fountain :-(

Luckily there is another fountain at this park. After cooling off, I figured I could make it the ~2 miles to the next park, do the water over the head trick.

Ahhhh

That felt so good. Now I was just past 10 miles and the heat index was in the upper 90's. Now I figured I could make it ~2 miles to the next water fountain and cool off again then make it home.

Shortly before setting off on my last 4 miles, my wife showed up on her bike to bring me cold water! How awesome is that? I email her a link to Garmin Live Track before every run mostly so that if I die of a heart attack, she'll know where to send the meat wagon even if some animals drag me into the woods :-). Anyway, 14 miles in the books.

The plan for Sunday was "just" 7 miles. It was a little cooler, but not much so I planned my route to end at the park with the cold water, then walk the 3/4 mile home to finish "cooling off".

Broke out the visor for the first time this year.

 

Anyway, week 5 is in the books. Week 6 is a slight cutback week.

 

My friend Jill commented on my last post asking how training is going. The short answer is slow. Still trying the Maffetone thing and with all the variables, I can't really tell if it's working. The long answer will be a future post :-).

 

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Week 4 - Marathon Training

Technically last week was week four though actually it was week three since I was fishing most of week one. I've decided to loosely follow the Hal Higdon Novice 2 plan. By loose I mean skipping one of the three weekday runs when I'm busy and biking instead of running for the shorter weekend run when tired.

Here are a couple pics from my fishing trip.

 

I'm not a good fishermen, but being out in nature is relaxing, except for the boat vs. boat competiveness :-). I don't have a carbon fiber bike yet, but I now have a carbon fiber reel and it's sweet.

Fourth of July we had about 20 people over for a cookout before some neighbors did an impressive firework display (allegedly since fireworks are illegal in Illinois). I made steak kabobs using beef tendorloin and veggie kabobs. About 30 beef and 20 veggies. It turned out well (no left overs).

 

So, back to marathon training. The plan for last week (starting Monday) was 0-3-6-3-0-6-13. I did 0-3-6-0-0-13-6. Thursday was the day before the 4th so I went to happy hour with a couple friends instead of running 3 miles. I switched the long run to Saturday since it was cooler and more convenient. I woke up Sunday to those heavy sore legs that could use a spin,but ran instead. It wasn't pretty,but I loved being able to be out running given my Achilles has been acting up.

 

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Product Review - Under Armour Spine Shoes

I received a pair of Under Armour Spine Shoes from Kovas as a result of a product give away on his blog. I didn't win, outright but when the winner didn't claim the prize, I was the beneficiary of the roll down. I was pretty excited since I love trying new gear and writing about it, specially gear I probably wouldn't buy on my own.

I've been doing a lot of trail running the last few months and have been using my trusty New Balance 1080 road shoes. I always wondered if a trail shoe would be better but never got around to really looking into it, until now.

I received the shoes a few days ago and at first glance they look like a normal shoe. Flip them over and they don't look so normal. The tread pattern is very aggressive with deep grooves for traction. The other major difference between these shoes and typical road shoes is the tread material. The tread has a relatively hard plastic feel vs. the rubbery feel of traditional shoes even though the Under Armour website says they are made of rubber.

Yes, I was too lazy to crop out the trash can in the background :-)

Nice deep treads

Last time these will be clean :-)

Once I put the shoes on I noticed a nice fit up top with a nice roomy toe box. The soles felt a little stiff walking around but not too bad. The shoes squeaked like basketball shoes when walking across the tile floor in my kitchen, nothing a little dirt won't fix :-).

I headed out to some of my favorite single track at the university and gave them a try on a nice, warm 60 degree day in January. With some heavy rain just a couple days earlier, I knew I would get in a good test on some slippery spots. I wasn't more than 10 or 15 steps into the woods when I immediately noticed the fantastic traction these shoes offer. I've honestly never experienced the sure footed feeling I had and was excited to put these shoes through their paces. When I reached the first slick spot, I didn't even have to change my gait where with regular running shoes, I would shorten my stride significantly to make sure I did t slip and fall. What a great feeling! Slick hill? No problem. Muddy stretch at a slant? Not an issue. Now I realize what I was missing trail running in a road shoe.

About 40 minutes into my run, I ran on a paved multi-use path to get to the next set of single track. The shoe felt stiff and made a clomping sound. Kind of like running with wood soles. I definitely won't be retiring my road shoes any time soon. After a brief stint on the paved path, I was back on the single track and enjoying the superior traction of these shoes. I'm not sure if its the shoes or the fact that I was running late for an appointment, but I PR'd my 6 mile loop by over three minutes without trying too hard. Being able to take full strides through tricky spots had to be a big chunk of that 3 minutes.

Overall I'm impressed with these shoes and would recommend giving them a try if you are in the market for a trail shoe. For running on pavement, I would stick with what is already working for you.

(Disclaimer: I was given these shoes for free from Under Armour. I did not pay for the shoes, receive payment for this review, agree to give a positive review, or agree to review them at all. Aside from information gleaned from the company website, the opinions are my own.)

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2012 Report Card

I had three goals for 2012 which were revised after injuring my knees.

 

Goal #1 - Go sub-6 at Door County Half Iron July 22nd.

Changed to take in enough nutrition to not visit the med tent. Success though I did throw up afterward. Grade = A.

 

Goal #2 - Go sub 1:45 at the RnR half marathon St. Louis October 21st.

- This one is a real stretch considering my PR is 1:55 and some change.

Changed to "don't get injured trying to be faster. Success, set a 5 minute PR without injury! Grade = A.

 

Goal #3 - Lose 10 pounds by May 20th (Carlyle Oly)

Total failure! I weighed the same on race day as I did January 1st. Grade = F.

 

That puts me at a D for the year (if I did my math right it's 67%) though I'm tempted to bump that to a C since I've traveled 10 weeks in a row and made it through Christmas and Thanksgiving only gaining two pounds and I weigh a couple pounds less than last year at this time.

 

I also managed a 5 minute PR at a Sprint tri, did an Olympic tri a week later and did a Sprint tri in Boston. I also set a distance PR by three miles at Patrick's 12 hour run.

Volume wise I was down from 2011 for swimming and biking and slightly up for running.

2011

Swim = 77,000 yards in 35 hours and 16 minutes

Bike = 2,500 miles in 167 hours

Run = 707 miles in 121 hours and 40 minutes

 

2012

Swim = 52,000 yards in 18 hours and 6 minutes (not as much volume, but way faster)

Bike = 1943 miles in 118 hours and 24 minutes

Run = 832 miles in 140 hours and 43 minutes

All in all it was another good year in the exercise and racing area. I'm not sure what 2013 is going to bring. I'm a planner and usually have most if not all of my races picked out. Things are busy at work and I expect heavy travel and lots of overtime, at least for the next couple of months. We'll see what happens after that.

Happy New Year!

 

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Product Review: Kiefer Mach 5 Goggles

Steven over at Kiefer sent me a note and asked if I would review one of their products. Kiefer makes performance swimwear, so it's obvious Steven hasn't looked up any of my swim times :-). I have a habit of leaving goggles in the shower! so I decided goggles would be the way to go.

The goggles came in a small plastic case with a couple spare nose connectors.

There were protective plastic pieces over each lense.

I tried them on before heading to the pool thinking I would need to adjust them a bit but they fit perfectly right out of the box.

Sporting some hat hair for a goofy picture.... No pool pics, sorry :-).

On to the pool. The goggles fit well again. They fit in the eye socket and the fit reminded me of Speedo Vanquishers. On the first lap I had some minor leakage on the nose side on the left and ear side on the right. A quick press on both goggles quickly corrected that. The goggles were comfortable and didn't fog at all. It wasn't long until I forgot I was even wearing goggles, which is always a good sign with gear.

Kiefer also has goggles with vision correction which would be nice for people that wear glasses. I wear my contacts in the pool, so they weren't for me. Kiefer also makes other swim gear like fins, buoys, paddles and flotation devices. If you are in the market for some swim gear, check them out.

(Disclaimer: I was given Kiefer goggles for free, courtesy of Kiefer. I did not pay for the goggles, receive payment for this review, or agree to give a positive review. Aside from information gleaned from the company website, the opinions are my own.)

 

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Running Mental Scale

On a few of my long runs, I've been thinking about my running limiters. When I first started running, it would clearly flip between cardio and leg strength as I built up my mileage. Somewhere during the course of training for two half Ironmans, my limiter clearly became leg strength since all the swimming, biking, and running I was doing built my cardio to the point that my legs always limited me. During all this training I also came to realize mental toughness is just as much of a limiter as cardio and leg strength. Lately my mental running state has been at an all time high and thinking about how all over the place it's been, I decided to create a running mental scale. I can usually tell where my mental state is at based on how often I look at my watch and what I think when I see how long I've been running.

State 0. This is the run funk state that keeps you from even getting out the door. Not a good place to be at all.

1. This the the worst state that involves actual running where you look at your watch within two minutes of starting and already start negotiating with yourself on how short you can cut the run and still get some exercise.

2. Slightly better than state 1, but you know it's going to take some effort not to quit early. In this state, I usually figure out how long I'm going to run, figure out about how many songs that is on my iPod and start counting down how many more songs I have to go.

3. Feeling good about running. Glancing at the watch every 10-15 minutes thinking about how much longer you will be running.

4. Feeling really good about running. You don't look at the watch until well into the run but still have the end in site.

5. The ultimate running state. You don't look at your watch for at least an hour into your run and when you do, you think "how long do I get to run before I have to be somewhere". It's a great feeling.

 

Last weekend I joined Patrick for part of his 12 hour run. Patrick ended up running 46 miles and his friend Cheri did 50 miles! I knew I couldn't run for twelve hours so I slept in and showed up about 9:30 and joined them. I felt great and immediately settled in to run state 5. My cardio was perfect as well. We did two mile loops in the woods and stopped by our cars for water and fuel every loop. We didn't stop long because it was chilly in the wind. After about three hours of running my left hamstring was getting tight and very tender to the touch so I knew my day wasn't going to last as long as I wanted. I ended up running 18 miles (my longest run by three miles) in four hours. It's too bad because I had all day open and wanted to keep going.

What are your limiters? Do you have a mental running scale?

Random pics from this weekend.

You can't tell the depth from the picture above but when I stopped to take this picture, the far hillside seemed to shrink as I stared at it, Matrix like. It was a really weird depth perception moment that I'm guessing my eyes/brain were reconciling as I was looking at it.

Looking back at the trail you can see in the previous pic.

Random pic.

If I don't post again before Thanksgiving, have a great one! It's my favorite holiday.

 

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September Training

September was a running month, and I'm good with that. I'm still enjoying the simplicity of running and getting out 4-5 times per week. I don't have many 100 mile months so I was excited to see a total of 116. A quick check showed I've only been over 100 miles in a month once before and it was two years ago!

I follow people that run 2-3x that every month, but 100+ is good for me. If I could just add a few hundred bike miles and 20k yards of swimming, I would be all set :-).

As I mentioned in my last post, I bought a running belt that can hold my phone so now I can take pictures. I made it out for an 8.6 mile run Saturday. The leaves on a few trees are changing, but not many yet. Here are a couple pics.

 

 

So I'm starting to make plans for Patrick's 12 hour run next month so I decided to hit the trail this Sunday to see what I'll be up against. The trail is fairly technical with lots of roots. I tripped several times and fell hard twice. I need to learn to pick my feet up or I have no business being out there :-). Luckily I didn't fall on a root or break anything, but I am a little sore today. Whenever I fall, I try to remember to take a picture once I'm done cussing and checking for injuries. Here are a couple I took yesterday. Sorry if you follow me on instagram and have already seen these. Oh, I also bought a headlamp since the beginning of the run will be in the dark. Can't wait to try it out!

The first fall wasn't too bad, but it happened fast. One second I was running and the next I was looking straight up at the canopy.

The second happened just as fast and I went down hard! Jammed my shuffle into the ground and jammed a bunch of dirt into the on/off switch turning off my tunes. After turning it off and on a couple times, it started working again, phew!

When I came out of the woods, a couple mountain bikers were staring at me with my right side, shirt, shorts, knee, calf, etc covered with dirt. I responded with, "just completed some full contact running :-)".

On to October!

 

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Recovery week

In August I snapped out of my training funk and had a nice build (except for swimming). Three progressive weeks of longer workouts left my legs tired and sore but in a good way. They were sore enough that I scheduled a deep tissue massage. I'm kind of a prude when it comes to people touching me so you know I was hurting. If you've never had a deep tissue massage, they hurt but in a good way. Definitely no risk of falling asleep like you could during a gentle massage. As the therapist grinded away at the knots in my calves then proceeded to move my quads around feeling like they were slipping back and forth across my thigh, I winced a few times. Anyway, it definitely helped and I'll probably go back during my next recovery week assuming I keep building up though I have no real race to build up for :-(. I am doing a half marathon at the end of October and probably Patrick's 12 hour run November 11th. I probably won't run all of it but I'll stay and drink beer and cheer for Patrick and whoever else can run for that long.

Yep, no swimming in August. I just didn't feel like it the first two weeks and the pool was closed the second two weeks. I plan to get back at it this week.

With last week being a recovery week and this weekend being a three day weekend I decided to smoke some chickens. I like smoking meat but it's time consuming and with all the training I've been doing, just haven't made the time for it for a long time. I have a large smoker and if I'm going to spend a few hours prepping and the better part of a day smoking, I usually cook a little extra.

I decided to do pulled chicken since it takes a lot less time than brisket or pulled pork. Yesterday I prepped the chickens. Three have lowery season salt on them and one is done in soy sauce (for those that don't like pulled chicken.

First step, light the smoker and get it up to 220 degrees F.

2nd step - arrange the birds with care.

3rd step - add fuel and wood chips that have soaked in water all night. I'm using hickory today.

4th step - sit on the couch and blog while watching the temp. I have three remote thermometers so I have one measuring the air and the other two measuring the largest of the four birds.

Yum!

5th step - remove the birds when their internal temp is 165-170F.

6th step - let the birds rest for 10-15 minutes before carving.

While smoking the chickens for hours, I made some black bean salsa. One of my favorite side dishes. I posted the recipe here and refer back to it from time to time.



Happy Labor Day!

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Is it worth it?

After missing two days of training because life is busy (and I was feeling a little lazy), I started wondering if all this training is worth it.  I skipped one swim, one bike, and one run the last two days and as a result I had time to eat dinner with my family one night, sleep in an extra hour one day, and volunteer one evening.  It was a nice change of pace. Don't get me wrong, I would still need to do something to keep the weight in check and the heart healthy, but I wouldn't need to do quite as much.

My volume so far this year is good for me.  I've averaged 6.7 hours of training per week over the first 34 weeks for a total of:

Bike:129h 13m 33s  - 2037.91 Mi

Run:70h 42m 38s  - 409.18 Mi

Swim:28h 42m 22s  - 60380.84 Yd


6.7 hours doesn't sound like much but if you include getting workout stuff together, cool down time, putting workout stuff away, showering, etc, that probably adds 30-45 minutes to every workout which adds 2-3 hours per week for a total of 9-10 hours.

My volume chart varies all over the place due to race, recovery and vacation schedules.

Funny, while typing this I was also going to mention my house is a mess and so is my yard so I would have time for both of those things.  Truth be told, if I back off on the exercise, I will fill the time in with something I enjoy and neither house work nor yard work fall into that category :-).

This is something I will be pondering over the next couple of months as I decide whether or not to do a full Ironman next year,  stick with HIMs, go back to Sprints and or Olys, go just to running, or whatever.  I'm still doing my private HIM October 2nd, then taking a week off.