Game Change -- The Fastest I've Ever Run

It’s been quite a while since my last blog post.  Busy season was, predictably, busy -- but it’s over now.

I’ve been trying to come up with a list of the races I’ve run so far this year.  I started out the year with the Resolution Run Half Marathon, and then did another half at the Famously Hot Half-Marathon in Columbia in March.  There was the Green Valley Road Race 8k in February.  It seems like there was another 5k or 10k or two in there prior to last weekend, but it might be that the others were in 2011.  I’m just not sure.  But I think there was at least a 5k somewhere.

5k races have always been just kind of throw-away events for me.  I mean, they’re a good time, but it’s just not a distance I’ve ever taken seriously.  I’m not terribly fast, so I suppose that’s led me to focus on the endurance aspect of running rather than what I’ve considered the more speed-oriented shorter distances. 

Even though I have strayed from strictly following the schedules therein, my training has largely been based on Coach Roy Benson’s Heart Rate Training, which has consistently served to slow me down.  By running slower over the last year, I have built up my aerobic capacity and am able to do longer distances.  Really, in all the races I have run, I find myself finishing the race with lots of energy left in my tank.  When I finished the Columbia half, I had to go run an extra mile just to burn off some of the reserves that I had been unable to exhaust in the 13.1-mile race.  Every race I’ve run, I end up flying past people for the last half mile or so.

Every race, that is, until last weekend.

April 21^st was Greenville’s RunWalkAdopt 5k.  Again, it wasn’t something that I was particularly excited about, but it was to be the first race after busy season, and might be a good chance to blow off some steam.  The course itself was moderately difficult, running along hilly parking lots and foot paths rather than roads.  Anyway, no big deal of a run.  Approaching the end of the race, I decided to turn it up a notch, as I typically do.  Pass this couple, pass this guy, then approach a short girl and start to pass her.  Have to turn up the gas to pass her.  I start to overtake her, but she doesn’t want to be passed.  I dig in, kick it up a notch.  So does she.  I put my pedal to the metal.  She doesn’t want to give in.  As we approach the finish line, people are cheering us on.  “C’mon!  You can beat him!,” they yell to her.  I thought I had a step on her, but no luck -- she’s right at my side.  In the end, I beat her by a fraction of a step.  The race website has us both finishing with the same time, but it’s only reporting to the second.  The final difference between our finish times must have been within a couple of hundredths of a second.

I had never been too interested in my pace, using it instead as a broad guide to make sure I am in a good rhythm halfway through a long race.  But this time, I was anxious to go home to upload my GPS data to my computer to see just what happened at the end of the race.  As it turns out, there was no illusion.  We really did keep getting faster & faster for the last half mile.  We finished the race at a 5:17 pace, or 11.36 miles per hour.  It is probably the fastest that I have ever run in my life.

This has been a game changer for me.  What if I decided to start taking 5k races more seriously?  Would I end up finishing with more competitive runners?  Would I find more people who will bring out the best in me?

I’ve been to the mountaintop, and I want to go back.

Running and Thinking Without Words

Mark it for posterity: I have officially run my first endurance race.  Last weekend, I ran the Greenville YMCA Resolution Run in Traveler’s Rest, SC.

It was a beautiful day -- a sunny Carolina January morning.  I was grateful that it was warm enough to just wear compression boxers.  I have been having some issues with the compression tights that I have been wearing when it has been cold outside.  I’ve tried two different brands: CW-X and 2XU.  The CW-X are thicker and warmer, while the 2XU are very thin.  Either one might be preferable depending on the weather.  However, I think that neither is designed for someone with any kind of belly, so they tend to drift southward.  The result can be chafing, which is exactly what they are supposed to prevent.  And while chafing can be uncomfortable for a three- or five-mile run, it’s downright terrifying for a longer run.  Anyhow, I was thankful that I didn’t need to complicate matters by worrying about how I was going to keep my pants up.

The run itself was a fascinating experience for me.  There were 219 entrants, which I think makes it a pretty small run.  I had decided on my heart rate splits rather arbitrarily before the race, planning a run that would allow me up to 80% of maximum heart rate for the first five miles, 83% for the next five miles, and then graduate upward for the last three+ miles.  The course itself was very hilly, so the splits were only rough guidelines in the actual execution.  Still, they reflect what my basic game plan for the race was: take it easy, don’t burn out; make sure there is always more in the tank; and shoot for a pretty consistent pace.  By allowing my heart rate to rise over the course of the race, I essentially allowed myself to keep very close to a set pace.  As it turned out, I ran right around a 12:30 / mile pace the whole way.

What fascinated me so was how this played against the other runners.  By the time we had gone a half a mile, I found myself running near no one else.  Those who fancied themselves runners had all dashed well ahead of me, while those who were looking to walk the 13.1 miles were all well behind me.  At the two mile mark, the course made a hairpin turn and retraced for about .6 miles on a parallel path.  As such, I was able to see much of the pack running back against me before I hit the two mile mark; and after I hit the turn, I could see the small group of walkers that trailed behind me.  I am thus able to say that, by the 2.5 mile mark, nobody was within a half mile of me -- neither ahead of nor behind me. 

For the majority of the race, I was running absolutely alone.  There were no other participants within sight.

These lonely miles of running were across rural residential roads.  At mile 4, the course crossed over Main Street, so I had a brief glimpse of the real world.  But apart from that, I’ll bet not even ten cars crossed my path for the remainder of the run before re-joining Main Street and finishing into the Travelers Rest Community Center. 

In short, I had a lot of time to myself. 

A lot of things ran through my head during this substantial chunk of the race.  Most thoughts that I have during running are free of words and thus ultimately deprived of substance.  I learned many years ago that putting words to things makes them “real” in a sense that they cannot be if they remain wordless.  Words give things labels; labels give categories.  Words help us to organize and understand our world, but at the same time they add something of a lie.  The reality of things is without words; understanding and especially communicating is where language comes in.  Words are a kind of tool or crutch.  As William S. Burroughs said, “language is a virus.”  Running tends to break one away from the world of language.  This caught me by surprise earlier in my running experience, when some of the occasions that I would seek to pray while running would come up short.

This is not so say that, when I am running, I find myself free of thought, however.  It is not simply a matter of abiding in the flesh at the exclusion of the mind.  While running, there is joy.  There is fear.  There is even love.  But, until I open my mouth to proclaim, “I love Julie!” or “Thank you G-d!” or some other such declaration (these being, indeed, my two most frequent linguistic utterances while running), the thoughts that I have lack the objective substance that only words convey.  Being free in this way might be the single strongest driving force leading me to run.

Enough with the philosophy.  As I mentioned, how my strategy and training played out during the race was quite interesting to me.  As I hope I’ve made clear, I was very much alone for much of the race. But after an hour and a half, a funny thing happened: I caught up to the group.  Well, sure -- not to everybody.  At first, I passed one guy that had obviously overextended himself and “bonked.”  He was struggling to catch his breath after a big hill.  He found someone to attend to him, so it’s not like I blew past someone passing out on the side of the road, mind you.  Anyhow, after overtaking him, I soon passed another couple people, then another couple, then another. . .  Did I mention that the course was quite hilly?

When all was said and done: Not one person passed me after the initial half mile stretch.  It was I who did the passing.  And no, I didn’t find myself magically transformed into a great distance runner, excelling all others in my preternatural abilities.  However, I set out to finish in 2 hours and 40 minutes.  My result on Saturday was 2:45, on a course that was much more challenging than I had anticipated.  For the scale of the hills I ran, a five minute swing is wholly satisfactory to me.  More important by far is that I finished the run.  At no point did I walk the course.  I kept my steady slow run pace from start to finish.  My old mantra of “Press on like Paul!” was fulfilled, if only for a day.

“It is not that I have already achieved this.  I have not yet reached perfection, but I press on, hoping to take hold of that for which Christ once took hold of me.  My friends, I do not claim to have hold of it yet.  What I do say is this: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what lies ahead, I press towards the finishing line, to win the heavenly prize to which God had called me in Christ Jesus.”  Amen V’amen!

Half Marathon in Ten Days

In September, while I was vacationing at Hilton Head Island, I rather casually posted as my Facebook status, “Running half marathon tomorrow.”  What I intended at the time was that I would be running 13.1 miles the following day.  It would have been a nice way to finish off a week of excellent runs.  However, I came up short.  Basically, my intention was to park my car, run 5 miles north along the beach to a river inlet.  I would then turn around, run past my starting point by approximately 1.55 miles, and then return.  Not exactly a classic “out and back,” but close enough.  However, in the execution, I was unwilling to run past my car.  The 13.1 miles was truncated to a 10-mile run. 

It was only days later that I decided to run a marathon.  It became clearer to me on that trip that I needed to set some sort of goal for myself.  What was I running for?  Did I want to get faster?  Did I want to be able to run longer?  How should I measure progress?  The answer to these questions was that I wanted to complete a marathon, the benchmark distance run.  I wasn’t particularly interested in developing speed -- at least not initially.  First things first: finish a marathon.  Train for it & do it.

In retrospect, much of my running journey so far was presaged during that trip.  Why was I unable to finish my 13.1 mile run at the beach?  I would say that there were four factors to my early termination.  First, by the time I got back to the 10-mile mark, I sincerely sought to use a restroom.  To run right past a well-situated facility would have been exceptionally difficult.  This fed in to the second factor: it was quite convenient to stop.  If my run had been 6.55 out and back, I would have had little choice but to complete the run in some manner once I had committed to the first leg.  In my case, especially after using the bathroom, it would have been akin to starting a second run.

Third, since  I was running by myself, I didn’t have any of the good peer pressure to keep me going.  Running in a pack helps you to press on.

But it was really factor number four that got me to head back: I was short-changing my family.  The night before my run was a particularly difficult one.  I don’t exactly remember which kid was keeping us up all night, but I know one of them was.  While I was gone, Julie would have to take care of both kids while being already exhausted herself.  Further, as I recall, she didn’t look to hide her irritation with me.  As with several other times that week, I was off to do my own thing, leaving her very little choice as to how to spend her time.  To make matters worse, this was the longest run of the week, and I wasn’t even starting at the house, so there was travel time to add to time I would be away.  This was, after all, her vacation, too.  Why shouldn’t she be a bit ticked off at me?  I guess I had never previously seen my exercising as being at some cost to anyone other than myself.  Surely, Julie and I hadn’t discussed the sacrifice yet at that point.

I haven’t endeavored a run that long since then.  And I’ve learned that running involves the whole family, in one way or another.

Still, I set out to run a half marathon on a whim, and it was on just such a whim that I signed up for the YMCA of Greenville Resolution Run to take place on the 7^th of January.  My schedule doesn’t have me running a half marathon for another two-and-a-half months.  And indeed, the half marathon is not a distance that particularly interests me.  From what I’ve been able to glean from websites and books, it’s largely a creation of the nomenclature itself (and a recent one at that).   Which sounds more noteworthy: running a “25k,” or running a “half marathon”?  The very word “marathon” attached to something makes it sound more impressive.  Of course, of the two I mention, the 25k is the longer run. 

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the chance to push myself a bit.  I don’t expect to do any better than about 2:40 or more.  I don’t intend to give it my all, since it really is just a whim.  However, it will be a chance to test my endurance, which is, ostensibly, my running goal.  

Indoor Running

A couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law helped me move my treadmill from upstairs in my house to my garage.  I used to do most of my running at mid-day, and it was nice to come home from work, turn on the TV, and run in front of the tube.  At this point, however, almost all of my runs are in the morning; I’d have to take a really long lunch to get in a good run & shower at mid-day, despite working only a mile from my home.  It is likely that during busy season, I will do exactly that.  Last year I’d get to work at 6:00 AM and then take a long lunch during which I would exercise, and that worked quite well.  In any event, busy season is a couple of months away, and I was looking for a way to get in a good run even on cold, rainy mornings.  I can’t see wanting to do my long weekend runs on a treadmill, but it has been quite nice for my shorter, slower runs during the week.

For one thing, it’s nice not to have to fight hills while keeping my heart rate low.  On the treadmill, I can pretty much just set a pace & leave it there.  About half way through a run, my heart rate starts creeping up, so I adjust the speed downward accordingly.  But apart from the small adjustment, the treadmill makes it easy to choose a heart rate and keep locked on it.

Having the treadmill in the garage has also reinvigorated my long-held, if long past, practice of reading while running.  My running for the last couple of years has tended to be too fast to really be able to read, and it’s also easier to just turn on the TV & zone out when that has been an option.  Taking away the TV, slowing down the pace, and the added benefit of the ease of reading on an iPad has revitalized my reading life.

The thing is, almost all that I have been reading over the past several months has been about running.  Whether it’s directly about running, or about nutrition for runners, or in some other way related to running, that’s been about all I’ve found time to read (other than scripture).  A week or so ago, I was running on the treadmill and reading Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.  If you aren’t familiar with Haruki Murakami, he is probably the most prominent author of contemporary Japanese literature.  What I Talk About… is perhaps his only non-fiction work.  It is brilliant.  I was thoroughly engrossed in his writing.  Here is one of the greatest living novelists writing directly to my interests!

What I Talk About… is basically a memoir.  And as a memoir of a novelist, he talks a great deal about writing novels.  So, there I was, running, reading a book about what a novelist has to say about running.  At some point. . . it just became absurd.  I had pre-ordered (and since received) his long-awaited latest novel 1Q84 and was looking forward to getting around to it.  But it had been a bit daunting.  I don’t read a whole lot of fiction to begin with, because it takes a commitment of time that I’m usually only willing to give to non-fictional information.  Since I don’t read a lot of fiction, it’s a skill that I somewhat lack.  On top of that, 1Q84 is 944 pages, so quite intimidating indeed.  Still, the absurdity of reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running while running was just a bit too much for me.  At some point, I just switched over to the novel.  I am quite grateful that I made the switch.  I had forgotten what a pleasure it is to read while on a treadmill -- how the time necessary to attack a long work is built in to the daily (or near daily) routine.

On the other hand, running on the treadmill more often than not lately, I have become aware just how much I love running on the street when I do so.  Especially running in my Vibram FiveFingers, I love the connectedness that I feel to the ground when I’m on the street.  For years, all I ever knew was treadmill running.  I am thrilled that I took the show on the road last summer.  Road running is fulfilling in a way that little else is.

So is reading novels.

I guess I’ll just have to strike a balance between the two.  Surely, though, I will never again forsake the road.

Big Decision Time

Big decision time: I’ve decided to run a marathon later in 2012.  I will run the Spinx Marathon in Greenville in October rather than the Columbia, SC Marathon in March.  On March 10, I will do a half marathon rather than a full one.

A number of factors went in to this decision.  If you’ve read the entries that I’ve posted in November, you might have seen it coming as well.

Last week was my firm’s annual meeting.  It is the one time during the year that I see a number of friends face to face.  It is a rare chance to catch up with each other and to share what’s new in our lives and our families.  In telling people about my plans to run a marathon in March, it just kept sounding more and more selfish to me.  Friends would ask about how things were going with a toddler and an infant in the house.   I would describe sleepless nights.  But really, the one losing sleep is, by and large, not me.  I don’t think I’m slacking off as a father and a husband, but I do think that I can offer more of myself.  I’d hear myself describing my allocation of time and energy, hear myself explain, indeed accurately, a disproportionate amount of myself being dedicated to running.

I was lamenting along these lines with my boss a couple of weeks ago.  His own father took up running in his thirties, I believe.  As I was telling him how I felt that the time I was spending on my long runs on the weekends was directly at the expense of family time, he said, basically, that I was experiencing exactly the same thing that every runner who has ever dedicated the time to running a marathon has experienced before me -- or at least, every runner with a family.  No doubt, the time that it takes to prepare has to come from somewhere, and one can only reasonably short change oneself just so much on sleep.

That said: I’m still going through with the marathon training and run.  I’m just deferring the 26.2 goal by two-thirds of a year.  So what’s the big deal?  What kind of difference do I expect there to be in training for an October marathon rather than a March one?

There are two big differences between March and seven-and-a-half months later.  First, the big difference is in my work schedule.  From the beginning of February until mid-April, I will be working around 55 hours a week.  In the March marathon scenario, many of my heaviest weeks of training fall during the first six weeks of busy season.  So, while I’ll still need to find long spells of time on weekends to dedicate to my long runs, they won’t have to be during weeks when I’m working six day weeks -- and long days at that.  Yes, training for the half will still take entail long-ish runs on the weekends -- but they won’t be nearly as long.  Also, this will leave the last five weeks of busy season free of any training schedule.  I’m sure I’ll want to keep up regular running in late March and April, but I can do it on my time rather than following the strictures of a training schedule.

The other big difference is that my kids will be just that much older.  Right now, my kids are likely at the neediest times of their lives.  Josiah is two-and-a-half, and so can get into anything he wants to, lacking the self-control to keep himself from trouble.  Chloe is seven months and still does not sleep through the night.  What that means, among other things, is that Julie needs a little extra sleep whenever she can get it.  If I drop both kids on her for a day, that guarantees that no sleep shall be had by the mama.  However, next summer, Josiah will be three and Chloe one.  Hopefully Josiah will be past some watershed in behavior, which will translate to greater independence.  Chloe, presumably, will be sleeping through the night (hopefully well before summer) and will get, at least for a while, progressively easier to care for.

Other little things also favor the October marathon.  Much of my more intense training will now fall in the summer.  I love running in the summer.  I love running on roads, and it’s better to run while it’s light.  I look forward to long, hard runs under the summer sun.

Also, it’ll give me a little extra time to shed a few pounds that would be hard to carry 26.2 miles.  Weight loss has never been much of a goal of mine, but in running, it becomes a little clearer the cost of carrying extra weight.  And I’m not looking to go on any great diet -- just to maybe cut out a few extra calories, with a goal of maybe losing a couple of pounds a month.

All that having been said, I am now very excited about my dual goals of running a marathon in October as well as the half marathon in March.  I’ve never given the half much consideration before, but I think it’ll be exciting.  It will give me extra confidence in the larger goal of running a marathon as well.

I made this decision on Saturday and had a good long run yesterday (Sunday).  It was filled with prayer and joy, even as I ran down an unlit trail well after sunset.  Even in the dark, the world is a brighter place for this change of mind.  I’m excited about busy season coming at work, which is my favorite time of the work year.  The anticipation was marred with a tone of dread.  Now my verve is up.

Bring it on!

Discipline

It’s still very hard to run so slowly.  True, I do get a smattering of fast(ish) interval runs, and Thanksgiving happened to coincide with the first tempo run on my training schedule.  It felt good to run fast for a change.

Still, many of my runs are still “A” runs, which means a maximum heart rate of 70% of maximum -- to wit, 140 bpm.  Especially running on Greenville hills, this can be an excruciatingly slow run.  So, I want to run faster.  Also, there are many running plans that would have me running faster.  I wouldn’t have to look too long or hard to find an 18-week training program that would allow me to run faster every day.

And so, my eyes wander.  I start wondering why I’m on the particular program that I am.  Does any other program at all indicate that I should run so slowly?

In short: yes.  In addition to the program that I am following as prepared by Coach Benson and Dr. Connolly, one of the other leading authors in the field recommends that, indeed, I need to be running just so slowly.  If I understand correctly, Dr. Philip Maffetone, author of The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing and other works, would have me basically never run at a higher heart rate than 180 - age.  So, Dr. Maffetone would have me under 142 bpm throughout my training (under 141 in a couple short months).  I’ve purchased his book and will look to it for reinforcement of the plan I’ve already undertaken.

Meanwhile, my moderate “B” runs are getting much more enjoyable.  “B” runs are my long runs that hold me to a top heart rate of 75% of max, or 150 bpm.  This used to be agonizingly slow to me.  And really, it is a frustrating struggle to fight with my heart rate monitor for an hour and a half, running right at the top edge of the range -- basically, being told to slow down for a whole run.  For my last couple “B” runs, however, I’ve tried to target 72% or 73% for the duration.  That way, if I lose control and start to run too fast, I have a little free reign before the punishment inflicted by the heart rate monitor ensues (beeping).  I find myself glad to run at these lower rates with the added freedom of not walking a tightrope for the whole run.  Ahh, I think I am on to something, indeed…

Yes, it’s still slow.  If I were to take my average pace from yesterday and figure my marathon time from that, it would put me basically right at a six hour marathon. 

But alas, most training programs do not even run this long.  It’s almost as if I haven’t even begun training yet under most systems.  And yet benefits have already been conferred.  True, my pace isn’t quite what I’d like it to be -- but my primary goal is to finish the marathon, not win it.  I’m learning the discipline that it takes to run all day. 

Man, I love running.

Doubt

Perhaps those of you who read Friday’s blog entry saw this coming.  This last weekend, I met with my first serious doubts about my goal of running a marathon in March.

As I mentioned on Friday, it’s not that I don’t think that I’ll be able to finish my 26.2 mile run.  Perhaps I do have some fear along these lines, but in any event, I won’t really be able to face and battle these fears until race day.  Meanwhile, I’m learning what I need to know about nutrition and pacing, and I am training my body to be able to complete the run.  I have no illusions about being the first one to the finish line.  But I think I am realistic in my expectation that, if I keep up my training and keep learning, that I’ll be able to run the race to its completion. 

No, it’s all that I might feel that I’m giving up along the way that weighed on me this weekend.  It’s all the extra responsibility that I feel I am putting on Julie to single-handedly parent the kids, especially on Shabbat.  So, I started thinking: If I changed my goal to do the marathon in Greenville next October, that would put the heavy training during the summer.  And in summer, the whole family can go out together; Julie can bike & pull the kids in a trailer while I run.  Or she can head out with me and play with the kids on a beautiful summer morning under the sun while I run, as opposed to being stuck in a house for hours every Shabbat throughout the winter.  And then, when busy season comes along, I could be in a lighter training cycle rather than overlapping my busiest time of year at work with some of my longest runs.  Really, one might say, I didn’t think things through very well before I signed up for this marathon.  It really could be timed out a lot better for October.  So, maybe I could call the marathon folks & tell them to change my registration to be for the half?  That way I could also make the most out of money already committed to this process.

I shared my misgivings with Julie after my run on Saturday.  We talked it through & I think that I had nearly sold her on the change of course.  But, I guess after thinking about our conversation as she showered, she came back to me and encouraged me to stay the course.  No matter what, she said, we would be running and biking and playing on Saturdays during the summer.  Wouldn’t it be nice (she didn’t say, but I inferred) if we could just enjoy each other in doing so instead on needing to stick to a programmed duration or distance?  I’ve come this far, and even if I were to change gears to aim for an October marathon, that’s really not going to change much about my daily or weekly runs.  How about, Julie suggested, I do my long runs on Sunday instead of Saturday for a while?

I won’t need to work on Sundays until February, and even then, Sundays tend to be short working days for me until mid-March.  The marathon is March 10^th.  When I was originally setting myself up on my marathon schedule, I was envisioning the worst cases: the three-hour run two weeks prior to the marathon and the other couple long runs right near the end. 

But, suggested Julie: Isn’t there some room for flexibility?  I mean, sure, there’s one long run a week, and it makes sense for it to be on Saturday or Sunday.  And it would probably be hard to just wing it week to week, since the days before & after the long run of the week are in anticipation of and recovery from the long run, respectively.  But what about planning on running on Sundays in November & December, at least?

Boy-o, does it ever pay to have a smart & loving wife!

My doubts have been allayed.  My verve has been renewed.