Monthly Archives: January 2008

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3M Half Marathon

Great weather. Great run. Finished in 1:49:55 (8:23/M pace). Near the end of the race (that is during the last two miles) I felt I could break 1:50 if I kept pushing, so I did, and I did. WOOHOO! I feel quite satisfied with this accomplishment today. The only negative is that I did it alone. Instead I would have liked to have done it with one or more of my running buddies.

Mile Split   Total
 01 9:14.48 0:09:14.48
 02 8:31.36 0:17:45.84
 03 8:09.00 0:25:54.84
 04 8:08.40 0:34:03.24
 05 7:34.22 0:41:37.46
 06 8:44.38 0:50:21.84
 07 8:33.00 0:58:54.84
 08 8:04.85 1:06:59
 09 8:50.37 1:15:50
 10 8:40.19 1:24:30
 11 8:20.09 1:32:50
 12 8:14.72 1:41:05
 13 8:01.50 1:49:06
 HM 0:49.38 1:49:55

Update: If I were to run the marathon based upon this the McMillan Calculator says I’d complete it in 3:51:49 (8:51/M). Yeah, right, no way!

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Running log week of 2008-01-27

01/27 – Sunday – 3M Half Marathon – 13.1 miles – 1:49:55
01/28 – Monday – Cross training (stationary bike) – 30 minutes
01/29 – Tuesday – Downtown Town Lake w/ Cait – 5.8 miles – 1:10 & Class (400@MGP, 400@10K) – 3.5 miles – 60 minutes
01/30 – Wednesday – Downtown North through UT w/ Cait – 6 miles – 1:10
01/31 – Thursday – off (yearly physical)
02/01 – Friday – Downtown Town Lake w/ Cait – 5.8 miles – 1:08
02/02 – Saturday – Last 7 miles of Marathon out and back – 14 miles – 2:23
Weekly mileage: 48.2 miles (This is my longest yet and I’m supposed to be tapering – oops!)

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Running log week of 2008-01-20

01/20 – Sunday – off
01/21 – Monday – Neighborhood – 4 miles – 40 minutes
01/22 – Tuesday – off – traveling to SF
01/23 – Wednesday – on business trip in SF – 3.8 miles – 40 minutes
01/24 – Thursday – on business trip in SF w/ Doreen – 3.8 miles – 40 minutes
01/25 – Friday – off w/ Justin
01/26 – Saturday – off – traveling home
Weekly mileage: 11.4 miles

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Stiffness and Muscle Fatigue

We ran the last 22.2 miles of the AT&T Austin Marathon on Saturday morning. I went out ahead of the 4:30 group with Glenn. We were doing fine for many miles. I think we were doing about 9:45s and were just sailing along. I was taking Clif Shots and Electrotabs about every 50 minutes. But beginning about mile 23 on the marathon course with about 3 miles to go I was getting stiffer and stiffer. I felt like my legs were logs. My stomach was aching and I didn’t want to eat anything whatsoever – IOW I thought I was going to hurl. I was also going into myself. The mental battle of keeping going or just walking was raging inside me. For the last mile I felt like I was just a slug going up the 12th Street hill. All I wanted to do was walk. However I made it to the end at 8th Street, but that was it. I ended in 3:34 with an overall pace of 9:44. I walked back to the Annex with Glenn down Congress. I couldn’t have run it. I had nothing left. My muscles were totally fatigued. They were even tensing and throbbing when I was driving home.

Now what gets me is that during the ARA 30K the other week I took it totally easy and none of this ever happened, but then again I didn’t push it at all. I walked all the big hills and I was running at a slower pace with Chris. We ended with an 11:23 pace overall. When I got done I wasn’t stiff. And I felt happy to have completed it. Mentally it was no challenge at all. I never got any demons. I even went out running 3 miles the next day. How can one day be so different from another?

So what should I do? Right now my first thought is to slow down and keep back with the 4:30 group. My second is to change my posture from time to time to use different muscles as our coach suggests. Finally I should probably to fuel myself later in the run even though I don’t want to. Figuring out what went wrong is really tough for me because all the weekly quality workouts do not come close to simulating what happened to me yesterday. The only time these crazies happen is on the very long runs. In general I’m fine with anything around a half marathon. Also this has been happening for the past three years of marathons. That is to say it might be just me, my body and my mind and what happens when I go over 20 miles. I wish that I could somehow conquer this, because it is the primarily reason that I’ll stop running. If I could only figure out where these physical and mental demons are coming from.

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Running log week of 2008-01-13

01/13 – Sunday – off
01/14 – Monday – off (Dentist appt.)
01/15 – Tuesday – Neighborhood – 4 miles – 40 minutes (missed class because I had an evening work conference call)
01/16 – Wednesday – Cross-train – 30 minutes
01/17 – Thursday – Neighborhood – 5 miles – 50 minutes
01/18 – Friday – off
01/19 – Saturday – Last 22 of marathon – 22 miles – 3:34
Weekly mileage: 31 miles

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Running log week of 2008-01-06

01/06 – Sunday – ARA 30K – 18.6 miles – 3:32
01/07 – Monday – Neightborhood – 3 miles – 35 minutes (approx.)
01/08 – Tuesday – Class (10x200K @ 5K, diagonals) – 3.5 miles – 60 minutes (approx.)
01/09 – Wednesday – Cross-train – 30 minutes
01/10 – Thursday – Neighborhood – 2 miles – 20 minutes
01/11 – Friday – off
01/12 – Saturday – 10 miles – 2 hours
Weekly mileage: 37.1 miles

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For 18.6 miles you too can get one of these

For 18.6 miles you too can get one of these.

WOOHOO! I like medals. I like shiny medals. WOOHOO!

Today Chris L. and I ran the ARA 30K together. This is the fourth race in the Austin Distance Challenge. The weather was great (overcast and in the low 60s). Since this was a very hilly race we had decided beforehand to do it slow and steady – and we did. We had been warned that this course could hurt us. So we felt no remorse walking the hills at the beginning and at the end. See the elevation map at the bottom.

The middle of the course (miles 6-15) was quite nice and the scenery was good (consisting of hills, scrub brush, and multi million dollar homes). Also because we were going slow enough we could even look at the scenery and enjoy it. Chris and I stuck together and chatted through the entire thing. At times we also ran with another running buddy of mine, Ed C. Ed was “slum”ing by running with us since he’s running the Houston Marathon next week for a 3:30 time. He said he wanted to run with someone slow so he chose us. Ugh! I know we’re slow, but he didn’t need to tell us that. In any case we finished together comfortably in about 3:32. Overall the course was hard if you were racing, but for those of us at the very back of the pack going slowly I think it was a good run and not as foreboding as previously warned. So we survived – quite well as a matter of fact.

Update: Here are the splits
Mile – Time
01 – 10:49
02 – 10:55
03 – 10:48
04 – 10:38
05 – 10:32
06 – 11:24
07 – 10:43
08 – 10:14
09 – 11:14
10 – 09:59
11 – 10:59
12 – 11:08
13 – 10:45
14 – 11:08
15 – 10:57
16 – 13:21
17 – 12:48
18 – 15:46
30K- 07:26

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Running log week of 2007-12-30

12/30 – Sunday – off
12/31 – Monday – Neighborhood – 3 miles – 30 minutes (approx.)
01/01 – Tuesday – Neighborhood – 4 miles – 40 minutes (approx.)
01/02 – Wednesday – Class (Ruth’s Ladder) – 6.5 – 90 minutes (approx.)
01/03 – Thursday – Cross-training (stationary bike) – 30 minutes
01/04 – Friday – off
01/05 – Saturday – off
Weekly mileage: 13.5 miles

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Ruth’s Ladder

For class this week we were to do Ruth’s Ladder. This is 600m @ 10K pace, 400m recovery, 400m @ 10K pace, 200m recovery, 300m @ 5K pace, 100m recovery, 200m @ 5K pace, 200 recovery, followed by 2 minutes rest, and then do it all over again for a total of three times.

Distance @ Pace Expected Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
600m @ 10K 3:06 2:58 3:01 3:03
400m @ 10K 2:04 2:02 2:05 2:00
300m @ 5K 1:30 1:23 1:26 1:25
200m @ 5K 1:00 0:57 0:55 0:55

I thought I did quite well even though I felt like a klutz with my right foot making a flopping sound.