Archives

Wow, it was hot at track tonight! 90 degrees at 6pm!! Here’s the rundown on the workout:

• Warmup – 2 Miles Easy
• 6 x 100m Stride Outs
• 3 Sets of 1000m f (200m recovery) / 400m f+ (400m recovery)
• Cool Down – .75 Miles Easy

I felt sluggish all during the warmup as my body was trying to adjust to the warmer conditions. It was quite a shock to my system after a couple of morning runs this week with temps in the 50s and low 60s. By the time we got to the stride outs I started feeling a little bit better, and tried to push the pace a bit to get my body ready for the workout.

John, our coach, was not at the track tonight so we were on our own to complete the workout. Once the first set started I was essentially running by myself (there were two guys who were faster than me, and the rest were behind me). When I finished the first interval and recovery I decided to just go straight into the second interval by myself instead of waiting around for others to join me.

As for the workout, my legs still felt sluggish during the first 1000m but this improved greatly with each set. However, unlike my legs, my breathing and heart rate were really feeling the effects of the heat throughout the workout. In spite of this I was very happy with the consistency of my splits, and came out of the workout with a big confidence boost.

My 1000m splits for the three sets were 3:49, 3:51, 3:49. My 400m splits were 1:24, 1:22, 1:24. The 400m intervals were especially tough tonight since there was only a 200m recovery after the 1000m. This didn’t allow much time at all to bring your heart rate down before starting the 400m interval.

Even though it was very hard in the heat, I thoroughly enjoyed doing the workout with the JSRC (as usual). My final total with warmup and cool down was just over 7-miles completed. After the workout, Olivia and the girls met our group at the Dog of Nashville for an enjoyable dinner. Great night!

Beast Mode…ON!

Hey speedy, what’s your 1 mile time? Just for reference… 🙂

I think it is 5:54, though I don’t have a great way to look this up in my log. The only time I really pay attention to my mile time is when we do 4 x 1-mile repeats at track on Thursday nights. Two years ago I had two sub 6-minute miles during mile repeats within the same summer, and I believe they were 5:57 and 5:54. As a point of reference, my best mile before joining this track group was closer to 7:25.

The weather for today’s run was very nice. Finally a spring morning that actually felt like Spring! Temps were in the mid 50s, and the humidity was not too bad at all. The schedule today was for 60 minutes at easy pace followed by 6 x 100m stride outs.

After two really easy miles over 9:00min pace, the average pace for the remaining miles was around 8:40 pace. I tried to keep everything very chill and focus on a short stride with good form. Overall the run felt great except for the lingering soreness from P90X Legs and Back on Monday. I increased my weight slightly for P90X, and today I’m pretty sore. This didn’t really affect my stride, but it was slightly uncomfortable until I got good and loose about halfway through.

I really noticed the soreness again on the stride outs at the end. For the these my pace was around 6:30, which is slightly slower than usual. This had to do with the soreness and also being on a slight incline for all six. My final total with strides was just over 7 miles completed at 8:46 average pace.

Beast Mode…ON!

Not only is today my daughter Sara’s birthday, but it is also the birthday of my dear friend Nathan (@inthewright). Today Nathan and I did a short, but enjoyable trail run on the Blue, Orange, and Yellow trails in Edwin Warner Park.

My scheduled called for 40-minutes easy, so I decided that would be perfect for a nice little jaunt on the trails. Overall the weather was much better than yesterday’s sauna, with temps around 60 degrees and overcast skies.

As we started off on the flat part of the blue trail, we came across a very small, vividly blue bird that hopped down the trail in front of us for a little bit. I made a comment about the color of the bird and Nathan responded with something like “Based upon my research of looking at the hastily crafted bird chart on the back of the bathroom stall in the Nature Center, I would say that is an Indigo Bunting.” I knew exactly what “document” he was talking about and (1) found this funny (2) was amazed that he could remember obscure bird names simply from looking at a chart for a couple of minutes.

Anyway, the Blue trail has one challenging climb (see elevation chart above), but was otherwise perfect for a nice recovery run. My legs felt very good this morning, even on the big climb. This was nice after the tempo effort yesterday and P90X Legs and Back with Olivia last night. Our final total was just under 4-miles at 10:53 average pace. Great way to start the day.

Beast Mode….ON!  ….And Happy Birthday Nathan!

Why Every Runner Should Have An ID Band (Competitor.com) By Cielestia Calbay / featuring yours truly & family

Caballo Blanco’s Last Run: The Micah True Story (New York Times) by Barry Bearak

After two weeks of easy training runs it was nice to get back to a little tempo work this morning. My schedule called for 70-minutes total running, which included a 20-minute warmup, 30-minutes at 7:15 pace, and a 20-minute cool down. The temperatures this morning were in the high 60s, which was fairly nice, but the humidity was somewhat stifling.

Nathan and I met at the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center and completed our 20-minute warmup on the Harpeth River Greenway and through the park at around an 8:30 average. For the tempo portion we ran 15-minutes out and back on the greenway, but didn’t stay together because we were running at a slightly different goal pace.

Everything felt really good throughout this section, and the only thing I had to fight was the urge to run faster than 7:15. The humidity felt uncomfortable but did not seem to have much effect on my legs or breathing. I completed just over 4-miles and nailed the 7:15 average. Nathan also had a good tempo effort with a 7:17 average pace.

After grabbing a quick drink, we finished with a 20-minute cooldown on the greenway and my legs still felt good all the way to the end. Our final total was 9.2-miles completed at just under 8:00-min pace with warmup and cool down.

Beast Mode…ON!

Friday

After a pretty hard track workout last night I was surprised at how good I felt on the run this morning. The schedule called for 50 minutes at easy pace, and I ran in my Saucony Hattoris through the streets of Bellevue with Nathan and Paxton. We kept the pace very chill with the first 3 miles in the low 9:00s, and the final 2.5 miles in the high 8:00s.

Even with the easy run, the humidity was high enough that I was in a full sweat by the end of the first mile. We mixed the route up a bit with a loop around the mostly empty Bellevue Center Mall. Overall another good run with the Bellevue Trio.

Saturday

Today’s group run was through the streets of Belle Meade and incorporated the infamous “Zig Zag” route introduced to us by Edward. Note the “Zig Zag” pattern during miles 2 through 4 in the map below…

We started at Bread and Company on Hwy 100 and I was a bit unsure how many total miles the planned route would include. My schedule called for 12 to 14 miles at an easy pace, and I was hoping to not have to run extra at the end.

The entire group ran together for the first 7 miles, and kept the pace very easy (9:40s to 8:30s). After 7-miles some who only wanted 10-miles total headed back to Bread and Company where we started. The rest of us kept going down Tyne Boulevard to add a few extra miles. After the 8th mile I decided to pick up the pace a little bit and ended up running most of the rest of the route by myself. 

For the next 3-miles I dropped the pace a little below 8:00, and then decided to back off a bit for the final two as a cool down (8:20s). Even though it was fairly warm throughout, I felt really good during the run, and especially during the final 5-miles. Total for today was 13.1-miles at 8:41 average pace.

Beast Mode…ON!

Tonight’s track workout with the JSRC was tough, but it was a good kind of tough. Part of the challenge was the heat which was still in the low 80s at 6pm. The other was short recoveries. Those short recoveries made it hard to maintain effort throughout the intervals.

Also, coming into the workout my legs were a bit fatigued from P90X Legs and Back on Monday and running trails yesterday, but I was able to loosen them up pretty good during a 2.5-mile warmup.

Here is a breakdown of the workout…

• Warmup + 6 x 100m stride outs
• 800m f (300m recovery)
• 400m f (1-min recovery)
• 800m f (400m recovery)
• 1200m Straights and Curves (1-min recovery)
• 600m f (200m recovery)
• 300m f (1-min recovery)
• 600m f (cool down)

With warmup and cool down my total was 7.2 miles completed. By far the toughest part for me was going from 1200m straights and curves directly into a 600m with only a 1-min static recovery. However, I was able to maintain fairly consistent splits all the way to end, and am pretty happy with my overall pacing.

Just like last week, I ran this entire workout with Nathan McCall who has made incredible progress since joining our club last fall. Unlike me (adult onset runner), Nathan was a 4-year collegiate runner at Appalachian State, so I’m expecting that pretty soon he will be lapping me during the workouts 🙂 …In the meantime it has been great to have someone else running at my same pace the last two weeks.

Beast Mode…ON!

Today I returned to the trails for the first time since running in southern Honduras on our mission trip. It was a nice change of pace from all of my recent road running and I hope to get back into a normal routine of incorporating trails at least once per week.

My schedule called for 50-minutes easy and 4 x 100m stride outs. Of the three main trails in Percy and Edwin Warner Parks, only the red is long enough to occupy 50 minutes since it is 4.5 miles. It would take two laps on either the white or the blue trails because they are only 2.5 miles each.

My legs were really sore heading into this run from doing P90X Legs and Back on Monday night for the first time in two weeks. Overall it didn’t have a big impact on the effort, but was something I could feel for the first half of the run. For the run I kept the pace very conservative with with a steady progression from a first mile of 12:23 to a final mile of 10:27. The red trail has a total elevation gain of almost 1,200 ft in only 4.5 miles, so needless to say this is a challenging route. However, I felt pretty good throughout, even on the tough climbs, and really enjoyed being back on the trails in the beautiful Percy Warner Park.

At the end I completed the 4 x 100m stride outs on the main drive near the trail head. It felt weird to run strides in trail shoes, but I was still able to crank them out at a 6:35 average pace.

Beast Mode…ON!

Nathan and I had been talking recently about shaking up our normal running routes, so today we just kind of made it up as we went along through the streets of Belle Meade. My schedule called for 65 to 75 minutes at easy pace, and we started off with a first mile in the 9:30s. My legs felt a little tired at the start after doing P90X Legs and Back last night with Olivia, but they felt better with every mile, and felt really good at the end.

Our pace steadily increased throughout the run and landed in the 8:20s and 8:30s for the final 4.5-miles of our 8.5-mile total. It was fun to just make random turns down unfamiliar roads to see where they would lead. This strategy brought us to one stretch where it felt like we were going uphill for a LONG way, but overall was very enjoyable. The only downside to this ad-lib route was that we reached the 75-minute mark with about a half a mile to go back to our cars.

Not wanting to break my schedule from John, I decided to walk the rest of the way back to my car, and encouraged Nathan to keep running if he wanted. However, he also decided to walk and we both enjoyed a nice cool down stroll on Belle Mead Boulevard that felt pretty nice. Great way to start off a day.

Beast Mode…ON!

Sammy Wanjiru’s death still a mystery by Shaun Assael – ESPN The Magazine

Let’s just say that this morning’s run was a little more interesting than we had planned.

The schedule called for 50 minutes easy with 4 x 100m stride outs at the end. Nathan and I met at the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center and did most of the run through the park and on the Harpeth River Greenway. As expected my legs felt a little creaky at the beginning after the hilly run through Percy Warner on Saturday. This steadily improved throughout the run, though our splits were pretty chill from start to finish. It was nice to enjoy a very easy recovery run until…. 

On our way back to the cars it became apparent that we would be about 5-minutes short of our 50-minute goal, so Nathan suggested we cross Hwy 100 and run a few minutes on Harpeth Bend road before returning to the park. When we came to Hwy 100, the traffic was so thick it appeared as though it would take a while to cross. As an alternate plan, Nathan suggested that we run through the Ensworth High School campus which is next door to Edwin Warner Park.

For those of you outside of Nashville, Ensworth represents the pinnacle of elitism with an annual tuition that is more than many private colleges. As a matter of fact it actually looks much more like a college campus than a secondary school. When we started running through the entrance I joked that we would probably be setting off motion and heat sensors and Nathan fired back that there were probably snipers watching us.

I suggested that we follow the lower drive which is well away from the main buildings so as not to look suspicious. As we were running through there I noticed a small parking lot and said “I wonder who they make park all the way down here…it must be the house elves (reference to Harry Potter).”

Just as we passed through the parking lot we came to their athletic fields and decided to turn back for the park. Right after turning we saw that a Hummer H3 was headed our direction. It quickly stopped and a security guard jumped out (why does a high school need Hummers for their security guards?). He asked if we attended school there (I’m 37 ???). When we said “no” he said that we were trespassing on private property and had been reported to security by someone at the school. What was surprising to me was that we had only been on that lower road for about 2 minutes.

He then said that our being on campus represented a “liability issue” and we needed to leave immediately. I told him that we were simply cutting through on a run and would head back to where we came from. He told us that going back that way would take too long and we needed to go past the athletic fields out onto Hwy 100 (really pleasant guy). Though I didn’t want to go onto Hwy 100, we obliged and headed back to the park along the highway.

As we passed back by the entrance to Ensworth next to the park, the Hummer H3 was parked right by the entrance with the security guard enjoying a smoke. I assume he wanted to doubly make sure we did not come back onto the school property. I waved at him as we passed by back into the park.

After the 50 minutes was completed we did 4 x 100m stride outs on the greenway back to our cars. Our average pace for the 50 minutes was just over 9:00 per mile, and the average pace for the strides was 5:58. Other than our little adventure at Ensworth, it was a pretty enjoyable run.

Beast Mode…ON!

Friday

After a hard effort at track last night, today’s scheduled 50 minute run was a very, very easy shakeout run through Bellevue in my Saucony Hattoris. The weather was awesome with sunny skies and temps in the low 50s. This felt very nice after the hot conditions last week and early this week.

As the run started my legs and ankles felt pretty achey, so I kept everything extremely chill with an initial mile of 10:15. Slowly the aches and soreness began to leave my legs and the run ended with things feeling much better than when I started. I guess this is the sign of an effective shakeout effort. Overall I got in just over 5 miles in the 50 minutes with an average pace of 9:48 per mile. I haven’t gone back and checked, but I’m guessing this is one of my slowest runs of the year (if not the slowest).

Saturday

Our group run this morning consisted of the 11.2-mile main drive through Percy Warner Park. This is a busy day for the park because of the annual Steeplechase horse race (which is more of a socialite / partying event than a race), and we were hoping to be able to run by the course before the crowds started rolling in.

My schedule called for 12 to 14-miles at an easy pace, and I was initially hoping to land in the upper part of this range by adding a little extra before or after the group run. The temps were again very mild with overcast skies and temps in the mid 50s. I was only able to get in about a 1/4 mile before the group started, but just figured I would add a little bit to the end.

Our pace started off very easy and we slowly picked it up throughout the run with some fluctuation due to the significant elevation changes (a single loop of the 11.2 has a cumulative 1,500 ft of elevation gain). My overall pace for the run was 8:45 per mile with a range from 10:10 at the start to 7:54 at the finish. Throughout the run my legs felt very good, even when going up some of the more significant climbs. However, even though my legs felt great, I could tell that my body was tired and I decided to not try and push the run to 14-miles. I added just a bit to the end of the group run to finish with 12-miles total and am happy with the decision to not keep going.

Right now I’m in the middle of a couple of easy recovery weeks before John and I get started on more targeted training for the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon in October. For some reason this has put me in a bit of a reflective mood. My total mileage was just under 44-miles on an “easy” week, and that made think back to when I first started running. I remember the first official running goal I set was to complete 10-miles over 3-weeks. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined running 44-miles in a week, much less 50, or 60+.

Beast Mode…ON!

Since I felt so bad during my 50 minute, easy paced run yesterday, it was great to have an awesome track workout tonight with the JSRC. After a 2-mile warmup and 6 x 100m stride outs we did…

• 4 x 200m fresh (100) [400]
• 800m good (400)
• 4 x 200m / infield recovery / timed intervals – 66 seconds (400)^
• 800m Straights and Curves (300)
• 800m good (cooldown)

^For these we run 200m on the track, then recovery across the midfield point of the infield. Each interval (run + recovery) is supposed to be executed in a set amount of time between 65 and 90 seconds. For me tonight the time was 66 seconds for all 4 repeats. This was 40 seconds for the 200m with 26 second recovery across the grass. All intervals are done continuous.

I ran the warmup and all the intervals tonight with Nathan McCall who has been running with our group since last fall. I’ve enjoyed getting to know Nathan, and it was fun to run with him tonight. We took turns leading interval laps and were able to maintain fairly consistent splits throughout. Even with a pretty hard effort, I felt really good all the way to the end, which was a big confidence boost after the crummy day yesterday.

With a 1-mile cool down, my total mileage for the night was just over 7.5-miles. Tomorrow’s schedule calls for 50 minutes at an easy pace followed by 12 to 14-miles easy on Saturday.

Beast Mode…ON!

P.S. After tonight’s workout I retired another pair of Saucony Kinvara 2s just as they reached 400 total miles. I know lots of runners have problems with durability on the Kinvara and Kinvara 2, but this has definitely not been the case with me. These shoes have taken me through 2 marathons and 2 half marathons along with a lot of training miles on the road. Probably could get a few more miles out of them had I not worn holes in the top of the toe-box just over my big toes. Still have one pair of Kinvara and one pair of Kinvara 2s in my current rotation along with one more pair of Kinvara 2s still in the box. Also can’t wait to try the new Kinvara 3. Find Your Strong!

Updated Race Results and Personal Records (PR)

Recap of the 37th annual One America 500 Festival Mini-Marathon in Indianapolis, IN

One America 500 Festival Mini Marathon 
May 5, 2012
www.500festival.com/marathon/

My Run:  Overall, the One America 500 Festival Mini-Marathon (“the Mini”) in Indianapolis was my 12th half marathon. This was the fourth year in a row that I have run the Mini, which is the largest half marathon and fifth largest road race in the U.S. with 35,000 runners.  The Mini is part of the month-long 500 Festival that leads up to the Indianapolis 500.

Well….today’s planned 18-holes at Hampton Cove in Huntsville was again a washout. So our 3-day, 72-hole golf trip turned into a 3-day, 46-hole golf trip. However, we still had a good time and I was able able to get in my scheduled 50-minute easy run earlier than expected this afternoon once I got home.

I decided to run in my Saucony Hattoris because I had not used them since last Wednesday. Overall I would say this was the worst I’ve felt on a run in a while, though it was kind of up and down throughout.

The first 10 minutes I felt tired, my legs were stiff, and my pace hovered around 9:30. I’m guessing this had something to do with playing 36-holes of golf yesterday followed by a 60 minute run. I briefly thought about just turning around and running home, but decided to give it a few more minutes to see if things improved. Well, they did improve dramatically for the next 20 minutes, and my pace dropped into the 8:20s. Then…BAM…I started feeling tired again and for the next 20 minutes my pace slowed back toward 9:00. Finally, I felt pretty good during the last 10 minutes and my pace dropped back down toward 8:30.

Looking back a few hours later I know that I was already tired when I started the run. Also, when I think back through my day, the only fluid I had consumed prior to the run was caffeinated coffee and iced tea. Not exactly good hydration for an afternoon run with full sun and temps in the mid 70s.

Whatever the case, the run is in the books and tomorrow will be another day.

Beast Mode…ON!

After 36-holes of golf followed by dinner, we did not get back to our hotel last night until 8:30pm. This pushed the start of my run to almost 9:00pm. My schedule called for 60 to 70 minutes at easy pace and I was determined to find some places to run around our hotel that did not include strip mall parking lots. I ended up finding a pretty good stretch of road along with running around the main drive of a very large business. Since I was already tired from golf the first 30 minutes was a very chill 8:40ish pace, and I felt pretty good once I got warmed up. Unfortunately after the first 30 minutes it started storming and I was forced to head indoors for the hotel dreadmill. While this was not pleasant I did feel really good for the remainder of the run and slowly increased my pace from 8:30 to 7:30. Overall I ran for just over 61 minutes for a total of 7.3 miles. We are now on the road headed north to Hampton Cove in Huntsville for one final 18 on our golf trip before heading home. Beast Mode…ON!

This morning my dad and I, along with our friends Mike and Ricky, headed south to Alabama for a 3-day golf trip on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. After getting rained out in Muscle Shoals after 10 holes we headed further south to Birmingham for the night.

Since I couldn’t get my run in this morning I had to get it in after dinner. There are not a lot of options around our hotel so I spent most of the run in the parking lots of various strip malls in the area. While this was not ideal it was much better than resorting to the hotel dreadmill.

This was my first run since the 500 Festival Mini Marathon on Saturday, and my schedule called for 50 minutes at easy pace. It was still pretty warm and humid at the start and I felt fairly sluggish for the first 30 minutes of the run. My average pace for those miles was around 8:30. For the last 20 minutes I started feeling much better and my pace picked up significantly including a final mile of 7:18. My overall average was 8:16 per mile.

Glad to have this run in the books and pleased with how good I felt during the last 20 minutes. Tomorrow we are supposed to play 36-holes at Oxmoor Valley, and my running schedule calls for 70 minutes at easy pace. Should be interesting.

Beast Mode…ON!