For Whom the Dogs Bark

48F, 92% and calm.  Pretty stellar running weather, undoubtedly the last sub-50 day I'll see for 6 months.  LLHR:  6.06 miles in 1:11:14, 11:46/mile, 120 bpm average, 125 max.  Then 1.05 miles with dog, followed by weights and stretching.  Foot has held up well this week.

56F, 68%, WSW 3 mph.  Still good weather.  LLHR:  6.04 miles in 1:10:47, 11:43/mile, 121 bpm, 128 max.  Tomorrow semi-long and hard.

62F, 68%, WSW 3 mph.  Pretty good morning, a bit breezy to start (not 3 mph, despite the weather report) but died down pretty much after about a half hour.  I wanted to do 10 fast but settled for 8.  It is good progress, but probably won't get me to my goal pace a week from today unless I am feeling really good that morning.  The weather is projected to be somewhat cooler, but the course profile shows some hills, though it doesn't look too bad on YouTube.

I warmed up for 3, starting at 9:26 down to 8:23, then ran the remaining 8 at a 7:38 pace (goal was 7:43).  Started out at 7:52 so I felt like I was in a hole the whole time, even though I got ahead of the 7:43 guy about halfway through.  About then I was feeling bad enough that I realized that if I went for 10 I might be running my race today instead of next Saturday; 10 at this pace is almost like running 20 at 8:00, not a good tapering strategy.  So I shifted my head into an 8-mile mode, finished with a 7:29, stopped exactly there and walked home.

Good thing I quit early, because when I got back to the house I found my daughter just arriving home from the senior prom.  Actually, she is a grounded kid and he seems relatively harmless -- my wife told his parents at pictures last night that me and my son had decided that their son was safe, to the point we passed on the customary gun-cleaning ceremony at our first meeting.  Nevertheless, I "invited" her in, and she "complied".  They went to an all-night event after the prom where they lock everybody down in a structured environment and eat and play video games all night I guess.

The race next weekend is called the Fifth Third River Bank Run in Grand Rapids, where my father now lives.  I don't know anything about the strange name, but apparently it is the national chapionship 25K race, prize money and everything.  They have something called a 2-hour club, which comes to a 7:43 pace, which happens to be right on the edge of my training level.  If the course is long (I know, they all are, even Boston apparently, judging from some of the race reports), I probably need 7:40 just to be safe.  If I had been able to do 10 this morning I would have felt somewhat confident.  But 8 is what I got, and you get what you got.

48F, 71%, SSW 7.  60F at finish.  Traveled to Grand Rapids, Michigan to run the Fifth Third River Bank Run, a very large 25K (the unusual name can be blamed on the local bank sponsor) that doubles as the national championship for that distance.  I have been traveling all week, so got a forced taper, 10 miles on Monday and 6 on Wednesday, ran 3 at race pace each time.  Don't have my notes for those days, I'll fill them in later.

My dad lives here, and he met me last night at the airport with his wife.  We went over to the expo and picked up my bib, checked out the logistics, etc.  The race is well-run.  Went to bed and slept well.  My alarm went off at 5:30 (a luxury compared to races out west) and got to the race area at 7:00 for an 8:20 start.  Plenty of time to get everything done.

They started the 5K at 7:00 and the 10K at 7:40, we never saw them, had the course to ourselves.  Loop course, it finished about a block from the start.  My goal was to hit 7:43 per mile, which for a true 25K distance comes in right at 2 hours.  I ran it in 2:01:47 (just under 7:46/mile) and measured it at 15.69, about 0.15 further than 25K.  (These courses are all certified, but if you read the certification rules, they want them to measure it long so that if anybody sets a record the measurement will hold up.  I missed one or two tangents but wasn't off by that much.)  Official pace was 7:50 per mile.  My heart rate was sky-high, 182 max, averaged 176.  858 overall out of 5565 finishers, 29th in age group out of 176.  Splits and heart rates were as follows (as usual, no accurate heart rate data to start, seemed to kick in OK by mile 2 though):

1: 7:37; 2: 7:36 (170); 3: 7:40 (172); 4: 7:37 (172); 5: 7:37 (173); 6: 7:45 (172); 7: 7:30 (176); 8: 7:30 (177); 9: 7:33 (178); 10: 7:50 (178); 11: 7:31 (178); 12: 7:57 (179); 13: 7:45 (177); 14: 8:16 (175); 15: 8:15 (176) and 16: 8:24 (177).

The course was essentially flat in the first half, then rollers until about mile 12.5.  The rollers were not difficult, but again I showed my inability to sustain hills late in a race.  I felt strong through mile 9 and managed to hang on through mile 11, didn't fall competely off the wagon until mile 14.  Got hot and couldn't sustain the heart rate any longer.  I think this is the highest heart rate I have carried for a longer-distance race.

But I felt strong in the first half, could have laid down the hammer at any time.  That is the first takeaway.  I never ran more than 11 miles after coming back from my injury a few weeks ago.  But the weight lifting and other cross-training have given me better speed.  Solution is to get back to longer mileage and longer runs, that is what gives me the depth to sustain what is now an easier effort to get to these kinds of speeds.  It's almost like I'm a younger runner who is naturally faster but undertrained.

Second takeaway is a rude wake-up for Boston in a year.  I have never run a course before that is ea.sy for the first half then gets hard before getting easy again.  Again, I need more stamina, but I have time to get it if I can maintain proper training cycles.

Really glad I came up here to run this; it is a good distance.  Hoping to convince some of my brothers and sisters into running it together next year.

61F, 85%, SSW 6.  5.27 miles in 47:12, 8:57/mile.

65F, 83%, SSW 14-21.  12.04 miles, 1:47:14, 8:54/mile.  150 bpm, 157 max.

70F, 94%, SSE 6.  9.00 miles in 1:51:12, 12:22/mile, 120 bpm. Starting in on a long summer of low heart rate runs, need to restore my base.  Foot comes and goes, still watching it carefully.  Today was extra slow, to be expected, but it will be a base to compare times against as I hopefully improve.  I just raced 16 miles at 7:46/mile, yet at low heart rate I am probably about a minute and a half slow.  Just shows how unbalanced my conditioning is right now, and it is probably why I faded at the end of the race.

73F, 84%, S 9-19 mph.  5.12 miles in 1:01:01, 11:55/mile, 121 bpm.  Much better today.  Did weights afterward, doing 170 on the glute machine (2 sets of 8 on each leg) and 135 Smith machine squats (3 sets of 10).

70F, 100% and calm.  10.00 miles in 1:56:36, 11:40/mile, 120 bpm.

72F, 93% and calm.  10.0 miles, no watch, it was dead whe I woke up.  Weights and stretching.

67F, 97% and calm.  Didn't get started until 5:30, not good for a long run.  Object was to do 20 at 9:00 but I went too fast, the sun came up and I started to get heat symptoms.  So I quit early, way too much vitamin D.  This is my first hard effort in the heat, so it was OK.  In a couple of weeks I should be able to do this pretty readily.  17.53 miles in 2:33:50, 8:47/mile, 155 bpm, 176 max.  Foot not getting worse.

73F, 95%, SSE 7.  LLHR run, 10.11 miles in 2:04:00, 12:16/mile, 121 bpm average.  Legs still beat up from Saturday I assume, though the heat is building as well.  At least it was a little faster than last Monday.  Wade ran the middle 5 miles with me; we won't be doing much running together this summer as he is going to his summer place in Wyoming this weekend, he will probably be there through September or October.  He was a good sport to run at my speed and commented that his legs felt rubbery at the end, just like mine do at these snail speeds. Might go up there in July and run a local half with him, undecided right now.

We also went to the outlet mall and got shoes.  My Jinga sources are drying up, so I got some Merrill shoes that are light and have zero lift.  With discounts they were half off.  I haven't run in anything but Jinga for at least 4 years, so this could be interesting.

68F, 100%, NW 2 mph.  8.24 miles in 1:33:24, 11:20/mile, 120 bpm.

Interesting run this morning, ran it in between storm cells.  I didn’t run yesterday because the downpour started exactly when I went out the door.  Today it started about 5 minutes after I came in.  We have my grandson so I quit early anyway this morning, in case he woke up.  At the 8 mile mark on Monday I had 12:09 as an average pace, ended up with 12:20 overall average as my heart rate climbed in the heat the last two miles.  So a big difference between Monday and today, which shows how much a moderate effort on a long run in the heat can take out of you, at least early in the year.

I started out in the new Merrills I bought on Monday.  They felt very light, but after 5 miles the right one was rubbing on the top of my foot.  I stopped and loosened the laces but that seemed to make it worse.  So I switched over to my Jingas.  I went a little slower after that, presumably because it was later in the run, but I was curious how the weight compared.  So I got out my son's food scales.  The wet Merrill weighed 7.5 oz.  The wet Jinga weighed 8.0.  Then I weighed a dry Jinga (same style as the wet one) and it was 7.1.  Then I weighed the dry Jinga racing version, slightly different style with a very thin sole.  It came in at a featherweight 4.2, so definitely I will continue to race in those.

The Merrills seemed to make my right foot feel better, the one I have been struggling with all year, so they are going to be a good shoe once I get the laces figured out.  And I would feel comfortable running trails in them as well.  I don't do it often but it is nice to have a pair available.

66F, 100% and calm.  10.0 miles i 1:53:04, 11:19/mile, 121 bpm.