Well, today was my last run of February, so time for an update.

For the week I did just over 20 miles. It was supposed to be a cut back week for me after doing 21 and 23 the two weeks before. I guess I didn’t cut back as much as I intended, but it was OK.

For February, I wound up with just under 75 miles. A bit short of my target, due to A. it being a short month, and B. an short 11 mile week the week of my 5K race. I ran 16 out of 28 days this month and spent 12 hours and 45 minutes pounding the pavement.

For 2010 so far, I’m up to about 153 miles done, 34 days running, and 26:41 hours, mostly in the dark and cold. As for my 1000 mile target, I’m just over 15% there. If you figure it all out mathematically, I should ideally be sitting at about 159 miles at this point, so I’m about 6 miles behind. That’s not bad at all. One run could take care of that. But looking at my half marathon training plan, which starts in 9 days, and calculating my projected miles for the next few weeks, I should be on or ahead of target by the end of March.

Most importantly though, this marks the end my sixth month of running seriously. I went out for day 1, week 1 of the Couch to 5K program on August 31, 2009. I think I mentioned that the night before that fateful run I could not find my “sneakers”. I can’t even call them running shoes because I never ran in them. I found one and searched the entire house for the other. It still hasn’t shown up. Anyway, I ran that first day in a pair of casual shoes, sweat pants, and a regular cotton tshirt. Granted, it was one minute running interspersed with 90 seconds walking, and I did it on a trail where nobody could see me anyway. I bought some real running shoes on the way home that day.

Since that day, I’ve logged almost 320 miles in 87 runs and spent over 58 hours doing it. But more than numbers and miles can possibly show, this has been one of the most amazing periods of my life. I’ve gone from stumbling breathless though those first one minute intervals, to being able to run 9 miles without a pause or any real struggle, from just over 6 miles a week those first few weeks, to over 20 miles a week now, from barely being able to hit a 10:00 minute pace, much less hold it for a few minutes, to being able to run a quarter mile at 7:30 today, not to mention finishing a 5K race in the top 25% with a pace of 8:14. I say all this not to brag, but to explain how massively things have changed for me personally. At any rate, none of these statistics are particularly bragworthy except as seen in relation to where I started. I imagine (hope) that in six months from now, I’ll be looking back at these numbers proclaiming similar improvements over them.

I started running for health reasons. To lose weight, sure, but not just from a vanity perspective. My blood pressure was borderline high – over 130/80. Blood sugar was also borderline high and I was diagnosed with impaired glucose tolerance, aka “pre-diabetes”. And my liver was infiltrated with fat to the point where it was causing damage, as seen by enzymes in blood tests. Cholesterol levels were also borderline bad. All of this was largely weight related (not sure about the cholesterol on that). I wasn’t morbidly obese or anything, but apparently my body just can’t tolerate the extra weight. At any rate, it was time to get a handle on things. Dieting was just resulting in a continuous rollercoaster. My doctor was urging me to get some regular exercise. Finally I decided to listen to him. Here’s what my weight looks like from the day I started C25K to today:

I hope to break the mystical 200 mark this week. I saw my doc in October, just a few weeks into C25K (and had gained a few pounds after a week and a half of English pubs and English breakfasts) so I don’t have updates on any improvements to blood sugar or liver enzymes. But I have been taking my blood pressure regularly at home, and am happy to report that it’s now down in just about perfect range. Last measurement was around 121/73, which is about average for the last few weeks. This gives me hope that my other stats are approaching normal ranges again. I think I’m due for another check up in the beginning of April. Looking forward to it.

One more indicator of how my health has changed in this past year is incidence of sickness and colds. In short, I have not been sick or had a cold at all since I started running. Nothing. As a comparison, in the 2-3 months just before I started running, I had been home sick or worked at home due to sickness so often that my employers (also good friends) had come to me concerned and begged me to take some time off and get some rest. The fact that I’ve made it through the most of the winter / cold / flu season completely unscathed is quite something.

At any rate, onto another week, another month, another six months and my first year as a runner…

Today: 7.59 miles
Week: 20.34 miles
February: 74.86 miles
2010: 152.93 miles

Good run today. Decided on 7.5 miles and did just over that. Was feeling a bit tired through mile six or so, but near the end of mile seven had a surge. Started going fast and held a roughly 7:30 pace for about a quarter of a mile. This felt great. After the quarter mile, I didn’t feel like I was getting tired at all, but noticed my pace had gone to about 8:00 and I was slowing down without even noticing it, so I decided to take it easy for the last quarter mile or so of my run.

During the fast run, I decided to take an alternate route back to my house so I could keep running fast without hitting a big hill. Just when I slowed down, I noticed two runners approaching me. One of them had a Daily Mile (http://www.dailymile.com) tshirt on. These had just been printed off and mailed out this week and a bunch of people on DM got them yesterday. I got mine as well. I noticed this guy was wearing VFFs. Sure enough it was a local DM member, Matt W., aka “Luau” http://runluaurun.com/, one of my DM friends. We’d tried to meet up during the Super Sunday 5K but never found each other in the crowd. We stopped, greeted each other, and got a pic snapped by Matt’s friend, Mike.

After that I ran just a bit more and then walked the last couple blocks home. Weather today was pretty snowy. Was a light snow when I left, got pretty heavy towards the end. You can see some of it in the photo there. But it was above freezing and there was no real accumulation occurring, so it was actually pretty beautiful to run in.

Today: 5.75 miles
Week: 12.75 miles
February: 67.27 miles
2010: 145.34 miles

Finally got in my 5.75 mile run for the Kate M. Haiku Challenge. Here’s my masterpiece:

The rain abated
Leaving an ocean of mud.
Trail run was bad plan.

Yeah, some horrendous rain the last couple of days. Was supposed to rain/snow all day today too, but I woke up and heard nothing. No drops hitting the roof and gutters. Yes, it was clear. When the sun finally came up, it was actually shining brightly. Figured I’d try the crosstown trail that starts near my house. As the haiku says, bad plan. A few times I had to run way over to the side, right off the path to avoid giant puddles. Even so, my feet totally got covered in mud. Abandoned that after just over a mile and hit the pavement.

Ran mostly “naked” today – no music/podcast, ignoring the Garmin except to check distance for proper turnback point. I pushed it a bit and wound up with a pretty good 9:48 pace. Actually, the first couple of miles were the worst, due to dealing with the mud. Splits were:

10:22
9:58
9:27
9:32
9:55
7:06 (0.75 miles – pace was 9:29)

Looks like I took a little rest there in mile 5.

Overall, I felt really good. But these days, now that my pace is picking up, I’ve been experiencing pains/cramps in my lower right abdomen. [Side stitches, I guess] Right under the ribs. I’ve heard that “belly breathing” helps for these, and it does seem to work for a bit. But they come back after a few minutes. It’s definitely speed induced. If I slow down, they go away. I think that’s part of the reason I slowed in mile 5.

Today: 4.0 miles
Week: 7.0 miles
February: 61.52 miles
2010: 139.59 miles

My iPhone weather app said “light rain”. My eyes said “heavy rain”. It was 36ºF, a bit chilly for rain running, so I opted to stay inside and climb on the Treadmill of Doom.

Five miles was on my schedule and I had I gone outside I probably would have gone for 5.75 to do the Kate M. Haiku Challenge. But I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to do on the treadmill. I just get antsy and stir crazy after a few miles on there. So when I got on, I really had no idea how far I was going to go.

I don’t trust the treadmill’s speed and mileage, so I usually go by my Garmin footpod. The thing is, a couple of weeks ago when I was out by the track, I did an auto-calibration of it. You run a certain known distance and it compares that to what it thought you ran and does an adjustment. For me, the adjustment was 943/1000. In other words when, by its own calculations, it sees that I’ve run 1000 feet (or meters or whatever), it’s now going to report 943.

Well, I got on and started running at a fairly comfortable pace and Garmin had me doing 11-12 minute miles. Seemed slow. Too slow. I stopped and undid the adjustment, putting it back to 1000/1000. Started running again at the same pace and it said I was doing 9:30/9:40-ish. Seemed too fast. Gah! Put it back to 943/1000 and dealt with it. The first mile ended up pretty slow – 10:49 per Garmin. I managed to do the next two below 10 – 9:59 and 9:52 – but I’m sure it was much faster. My heart rate was up to 156. In mile 4 HR reached 160 and I was feeling it, so I slowed it down a bit and came in at 10:10.

So I’m sure the 943/1000 is way off. There’s no way I’d be exerting myself that much – 160 bpm – for a 10 minute pace. The last time I did serious speed work, I was doing sub 8:30′s and HR only went up to 166. So I think I need to recalibrate. If the 1000/1000 is correct, it means I did closer to 4.25 miles and something under 9:30 pace. That’s a LOT more in line with what it felt like. Oh well, you live you learn.

Anyway, as far as distance, by around 2.5 miles, I knew the 5.75 and even the 5 was out of range. Like I said, I just get really antsy. I start focusing in on how much time/distance is left. From 3 to 4 miles, I was counting the 100ths. It was horrible. 3.65…. 3.66………. 3.67….

In retrospect, running in the cold rain would have been relatively pleasant. Looks like I’ll get a chance to test that theory, since this weather is supposed to continue throughout the weekend.

http://www.cambridgecityrun.com/

Just realized this is coming up in just under 5 weeks. Just getting over the high of completing my first ever race, now the adrenaline is kicking in on this one. It’s a great course – around Fresh Pond in Cambridge, MA – and should be a great time of year – late March. Anything warmer than the biting cold of the Boston waterfront on February 7th will be nice!

Right now I’m telling myself that I’m not trying for any amazing time. If I get in under 45 minutes, I’ll be happy. That’s five 9 minute miles, which I feel completely confident about. Probably too confident, meaning I should really go a bit faster. Based on my 5K time, McMillan says I should be doing 42:45 with 8:33 miles. In one sense that seems about right, but then again, that’s so close to my 5K pace of 8:18, and I can’t imagine sustaining that for 5 miles. But we’ll see. I’m sure I’ll go out faster than 9:00 and see where that leads me. Now I’m rambling. OK, bye.

Today: 3.0 miles
Week: 3.0 miles
February: 57.52 miles
2010: 135.59 miles

Funny how running three whole miles felt like a pretty major accomplishment a few months ago. Now three miles seems just barely worth the trouble of going outside for. Anyway, I’m taking it easy this week, so just three miles today.

Over the weekend, I came across this article at Active.com on proprioception. Per the article, “Proprioceptive cues are images and other sensory cues that enable you to modify your running stride for the better as you think about them while running.” It gives you a bunch of techniques or visualizations you can try while running which should help to guide you into a “better” running form. Rather than just saying, “shorten your stride!” it’s saying, “think about this, or focus on this, and your stride will probably shorten.” (It’s not only about stride shortening. I just used that as an example.)

I tried the first one, where you tilt your body forward while running. This causes you to place your foot down more quickly and closer to your center of gravity to keep your body from falling forward. This is supposed to shorten your stride and increase turnover or cadence. Seemed to work pretty well. My pace was 9:43 which is good for me, while my average heart rate was 140, which is relatively low. My cadence was 81 average, up from my usual 78-79.

Another podcast listening day. Today: This American Life, an old favorite.

Today: 9.0 miles
Week: 23.0 miles
February: 54.52 miles
2010: 132.59 miles

I have an awesome 10 mile course mapped out, going straight down Route 16, around Wellesley College via Pond Rd. and straight back. But I wasn’t quite ready to jump to 10 miles. Wanted to do 9. If I cut through the college itself, that would take off two whole miles, putting me at 8. So I added an extra detour to the beginning of the route, which put one more mile back on. Perfect.

Wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It’s a mile more than I’ve gone before. OK. 0.8 miles longer. Temp was 34ºF. Would I need food? Water/Gatorade? It didn’t seem like an extra 0.8 miles was going to break the camel’s back, so I just drank a bit before I left, and took some Clif bars along as usual on my long runs, though I’ve never felt the need to eat them on the run, and didn’t today. I will say that at around mile 7.5, a swig or two of Gatorade would have been very nice, but it wasn’t any kind of strong craving. I think when I go up to 10 miles, some mobile hydration will be in order. And of course, when it starts getting warmer around here, as rumor has it it will, I imagine I’ll need something on even shorter runs.

Also listened to some podcasts today, from “Hardcore History” available on iTunes. Pretty interesting stuff.

I’m pretty amazed by my body’s adaptation so far. Cardio in particular is so much improved. Average pace was 10:40, and average heart rate was 142. Only got up to 153 max and that was on some fairly significant hills. My first 8 miler was just over a month ago, with a pace of 11:12 and average/max heart rate of 144/157. So I added a mile, cut off 30 seconds per mile, and did it all with less effort. I’m not bragging, just amazed to see the body adapt and improve so well in a relatively short time. I guess it shouldn’t be amazing – that’s what’s supposed to happen, but after years of failed diets and half hearted attempts at “getting in shape”, it’s just really nice to see something working exactly like it’s supposed to.

I think next week I’m going to cut back a little bit and thank the body for its hard work the last few weeks – a great 5k race, and two highest ever mileage weeks. The following week I’m going to shoot for that 10 miler. That will conclude my 4 weeks of “anything goes” running. Then, on March 8, I start the Hal Higdon Half Marathon Intermediate plan.

Today: 4.0 miles
Week: 14.0 miles
February: 45.52 miles
2010: 123.59 miles

Woke up, fell out of bed, strapped a heart rate monitor across my chest…

Weather.com said 33ºF. My body said at least 5º cooler than that. Sidewalks looked clean so I left my Stabilicers off. Maybe a mistake. Although there’s no snow on the sidewalks, it was fairly warm during the day yesterday and a lot of melted snow ran across the sidewalks and then froze last night, creating a lot of random icy patches. No incidents, but I definitely had to keep a lot of attention on the ground in front of me.

When I started running last late summer/early fall, I listened to music while I ran. I soon quit this as I generally found it too annoying when I needed to concentrate on just getting oxygen into my burning lungs. But now that I’ve learned to do most of my runs at something less than 99% of my max heart rate, I find my brain has more free time during the runs. And frankly, it’s getting bored with itself. So I listened to an old episode of Phedippidations by Steve Runner. Been listening to those starting from episode one and I’m up to 70 something – dating back to late 2006. Pretty entertaining. I’ve listened to one during a treadmill run, which was good, and it was a very nice change today. I don’t think I’ll listen to something every time, but it’s a good option.

My last few runs I’ve felt a bit tired. Not really in the game. I made sure to get to bed nice and early last night and actually felt really good today. Did the first mile in 10:06, then 9:59, 9:51, and 9:34. Felt comfortable the whole time, never like I was really pushing myself. In fact, my average heart rate for the whole run wound up at 139. That’s my 65% rate, which tells me I probably could have bumped up the pace a little bit. This is good. Speed going up, heart rate going down. Just what we want.

Tomorrow is my long run. Shooting for 8-9 miles. I’m thinking of hitting Washington St. in Wellesley, heading west, as if running the Marathon in reverse. This is my most common route as it’s straight and not very hilly. But usually I go 1.5 to 2.5 miles and turn back for a 3-5 mile run. Tomorrow I’ll keep going for at least 4 miles, which should take me up to Wellesley College. In the next week or two, I plan on going all the way down Washington St. to Pond Rd. and back east on Central St., going all the way around the college. But that will be a 10 mile run, which I’m not quite ready for yet.

View Larger Map

Today: 5.0 miles
Week: 10.0 miles
February: 41.52 miles
2010: 119.59 miles

I tried out a new feature on my Garmin 305, the “Virtual Partner”. OK, it’s not a new feature, but it’s the first time I used it. Basically, you set up a “Quick Workout”, in which you specify time and pace, time and distance, or distance and pace. All three essentially amount to the same thing since all three factors are interrelated. I set it up for 5 miles at a pace of 10:30 per mile, thinking I’d take a nice easy one today. When you turn on the virtual partner, you get a screen like this:

On top is a somewhat gimmicky graphic of you in relation to your partner. The partner is on top, ahead of you or behind you. The bottom half of the screen shows how far ahead or behind in real numbers. When you’re ahead, it has light background with black numbers, if you’re behind, the contrast is reversed. I believe it will show you distance in feet up to 0.1 miles, then in fractions of a mile. So you can tell at a glance whether you are on pace or not and how far off. You just try to keep that number as close as possible to 0. Given inherent GPS inaccuracies, it’s hard to say how close it is at any given point, but I could generally stay within 10 feet of my partner without too much effort. On hills, I might get out of sync by 30-40 feet one way or the other (depending on whether I was going up or down the hill). But overall, 5 miles at 10:30 equals 52:30, and I finished my run at 52:31, so that’s pretty good.

Normally, 10:30 would be a pretty easy pace for me. But we got a pretty good dumping of snow last night. They did a decent job of clearing the sidewalks, and I had my Stabilicer Sports on, so traction was pretty good, but I realized today just how much more effort running on snow actually is. Perceived effort was definitely higher, and that was validated by my heart rate – both average and max HR were just one beat less than Monday’s run, which I did at a pace of 9:45. I was pretty shocked by just how much it affected the effort.

Today: 5.0 miles
Week: 5.0 miles
February: 36.52 miles
2010: 114.59 miles

Wellesley Trails Map. Click to see full size.

Today’s plan called for a 4 mile easy run. But my plan is pretty loose right now in these few weeks before I begin my half marathon training. So I was looking over the map you see above, which is a map of the trails for my town, Wellesley, MA. I saw that big pink diagonal line that slashes through the middle of town. That begins about 1.4 miles from my house and runs for 2.3 miles. I figured if I did about half of it, I would wind up with a 5 mile run. I could handle that.

As soon as I started running, though, I remembered last Friday’s 5 miler, where I was aiming for a sub-10:00 pace. I was feeling up to it, so I pushed it a little bit. And so, my 4 mile easy run became a 5 mile pace run. My splits were:

10:13
9:29
9:53
9:38
9:35

Other than a too-fast mile 2, not bad negative splits. Average pace came in at 9:45.

I experimented on and off with my stride. Each time I concentrate on a fore/mid-foot strike and faster turnover, my pace went to around 9:30. When I added kicking up my heals at the end of each stride, my pace went to about 9:15. And when I concentrated on following through from that, letting my feet kick out for the next stride, I went sub-9:00. However, even though I feel it’s definitely more efficient, it’s still a lot faster and considerably more effort and I can’t keep it up that long. I can’t seem to reconcile the new form with my usual speed. I feel like I’d be doing the moon walk or something.

Anyway, it’s all good. It’s something I’ll keep working on little by little, pushing in a bit at a time and hopefully have it become more natural. I’m also starting to feel the lure of the VFFs. I don’t expect that I’ll become a barefoot evangelist any time soon, but I hear enough positive things about them and how they help improve your form even when you’re not wearing them. We’ll see how long I can hold out before trying out a pair.

Oh… just realized I didn’t say much about the trail. It’s called the Brook Path. Most of what I ran on wasn’t very “traily”. More like running in a park than running in the woods, which is my concept of trail running. But it’s a lot better than running on the streets. No traffic noise, less wind. Some trees, and nature-ish objects. At one point it crosses the small brook that is its namesake and there is a little footbridge. But as you can see on the map, the part I ran on (from the top middle of the map, down about half way) runs parallel to, and just a couple of blocks away from the main street in town. It seems that the second half veers away from the main drag and gets more rural. I’ll check it out when I’m ready for a 7 mile run. Maybe this weekend.