February 2017 Running Challenge

@MobyCarp - love the pictures of your running group! Looks like a fun bunch!
@9voice9 - I think any age group win is a great accomplishment, even if the pool is small. You were there, you ran and succeeded. Boom! Also do they give out snickers at your HM? If they do I could probably get my husband to consider running it!
@HonuNui - Love the video!
@Stoshew71 - Congratulations on your HM and the AG win! Did the dog race again this year?
@OSUbuckeye906 - Great pictures! My doctor had me stop taking Vit D and Calcium. My D was off the charts - I am sure from running outside so much. I am continuing to take Turmeric and Magnesium though. The Turmeric helps with inflammation and the Magnesium has helped immensely with the muscle cramps I get (not while running but when sleeping, training and doing yoga).

Late afternoon run today. I didn't get to run yesterday because of the monster storm hitting So CA and I waited today until most of the rain and wind had passed. I still got wet but the sun came out while we were out. It is amazing when it is raining and the sun is shining!

Date........Miles........Total
02/01......4.63........4.63
02/02......0.00........4.63 - + Strength Training and Rally
02/03......2.35........6.98
02/04......0.00........6.98 - Race Expo
02/05....13.36......20.18 - Surf City HM
02/06......0.00......20.34
02/07......5.23......25.57 - + Strength Training
02/08......5.97......31.54
02/09......5.27......36.81 - + Strength Training and Rally
02/10......0.00......36.81
02/11......9.30......46.11
02/12......2.00......48.11 - Dog Beach Sunday!
02/13......5.00......53.11 - + Agility
02/14......4.42......57.53 - + Strength Training
02/15......0.00......57.53
02/16......4.39......61.92 - + Strength Training and Rally
02/17......0.00......61.92 - Monster storm
02/18......6.50......68.42



My completed and upcoming Races - Let me know if you will be running too!
02/05/17 - Surf City Half Marathon
07/23/17 - San Francisco 1st Half Marathon

@HonuNui Love the video! Thanks! I can play through "Ode to Joy" now without too many mistakes! Be a bit before I take that devil down!!!

2/1- 8.1
2/2- REST
2/3- 4.23
2/4- 14.11
2/5- 3.16
2/6- 6.16
2/7- REST
2/8- 8.09
2/9- REST
2/10- 4.04
2.11- 14.01
2/12- 3.04
2/13- 6.06
2/14- 3.16
2/15- 8.15
2/16- REST
2/17- 4.66
2/18- 15.04
2/19- 4.03

Total: 106.04

Monthly goals:
Mileage goal: 150
Real Goal: Stay healthy enough to get into the swing of real marathon training.

Today's notes: 4 miles easy pace, nothing really to report other than I felt pretty good, which I guess is something, after yesterday's distance PR. Finally starting to feel like I'm marathon training. Something about going the 15 made it sink in that I really am training for the 26.2....LOL...only have to run 11 miles more on race day.....Also, feeling good after running that far and running easy at 9:39 pace hammered home that a full should be within my reach in just under 4 months.

Stoshew71 wrote: »

shanaber wrote: »

@Stoshew71 - Congratulations on your HM and the AG win! Did the dog race again this year?

Ludivine did not run this year. Her owner literally kept a tight leash on her the entire time. And Ludivine was not happy as the runners took off.

There was however another dog that ran the whole thing, but with their owner.

http://www.werunracephotos.com/WRH/2017-Events/2017-Hound-Dog-Half/i-zrWSBsT/A

Unless it was a safety concern I don't see why she wouldn't let Ludivine run. I am sure most all of the runners would have enjoyed having her participate.

That pictures of the Dobie running are awesome. I would love to run a HM with Hobbes the Vizsla. We have run a couple of 5ks but he was very distracted by all the other dogs in those. I use a waist leash like that runner but I don't let Hobbes pull me like the Dobie was doing. On the other hand if I did I would probably have a faster time
Here most all races explicitly forbid people running with their dogs unless they are a certified service dog and then you have to register them and show the certification (you can't just put a vest on them and say they are needed).

@shanaber Ah, ok. I've never lost a toenail and my running shoe has a wide toe box and is generally very comfortable for the routes I run. But as you mentioned the hilly HM, there's the definite possibility that it could also be that where I live is generally pretty flat, and if I lived in an area with a more varied terrain, things could be very different.

I smashed my laptop so writing from mobile is annoying

anyway, I managed to ride my bike a few times last. week, including taking. wrong. road and ending. up on a 35% ascent... Obviously I got. stacked and obviously there were people walking there so I lost my dignity

riding. helped. a lot my knee, pt suspects I damaged. the ligament,. don't even want. to think about that

but. I'm. really concerned about my leg, had a scan and. thigh is fine, so why it feels. so weird randomly and cannot bend my leg? I feel like it is contracting but the muscle is not. rest days didn't help at all.

16 miles today, was a nice day and was able. to wear shorts. bike tomorrow,

OSUbuckeye906 wrote: »

@autumnblade75 I have the same problem with my right foot sometimes. I now buy a half size larger than non-running shoes and have started buying them in a wide width as well for a roomier toe box. Those two things seem to be doing the trick.

I probably would have sized up half a size on these if I had tried them on in a store, but since I was ordering deeply discounted discontinued shoes, I knew I was taking a chance.

I've lost 3 toenails over the course of 7 years - All from my "great" toes. I think it was just last year that I lost both at the same time. I have decided that I prefer to lose a toenail occasionally over having blisters pretty much constantly from my feet sliding in the shoe.

I think they've still got a few more pair where I ordered them from. If cutting the stitching on the toe doesn't help, I'll think about sizing up (or just stick with what I know works).

The toenails I've lost were all from half marathon or greater distances, but these shoes were sending warning signals by the 3 mile mark. They will certainly not work "as is."

February Running Totals (miles)
2/1 – 7.00 easy
2/2 – 2.63 easy shakedown run
2/3 – travel day, didn't get a run in
2/4 – 7.99 warm up on road + 8K cross country
2/5 – travel day, didn't get a run in
2/6 – travel day
2/7 – 9.26 warm up, speed work, cool down
2/8 – 7.02 group run
2/9 – 12.03 MP intervals
2/10 – rest day
2/11 – 18.63 paced run + solo miles
2/12 – 11.48 easy 90 minutes
2/13 – rest day
2/14 – 12.25 warm up, speed work, cool down
2/15 – 6.62 group run
2/16 – 10.05 easy with hills
2/17 – rest day
2/18 – 22.17 paced run + solo miles
2/19 – 12.97 easy 100 minutes with hills

February total to date – 140.10

Nominal Challenge Goal – 225 miles
Real Goals: Survive travel to and from Bend. Train well toward Boston. Avoid injury.

Today's notes – Today's assignment was 100 minutes easy. I added the "with hills" part because, a) it's hard to avoid hills near home without doing repeated loops; b) I like hills; c) there are some hills at Newton; and d) it feels pretty good to pass people in Newton, knowing that most of them were ahead of me because they ran a faster marathon than I did and got seeded further forward.

It's pretty clear that the point of the plan having me run 100 minutes the day after it has me run 22 miles is to train me to run on tired legs. When I hit this part of the plan last year, it was a huge mental challenge to run beyond 10 miles on the 100 minute day. This year, I'm better prepared for it mentally and the weather is immensely better than it was last year. (Last year I had a mental challenge running 22 miles on an indoor track, then had a different mental challenge running 100 minute outside after it had warmed up to the mid-teens F and the wind had moderated to 12 mph or so.) This year, I had beautiful weather for a long sleeve tech shirt yesterday, and today it was 57º F (14º C) with sunshine when I set out to run in shorts and a tech tee. Yeah, I noticed the 16 mph W wind on the westbound segments; but at 57º I didn't care all that much.

I estimated that I would need 12.5 miles to get my 100 minutes in, assuming an easy pace of 8 minute miles. I have a standard 10 mile route with hills, and today seemed like a good day to run it in the reverse direction of what I usually do. I added perhaps 2 miles on the front end of mostly flat terrain before the hills started about 3.5 miles in. With it being this warm, I was able to wear my Vivofit on my right wrist, so I could see my HR in real time without giving up any of the fields I normally want to see on the Garmin 620 on my left wrist. Today's experiment was slowing down to put my HR into Zone 1 if I was on the downhill or level and my pace was faster than 7:45. I didn't worry about a high heart rate going up hills. I don't know how much difference it made trying to run to the HR part of the time, but I noticed that when I had to slow down for the HR, I managed to slow down to about where I would have been slowing to if I had been running purely by pace.

Cognitive dissonance was a long downhill in mile 9, seeing a HR below 120 on the right wrist and a current pace of 7:10 on the left wrist. That's something of an education in just how much difference it makes to be going downhill and letting gravity do the work.

Yes, my legs felt tired. But easy was still faster than I expected it to be. My slowest mile split was 7:54, for mile 1. The fastest mile split was 7:30, for mile 6; but a 7:36 pace for the final 0.97 mile and a 7:37 pace for mile 9 (with that lovely downhill) were close. The mental challenge came when I needed more distance than it would take to get back to my driveway in order to keep running for 100 minutes. I ended up adding some junk distance on the fly in my neighborhood, and hit 100 minutes a nice cool down walk away from my driveway. Had the crazy thought that with 12.97 miles I should keep running to 13 miles; but the assignment was 100 minutes and that's where it landed. Average pace was 7:43 per mile, 2 seconds faster than what I've been calling the fast end of my easy range.

HR stats: average 129, max 149. 49:42 in Zone 1, 47:24 in Zone 2, 1:53 in Zone 3 (leaving 1:03 presumably in Zone 0). I'm pretty sure all of the Zone 3 (143-156) was going up hills.

The interesting thing is that the mental challenge was all route design. Physically, I'm pretty sure I could have gone 15 miles today. Maybe I couldn't have made it to 20, but physically I had miles left in the tank. Mentally, I was ready to stop at 100 minutes. But if the assignment had been 120 or 125 minutes, I could have done it.

The other interesting thing is, it's the day after I ran 22 miles and nothing hurts. That's an encouraging sign, and one that would be easy for me to overlook.

2017 races:
January 1, 2017 Freezeroo #2 (Resolution Run 7.5 mile) (Mendon, NY) Finished in 50:45
January 7, 2017 Winter Warrior Half Marathon (Gates, NY) Finished in 1:32:40
January 14, 2017 Freezeroo #3 (Pineway Ponds Park 5 mile) (Spencerport, NY) Finished in 33:42
January 28, 2017 Freezeroo #4 (Hearnish 5 mile) (Victor, NY) short course, finished 4.88 miles in 32:50
February 4, 2017 USATF Cross Country National Championship Masters 8K (Bend, OR) Finished in 35:39, team won the 60+ Men's cross country championship
February 11, 2017 Freezeroo #5 (Valentines Run "In Memory of Tom Brannon" 8 Mile) (Greece, NY) sat out due to training schedule
February 25, 2017 Freezeroo #6 (White House Challenge 4.4 mile) (Webster, NY)
March 11, 2017 Johnny's Runnin' of the Green 5 mile (Rochester, NY)
March 18, 2017 USATF Masters 8K Championship (Virginia Beach, VA)
April 17, 2017 Boston Marathon (Hopkinton, MA)

@MobyCarp I agree with @MNLittleFinn - 62 miles in a week is awesome! I ran a little more than 62 *kilometres* this week; and all of them a lot slower than you. When I want to grow up, I want to run like you
And as always, your photos look like you have a really nice running group.

@ctlaws44 How was your 8k race on Saturday?

@garygse Congratulations on the distance PR! I can't believe you got up at 2:30AM do go running, wow. I'd be more likely to go for a run at midnight and go to sleep at 2:30 than the other way around. And I'm equally impressed by your weekly distance.
On the toenails: I've lost one, but that was after dropping some furniture on it during a move, not from running. I'd prefer not to lose another one, because my big toe looked really weird without the nail, and it took more than half a year until it had fully grown back...

@MNLittleFinn - Congrats on your distance PR too! With a fast finish on top - nice

@bmelb1 That's great news that the doctor saids it's nothing serious and told you which muscles to strengthen. Ant it's very interesing that he said runners should take a vitamin D supplement. I always figured runners spend more time outside in the winter than most other people, so we should be less likely to be vitamin D deficient.

@RespectTheKitty Maybe you dind't run the 10mi you wanted, but with speed records like that it's no surprise. Congratulations on the 1mi and 5k PRs!

@Stoshew71 Spectacular race, congratulations on the AG win!

@autumnblade75 14 miles on the treadmill? In the gym I tried last year, they had a 30 minute limit on cardio machines during after-work hours - and it didn't bother me one bit, because I couldn't imagine running more than 30min on the thing anyway. 14mi are impressive determination, great job!
I hope you figure out how to make the new shoes work without black toenails. Which model did you get?

@OSUbuckeye906 What a pretty place to hike! I don't know about the golf course, though - I'd be worried about getting hit by a stray ball. But I'm easily creeped out by golf balls - there's one forest trail I sometimes run that borders on a golf course, and sometimes I've seen balls on the wrong (forest) side of the fence; so I'm always worried one day one of them might come flying and hit me.