Good training

My training for the Surf City marathon has been going fantastic! It feels so good to have all of my runs in my calendar and have a specific goal that I am working towards. It makes me a little disappointed in myself that I sputtered along for so many months. But, I am back at it now and I must say, I have never felt this prepared for a race since I started racing. My paces are all on track for my goal time. Looking back through my stats leading up to all of my other races, I am consistently close to a minute per mile faster. That's a good thing. When I first started running, I was plagued (like most people) with some injuries that threatened to sideline me for awhile. That really bummed me out and I discovered low heart rate training. Which basically gets you to slow down a bit, which in turn, tends to mitigate future injury.

I believe in low heart rate training, but like anything, TOO MUCH of a good thing is bad. You HAVE to mix in speed work or else you become, well... slow! It worked out ok for me because I needed that huge aerobic base for my cross country run, but, it wasn't that great for races. Now, I am mixing in speed work, tempo runs, hill training, Lasso 800's etc. and everything is working beautifully. I did my last 20 miler at a 10:01 avg. which is much better than my previous long runs leading up to my marathons. My tempo runs have been very comfortable at around 8:30's and it was effortless to do a sub 9 the last mile of my 12 on Sunday. All very good signs to shoot for a sub 4:00 marathon. Boy wouldn't that be great? But, I will be happy with a PR of 4:07 or less.

Now, all this running has got me thinking about another adventure. Of course running across Europe holds a great appeal for me. But, realistically, that may be a few years off due to logistics. So, maybe something a little more close to home. Possibly the southbound route from Canada to Mexico, or maybe Maine to Key West. An east coast run sounds like so much fun! I have become so fascinated with history that my own little tour of the 13 colonies would be amazing. We'll see, but it is very much on my mind and when I do a big run this time, it will be coming from a happy place. Not running away from anything, but towards something. Meeting great people and seeing beautiful places. That sounds like something to look forward to!

Goals are good!

Yes, goals are good! It's funny, I kind of forgot this for the last year or so. It was hard to get excited for a race, but once I committed to doing the Surf City Marathon, everything just sort of fell into place. My training has been going very well. I have a goal time in mind and my paces have been right on target for my projected time. It has been nice to be training at higher paces as opposed to the slower paces that I was training at in preparation for my run across America and the couple +50 milers I did earlier this year. I have a 5k this Saturday that I am running with Brittany and I am very excited to be able to do races with her, now that she is a California girl again :)

I would love, of course, to PR the 5k. I'm not sure if I can do better than a 23:13, but I'm gonna try and it's gonna hurt. I get the most nervous for 5k's because there is no time to settle in. It's uncomfortable the whole way at close to my max heart rate. I prefer half marathons, but there's nothing like a 5k to see where you are really at.

I have retired the Vibrams for the time being and have been running in these.

The New Balance Minimalis shoes. After running so many miles in the Vibrams, I needed to find a very light shoe and these are working great. There's no doubt the Vibrams helped my form tremendously and switching to these shoes has made running a faster pace seem almost easy. And now, I can step on rocks and I don't feel it. That's a good thing!

So, I have taken my own advice, registered for races and have very specific training runs in my calendar. All is right with the world.

Paul

Surf City Marathon

Have you ever had such a bad headache that once it was gone, you felt better than If you had never had it? That describes, pretty well, how I feel right now.

Chris and I finished the run one year ago on Wednesday. It's been an interesting, and quite honestly, a tough year. Ive struggled with setting a new goal, which for me and most people reading this, I'm sure, is a must to keep my sanity. My only real goal for the last year has been to see how much of the beer, that I've been brewing, I can drink every night. Of course, I'm pretty good at hunkering down and achieving the goals that I set for myself..... this probably hasn't been the best thing to spend my time on.

Depression!

Since I have been back from the run, I have become FASCINATED with history, particularly American history. Seeing so many amazing places across this country, especially east of the Mississippi, has given me a voracious appetite to learn as much as I can about our past as a nation. In my studies, I have been especially interested in the Lewis and Clark expedition. For obvious reasons, I am intrigued by their story of crossing this country. It's easy to draw a parallel between theirs and our journey, although, I will concede that even though the "Galt" and the baby jogger and Chris's bike and trailer were harsh conditions, they didn't compare to what Lewis and Clark encountered on their journey west. But what is no doubt the same no matter when and how you embark on such a long trip, is how you are forced to look inward and confront yourself, sometimes what you see is good, sometimes it's not so good. Also, the things that everyone gets accustomed to, the daily routine where your own little world, with it's trivial details, becomes drastically stripped away and suddenly, it's hard not to see the bigger picture. The TV doesn't matter, who's ON the TV, REALLY doesn't matter. How many toys you have or how nice your clothes are, just doesn't seem important. It's hard to step back into "regular life" where those priorities are crammed down everyone's throat 24/7. It's easy to feel like an alien at times.
I've told the story of all the people that tried to hand me money when I was pushing the baby jogger. They thought I was homeless. It makes me think sometimes. "Homeless"?? It has such an automatic negative connotation to it. I'm not talking about freezing, starving people here, with children, looking for shelter. But I would venture to guess that there a a good number of people who CHOOSE to be "homeless". They are "dropping out" if you will, from the rat race that has been created as a result of the industrial revolution. I've seen a documentary on this and there were several people who said it. They don't want to play the game. And I understand. The rat race is a hard thing to go back to and it's hard not to ask "why?" Even though it was way back in 1809, I wonder if these weren't some of the feelings Lewis and Clark had? Sadly, Meriwether Lewis shot himself. Luckily, I haven't been that depressed.

Selfish

I've talked about it before, I believe that the thing that I needed to discover about myself, and I DID, in a REALLY BIG WAY! Was how selfish I've been my entire life.
One of the hardest things for me, has always been to find balance. In this case, it has been about being strong, being true to yourself, not letting people get in your way, being goal oriented and accomplishing anything at all costs!! But, in doing so, I realized out on the run, that I have hurt many people over the years, not caring how they've felt, only caring about myself. It wasn't malicious, it's that my priorities were wrong. I thought that the ends justified the means and that if I could achieve everything that I wanted, I could provide everything to the people that I loved. There's that saying "The road to ruin is paved with good intentions".

It's easy to only think of yourself. More so now, with the "Me Generation" and our reality shows, facebook feeds and twitter feeds all about US. Even my blog, is mostly about me. We have slogans "If it feels good do it!" Or my new favorite "Follow your heart". Which the more I think about it, is just an excuse for people to do whatever they want, often ignoring any commitment they have made. Like they need to do whatever it is that they are being lead to do by some inner voice. I've always listened to that voice inside me, but I've also argued with it when I need to. When we have people like Kim Kardashian (who I have no kind words for) saying that she "followed her heart" and filed for divorce 72 days after getting married. Clearly, not everyone should be listening to their heart.

Of course, listening to your heart can be a really good thing. Again, it's all about balance. As it's never good to hurt someone else. It's also not good to hurt yourself. In my pursuit of being "selfless" I managed to lose myself. It's been nobody's fault but my own. I stopped thinking about me and what I wanted. I stopped communicating with friends. I stopped dreaming about the future. I stopped living, basically. I was waiting.... waiting for something that I had no control over. I've always told my daughters that the best way you can be good for someone, is to be the best person you could be. Here I was, not taking my own advice. Finding that balance is hard. For me, it is being strong, motivated, goal oriented and driven, without hurting anyone in the process.

So, why am I laying this all out in my blog? Because I know we all deal with this in some form or another. If you do endurance sports, you've no doubt wondered if all of your training is taking too much time away from your family. Or if the hobbies you do are worth the time you devote to them, etc. My conclusion is to exercise "rational self interest". I think of it this way, if a plane is going down, and you have a baby next to you, it's better to take the first breath from the oxygen mask, so you can keep giving oxygen to the baby. That's not being selfish, that's balance!

So, I've finally started thinking about me again and registered for my first big race since being back. I'm doing the Surf City Marathon on February 5th. Pretty cool since this was my first Marathon back in 2007. It feels great to be training for a race and have a training schedule in my calendar! It also feels good to be me again, this time, hopefully keeping all of my priorities in order.

What's next?

What do you do after you've done something you never thought you could do? That is the question I have been asking myself for the past 8 months. For me, that thing was running across the country. It was such an epic journey for me that most things pale in comparison now. It has been hard to get excited about training for any races. Of course, after running such long slow distances, training to get faster at any distance is a formidable enough challenge. I could train specifically for any distance and focus on time. That would be good, but so far I just haven't been able to commit to a race. I did do a 56 miler around a park near me in March and trained to do 100 miles around the same park in April. The park is 4 miles around and it served as a good place to do it for logistical reasons. I had my own little aid station in my truck and 4 miles is a perfect interval. The problem was, BOREDOM! My 100 mile attempt ended in disappointment when I stopped at 14 loops, doing 56 miles once again. Physically, I could have gone on, but the motivation wasn't there. I guess you can't underestimate the threat of an official DNF or just the existence of a good old fashioned finish line. Perhaps even the lack of support from spectators or actual aid stations played a part. I would definitely like to do a 100 miler in the near future, but it will definitely be an organized race! Speaking of long distance races or "Extreme Marathons" if you'd like to call them, I took part in episode of Runner's Roundtable in April. That was fun and there were some interesting stories told of some really cool adventures.

As far as training goes, I have been averaging about 25 miles a week, which is on the low side for me, along with about 2-3 hours of cycling a week. I have started weight training which feels great! Running all of those miles before, left little time for lifting and now the body feels much stronger than I did with my emaciated upper body from my run. Oh, I miss triathlon training! Perhaps another Ironman.....

On the run, we toured several craft breweries and since then, my love for great American made beer has turned into a love for brewing. I brewed my first extract beer in January and just recently started brewing from "all grain". As with any hobby, there are many things to learn and many more things to buy! There is a real science to brewing beer and it is fascinating, all the many aspects of it. And of course very gratifying when you end up with a great finished product. In this case, a closet full of my favorite types of beer! It's a good thing I run so much :)

I've been working on writing my book about the run. I have about 18,000 words, which is 8 chapters in my case. Talk about tough! My original reasons for the run slowly transformed to a spiritual journey in which I confronted many things about myself and my life. There was a lot of time to think during those 120 days of running and what I learned about myself has motivated me to share in my book, what I believe were the reasons that I needed to do the run in the first place and what I learned about myself in the process. Like the memories that came flooding back while running through the desert in winter or through the Great Allegeheny Passage in fall, writing things down about your past can be an emotional experience. It is very cathartic, however and I hope that it is inspiring. AND, I hope that it doesn't suck!

So, the goal now, is to come up with a goal! One that will excite, inspire passion and preferably scare the crap out of me. I don't think there is such a thing as being "fearless". It's doing things in spite of your fear. And that is where I am most comfortable and feel most alive. I'm looking forward to it!!

Cadence

I just read an article at "The Runner's Roundtable" about the average cadence of 6 Kenyan runners who ran at UTEP. Here are some numbers.

Pace per mile Avg. Cadence

7:40 175

6:43 181

5:58 185

5:22 191

4:58 196

I went back and found my second fastest 5k (my pr race didn't have cadence data) and found these interesting numbers. I ran 3.14 miles in 23.26, which is a 7:27 minute mile. My average cadence was 190! The Kenyans are a whole 2 minutes per mile faster at the same cadence.

My average heart rate for that race was 194. My max heart rate is around 210 and I believe my threshold is around 170. So, I was working hard.

Longer distance as a comparison? My fastest marathon 4:07:44 (9:22 pace) average HR 180, my cadence was 182. Fastest half marathon 1:48:20 (8:16) average HR 190, cadence 182!

What does that tell me? I don't think my fitness level is why I am not fast. I think it is my mechanics. I either fix that or I might as well get used to and be happy, being a slower long distance runner.

How much can you change your natural gait?