The Death of Speed

While in southern Texas over Fourth of July weekend, just missing a hurricane and eating more BBQ than I thought possible, I had an epiphany: speed is not my thing.

We were visiting a close friend in McAllen, TX July 1-6. I had full intentions of keeping up my Summer of Speed training while on vacation, but one night in central AC and I couldn't wake myself up before 9am.  It was great and horrible at the same time.  For all the luxuries that New York City has for some reason central AC still hasn't caught on--even in my current apartment building which is only three years old.  If you have been to southern Texas, you know that you need to get out there at dawn if you're going to do any kind of physical activity, so 9am was not an option.

For a couple nights we stayed on South Padre Island and being across the street from the beach was too much to ignore.  Our first morning there I fought off the siren song of central AC and forced myself out the door by 7:30...barefoot.  That's right.  Not only was I going to run on the beach--which I've never done--I was also going to do it barefoot.  I figured when else would I have a chance to do this?

I stashed my flip-flops under the boardwalk in hopes that no one would find them.  The sun was bright and pretty high already, but the strong breeze and reduced temps left over from the hurricane made it downright tolerable.  I set off going south for three miles and then returning, for a total of six miles.  I didn't set any speed requirement since I've never run barefoot or on sand before.

The sand was fine, compact, and mostly free of shells/debris; ideal for running.  I noticed immediately that my heels had to go further down during each stride and that my calves were stretching out.  But after the first half-mile I was totally down with the form and stride adjustments.

By the turnaround I could feel something on the bottom of my feet, but I figured that I hadn't stepped on anything.  At mile four I stopped and finally checked my feet.  Sure enough I hadn't stepped on anything, but I had managed to form three blisters on my feet.  I took a bit of a walking break and then managed to run for the last 1.25 miles.

After that run I felt great, better than any of my runs in the past month.  It was a long, sweaty, sustained effort.  While I didn't do any sexy speediness, I felt like I got a real workout.

That night I mentioned to Wifey that I wasn't really feeling the whole Summer of Speed thing.  I wasn't digging the workouts.  I couldn't find races.  I missed the long runs.  And I had a nagging fear that I wouldn't be ready for an October Marathon if I was running 5Ks all summer.  Now, don't get me wrong.  During Marathon training I love speed workouts.  Track repeats, tempo runs, hill repeats--I love doing them all when they offer a break from the long slow runs that are also baked into Marathon training.  Doing them exclusively turns out to not be so much fun.

In talking to Wifey I realized that I should just drop the Summer of Speed and focus instead on a Fall Marathon.  It would getting me doing the runs I want to do and get me back on the 50 State track.  It sounded like a plan (once again, I don't see the most obvious answer).

Now, you might remember/recall that I was planning on running the Virginia Beach RnR Half on Labor Day and then the Mount Desert Island Marathon in October.  Well, over the past couple of months both of those have fallen through.  We were going to go to Virginia Beach with the family for a weeklong vacation, but scheduling and costs prevented that from happening.  So I was going to save this race for another year.  But then I realized that Virginia and Maine were basically the only remaining states within driving distance.  All other states are pretty much fly only.  So I planted the bug in my mind (and Wifey's) to do a "destination" Marathon.

A couple cities came to mind--someone even suggested Denver--but once Wifey said Portland, Oregon, my ears perked up.  I looked up the race and started getting excited.  We've wanted to go to Portland for a while now and a Marathon near our Anniversary would be a perfect excuse to go.  On reading further it looked like a great race that wasn't too big plus there is a big wine region next door, the ocean an hour away, Mt. St. Helen across the state line, and a slew of quirky hotels--I was sold.

So my next race will be the Portland Marathon on Oct, 10 (that's 10/10/10) after which we're going to enjoy a week's worth of vacation involving lots of drinking and an active volcano.  Hurray!

An awkward relationship

I have to be honest: I'm in a running funk.  I thought it was a short term thing during the cold winter months.  But here we are in the throes of summer and I just don't feel like the runner I used to be.  I'm not excited about this Summer Of Speed because I can't find races.  I haven't read a blog post or running related article in about a month (never mind the last time I actually left a comment on someone's blog).  Even writing this entry is like pulling teeth.

I suspect the crappy winter/spring training has a lot to do with it.  It just messed me up psychologically--especially since I ran my best Marathon time at the end of probably my worst training cycle.  I'm still having nightmarish thoughts from the winter when I'd go out there in 15 degree weather before dawn and crank out six miles afraid that my eyes would freeze closed.

And then with the new job I find that I hardly ever have time to write an entry or keep up with other bloggers, which gets me out of touch with the running community.  I really have no idea what anyone on my blogroll is doing (sorry guys!!).  Heck, I barely have time to look up races to run.

I'm thinking I just have to get through this summer and start training for a Marathon to get me focused again on what I love to do.  And I'm hoping that as my main project at work winds down in September, I'll be able to get into a better groove with my life.

Legs of steel

Over the past month since the Delaware Marathon and in getting off on the SOS I've noticed two things going on with my legs.

First are the Marathon Cuts.  I noticed my first Marathon Cut just after the NYCM.  I was standing up from a squatting position (read: I was in the bathroom) and noticed that I had developed enough muscle definition in my quads to see a "cut" about two-three inches long.  As a recovering fat kid, having a cut of any kind is super cool--I must have spent a five minutes checking it out...in the bathroom stall.  Then after the Delaware Marathon I found that the Marathon Cut I got from the NYCM had elongated into a full-length cut from the outside of my hip to about five inches above my knee where the muscle ends.  This is totally awesome!  It's like discovering a new part of my legs!

Another side effect of training is the size of my calves.  It's not exactly a problem, until I put on pants--which is everyday.  In particular, navigating jeans over my calves has become pretty hard to do without tearing out some leg hairs along the way.  I guess I now have a high calf-to-waist ratio (bigger calves, smaller waist) meaning that I might have to start buying those carpenter jeans that were popular when I was 12.

SOS kicks off with a fizzle

Hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it? I realize now that I probably shouldn't have picked the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge as the kick off to my Summer Of Speed. For starters the race is an irregular distance: 3.5 miles. A few less tenths of a mile and it would have been a 5K (one would wonder why it they didn't do that). Then, there were the 14,000 runners. For such a short race that is a friggin nightmare. But none the less, I counted it as the official kick-off to my SOS (borrowed generously from Nitmos).

The event is a corporate charity run (and walk as I found out) benefiting the Central Park Conservancy. My office organized a team and paid for the entry fees, so when I saw the email I was one of the first to sign up. The race was also exactly one month after the Delaware Marathon, so I figured I had plenty of time to switch out my Marathon legs for 5K legs.

Lesson #1 from the JPMCCC: I have never had 5K legs. By training and by racing I am a long distance runner. For six years I have only run Half-Marathons and Marathons (except for one 5K and one 10K). So training for this race was exceptionally awkward. The biggest problem was that I would wake up to go running and then I would think "it's only a three mile run, it won't hurt if I miss it" and then went back to sleep. And then when I did run my legs were super sore. I'm not used to being sore after every single run--at least that hasn't happened in a very long time. Hopefully this means this SOS will break out some long dormant muscles.

On race day (Wednesday) me and a couple of coworkers gathered up to head uptown together. We were all dressed up in running shorts and the team t-shirt when the head of our East Coast operations (my boss's boss's boss) passes by and starts chatting us up. Since I'm the "professional" runner he singles me out and says that if I don't finish in the top five I can consider myself fired. Actually, he grabs a sharpie from a desk and writes that ultimatum on my t-shirt. Great. No pressure.

Since we're running late when we get off the train at Columbus Circle me and my coworkers decided to "warm up" with a run from Columbus Circle to Tavern on the Green.

Lesson #2 from the JPMCC: running with a backpack is difficult. Worse than running at a sprint is running at a sprint with a back pack full of work clothes. It actually wore me out pretty bad--and that was before I got to the bag drop off for my company.

We put our bags down and stretched before walking over to the massive mess that was the starting line. I didn't realize how far back we were because the starting chute wrapped around a curve. But once the crowd started moving I saw that we were waaaay far back in the non-competitive section (excuse me: non-competitive? That's a joke, right?). After we passed the non-competitive banner then came the markers for 12 minute pace, 11 minute pace, 10 minute pace, and so on. We were essentially with the walkers and knew that we would be weaving through the crowd the entire way.

Lesson #3 from the JPMCC: weaving through a entire race is like cross training in the middle of a tempo run. Weaving through the crowd the entire race felt like I was alternating between a tempo run and calisthenics. There was no way to get to my goal race pace of 7:15 and I was constantly shuffling, hopping, skipping, passing, and dodging. It was an entirely different workout than I'm used when I run.

I immediately lost my coworkers in the crowd. I was so focused on making my way through the crowd that I didn't see the first mile marker. For someone used to running long distances where there are usually sections of the race when you're all alone, this literally was a nightmare.

Lesson #4 from the JPMCC: team t-shirts should be recognizable from a distance. I work in an ad agency, and while it's not the type of ad agency that produces advertisements we nonetheless have professional designers on staff to make presentations and such look good. Apparently, no one in my office thought of tapping one of those designers for a t-shirt. Our team t-shirts were plain white t-shirts with the company logo on the front and some uninspired words on the back. Finding one of my coworkers was impossible in that crowd.

Even though our t-shirts were hard to find, I did eventually find a coworker in the distance near mile 1.5. I tried to lock-in on him but I couldn't close in because of the crowd and the weaving that had tired me out prematurely. But at least I had that goal to pass him (remember, I had to finish in the top five if I wanted to keep my job) and that kept me going through the race.

On the final downhill (cat hill) I made up a significant amount of space between me and my other coworker and finally passed him just after the boathouse. Then was the unforgiving 90 degree turn just before the finish line and the even less forgiving uphill to the finish line.

Lesson #5 from the JPMCC: that was the worst finishing chute experience ever. One of my co-workers pointed out that between my finish and his finish about 800 people crossed the finish line.  Want to guess the amount of time that passed between our finishes?  Thirty seconds.  With that many people crushing at the finish line it was like running into a wall at the end.  Actually, I did run into two people who slowed do faster than me.

I finished the race in 28:11, a pace of 8:03.  However, according to Fenny I managed to run an extra .1 miles, bringing my adjusted pace to 7:53.  While this was about 45 seconds slower than I intended on finishing, it sets an incredibly low bar for the SOS.  I can only go up from here.  Hooray for optimism!