October 2017 Running Challenge

@juliet3455 That looks like an amazing run!

After today I finally feel like I can start to think about such things in the future again. Several milestones for me today: longest run (9 mi!) since Feb, highest mileage week of the year so far, and lowest body weight in 2.5 years. And my 8 year old son ran the last 4 miles with me which was much fun. All good. Ankle/foot a little ouchy afterwards but did my serious stretching program and going to ice here for a bit. Celebrated by signing up for a winter night trail half marathon in January. And I am going to do my PT before I go to bed tonight. 3+ more on Tuesday and I think I've got this goal.

Day/Distance/Comments

10/1 5 mi (+ 1 mile walk) + serious stretch program (Gymnastic Bodies Front Split)
10/2 Water walking
10/3 3 mi + light yoga
10/4 Walking + yoga
10/5 3 mi + PT (scraping + treadmill + stretch + strength)
10/6 Walking + PT (stretching + scraping + ultrasound + H-wave)
10/7 4 mi (+ 1 mile walk) + yoga and PT moves
10/8 6 mi (+ 1 mile walk) + Gymnastic Bodies Front Split stretch routine + PT
10/9 3 mi slowish with youth XC team + 40 min water walking + PT
10/10 Walk for 45 min + PT moves
10/11 Walk for 45 min + a little PT
10/12 3.5 mi (+1 mi walk) + PT
10/13 Walk for 45 min
10/14 Ran about 1 mi plus some walking
10/15 Ran 4 mi + walked 1 mi + restorative yoga + PT
10/16 Ran 8 mi + walked 1 mi + Gymnastic Bodies Front Split stretch routine
10/17 Walked a lot marking trails for fun run
10/18 Ran 3 mi marking new trail for fun run in Strava
10/19 Walked a lot marking trail for fun run, did Yin Yoga class (with sandbags)
10/20 Walked over 10 mi marking trail for fun run
10/21 Ran 1st 5k in almost a year! Planted geocaches and hosted a party
10/22 Did some walking to fix geocaches + PT
10/23 Water walking
10/24 Ran 4 mi on the indoor track + walked 1 mi
10/25 Walked for an hour + Gymnastic Bodies Front Split stretch routine + PT
10/26 Ran 5 mi + walked 1 mi + PT
10/27 Walked a bit + zombie run 5K + PT
10/28 Ran 4.5 mi + walked 1 mi + yoga + PT
10/29 Ran 9 mi + 1 walked 1 mi + Gymnastics Bodies Stretching + PT
10/30
10/31

Goal: 75 mi
Total: 72 mi
To go: 3 mi

1/10-6.5
2/10-10.1 (longest run to date, first time in double figures!)
3/10-REST
4/10-3.1 (running club)
5/10-6.0
6/10- T25 workout
7/10-5.2 (parkrun)
8/10-5.0
9/10-REST
10/10-4.5
11/10-7.2 (running club)
12/10-4.5
13/10-6.6
14/10-5.6
15/10-REST
16/10-6.5
17/10-4.0
18/10-3.4
19/10-REST
20/10-5.1
21/10-3.4 (parkrun)
22/10-1.2 (parkrun with daughter) & 6.8
23/10-REST
24/10-3.4
25/10-5.1
26/10-8.5
27/10-REST
28/10-5.8 (Race - beachy head 10k)
29/10-6.4 (Race - Crawley 10k)

Total - 123.6/120 Miles

Today I had another race, not feeling it after yesterdays challenge but my children had a 1k childrens race as well so I didnt want to let them down. It was billed as a few gentle hills but had an elevation of 512ft!

October goal: 70 miles

10/1: 7.7 miles
10/3: 3 miles (intervals)
10/4: 3.1 miles
10/5: 2.3 miles
10/7: 3.1 miles (race)
10/8: 5.7 miles
10/10: 3.3 miles (intervals)
10/11: 3.2 miles
10/12: 2.7 miles
10/14: 3.1 miles (virtual race)
10/15: 7.2 miles
10/17: 3.1 miles (intervals)
10/18: 2.6 miles
10/19: 3.3 miles
10/22: 8 miles
10/24: 2.6 miles (intervals)
10/25: 3.5 miles
10/26: 2.8 miles
10/29: 8.1 miles

78.4/70 miles

I had a lovely 8.1 mile run this morning. The weather was just perfect. When I got home my husband had already started a fire and was getting ready to grill some burgers. It was so nice to sit out in the yard. It was cold yesterday (we had our first freeze of the year) and I was glad it was my rest day. Plus we noticed Friday that we have a gas leak at our house and we had to turn off the gas so no hot water and no furnace. Thankfully we have several electric space heaters and plenty of family in town to go take showers. It really makes you grateful for the conveniences we take for granted.

I also did some yoga this afternoon. Mostly because I love yoga and it is my favorite way to stretch. But it is also a good way to relax and relieve stress. Between the long run and the yoga I have been able to not stress too much about calling the plumber tomorrow.

October goal of 120 with a stretch of 150

Week 1: 39.2
Week 2: 43
Week 3: 36.6
Week 4: 20.8 (Mtd: 139.6)

Week ended with Chicago's Hot Chocolate 15K which was by far the largest race in terms of participants (nearly 10,000 runners in the 15K and ~16,000 running the 5K, and later in the morning a slew of 2 mile walkers) that I have run to date. Was very brisk (temp in the low 30's) and the race started at 7:30 with coral's being released every 4 minutes or so. I was assigned to Coral F so I departed at ~7:50. Even with the timed departures it was congested for the first 2 miles as we weaved our way under the city utilizing roads below street level. At around mile 2.8 the 5K runners turned off to the finish and we continued our journey through the city. GPS/Garmin doesn't fair well in the underpass/high rises of the city so when I was alerted that my first mile was less than 7 minutes, I was fairly confident that I was not that speedy and I had enough training to know that I was not at my fastest but I was still pressing as best I could. Since I knew the 5K split from the 15K was around 2.8 miles I took a peak at my watch and the overall time regardless of reported watch paces was saying I would likely run an ~24 min 5K (actual was 24:11). With the course somewhat opening up, I kept up my pace and at 10K mark I looked again and I was in the 48:30 range which is right on track with a 10K finish a couple weeks back (Overall a 7:48/Mile pace). We had made the turn at this point and we were running up the lake shore, the air was still cold but it felt good. Ran by Solider Field and the Field Museum that had some rolling inclines until we hit Grant Park and basically had the last 1/3 of a mile to go. My pace slowed a bit in that last 5k, however I picked up my pace as I saw the finish. I ran the last 5K in 24:30 - completing the race in 1:13:01. Ended up 24th of 253 in my age/gender and in the top 500 overall. Overall very happy with the race and especially that my 5K splits stayed relatively consistent. If you interested in seeing a couple of Photos, they are posted at Strava. https://www.strava.com/activities/1252480603

Very impressed with some of the other races I saw on Strava including @carolineb81 running those back to back 10K's. Hope everyone is enjoying the end of October and looking forward to Halloween!

October Running Totals (miles)
10/1 – rest day
10/2 – 5.07 easy
10/3 – 5.05 easy
10/4 – rest day
10/5 – 6.01 easy
10/6 – rest day
10/7 – 10.09 paced run
10/8 – 7.20 easy to MP
10/9 – rest day
10/10 – 6.09 mostly easy
10/11 – 6.30 group run
10/12 – 6.12 easy
10/13 – rest day
10/14 – 11.02 paced run
10/15 – 6.51 rainy run
10/16 – rest day
10/17 – 6.02 easy plus intervals
10/18 – 6.39 group run
10/19 – 5.87 warmup, XC practice
10/20 – rest day
10/21 – 11.54 paced run
10/22 – 7.19 easy plus a stride
10/23 – rest day
10/24 – 7.43 warmup, speed work, cool down
10/25 – 7.00 easy
10/26 – 6.54 warmup, speed work
10/27 – rest day
10/28 – 12.46 easy
10/29 – 5.53 warmup + 6K XC race

October running total to date – 145.43

Nominal challenge goal: 100 miles

Real goals: Get healthy enough to run 5 days a week. Avoid re-injury. Build base.

Today's notes – Yesterday I looked at the hourly forecast, and ran in the morning to avoid the rain. That gave me more than 24 hours to think about running in the rain today. The forecast was accurate; we had rain or showers pretty much continually from early yesterday afternoon to now, and I don't know when it will stop.

So . . . rain and 45º F (7º C). This is not my favorite weather for running, though it would be worse if it were a few degrees colder. This is the kind of weather that gets me to look out the window, procrastinate starting the run, and maybe end up swapping tomorrow's rest day onto today.

But today there was a race. I was committed.

With plenty of time to think about it, I put a change of clothes in the car. And lots of plastic bags, more than I thought I'd need. I took 2 pair of dry socks, trainers to warm up in, spikes to run the race, and walking shoes to have a dry pair after the race. Logistically, about the only thing I missed was that I only took one pair of running gloves.

Pete Glavin XC #4 was actually 3 cross country races. The women's race started at 11:00, the masters men's race started at 11:45, and the open men's race started at 12:30. The course is a loop; women and masters men ran 3 loops for 6K, open men ran 4 loops for 8K. I started my warmup at 10:45, and got one full loop of the course and a partial loop before stopping behind the starting area to watch the women start their race. My hands started out cold, because I didn't want to get my only running gloves wet on the warmup; but they warmed up well enough. The course wasn't too bad.

Later, some women I talked to confirmed that the course deteriorated with each lap. It was definitely worse on my first lap than on my warmup, and it deteriorated a little each lap I ran. I started out hard across the grass pointing at where the turn onto the chalk-marked loop was, and I was pleased that Garmin shows my start across that grass as a straight line. I guess I ran a near-perfect tangent to open the race.

Later, the tangents weren't perfect. There were places where I had to choose between cutting the corners tight and having better footing. There were also a couple of places where I was able to run good tangents on decent footing, with the course showing that most runner ran poor tangents. I had the advantage of having practiced on the course 10 days ago, when I noted several odd tangents.

The pack sorted itself out in less than one loop, and I ran most of the race in space, i.e. there was a largish gap between me and a pack of runners ahead of me, and I couldn't hear footsteps or spectators cheering people behind me. My ankle didn't bother me during the race, but I didn't really push for a 5K type pace; I mostly ran about threshold level of effort. And I got T pace type results. Garmin reports mile splits of 6:38, 6:54, 6:52, and a 6:44 pace for the last partial mile, for an average of 6:47 per mile. Not as fast as I'd like for this short a race, but quite acceptable for the course conditions and my own current level of conditioning. Garmin said 25:32.3 total; official time was 25:32.8. I did a pretty good job of starting and stopping the watch timely.

There is no bling to brag about. Pete Glavin #4 was also the USATF Niagara Region Cross Country Championship, which meant it drew a strong field. My result was good for 36th of 78 overall (in a field of men over 40 years old), and 4th of 26 in the M 60-69 age group. The GVH Men's 60-69 team finished second (2-4-11) behind Syracuse Track Club (1-3-5). If we had one more guy healthy, we would have been competitive for first.

I'm not terribly fond of cross country, but I'll run it to support the team. I remarked to one of our 50-59 runners afterward that I hated cross country, and he said, "You have to embrace it." And I thought of this group. Yeah, today was a real "Embrace the Suck" kind of day.

My phone stayed in its plastic bag before and during the race, but I did pull it out in the shelter afterward to take a couple pictures of how muddy my legs got:




Of course, the open men got muddier than I did, because they had a worse field to work with and had to run 4 laps.

And then came the post-race online results monitoring. This was the next to last race in the USATF Niagara Runner of the Year series. Masters results are scored by age grade. I age graded 14th, which doesn't get me any points; but it gives me a 4th race in the series so my score will count. There were 2 guys who could beat me that needed to run both of the last 2 races to get their 4 races in. One didn't run. The other ran, but didn't show up on the USATF age grade scoring. My best guess is that he signed up for the race to run for his club in the Pete Glavin series, but didn't bother to put in his USATF number. (RunSignUp made me manually enter my number for this race. It auto-filled my number for the other 3 races in the ROY series I ran. I don't know why.)

So I could be looking at being the USATF Niagara Region Masters Men's Runner of the Year by default, from not having anybody who age grades consistently better than I do run enough races. If that happens, I'll take it. Depending on the status of that one guy, there are only 5 or 6 guys left who can complete 4 or 5 races in the series; none of the others can pass my point total even if they age grade first at the indoor track 5000 meter event that is the last ROY race. And if that one guy doesn't run the indoor track 5000m, it doesn't matter what his status was today.

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) short course, finished 4.34 miles in 27:51
March 11, 2017 Johnny's Runnin' of the Green 5 mile (Rochester, NY) finished in 33:25
March 18, 2017 USATF Masters 8K Championship (Shamrock 8K, Virginia Beach, VA) finished in 30:59, PR for 8K
April 17, 2017 Boston Marathon (Hopkinton, MA) finished in 3:49:42
April 30, 2017 USATF Masters 10K Championship (James Joyce Ramble, Dedham, MA) finished in 39:54, PR for 10K
May 21, 2017 Lilac Run 10K (Rochester, NY) finished in 40:04
May 27, 2017 Canandaigua Classic Half Marathon (Canandaigua, NY) finished in 1:33:06
June 9, 2017 Charlie McMullen Mile (Fairport, NY) finished in 5:44.90, PR for mile
June 18, 2017 Medved 5K to Cure ALS (Rochester, NY) finished in 19:32
July 4, 2017 Firecracker Four Mile (Fairport, NY) finished in 25:42
July 15, 2017 Shoreline Half Marathon [1:40 pacer] (Hamlin, NY) finished in 1:39:05
July 28, 2017 Karknocker 5K (East Rochester, NY) finished in 19:28
August 9, 2017 Pound the Ground 10K (Mendon, NY) finished in 41:26
August 12, 2017 Bergen Road Race 5K (Bergen, NY) finished in 19:47
August 25, 2017 USATF Masters Mile (Hap Crim Michigan Mile, Flint, MI) DNS - injury
September 3, 2017 Oak Tree Half Marathon (Geneseo, NY) DNS - injury
September 17, 2017 MVP Rochester Marathon (Rochester, NY) DNS - injury
October 29, 2017 Pete Glavin XC Race #4 6K (Brighton, NY)
November 23, 2017 Race with Grace 10K (Hilton, NY)
December 9, 2017 USATF Club National XC Championship 8K (Lexington, KY)

2018 races:
January 6, 2018 Winter Warrior Half Marathon (Gates, NY)
April 16, 2018 Boston Marathon (Hopkinton, MA)