For Whom the Dogs Bark

38F, 10.05 miles in 2:04:24, 12:23 average pace, low heart rate.

I worked harder on Saturday than I thought, took a while to get going this morning and never got going very fast, although the kinks eventually worked themselves out.  My speed is still slow.

My sister pointed out something over the weekend, which is that if one's speed at the same heart rate continues to deteriorate, that is probably a sign of overtraining.  It seems obvious when I think about it, and a blessing, actually, because it might give one the ability to back off soon enough to avoid injury.  I can't think of another explanation for why speed at the same heart rate would decrease consistently over 7-10 days.  This is something I will be watching closely this week.

Shoulder is still pretty painful from my fall 10 days ago, but otherwise no remaining effects.

48F, windy and trying to rain, felt cold.  Went out late and ran 10.10 miles in 2:00:09, 11:54 minutes per mile, low heart rate.

I was prepared to cut it short if my times were still slow, but I started hitting some 11s after the first mile and continued doing it, so I went the full distance.  Not a great run, but better than the last few.

Still have a lot of chatter going on in the family about Saturday's run in Queen Creek, Arizona.  It was a big success and we will probably do it again with a higher participation rate.  Turns out my sister won her age group, as did a second nephew running the 10K.  With results like that everybody is enthused to go at it again.  Of the 9 in our group who did the half or the 10K, only three or four were running when we organized this race about 6 months ago.  Running is contagious, probably the best thing about it. 

There was also a long-lost law school buddy running, finishing about 2 minutes ahead of me.  I didn't realize he was there until I got home and saw his name on the results list.  Good thing I didn't elbow him at the start line, or push him into the mud at mile 3.  I contacted him yesterday and he said he has been doing this for about as long as I have.  Lots of fun.

48F, wind E 8 mph and rainy.  It was dang cold out there.  Ran 10.04 in 1:58:27, average pace 11:48 per mile, low heart rate.

Somebody on this blog, can't remember who, posted a link (http://www.scribd.com/doc/13695/Gordon-Piries-Running-Fast-and-Injury-Free) to a long essay by Gordon Pirie, who I had never heard about.  He was an iconoclastic British runner, post WWII, a contemporary of Roger Bannister.  He was very, very good.  He beat Zatopek several times but apparently was not popular with the UK running establishment.  Very opinionated, thought anybody who disagreed with him was uninformed or worse.  In many ways his views are the antithesis of the Lydiard long slow distance theory, so I am doing things that would make him yell at me if he were still alive, if he even cared.  He thinks running long and slow all the time is a waste of time.  His basic thesis is that you avoid injury by acquiring good (by which he means perfect) running form, which includes wearing minimalistic shoes, after which you let it fly.  Frequent monster workouts (at his peak he ran 175 miles per week), lots of racing and lots of heavy weight-lifting.  Despite the temptation to laugh him off as old-fashioned, the guy got results.  And my recent habit of running long runs hard may not be that far off from his views.

49 F, wind NNW 5 mph, rain petering out.  It rained all night but stopped in time to run this morning.  Cold and dry is OK, wet and warm is OK, but cold and wet is uncomfortable for my delicate disposition.

Ran 10.18 miles in 1:56:55, 11:29 minutes per mile, low heart rate.  One of my better runs, nearly a best, especially since the first mile was in the upper 12s.  I got 11:27 about a month ago.  My left groin is still bothering me, the one that first popped up late in my last marathon.  It comes and goes, but right now it is here, and it takes two and a half miles to loosen up.  It isn't getting worse, so I'm just watching it for now.  I have been practicing my form a little bit, and I think that has helped my speed as well as keeping the groin pull in check.

48F, wind NW 10 mph.  Got up early but had to work, so didn't make it out until later in the morning, then had to stop a couple of time to fix my heart rate monitor, then a client called so I had to stop for that.  But eventually I got going and ran 10.17 miles in 1:58:56, average pace 11:42 per mile, low heart rate, not as good as yesterday but OK under the circumstances.

The highlight of the run was following a garbage truck picking up cans in my neighborhood.  I was right behind him for a full mile, going about the same speed (2 mph).  Nice smells, but the guys were friendly and he wasn't trying to run me over.

41F, ran 10.43 miles in 1:49:39, average pace 10:43 per mile.  I had planned to run 20, 15 of them at a pace of about 8:30 or so.  I warmed up for 4 miles but never seemed to get completely loose.  Tried anyway, but it was obvious after 3 miles that I still had groin/hip problems in my left leg, so I shut it down and jogged in. 

Whenever I get an injury, it has been traceable to running too fast rather than too far, probably a geriatric problem.  This is the same groin that first acted up in my last marathon -- it came back a few hours after the half marathon a week ago and never completely disappeared during the week.  If I don't run fast I won't get better, so there isn't an easy answer, but I think going forward I will run faster but shorter and increase it more gradually, just like the slow running.  There are no important races on the near horizon, so I will probably shut it down completely this week, maybe try some machines or something so as not to lose ground.  My goal was to not let this happen, but it did.  Hopefully a week will be sufficient.

Two bits of good news.  First, I drove out to the Rocky Raccoon 100 last night (Saturday) in Huntsville, Texas, about an hour from my home, hoping to spot Davy Crockett.  I missed him because he was way ahead of schedule, but it was fun watching all the hundred mile runners come through the home aid station at the end of their third or fourth laps.  Davy a couple of weeks ago generously invited me to pace him (he doesn't normally use pacers) but I had to decline because of my leg.  Probably a good thing, I might have slowed him down.  Some other year.

Second, a friend who is an orthopedic surgeon came over today and we talked about running.  He doesn't like it too much, says the biggest problem is that it can eventually cause osteoporosis, but if I take lots of dairy I should be fine.  Time to add that Sam's non-diet rocky road 3-pack to the shopping list.

Back in a week for better or worse.

34F, ran 1.06 miles in 14.10, average pace 13:21.

Well, that was a good week.

The groin injury is still there, but wasn't bothering me.  I feel OK after running very short and will monitor it over the weekend, but I am unsure whether to start running again.  I'll try to figure out some cross-training today and get started on that, at least.

32F and sunny, 3.07 miles in 35:16, 11:31 average pace, no heart monitor.

Still feeling out whether I am on the healing side of my groin pull.  Hard to tell.  At times the pain was sharp but focused, like a small needle, at other times it wasn't there at all.  Most encouraging, it stopped immediately when I finished.  But this thing is not settled.  My son is going to show me some stuff at his gym today.

My next door neighbor has her grandparent's visiting and they brought their lap dog, a fierce little thing that got out of the garage when I ran by.  I was very nice about the whole thing.  See, I can be nice to dogs.

Such a perfect morning and no work.  Would have been a good day to go long.

29F, ran slowly to the neighborhood rec center in the dark and went in, only to find all the ellipticals in use, at 5:20 in the morning.  There is never anybody in there when I run past the place.  I needed to start working on weights anyway, so I just started in.  I had to read the directions on the machines, but after awhile I noticed a pattern:  wipe off with towell, sit down, pick your weight, push or pull about 10 times, get up, wipe off with towell.  Finally an elliptical came free and I casually got on and made it go up and down. Had about a half mile on it before I glanced over at my neighbors' feet on both sides and noticed they were moving the opposide direction.  Sad to say, I was going backwards.  I got off, stretched, got back on and coolly changed directions.  Nobody said a thing, at least while I was there.  I fled into the darkness and ran back home.  My groin pull seemed less actute today while running, so maybe I'll leave them to their machines tomorrow.

29F, clear and cold.  Weather was perfect again, and I wasn't about to let another good running day go to waste.  Ran 5.08 in 58:33, average pace 11:43.

My groin pulled a little bit, especially at the first, but it subsided after a while and was replaced by a modest but noticeable hip pain on the same leg.  This is my new substitution theory of injury recovery.  Also, they all come back in a taper, in reverse order, according to my theory.  So never taper. 

Anyway, all the pain went away after 4 miles and I floated home.  If I feel good during the day today I'll probably do the same run a couple of more times before ramping up.

31F, clear and crisp.  Another great day in paradise.  Ran outside for 2.25, paying close attention to my injury.  It wasn't bad, but neither was it better than yesterday, so I pulled into the rec center and got back on the elliptical.  Now that Jasro has been kind enough to officially certify operating the thing backwards, I hopped right up and went after it.  There was a guy right next to me going forward, but I sold it hard and I think I got away with it.  Got 2.5 more miles that way, set on about level 3 of difficulty out of 8.  I accelerated through the whole thing and my legs were very tired afterward, but the elliptical motion does not affect my injury, so this is going to be a good backup if I can take the mental torture.  Even though I did the 2.5 backwards, I am adding it to my total for the day.  Runner math.

Then I did some weights and ran back home, another .25.  Garmin is on the fritz again, but I know what these distances are within a few hundredths.

51F, cloudy and windy.  I woke up at midnight with an epic cramp in my lower right calf, probably from doing too much backwards elliptical yesterday -- this must be my punishment for counting yesterday's backward miles as forward miles.  I made enough racket that my wife came running in.  As a veteran of childbirth she wasn't all that sympathetic.  But it kept me drifting in and out most of the night, and when I got up this morning I could barely walk.  So I dressed in street clothes, took my daughter and  her friends to school, ate a full breakfast and then cleaned out my in-box.  I kept walking around a bit at a time and it continued to improve, so I finally changed into my running clothes and went out.  No problem running, it only hurts when I walk.  The good thing about cramps is they go away, although I think once you get one in a muscle it makes you more susceptible to getting more in the same spot, kind of like a concussion.

Anyway, 5.08 miles in 56 minutes (Garmin is still recuperating), about a 10:55 pace.  Felt sluggish.  All the normal aches and pains are still there, but at least in my imagination they are improving, and by the end of the run I felt pretty good. 

My other daughter was complaining about aches and pains this morning.  Turns out she ran every day this week and I didn't know it.  She is probably a go for the Cowtown half marathon in a week.  I was considering dropping out because of my own aches and pains, but I can't do that if she is powering through like this.

52F, cloudy but dry.  Ran 9.09 miles in 1:31:22, average pace 10:03.  Pretty stiff and sore to start but gradually loosened up as I ran.  Every mile was faster than the last, starting at 11:22 and ending at a 9:09 pace for the last partial split.  It felt pretty good to run a little faster with no significant pain.  Went and cleaned the church afterward -- an hour and a half of bobbing and weaving behind a vacuum seemed to help.  So far so good, looks like I will be able to pick up the distances a little next week.

There is an ad on this entry page for a Nordstrom Rack grand opening in Houston.  I can't figure out how they know I am in Houston or how they ended up running a Houston-specific advertisement on this blog -- I'm sure Nordstrom Rack isn't opening a store in every city where FRB bloggers live.

48F and blustery.  Ran 6.18 miles in 1:13:29, average pace 11:54, low heart rate.  Back to a normal routine today, though my miles are still lower than before.  I can tell I have lost some conditioning.  The plan is to run a half at the Fort Worth Cowtown Marathon this Saturday, but I will run it with my kids at their speed if they come, which is a little slower but fine for where I am at.  More important that they have fun anyway, and I am still a ways away from adding much speed.

42F, wind N 10 mph, cloudy with weather moving in -- they are predicting snow tonight, but I don't believe it.  Ran 7.77 in 1:34:15, average pace 12:08, low heart rate.  I felt really good today, when I saw my average pace I knew why.

I stopped at about 7.5 and did weights.  Wish I could say what I did.  Some arm stuff and some leg stuff.  I just looked at the pictures.  Anything with glutes I hopped on -- I'm trying for a bigger you know what.  Anyone who has seen me knows that is an ambitious goal.

47F, wind NW 14-19 mph, sunny (we actually got snow flurries yesterday afternoon, but nothing stuck).  I ran at lunch today because my son called this morning on his way to school from seminary.  The transmission on the truck blew out.  Nice little present to start the day.  The debate is whether to buy a new transmission or a new truck.  I pointed out that I could buy a transmission every year and still be better off than getting a new truck.  Plus trucks are supposed to be old.  The older and uglier the better.  If I see somebody driving a truck that is too fancy, like with GPS, heated seats and mood lights, I think he is a poseur who probably doesn't own a good socket set.  My son and his mother, on the other hand, think that is just fine and would add a custom sound system to the list.

Oh yeah, the run.  I went 7.91 miles in 1:13:06, average pace 9:15 per mile, no heart rate monitor.  That is about where I wanted to be, the goal was to air it out a little bit and see if my injuries stayed away.  They did, and after I ran the second mile in 8:54 I thought I might as well run the rest of it at that pace.  Well, it didn't happen, never saw another 8 the whole run.  I have lost some conditioning to be sure.  The wind was pretty hard and I don't like baking my skin in the noonday sun.  But those are mere excuses.  You are what you run.

29F, clear and calm, great running weather.  Ran 7.77 in 1:32:46, 11:57 per mile, low heart rate.  This is the same exact run as Tuesday, down to the stop for weightlifting at 7.5 miles.

My groin hurt all night after running "fast" yesterday, but it didn't really bother me this morning.  All the aches and pains disappeared at mile 3 and never came back.  I like the idea of doing weights toward the end of the run rather than after.  It seems that running the extra quarter after lifting gets rid of quite a few kinks.  Some people in the weight room acted like they were waiting for me when I came in, said they saw me all the time and wondered how far I run.  They seemed impressed, even though most people on this blog regularly do similar workouts.  I guess it is just a different world once you get serious about running.  But I'm gonna have to start running in the dark more, I hate to make a spectacle out of myself.

Current drama at the house is whether to buy a new truck -- stay tuned.

49F, cloudy and slight breeze, nice running weather with no gloves or beanie.  I ran 5.2 after taking my son to seminary, then had to take my daughter to the bus stop, then went back out for another three, totaling 8.18 in 1:37:29, average pace 11:55, low heart rate. 

I am going to fix the old truck, so there is no joy in mudville with this stick-in-the-mud old dad.  Everybody but me wanted a new truck, even the wife, although she understands the economics better than some of my math-challenged teenagers.  In the meantime life in the morning is complicated getting everybody off with one less vehicle.

34F, clear and cold.  This was not supposed to be a race report today, just a run with my son and soak in the atmosphere.  My time reflects it, a full 13 minutes slower than my previous half in Phoenix a month ago.  The plan was to run at about an 11:00 pace to ensure that he finished.  He came up lame early in the race, bad shin splints.  We tried walking about a half-mile but he only got worse, so I sent him back and finished it by myself.  By that time there was no hope of getting a good time, not to mention the fact that I have been recovering from my own injury and don't have the conditioning to run well -- even if I did I wouldn't want to push it hard for fear of re-injury.  Still, I ran as fast as I could given the sudden change of plans.  I don't have mile splits because the memory in my Garmin filled up halfway through the race.  That was also frustrating.  The race results show me doing quite a bit better overall (1892/4753) than in my age group (114/197).  The same thing happened in Phoenix.  I need a new age group. 

One good thing, I don't appear to be having any trouble recovering.  No lingering pains or stiffness of any note, even though I hopped into a small car immediately after the race and drove all the way back to Houston.  I figured I would need to be manhandled out of the automobile, but I was fine.  Secondly, I ran negative splits -- toward the end of the race I was approaching my previous pace, so I am probably going to be OK.  Finally, due to my hopeless position when I started running, I must have passed over a thousand people -- I improved by about 700 places just from the 10K mat to the end.  I was almost never around anybody who was running my speed.

A couple of interesting things happened.  I was following a group of runners for a while with blue t-shirts that said "The Pine Cove Team".  I wondered where that could be.  All of a sudden this neighborhood we were in went crazy, and the blue boys started high-fiving and body-bumping everybody.  Obviously, we had entered Pine Cove.  Good thing I waited to pass them.

Also, some course confusion, if that is possible in a race this big.  The marathon and half-marathon groups ran together for about 8 miles and some change.  Then at about mile 11 there was old man questioning some officials about where the courses split.  He said "I am in the marathon".  Pretty sad, I'm pretty sure he didn't finish his race.  And the kids 5-k turned into a 1.8 mile race because a cop on a motorcycle stopped to direct traffic, everybody ran the wrong way and nobody stopped them -- wonder how they found their way back.  Lots of chaos today, 21,000 people in a relatively small area created some tough logistics before, during and after.

Here's to better races.