A confidence boost

Today was an absolutely perfect day for running — well, at least it was between 7 and 9 a.m. — it's supposed to get up to 78 degrees later today, so I'm glad I'm finished. The temperature when I started running at 6:20 was about 45 degrees, rising to 55 by the end of the run. The plan was to do 16 miles, with the last 12 at marathon race pace, 8-minute miles. This would be the fastest I've ever run this distance.

Since I only had 4 miles to run before meeting up with the group, I decided to go iPod-less, and was rewarded with the songs of birds for the length of my solo outing, at an easy 9-minute pace.

I cruised back to our meeting point by 7, to be joined by Chad, Jeff, Chris, Terry, Tim, Matt, and Rodney. We agreed on a 12-mile route and headed out. I wanted to try to keep up with Matt, because I knew he was one of the faster runners in our group. After a couple of 7:40-ish miles, he asked if I wanted to slow down a bit, and I was glad to be accommodated. About 8 miles in, Matt and Tim started pulling away, and I joined up with Chris. On most DART runs, we stop every 4 miles or so to regroup, but Matt and Tim didn't seem interested in stopping. Finally at Mile 10 (Mile 6 for the group), we all took a break, mainly because Matt and Tim didn't know where we were going. I was still on pace, but some big hills were looming.

Matt, Tim and I headed off together up the hills and onto Shearer Road, where Chad joined us because we were about to pass the home of a notoriously aggressive unleashed dog. Fortunately the dog wasn't out that day, and we continued to push the pace up the hill. At about Mile 13, we made one last stop. The last few miles had some dramatic hills, and Matt and Tim headed down the first one at a very quick pace. I tried to stay with them, but my legs were sore and I let them build up a 20-yard lead.

We were at the bottom of a long hill, and Matt and Tim headed up the next hill, the biggest on our route. I thought I might be able to catch them, since I was familiar with this route. But familiarity doesn't equal fitness, and while I kept up a strong pace, they were faster. There was just over a mile left, mostly downhill, but I knew there was another hill between us and the finish. There was no hope of catching Matt and Tim, but I wanted to finish strong. About halfway up the final hill, I completed Mile 16 in 8:00 flat. I had finished my planned workout -- as it turned out, I averaged 7:51 over those last 12 miles, even faster than my goal pace! But I was spent, and decided to just jog it in for what turned out to be another 0.8 miles. Matt and Tim greeted me at the CVS, looking quite spent as well -- and they had only run 12.8.

Here's a graph of my splits for the day:

Overall I averaged an 8:12 pace, including the warm-up and cool-down miles. Not bad at all! After a week with basically no fast runs, it was great to see that I still have a bit of speed in me, and important to realize that I can run at race pace after over 2 hours of running.

Week in review:

6 runs
65 miles
3,202 feet elevation gain
534 feet average elevation gain

Although I didn't do any really long runs, three medium-length runs can still add up to a lot of mileage -- that's my second-longest week yet. Next week will be a bit of a break, with a long run of just 15 miles, and 57 total miles planned.

Details of today's workout are below.

Halfway there...

After tomorrow's run, I'll be halfway through my 18-week training program for the Big Sur Marathon.

As Mainers pointed out on his blog last Wednesday, this is one of those points in the training schedule where things feel a bit futile, but you're actually making major improvements. On Wednesday I ran 15 miles at an 8:38 pace, but on Friday, for 13 miles, I could only muster an 8:53 pace. Despite the wind, warmth, and hills on Friday, that feels like a bit of a letdown. But pushing through is still probably the best thing to do, and with any luck it will pay off big when I'm looking for a bit of extra mojo in Mile 22 at Big Sur.

Over these 9 weeks, I've only come short of my target mileage on two or three days. I haven't run my goal pace every day, but I've generally come close, only dropping off on the last couple miles, if at all. I've run farther and harder than I ever have in my life. I was probably a little faster when I was in college, but I've never put in anywhere close to the effort I'm expending right now. I'm pushing the limits of what my 44-year-old body can achieve.

After tomorrow's 16-miler, I'll have logged 500 miles training for Big Sur, averaging over 55 miles per week. This graph shows how well I've done relative to my weekly goals:

As you can see, I beat my weekly goal every week save two: The week of January 16 when we had a horrible ice storm and I was attending a professional conference, and last week, when I was extremely ill on the first scheduled running day. Overall, however, my goal was to run 494 miles over that period, so I beat it by six miles!

Today's run was an easy 7 miler, plus 6 X 100 meter strides. Davidson College's track is finally open again, so it was nice to be able to run the strides on a good rubberized track close to home. As always, the details are below.

Running in the wind

I read a race report for a Big Sur Marathon that took place on a day with very strong winds. Because it's a point to point race, that meant heading into the wind for almost the entire route. The runner did note one benefit of the situation: On downhill stretches, it made it easier to go all-out, because the wind acted as a braking force.

Today I got to simulate that on a small scale; I had a 13-mile run planned, and as it happened, it was a very windy day. I got a late start in order to avoid some morning rain, but after the rains ended, the wind rushed in almost immediately. Plus, it was my warmest day of running yet this year, around 65 degrees -- and the humidity made it feel worse. For just 13 miles, I figured carrying 16 ounces of Nuun would be plenty, but I hadn't taken into account how hot it was. Even though I was well hydrated at the start, by the end of the run, I wished I had brought about twice as much liquid along.

The first six miles were pretty easy; I was running at roughly an 8:45 pace. Then I decided to pick up the pace a bit: 8:26, 8:30, 8:25. That last mile, Mile 9, is when the wind really picked up. I was heading downhill, straight into a strong headwind. Just as I had read, the wind really did help me lean into the hill a bit more than I would normally do. But then things leveled out for a while, and running on the flat felt more like running uphill, so even this "easy" dowhnill leg wasn't any faster than the previous two. Then the big hills arrived: Miles 10 and 11 were 9-minute slogs; Mile 10 with the wind at my back, and Mile 11 into the wind. On Miles 12 and 13, comparatively flat, I struggled to maintain a 9-minute pace. I arrived home after 12.6 miles, so I jogged around the block to get my 13.

The verdict: I'd much rather be running in still air than in the wind. Even on an uphill segment with the wind at my back, it didn't help much, and the brief intervals where I was running downhill into the wind didn't make up for the overall increase in effort. I felt like I expended a lot more energy than I normally would have to complete a 13-mile run. I was absolutely drenched with sweat after the run. Even after drinking three 16-ounce glasses of water, I weighed three pounds less than I had the day before, which means, counting my 16 ounces of Nuun, I probably sweated away 7 pounds worth!

For the fastest recovery, most running guides suggest drinking enough water after a run to bring you back to your pre-run weight. Because some of this doesn't stay in your system, you may need to drink as much as 1.5 times the weight you sweat away in a workout. I spent much of the day drinking liquids, trying to restore some balance to my system.

I have a 16-miler planned for Sunday; here's hoping things cool off a bit and the wind dies down by then!

Why does running downhill cause more pain than running uphill?

I've heard many runners suggest that running downhill is harder on the legs than running uphill. But why? I almost always run faster when I'm going downhill. Running uphill is much more exhausting, which must mean the muscles are working harder, right? If I work my muscles harder, then that should cause more pain, right?

If I do an especially difficult weightlifting session, my muscles ache like the dickens the next day. In an easier workout, not so much. So working muscles harder, like on uphill segments, should be more painful. Yet that's not my experience in actual runs. If I run a few steep downhill segments early in a long run, I can often feel the soreness in my legs by the end of the run.

Biologist P.Z. Myers has a great post that might explain why. He volunteered to serve as a guinea-pig in a student's demonstration. The student had him do an easy weight-training session, spotting him on the lifts but letting him lower the weights on his own. The result: Tremendous pain!

The next morning, I tried to get up. Aaaaiaiaiaeeeaaargh. His experiment had been spectacularly successful, and I could barely move. Let me tell you, brushing my teeth that day was the most exquisite agony — just raising my hand to my mouth was bad enough, but wiggling my arm gently once I got it there? Forget about it.

As Myers explains, when you flex your muscles, all the muscle fibers work together. But when you allow your muscles to unflex in a controlled fashion, the fibers work differently. Individual muscle fibers can either contract or relax; there is no "inbetween." So in order to lower the weight in a controlled fashion, just some of the fibers contract — enough so that the weight doesn't plummet rapidly to the ground - or worse, crash down on some tender part of your body. The effect is very hard on your muscles; they try to contract, but you're allowing the force of the weight to stretch them out anyways.

The top-left image is a section of muscle before exercise; the bottom-left is just after exercise involving controlled lowering of a weight, and the bottom-right is one day later. Only after a couple weeks do the muscles start looking normal again (top-right).

I think this applies to running downhill as well: When you're running downhill, your body is like a weight that you're lowering over and over again with each step. Your muscles are being slowly shredded. So that's my hypothesis about why running downhill makes your legs so much more sore than running uphill.

If you're interested, details about today's workout are below.

My Toes, a Poem

This little piggy has a giant blister too deep to pop.
This little piggy has a scab under the toenail.
This little piggy's missing toenail is just starting to grow back.
This little piggy is somehow unscathed.
This little piggy is pretty much one big callus.

And that's just the left foot.

Sorry, I'm not much for rhyming.

In case you're interested, details of today's workout are below.

My training since September, revisited

I first posted these graphs on January 23. While the trend is still in the same direction, as you can see, there's a lot of variance. When you get up to really high mileages, missing just one day can throw off your whole week, as last week demonstrates. Also, my tempo pace lately hasn't been much better than it was last October. I'd chalk that up partly to injuries, and partly to just the difficulty of running fast and running long at the same time. In fact, for the coming week, I don't have any tempo runs scheduled at all -- just three medium-long runs and three recovery runs. That said, I don't think my speed is suffering: I set a PR in the 5K just a couple weeks ago.

So while the graphs told a very simple story a month ago, now they are starting to reveal the complexity of marathon training.

Another 20-miler

The plan for today was to run another 20-miler. I did 21 last week, and this week I was hoping to at least match last week's performance, while possibly evening out my splits a bit and running faster at the end of the run.

Like last week, I got up early and ran 6 miles before meeting up with the group at CVS. Like last week, I took these miles easy, roughly a 9-minute pace, knowing that the group likes to take things a little faster than my ideal 20-mile pace. With Chad and David at the Iron Horse 100 miler, and Ashley at Myrtle Beach, I knew it would be a small group, and just three runners were there to join me: Todd, Chris, and Jeremy.

Todd wanted to run 14, but Chris and Jeremy only needed 10, so we headed out on the hilly route towards Fisher Farm. I stayed with the group for the first couple miles, 8:12, 8:21, 8:14. Then I let them pull away, but maintained a fairly aggressive pace. It was a perfect, 40-degree morning and the sun was just beginning to peek over the hills, illuminating the clouds with soft purple tones. The was still a bit of frost on the ground in the low areas near the creek. A few walkers were out with their dogs, but otherwise, we had Fisher Farm to ourselves. We stopped to fuel up at the parking lot, then turned around and headed back down the hill towards home.

We ran roughly three miles on trails, and I was a bit worried about my tender knee, but made it through without incident, being especially careful on the downhill segments. This meant the others pulled away from me again quite quickly. Still, I was keeping a decent pace on the rough, hilly route -- 8:45-ish.

Things got even hillier when we returned to the roads for miles 13, 14, and 15, with over 300 feet of climbing. But I still managed to maintain an 8:45 pace. We arrived back in town at mile 15.76. Chris and Jeremy went home, but Todd was glad to join me for my final 4 mile loop. We took off at a brisk pace, and kept it up all the way to the finish. I ended up doing about 19.6 miles. It was a little short, but it was a very hilly route, with over 1,000 feet of climbing.

Unlike last week, there was no slowing down at the end. In fact, my last four miles were some of my fastest, so I'm quite happy with the workout. I've added this week's split times to the graph from last week so you can see the difference:

As you can see, starting at Mile 13 I really picked things up, just when I was beginning to fade last week. This week the average pace was 8:41, compared to 8:58 last week. What's more, I felt much better after today's run. Perhaps the lower mileage this past week had something to do with that, or perhaps I'm just beginning to become a stronger runner. Either way, I'm very pleased.

Week in Review:

5 runs (missed one run due to illness)
52.61 miles
2,306 feet elevation gain
577 feet average elevation gain

I tried to tone down the hills a bit this week to help my IT band recover, and that seems to have helped. Even after today's hilly run, my knee feels much better. Next week, I'm bumping up the overall mileage to 63 miles, but Sunday's long run will be just 16 miles.