Sickness, Sin, and Sloth

That pretty much sums up February through May.  June 1 marks a shift in attitude thinking everything that began at 4:45 this morning and going out the door for an amazing sunrise run.

• Work is not going to own me like it has over the last few months – mostly between the ears.  It has affected my mood, my sleep, and the way I interact with pretty much everyone.  For the most part, I think others would be polite if they called interactions anything other than unrewarding.  What has been missing are the head-clearing morning (and sometimes evening) runs in the cool air.  More of that.
• What I like to refer to as the “no liquor rule,” which usually begins in the last couple months of training is in effect now.  Beer?  I’ll never give up on you, beer…but we’re going to see a lot less of each other.
• While the last 6-7 years have been mostly good, as far as diet goes, refocusing on the “food is fuel” mantra will guide even smarter decisions that are focused like a laser on peak performance. I know all the right things to do and will do them all even better.

As previously mentioned, what’s done is done.  With 126 days until Twin Cities – and a sizable goal – there is a lot to be done in the 18 weeks ahead.  (Could it really be that my last PR effort will have been two years ago by the time I toe the line in Minneapolis?)  My, how time flies…

BolderBoulder

All of my spring “racing” is done now, the last of my planned races being the BolderBoulder 10k.   I ran leisurely through the hilly parts in the first 3.5 – 4 miles, and then sped up in the last 2.2 miles for negative splits and a finishing pace of 7:16/mile (45:10 overall). That is a sobering reality because I have to run faster than that for an additional 20 miles to beat the goal in October.  It was a perfect day, and I enjoyed it. It is good marker for the beginning of summer with which I can compare everything to at the end of the year.

The sun finally came out just in time for this year’s BOLDERBoulder!!

See you out on the trail…

Back in the saddle

I knew it had been a while since I wrote anything, but seriously – 3 months?!?  As far as running goes, I don’t have a lot to show for that whole time away.  I ran the Colfax Half Marathon last weekend and have the Bolder Boulder 10k tomorrow.  A while back, I wrote about February being a near loss, as far as racing and training, and the blog hiatus is predominantly because March and April…and May, did not get much better.

Running through the Denver Zoo in the first few miles of the Colfax Half Marathon.

This is not an “oh, woe is me” entry.  During the first part of the year, work comes first and it sucked a tremendous amount of time from anything else I wanted to do with my life, running or otherwise.  Thankfully, this was not a year I was running Boston.  The day of the Boston Marathon, I was stuck in a legislative committee room in the capitol for much of the time, not to mention how challenging getting in all the training ahead of time would have been. From January to May, work is the #1 priority, at least as long as I am chiefly a lobbyist.  (While a lot of people want to do that for life, I am not among them – but that is a topic for a different discussion)

Last year, as I was turning my sights toward the fall and the Wineglass Marathon, I wrote about the unconscious self-destruction in which many people engage.  I called it the “Training Wall.”  Unlike the wall in a marathon, which is obvious and sudden, the training wall builds slowly over time through lack of focus, whether intentional or not, on what goes into achieving a goal.  After my PR at the Marine Corps Marathon in 2013, I had a tough time coming back.  That one took a toll on my body, and instead of pushing past it, I slipped backwards.  Boston 2014 was a grunt, even at the slower pace I had decided to go.  I tried to refocus on good training through last summer so that I could take a run at beating my PR, but I had a tough time.  I don’t know if I every truly recovered – or if I did all the things I should have to make that possible.

I knew when I got to New York for the Wineglass that I was not in the right shape to try for the PR so my goal was to at least go fast enough to qualify for Boston in 2016.  I needed, at best, a 3:25:00 to have a chance.  However, it is so competitive to get in now that one really needs two minutes under the required BQ time to guarantee entry.  (In 2014, it was BQ minus 1:37. In 2015, it was BQ minus 1:02) I had to fight to finish in 3:22:33.  It wasn’t pretty.

Looking backward at what was or – potentially even more destructive – what might have been does not do a lot of good.  What’s done is done.  What was left undone is still left to do.

Goals

This fall, on October 4, I will be in Minneapolis/St.Paul to run the Twin Cities Marathon.  I would very much like to run my fastest marathon (current PR is 3:11:38) and break under 3:10:00, which means a 7:14 or better pace.  That is pretty fast for a big lumbering oaf like me, but I was so tantalizingly close in 2013 that I want to give it another shot.

It is going to take a concerted effort.  I have weight to drop, which ideally would have been done by now.  I have habits to change.  I have diet to improve.  I have existing, nagging little aches that need to be properly addressed.  So I’ll either do it or I won’t, and if things break the right way, then I might just have a shot at meeting that goal.

When the new Runner’s Edge training session begins on June 13, the Twin Cities Marathon will be exactly 16 weeks away.  That, for me, is an ideal training plan length, and I intend to spend the next couple weeks before that continuing to rebuild my fractured base so I can get right to it.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Planning for 2015

One of the most difficult things for me, as someone who likes to make a plan, and then see it come to fruition, is the occasional crushing disappointment that comes with a relative inability (at times) to “go with the flow.”  As I think ahead to 2015 and the things, I want to do, I am trying to embrace this conflict a bit more, rather than avoid it.

It is an incontrovertible fact that, for a great many things, “going with the flow” doesn’t cut it.  Planning for retirement, air travel, and most of what I do on a daily basis for my job serve as good examples. Waiting to see what happens in many circumstances makes you a victim of them, and then often ends up costing you more.  I am wired to plan, and I am not ashamed to admit it is because I want to control a predictable outcome.

This is the cross I bear…

My lovely bride serves as the yin to my yang, and I definitely want to do more to make her happy and less to disappoint her.  So with that in mind, I can be relatively confident that the plans I am making for 2015, which in this venue are almost exclusively running and fitness-related, will not conflict with her carefree, happy-go-lucky nature that can be both endearing and maddening at the same time.

Progress

I cannot look forward without a look back because 2015 is somewhat of an anniversary.  Ten years ago this year, I think I was just about at rock bottom in terms of life and happiness.  My first marriage was careening towards its eventual end, and I had reached a point in my health where I likely wouldn’t have had too many years left to be miserable.  I was nearly 240 pounds and my exercise regimen consisted largely of 12 ounce curls and straining to pull open the next bag of Doritos.  It was not a pretty sight.

2005 – Pushing maximun density

What happened after that was something I wrote about in my very first blog, and for a few entries after that.  I got my s**t together, albeit with a few bumps along the way, and starting dropping weight.  I was challenged by others to run so I did, and my dad and I ran together in my first race after that.

First race. The Phoenix New Times 10k (Tempe). November 2007

Not too long after that 10k, I met my lovely bride.  In much the same way that I got my physical self back together, she was the one who really got me 100% back on my feet.  In 2008, she gave me an early birthday present – a Garmin Forerunner 305, which today would feel like a microwave oven strapped to my wrist. On March 29, I logged my first “official” run using it – a 3.4 mile run from home that I still remember today.  I was training for my second race, the 2008 BolderBoulder 10k, and was running religiously at this point.  I never really gave much thought to doing anything more than a 10k.  Who on earth would want to run farther than 6.2 miles???

Funny how that works.  I ended up running that and several 5k and 10k races over the months ahead.  When my bride and I decided to make it official (she lived in Seattle at the time…ask me sometime about long distance relationships) and she was to move to Denver in June 2009, we coordinated it so I could run my first half marathon – the inaugural Seattle Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon and Half.  It was the first of many sacrifices she has made for me to pursue an avid running schedule.

She still likes to talk about how when asked by her if I ever was going to run a full marathon, I told her I really didn’t consider myself a real runner and that half marathons were the most I would ever do.  She saw right through that, and 6 months later – nearly 5 years ago today, I ran my first marathon in Arizona.

First Marathon – 2010 Rock ‘N’ Roll Arizona.

Planning marathon #10 and everything else

I don’t know what the next 10 years will bring, but I can at least plan the next 12 months – as much as possible.  This year brings another milestone, in that the next marathon I run with be my tenth, and I want it to be as memorable as possible. The ultimate goal for 2015 is to run a PR and sub-3:10:00 marathon this fall, and I want to it to be the Twin Cities Marathon.

First things first, though.  For a lot of 2014, I referred to trouble I had been having with my running health, which I attributed to a lot of different factors. My PR at the 2013 Marine Corps Marathon took a toll, but there are a lot of other factors in play.  As I begin 2015, those have not necessarily been resolved and the price has been decreased running health because I ran very few miles after October.

To ensure I didn’t totally fold up like a paper airplane, I signed up for a winter series.  I ran a 5k in December, and there is a 10k at the end of this month, as well as a half marathon at the beginning of February.  I wanted to make sure that I had targets on the calendar to keep me focused on a goal and to make sure I didn’t totally slack off.  I also wanted to plan something beyond the winter series I signed up for to keep the train on the tracks.  That’s a good thing because the slowdown in activity, plus the joy of the holidays have conspired to set me back a little further.  Now I am “running heavy,” and will have to address that along with tackling other aches and pains that have subsided very little for over a year.

So here are the goals/races/plans in no particular order:

1. Get my fitness house in order.  More cross training and exercises to balance out the imbalances in my body due to running being my sole activity.
2. Triage on my training diet.  I used to have a good one – I currently do not.
3. Yeti Chase 10k – January 25, 2015
4. Ralston Creek Half Marathon – February 8, 2015
5. Phoenix Half Marathon – February 28, 2015
6. Attain my target training weight sometime during the summer months – 182 pounds.  I’m not going to disclose where I am at now, but let’s just say I have some work to do…
7. Twin Cities Marathon – October 4, 2015.  Goal: PR, sub-3:10:00

It is an ambitious plan for me, but it is the right plan to get things moving back in the right direction.  Plus, the greater the challenge, the sweeter the reward!

October 4, 2015

The lack of a plan can actually be a plan

Now that made it three weeks past Chicago, I guess it is safe to say that the recovery is over. I ran few miles the Saturday after the marathon and just over 12 miles the following week.  Even though the recovery plan called to get up over 15 miles total by last Sunday, I just didn’t feel like it and took the weekend off.  I figure I had earned at least that much.

However, I am committed not to repeat the same mistakes I made last year after finishing the Columbus Marathon in early October and then just basically shutting it down for a few weeks.  That ultimately led to falling out of shape and then injuring myself at the end of the year trying to get miles in and get back into shape again.  My refuge against that mistake was immediately signing up with Runners Edge for “winter maintenance” from November 3 to January 5.  After that, the full spring session will go from January 19 – May 31.  By sticking with the program and consciously working in more cross-training, especially during the maintenance session, I can build a strong base that I have never really had going into training for my next marathon.

What is my next marathon, anyway?  Unless something horrific occurs, I know that I will be able to enter the 2014 Boston Marathon, which will be run on April 21, 2014.  That is too far away to be my next marathon so I will probably look toward the fall of 2013 to run the next one, which will allow me to maintain through the 2013 holidays and then train hard without giving up my base going into Boston.  Currently, I am intrigued by the Marine Corps Marathon in October, but there are so many other options.  I may also want to run Long Beach, also in October.  Family considerations – like the fact that it will be Christy’s senior year of high school – factor in higher than most other considerations so I have no doubt it will be a “team decision.”  Other fall marathon possibilities include the Twin Cities Marathon, Portland Marathon, and the Wineglass Marathon – all in October.

I have plenty of time to figure all that out, which allows focus on the short-term.  Other than a Thanksgiving 5k race in Broomfield, I don’t have any races on my dance card.  That means I can focus through the holidays on maintaining and improving on my base while not spending a lot of time obsessing about a training plan or race schedule.  That said, I have not run a 5k since 2009, and that was when I was a lot slower and on a course that goes around the hilly CU campus in Boulder.  The race in Broomfield in 3 weeks is flat, and I plan to destroy my previous PR – if I can manage not to eat all the extra Halloween candy between now and then!

Looking ahead, I would like to run a half marathon in April or May and see if I can’t get my time below 1:30.  That would be pretty cool.  I’m sure I will sign up to run the BolderBoulder again, too.  I’ve run it four out of the last five years, and I think it is a blast.  (Although, I still haven’t been able to go off the course to dive down the slip n’ slide around Mile 2!)  If I manage to stay healthy, then I should have a better base and more speed going into the summer than I did this year.  If so, then maybe – just maybe – I might be able to bring that marathon time down under 3:10:00.  I am not sure if I will ever see a sub-3:00 marathon, but I think a sub-3:10 is a possibility.

Time will tell.  For now, I think I will just enjoy and maintain.