Go Hard or Go Home

If you had a chance meeting with Mo Farah while in Portland wouldn't you have done the same thing?  He's a great guy, happy to talk about his training.

Mike and Mo Farah

That's me doing the Mo bot.

fall in (the C&O canal)

Some friends who ran in "Tom's Run Relay" told me that one of their members fell into the C&O canal during the night,  I tried to be sympathetic but a part of me wondered how that could happen ...

Well a few days ago I headed down to try to find the end of the canal in Georgetown (called the watergate it turns out) and see how much of the canal I could cover in a day - more on that some other time.  You may have heard a slow pace described as a 'conversational' pace, a pace at which the level of effort is easy enough to carry on a conversation.  I can tell you I have developed an even easier pace, a 'daydreaming' pace, a pace where sometimes you look around yourself a little bit surprised and wonder how you got there ...

Now let's talk about falling down.  There are different ways you can fall.  Take running down a rocky trail.  Some people call that technical running, You might wonder how fast you should be running downhill - I like to think the answer is in the form of another question "How fast do you want to be going when you fall?"  You sort of expect that a fall is going to happen, and you wear some gloves and try to protect the palms of your hands and just go have fun.  Unexpected falls might be a sudden and a total surprise - bam, you're on the ground trying to figure out how that happened.  Or, you might have a slow motion fall - you trip, then take one or two stagger steps, fully realizing that you're falling, and you're down.

Now about falling in the canal.  I'm moving along the edge of the trail, a pretty smooth dirt path, at 'daydream' speed.  I trip over basically nothing at all, just enough to get my weight too far forward to recover despite a couple of cartoon-fast strides.  I'm looking at where I'm going to fall, and I manage a pancake front slide off the dirt and into some green.  Some kind of green prickly weed.  But it turns out those weeds are growing up the side of canal bank, and my pancake slide takes me just over the edge, And I roll just a bit down the bank and one leg goes into the canal calve deep.  I'm grabbing for anything and there is nothing to really push on ... I got out easy enough so really not a big deal, but I'm glad no one was around to see that.  I ran into the freaking canal!

A while later I realized I lost my hat.  I'm sure it's in the canal.

Karl Meltzer Appalachian Trail 2014

This morning I had the great fortune of seeing Karl Meltzer (aka Speedgoat) working his way southbound on the Appalachian trail. Karl is going after the record for the end-to-end hike currently held by Jennifer Pharr Davis, who completed the feat in 46 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes.

Here he is descending into Gathland State Park ...

... and this one of us just before he disappeared into the woods.

I have a hard time coming to grips with the challenge he's undertaking.  I've run over this section of trail quite a few times - it's part of the JFK50 Mile course.  I always think that getting out there and running that trail makes for a 'hard' training day.  I'm just gob-smacked by the notion that he did way more than that after he disappeared on the trail today, and that he's been doing this every day since July 27th.

Keep your feet under you Karl, and God speed!

today's comic

This was today's "Non Sequiter" comic.

Moses was an older guy who knew how hard it could be to go the distance.

vertical

Vertical ascent is one of my new favorite training metrics.  You don't get much vertical running in the suburbs!  The streets in my neighborhood do roll up and down, but my new Garmin reports I get just 400 feet of vertical climb on a typical 5.5 mile loop I run a lot.  The biggest hill near my house - Powhatan Hill - rises 110 feet over .4 miles and seems like a grind every time I run up it.

Looking at the elevation profile of the JFK50, there is a vertical climb of 1200 feet in the first 5 miles.  That's a bit daunting if I equate it to running up my own Powhatan Hill ten times in a row, and then still having 45 mile run to go.  Last weekend I took my water bottle to the base of Powhatan Hill and ran it ten times just for the vertical.  I now track my total vertical ascent, and plan to add more climbing to my workouts every where I can.

So with my new interest in tracking vertical, the list of things I watch or try to include week-to-week to manage my training includes:

- my total mileage as a sliding 7-day sum

- long runs

- intervals (long intervals up grade or on hills, but I still enjoy running 400's on the treadmill)

- vertical ascent

- heart rate data, to track TRIMP / ATL / CTL as used in SportTracks Training Load software

Punxy progress report

In my last post I wrote a bit about my 'crash' training plan to get ready for the Punxsutawney 50K. Here's an update now that the race is just four weeks and a handful of days away.  The good news is that I've trained hard and made a lot of progress. I haven't hurt myself (though I did run with inadequate recovery time in my drive to rapidly build my weekly mileage).   I've had some hard, strongly-improving workouts, but I'm lacking in the long runs needed to really be ready  Punxsy will be a struggle  - I really started late...

training plan

Mary and I just got back from spending almost a month wandering about in France.  We had a great time - but looking at my running log, I only did 10 runs in June while traveling.  I ran in some interesting places, but there wasn't a lot of intensity or duration.  This fall I'm planning on running the Punxsutawney 50K in early September, and then the JFK 50 Mile run in November right before Thanksgiving.  How can I be ready?

I've got just 9 weeks left before the Punxsy run.  Here is what I plan to do for the two races:
1.  Set the bar fairly low for Punxsy - my goal is to finish the event without beating myself up too bad.  I'm going to think of it as a good step on the way to the JFK 50
2. Focus on 'duration' over intensity.  I want to accumulate as much 'time on feet' as possible, and to get that number up fast I will sacrifice intensity (speed).
3. Get some higher intensity work in each week.
4. Don't get injured.  A big increase in workload is risky, I like to think experience will help keep me out of trouble, but you know self-coached runners ...

I think I'll stay on the roads getting ready for Punxsy, running back and forth over Powhatan hill close to home to get ready for those Pennsylvania hills.  In September and October I'll get out on the Appalachian Trail as much as I can (maybe once a week?) to get ready for all that rocky footing in the early part of the JFK 50..

I'm certainly well rested now, so, I've got that going for me.

a thought for today

"Sucking is the First Step to Being Sorta Good at Something" (Alexis Ohanian)

I guess I'm on my way then.

looking back

2013 was an 'ok' running year for me.  Maybe it suffers a bit in comparison with 2012, where I trained smart and hard to get ready for the Comrades, and ran the race of my life.  This year I didn't have any big hairy audacious goals, and as the JFK 50 approached I wound up just trying to spend enough time on feet and get enough miles logged to be able to finish the race.  I did finish, but it was a hard day - in some ways I thought my familiarity with the course and running experience played as big a role as my conditioning. did.

This year I will improve the quality of my training.  Run faster.  I've been thinking that the software I use to track my running (SportTrack) focuses on TRIMP.  I can always accumulate plenty of TRIMP with lots of long slow running.  My old Suunto watches calculated TE or training effect - what I need to do this year is make sure I get some higher intensity / TE runs done as part of my weekly routine.

Running highlights of 2013

There were no real racing highlights for me, but I did have some memorable runs.

- My sister Lisa and I ran the Appleton, WI 'Turkey Trot' 5 miler on Thanksgiving morning.  It was a cold day in Appleton, and the first time my sister has run 5 miles that she remembers.  My wife Mary was on the course at the same time, walking it with our extended family.  Everyone had a good day - definitely a running highlight for me too!

- Portland OR run-about.  A couple of days in Portland in September gave me the chance to run some new routes starting from in-town, going up the hill to Skyline Drive, then back into town on a two-mile downhill stretch coming down Burnside about as fast as I have run in a long time.  A blast.

-  Exploring and running bits of the great Leadville 100 course, and then watching the race from various points on the course.  Wow ... just wow.

Keep your feet under you, and have a happy new year!