Post Turkey Day Recovery

As those of you who read the better half's blog know, we went to the mountains for Turkey day with friends.What she might not have let on is that we went there with one of them.
So we had a great Turkey day dinner. Lovely desserts. Lots of fun with the kids (sledding, games, etc).

Tangent

Unlike most kids, our LM doesn't like things that go 'fast'. He's a bit of a scaredy cat. So, when we went sledding he wanted no part of going down the hill. Even when his friend went down. Even wen Daddy went down. He much preferred the one-horse-open variety of sledding. I'll give you three guesses who the horse was.

End Tangent

So, the day after thanksgiving, we decided to go for a run. Now mind you. It was cold. And snowy. So when we headed out at 8:30 it was an adventure. The temperature was about 2C. We headed out down the road, and turned off onto a foot path/bike path combination. It was covered in a combination of snow and slush.

Soon, it turned off into the woods. Where the path became just that: a single track path. Covered with snow and ice. It got so rough that we ended up walking for about 25m because we just couldn't get any traction while running up hill. Just too icy.

That was only the beginning of the fun though. Going down hill was even better. Slightly better trail conditions, but not much. And of course, since we were going down hill, I ended up on my derriere at one point. No serious injuries, just a sore wrist and bruised ego.

Still, it was a good run (except for the fact that he ran me into the ground going up hill). We made it back after an almost 4 mile run and all the moisture that had been wicked away from our skin onto the outer layer of clothing had turned to frost. Very cool look.

Kit Review

Garmin has gone and updated Garmin Connect again. I'm getting more and more satisfied with what they're doing there. Check out this new feature. It plots speed against elevation and steps through your workout together as it does so.

The Long Lay Off Ends and Others

I've been silent for a while. Various factors came into play, but I'm back and running again.

I had a last minute business trip which caused me to miss a 10k I intended to run. This was unfortunate for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that the top times were within reach of my personal bests, so I might have been able to do relatively well. Of course, the route was very hilly so it might have impacted my potential times.

---------

I have found, looking back over my training records for the past year, that I am a much more reliable runner when I have a goal. So I've given myself a goal. We'll see how this works out. I had planned to do this in October, but I just couldn't get the time to train properly.

Stay tuned for updates. Encouragement and advice warmly accepted! (Remarks along the lines of 'you idiot', while not necessarily off base, are not.)

Kit Review

As my few regular readers recall (ahhh, alliteration...) I promised some updates on my Garmin Forerunner 405. I'm happy to say that it appears the Garmin people were reading my blog. They've made some improvements.

In summary my initial review was that the watch was great, but the Garmin Connect functionality kind of let it down. I'm happy to say that it appears they are working on my comments.

• The Garmin Connect website is now significantly faster and smoother to use.
• They adjusted the scaling on the elevation plot so you can actually see some details, instead of showing you from sea level up (great if you're in Groton, CT not so good if you're up over 1,000 feet). Below is an example of the new graph:

Here is what it used to look like (if you're curious, the route is approximately the same):

There are still some fixes I'd recommend. Highest among them is some data averaging or fairing (look at the graph of my lunch run from yesterday):

Lots of spurious data points there that could be faired. Still, we're moving in the right direction here, and I'm happy.

Time flies?

I know I've written about my toy a bit lately here and here. But read this and take caution.

A co-worker of mine ran the Berlin Marathon this past weekend. Some miles in (about 14 or so if I recall) he stopped at a water stop. A short while later, he reached up and went to tap a friend on the shoulder and thought to himself "my arm feels a bit light". After a moment or two delay he realized that his Garmin was gone.

To the best of his knowledge it got knocked off in the confusion around the water tables. He went back to look for it, but there was just too much debris on the ground.

Needles to say, he ran the rest of the race angry and frustrated. He said he just jogged it the rest of the way.

That sucks. I guess the lesson here is make sure your watch is securely fastened to your wrist. That, and make sure you have insurance!

Equipment Review

As promised, an update on my Garmin Forerunner 405.

I love the watch. I'm still not using a fraction of its capability, but I love it. I've been playing with some of the 'workout' features. Today I did some intervals: 0.5 miles with 2 minute recoveries between. It took all of about 2 minutes to program ahead of time and it was pretty easy to use.

I had one 'oops'. After hitting the 'Do workout' button a window pops up saying "hit lap when warm up complete' (or something to that effect). So I did my little warm up and hit lap...and...nothing. Turns out you have to hit 'start' to start the workout, but I'll take the hit on that one.

Here's the run I did today. Simple out and back, not too long:

I like the fact that you can see your run data displayed against time:


That's my heart rate against time.

You can do the same thing with elevation or pace too:


You may see above where I think things start to fall down a little bit. Look closely at the graphs. You've got heart rate against time, elevation against distance and pace against time. I'm not sure why they've selected it that way. It would make sense to have everything against time...or everything against distance...or even better, make it user selectable.

Second quibble: Look again at those graphs: particularly the elevation one. It goes all the way to sea level. That would have been fine last winter in DC, but here, not so good. There's a lot of wasted space on that graph and you cold see the elevation changes in much more detail if you could adjust the scale...even an auto scale would be more useful than that.

Third quibble: look at the pace against time. How about some data smoothing? That would make things more usable I think.

Last point for today: Garmin connect (the source of all the graphs and pictures from above) is slow. Not the downloading from the watch to the PC. I'm okay with that (and it's wireless). But navigating within the Garmin Connect site is very slow between pages, logging in and pretty much everything.

Things I'd like to see added:
-More user selectable options (as mentioned above)
-The ability to select a point on the geographic display and have the same point highlighted on which ever graph you are looking at.
-The ability to look at more than one piece of data on the same set of axes (i.e. elevation and pace against distance)
-Exportability (as a .gpx file or something similar)

A caveat: it may be possible to do some of the things I've mentioned above. If it is, I can't figure it out (and not for lack of trying). I'm willing to admit error though if someone can show me the light.

Overall, I love the watch. I'm living with Garmin Connect. I feel it's letting the watch down to some degree.

Whoops

So.
I've been trying out some of the new features of my new watch. I figured that the auto lap detect feature was a great match for some speed work on the track. It's great. If you set it up properly, it will detect when you cross your own path and mark a "lap." Great feature.

I jogged up to the local track this afternoon to give it a try. I did the first two laps as a warm up then proceeded to alternate fast laps with slow laps. The 405 beeps every time a lap is detected, so I used that as my signal to pick up the pace or slow down.

Post run, the data the unit provides is pretty good (better than the Polar S120 I've been using anyway). Here's some of the data from my run. I didn't wear the heart rate monitor today. In the past, there has been interference on the track that prevents a good signal:

Lap

Time

Distance

Avg Pace

Avg Heart Rate

Avg Cadence

Calories

1	00:01:46	0.17 mi	10:42 min/mi	--	--	26 C
2	00:03:13	0.34 mi	09:34 min/mi	--	--	56 C
3	00:03:09	0.33 mi	09:24 min/mi	--	--	56 C
4	00:02:24	0.34 mi	06:59 min/mi	--	--	55 C
5	00:03:21	0.35 mi	09:41 min/mi	--	--	59 C
6	00:02:15	0.33 mi	06:45 min/mi	--	--	53 C
7	00:03:44	0.34 mi	11:00 min/mi	--	--	60 C
8	00:00:29	0.06 mi	08:25 min/mi	--	--	7 C

Now, the astute among you may say: "Gee, that's a short last lap. Only 0.06mi. What did you do? Wimp out?" Uh. No.

As I was rounding the first corner of the track, one of four things happened:

a) I hit an uneven spot, or
b) someone unseen by me threw something in my path, or
c) I hit the inner edge of the track, or
d) I tripped over my own two feet

I'm voting for b.

Anyway. The damage is done. I'm nursing a nice skinned left knee (which the LM has helped by putting a bandage on) and a swollen right ankle.

I'm not worried about the knee. Although it looked really bad at first. Luckily, what I initially thought was a massive abrasion and bruise turned out to be mostly some of the red surface of the track that rubbed off. After a shower it cleaned up nicely.

The ankle is ugly. It's the same ankle I've sprained on and off for years. We'll see how it develops. Right now I'm practicing the Ice and Elevation aspects of RICE. Compression will come in a few minutes.

The most frustrating thing? With all the running on trails, paths and other uneven surfaces I've been doing, where do I bite it? On a track! (and no, I wasn't looking at my pace on the watch when I did it).

Stuttgart Half Marathon

The observant among you may have noticed the added Personal Record in the left column. It's not hard to record a new PR when it's your first race at the distance!

Looking back at previous posts, you may also realize that 2:03:18 isn't quite the time I was hoping for. Honestly, as the race went, I'm quite happy with it. It was a lot of fun, and very crowded (well over 15,000 runners). Complete with samba bands, cheerleaders (yes, German cheerleaders I'm not kidding). But I get ahead of myself.

We left the house and took the train which was fine, except as we got closer and closer to the start the train got more and more crowded. While the race wasn't as big as last year's Marine Corps Marathon, unlike the DC Metro the Stuttgart transit system didn't throw on any extra trains...just the normal Sunday schedule (i.e. one every 30 minutes).

Once we got there things were fine. We made our way to the starting area and had quite a bit of time. More than we expected, since we planned (conservatively of course) to get there 30-45 minutes early. We just didn't expect the 45 minute delay in the start time. It worked out alright though, b/c the LM got to watch the hand bikes warming up (the picture is of a rider getting his medal but you get the idea.) The thing that worried me, was that as we were standing there waiting to start, it just kept getting hotter and hotter.


Herein was the big problem with the day. Heat. All of my long training runs had been done in the morning. Usually completed by 10:00. The race was scheduled to start at 9:00, so I should have been done by about 11:00. But add in the 45 minute delay... That and the average temperature for the past few weeks has been hovering about 17C/63F Yesterday the temperature was about 32C/90F. This created some serious problems

Tangent

One of my co-workers today uttered the following words while talking about his mountain bike race and my half marathon this weekend:"All those super thin people had a lot of trouble, but you and me, we've got nothing to worry about!" (This from a guy who is going to ride the Trans-Alp mountain bike race later this summer, so I didn't feel too bad.)

End Tangent

Because it was hot, and I really didn't feel acclimated, I didn't push it. And I'm glad I didn't. There were a lot of people having a lot of trouble. This was most evident in the later miles of the race. Going up a slight hill about km 15 or so, I had the runner in front of me start weaving all over the course (right into the arms of a fireman). Then, most disturbingly in the 19th km, I heard yelling up ahead. In a small alley way off the side of the course I caught a glimpse of a runner-a man-with blood dripping down his knees, screaming in agony, thrashing about on the ground being restrained by several medical workers and race stewards. Yeah, great weather.

I must say though, the people of Stuttgart were just great. Lots of support along the way, music, cheerleaders, a couple of drunk guys dancing about... But most importantly, quite a few of them (and some firefighters manning the routes in their trucks as well) took it upon themselves to spray down runners as we went by. Much appreciated!

The above water sprays were especially appreciated because the actual race water stations were pretty uncoordinated. Things pretty much came to a stop as soon as you approached one. Which slowed everything down. A lot. This was probably the low point of organization for the run, which was really unfortunate. I was just glad I had my belt on.

As for the sights and sounds. I'll leave you this link to the LW's blog. She's covered most of the highlights. Just let me add, she didn't see the post race showers! To be blunt, there's not a lot of modesty to the German character. Basically open air showers, with a little screen separating the men from the women. But of course, the men's showers were open to just about anyone. (The ankle deep water in the showers themselves was just an added bonus!)


Overall, my griping aside, it was a great time.

- - - - - - -

Kit review:
Amphipod belt: good, no irritation, I wore 3x 8 oz bottles (probably should have worn 4) and the pouch with Jelly Belly Sport beans.
New UA running shirt: I'd worn it a couple of times over the past few weeks and it was great. No irritations at all
UA shorts: this is the first problem I've had with them, even though I've worn them numerous times (long runs included) I had some chaffing issues. (The link is to the newer version of the shorts I was wearing.) I've got to think the chaffing was made worse by the heat, humidity and the fact that I was continually doused in water and/or sweat.

Hyper Sensitivity.

Yesterday day was long run day. I ran the same route that I ran last weekend. It's just under 12 miles from our house to where the Little Man plays soccer on the weekends.

Tangent

It was his last game. He did great. Actually kicked the ball a couple of times! The fact that he was on the sideline two of those times is beside the point! He even did well enough to get a new Doctor Who toy. Who said bribery doesn't pay! He started the season as one of the archetypal first time soccer players. Not paying attention to the coach. Not paying attention to the ball. Just kind of wandering around the field randomly: "hmmm what pretty flowers....ohhh! that blade of grass is longer than the rest! I must pluck it! What was that round thing that just bounced off my back? I'd best fall down and cry!"

End Tangent

Like last week, my legs felt very heavy through most of the run. I tried to push through the second half though. (I had the incentive to get to the field on time, and last week I'd barely made it.) I managed to shave some time off the total from a 10:04 pace to a 9:54 pace. But I noticed something odd.

The route is mostly on fire roads and gravel/dirt trails through the woods. There are some pronounced hills (like part of the big one and the last one from the last race). But I noticed something odd. I've run this route or it's constituent parts at least three times in the past. But yesterday I noticed something. Lots of those stretches that I'd previously mentally classified as "flat" weren't. Pretty much the whole thing was either a moderate up or moderate down slope. (In my mind yesterday it was pretty much all gentle up!)

Just a silly change in perception. Anyway, 2 weeks until the half marathon.

Kit note:
The Amphipod belt still working well. Still no big issues, no real bouncing which was my main concern. Most of the time I don't even know it's there. One of my concerns was the ability to get the bottles back into their clip holders while running. It's really not a problem. They just nicely slip in with a nice 'click'.

Unsolicited Commercial Endorsement

Living overseas, we do a lot of internet shopping. It's a great way to get a wide selection and still pay in $ vice paying in € or even worse in £. A company I was turned on to by a fellow running blogger The Running Warehouse.


Wide selection, quick turnaround (usually w/in a week, and we have to wait on the USPS) and they've sent me what I ordered every time! My only criticism is that some of there items only ship through UPS, not priority mail so I can't order them). Although, for those who live in the continental 48 (sorry Blunoz) they have free 2-day shipping, and free return shipping.

Even better, they've got a promotion of some sorts going on right now, and if you place an order over a certain value, you get a free reusable cloth shopping bag.

It's Kind of Like Riding a Bike

Cross Training. I've decided to do it a bit more. The bog-standard Runner's World half-marathon plan has 2-3 days of "Rest/Cross Train" per week. I've tried to do something other than run at least one of those days.

It started off with just riding the stationary bike a the gym.

Then I moved on to doing a little strength training.

Tangent

I don't really like strength training to much. I can't explain why. I just never really have. I fall for the oldest trick in the book all the time. "I just need to get in better cardiovascular condition first, then I'll start worrying about strength training," I tell myself. Then the semi-annual PRT rears its head. I realize I haven't done a push-up since the last one. I panic. I over train. I burn myself out. I grow to dislike strength training even more. When the PRT is over, I just go back to cardio. Repeat until next PRT.

End Tangent

I've struck upon a better idea now (it doesn't really address the strength training though..).

Today, I cycled in to work and back home.

It was fun. Not easy, but fun.

I'd scoped the route by running it half-way from home and half-way from work. This morning I rode in for the first time. About 7.6 miles each way. I'm quite proud of myself, as the route is anything but flat. I even made it up the first big hill without too much difficulty (the same one that was at the beginning of my latest race). It was pretty much cake from there.

Right up till the end.

I'd talked with another guy from work who cycles in the same way occasionally. He'd warned me about a hill. Now, this is a hill I've 'run' up numerous times, but I'm not sure if I've written about it. It almost always ends up at the end of my lunchtime runs. It is the bane of my existence. Regardless of my intentions, by the top of this not-too-long hill I'm moving at a walking pace with a running gait.

So, for-warned is for-armed, no? Well....no. I knew the hill was coming, so I built up to max speed on the straight away leading to the hill....as fast as my wee little haven't cycled in 11 years legs would take me. Then: foiled again! What I'd failed to recall, what I didn't seem to remember, regardless of having run this way numerous times, was that the way I was going, I had to make a hairpin turn at the base of the hill, reducing my speed too essentially zero. Great plan. Needless to say, my cycle up the hill ended up resembling my runs up the hill. Walking pace, but this time pushing a bicycle.

Final Tangent

I've decided to keep the bicycling up once or twice a week, weather and my work schedule permitting. I just need one more piece of important kit. Glasses. I swear I pulled a dozen flies out of my eyes over the course of 40 minutes.

End Tangent. End Post

Call me Corrigan

It all started a few weeks ago. I went for a long run on a new route. I was going to meet the LW and Little Man for his soccer game. I wanted to do about 8 or 9 miles, but the field is only about 5 miles away. So I went to a convenient online mapping service, scouted out a route. Looked simple enough, and I ran it.

It started well, but I'd run most of the beginning of it in pieces before. The trouble came when I entered new territory. You see, it wasn't on roads, but trails. There are plenty of trails around here. Most of them are probably better described as forest roads, because they are so wide, they are however, closed to traffic which makes it a very attractive place to run.
But they're just not marked very well. So needless to say, I went a little astray. My 8-9 mile run turned into a 9.5 mile run. Not too bad. Except it was cold and rainy.

(And his game ended up getting canceled:

• Name at end of alphabet
• last call on roster
• didn't get the call before LW left the house
• Glad coach wasn't there, I'd have been bailing LW out of prison.)

Fast forward one week. I'm in North Carolina for a conference. I ran the first morning (it's great to be time zones ahead so you can wake up early and go for a run without the misery of waking up early.) It was a nice short one. No problems, just a little drizzle at the end. Over the course of the next two days I find a running route map outside one of the conference rooms. Eureka! It's perfect. I take a look that night and find a nice 6ish mile loop to run the next morning.

Great plan. 6ish mile loop. On trails. In the dark. In an area I've never run in before. Can you see where this is going? I think the best thing that can be said about that run is that I couldn't find the trails in the dark, therefore I didn't get miserably lost trying to follow them. My 6ish mile loop became a kinda 4ish mile loop with spokes shooting off it! Here's the loop, you just lose a bit of the frustrating "shoot, dead end!" aspects of it.

Fast forward to this morning. Not wanting to repeat my past mistake, I took a very close look at the route online. I saw where I'd gone wrong: I needed to take a left immediately after the house by the train tracks, last time I'd gone straight. So armed with that, and a list of the names of the three trails I needed to hit, I was off.

Yeah. Well little did I know, there were TWO left turns, only one of which was marked on any map, and you just couldn't see the other on any overhead imagery I could find. (Anyone think of asking Google if they could do a winter global overlay? No pesky trees to block trails.)

So needless to say. I got to do a bit more exploring. Due to my natural sense of direction (LW suppress that snicker), I found my way back to the main cobblestone trail and finished up. Nine miler becomes 11 miler. But....I didn't miss the Little Man's soccer game, or my name would be Mudd.

The good thing is, I've found quite a few neat paths through the woods, and with the summer coming it will be just lovely to explore some more.

Kit notice:
I bought an Amphipod Hydration belt online. I figured with running longer distances in the summer weather I'd need something more than the single 20 ounce Ultimate Direction bottle I had. (I'd gotten that one free a couple of summers ago in Hawai'i when the Ultimate Direction sales rep was in the shop when I went in to buy some new shoes). I really liked the bottle in the Ultimate Direction set up, but holding it in my hand just got a little annoying. So I bought the belt and ran with it this morning. It was great. I was worried about bounce, but there was none. I had to do a little tweaking with bottle position, but luckily that's not too hard. Over all very satisfied after one run. We'll see how it goes as the summer progresses.

New Shoes

Yes. The old ones were dead. 270+ miles (so even at ridiculous UK prices my shoes ended up costing just under $0.50 per mile).
I strapped on my new shoes for a nice muddy run today.

Holy cow. I had a new spring in my step. So, now my nagging achey hip needs to go away, and all will be good with the world.

(Of course, the lovely and supportive wife calls it "oldgeezeritis")

Oh. Do you?

This is a response to my favorite blogger (besides Culinary Cowgirl) in the whole wide world. Blunoz recently related how much he loves and misses winter. Having just finished a nice tempo run here in Washington, DC I wanted to make sure Blunoz realized what 'winter' really is. Please note the following facts. The current weather at Blunoz' house is as follows: Mostly Cloudy, 73F (feels like 83F). This is the weather here: Mostly cloudy, 37F (feels like 26F).

So, while Blunoz was probably out today in shorts and a t-shirt, I ran in the following:

• tights
• nylon trousers to block the wind
• a long sleeved shirt
• a second long sleeved shirt
• a warm jacket
• a wind-breaking vest
• a watch cap
• gloves

and it was still a bit chilly. The wind was coming off the starboard quarter on the way back in and it was a bit brisk. But still, it was a nice run and I'm glad I did it.

TAKE THAT BLUNOZ!

Much better

I ran again today. This morning actually. Not too early though, left just before 9:30. It was a much better run. Possibly because the temperature was much cooler, about 70F I ran a bit faster (for a slow, get back into shape run) than I managed either of the two previous runs. The run was a bit longer too (5 1/4 miles). Altogether not totally displeased.

So, looking at the comments from Blunoz over my las few posts, I've decided to produce a quick list of gear/kit that I use with any regularity. As a word of caution, I am not a gadget-head, nor do I feel the need to have the top-of-the-line of everything (or anything for that matter). I fall into the 'it works for me' and the 'I don't want to spend too much' categories. So, here goes.


Shoes: Mizuno Wave Rider 10. I have a pretty neutral gait it seems, and these shoes seem to work for me so far. I recently replaced a pair of Wave Rider 9s and these new ones don't have many miles on them (only 25 so far). We'll see how I feel as they age.

Watch: Polar S120. Pretty basic features, but it works for me. I've forgotten it on this trip and am really missing it.

Music: RCA Lyra RD 1028. It took some effort to find this on the web for a link. See the comments about my HRM.

Clothing: I've pretty much got a mish-mosh of different brands and styles. Probably b/c I'm still trying to figure out what I like. I'm not wild on running tights though. I've got a pair of Under Armour shorts that I like a lot (read: no-chaffing) as well as two of their shirts. I'm particular to Adidas running shirts of which I have a few. I'm not too keen on the Nike running shirt that I have. I find it a bit rough and on longer runs painful.

That's about it.

Portsmouth 5k

I mentioned in my post from 7 Aug that I had a bit of a worry about the 5k on the 8th. Well the 8th has come and gone and to be honest I'm more pleased than I had thought I would be. It must have been the nice slow run on the 7th that helped loosen the muscles etc, but I ran much better than I thought I would.

The conditions were better this time, which probably contributed to the better time. During the run on July 4th, shortly after the turn around point (the course is essentially an out-and-back) we were greeted with a vicious head-wind. This time the wind was mostly from the side so it probably didn't play a major factor in the times.

I tried to improve on pacing this time as well. I did my best to resist the urge to go out too fast. Basing my pace off my heart rate monitor I tried to maintain an even, slower pace during the first half. It didn't necessarily work as I felt like I couldn't maintain the pace by about the 3.5k mark.

I also tried to run 'with' people during this one. A dangerous tactic I'm sure, but I figured in a 5k I might be able to get away with it. I found a group of people running at about the same pace I was trying for and tried to stick with them. It worked okay until the end, when a gentleman at least 2 age divisions above me that I'd been running near demonstrated significantly more 'kick' than I possess.

It all worked out in the end though. My time (by my watch) was 22:48 (besting my previous time on the course by nearly a minute and a half).

(Oh, and I bought a new pair of shoes the next day.)