A Marathon in 24 hours?

I found a YouTube video by someone named Beau Miles documenting his marathon in 24 hours, running a mile every hour.  In the extra time every hour he tried to get things done.  The idea strongly resonated with me, and I do have a good list of projects, so I did not let the inspiration pass.  At 9:00 am the next morning I had a bowl of oatmeal and started to run, one loop every hour, for 24 hours.

In the end, I stopped short of my plan - but it was a memorable day anyhow.  It brought back a lot of memories of old long runs.  It reminded Mary she is married to a crazy guy. 

Here is how the day (April 22, 2020) unfolded.

9 am - My "one-mile loop" is out the front door around two long blocks.  The loop is 'tilted' (not flat) so it will be interesting to see how much vertical I get over the day. Weather at the start is sunny and cool.  Saw a fox on the road.  My first task was getting the edger out of the shed, getting it started and making a nice clean edge where my yard meets the front curb.  I edged around the big flower beds while I was at it.

10 am - Spread Preen on mulch beds to hopefully slow the weed return.  I could probably weed for a couple of hours! Had first coffee of the day.

11 am - Cleaned out overgrown ground cover between the stepping stones to downstairs patio

Noon - Mary made her wonderful mushroom soup for lunch.

1 pm - Trimmed branches from cherry tree.  I cleared everything off the patio and got ready to power wash the stepping stones and pavers.

2 pm - Power washed stepping stones and downstairs patio.  Observation: Just because you have 40 minutes to power wash doesn't mean you can get it done in 40 minutes ...

3pm - weeding patio

4pm - Washed both cars

5pm - Rest!

6pm - Dinner. Mary made a nice spaghetti dish.

7pm - Mary gave me a haircut.  She worries she is going to mess it up, and I sound like Rocky Balboa yelling at his corner man "Cut me!  Cut me!"

8pm - Practiced a new Ryuichi Sakamoto piece on the piano.

9pm - I have covered just over 15 miles according to my Garmin, so my "one mile loop" is a little longer than I thought.

10pm - Mary went to bed.  The team dynamic shifted ...

11pm -

Midnight - Deer and fox in the road on this loop.

1am - I was thinking back to a time sleeping in the basement of the house on the river in Moorhead, watching the flood dikes with my brother Steve.  We set the alarm to go check the sandbags every hour.  Eventually I stopped getting up and Steve did it by himself - I still feel guilty about that ...  But I got up this time and went out.

And then I stopped.  I felt "OK".  Really tired though.  My back was feeling tired and weak.  There was nobody around and I just couldn't find the motivation to keep doing the hourly loops until 8am.  So I just went to bed.

Thanks to Mary for taking some pictures, and all the encouragement once I got going!

The track from my Garmin:

1,673 ft of elevation gain - I should have picked a flatter loop ...

What will it take to get back to running?

I've had a way too long lay-off from running. It took a long time to recover from an achilles injury, but some recent easy runs tell me that my achilles is no longer an excuse.  So what are the challenges to overcome to get back to running?

- Age. It's real, it's measurable, it's progressive. It lowers peak performance levels of course.  It makes recovery times longer, so that limits total training workload.
- Weight. I think it's the biggest obstacle I face.
- Flexibility and range of motion. I've lost a lot of both!  These are essential to running fast and running efficiently.
- Strength. It would be good to improve my core and upper body strength at the same time I'm working on flexibility and range of motion.
- Doing the training work.  I actually like doing the running. The challenge is doing the volume of work required.  I'm a natural at just racking up some time and distance during a base-building phase, but I haven't done any higher intensity work in a long time. After rebuilding my base I need to plan some interval/repeat work and hill work.  And speed work improves efficiency - efficiency is essential to running long.  I think I can do that myself, but a smart runner would find a coach ...
- I like to remind other people that training stress leads to improvement, and greater training stress leads to greater improvement - all good, right up until you get hurt. I need to not injure myself!

I've got some shoes, my old running watch, some comfortable cold-weather running clothes. I've got a challenging race on the calendar just over four months from now.

Gotta run!

"The Ditches of Fairfax County"

I ran with some friends along Pimmit Run this week, where the first part of the run is like running in a concrete-lined drainage ditch.  But it's always surprising to find a bit of real trail running and adventure right in my own neighborhood.

Elite runners (Mark and Paul) and the slow guy (me, in the middle)

Skaters and skiers might say this is where you "drop in"
to the ditch just off Rt 7 by Pimmit Drive

And then there is this ahead of you.  Not bad!
But don't try it during or soon after a hard rain ...

This is the underpass that gets you to
the other side of the Dulles access road

Coming up to Great falls road

And then the Little League baseball
fields off Westmoreland road

.

Watch out for tree roots, but the trail is good

The last bit of trail before the cul de sac at the end of my street

Overall the run is quite flat, dropping a little over 100 feet in this 3 mile section.  If you keep going, you can follow Pimmit Run all the way to where it runs into the Potomac underneath Chain Bridge.  Good luck!

You can push hard to get to the top of the hill.  But just run in the moment and the top comes to you.

thought for the day

“I believe that if you set out on an adventure and you’re absolutely convinced you are going to be successful, why bother starting?”  -  Sir Edmund Hillary

Young, fit, gifted ... that's one way you could go ...

cross that bridge when you come to it

I was running on the Main river in Frankfurt and was trying to think of an alternative to running one side or the other, or up one side and back on the other, and discovered a topological problem.  What if I ran down one side of the river, crossed the next bridge I came to, continued down the other side to cross the next bridge, and just continued doing that?  Eventually of course I should cross a bridge and head back, but continue to cross each bridge when I come to it on my way home.  I was thinking it through and discovered that as I crossed a bridge on the 'out' and 'back' part of the run I always crossed any given bridge running the same way each time.  I first thought this depended on whether there were an odd or even number of bridges, but I was jogging along trying to mentally draw these paths out and couldn't find a way to "cross each bridge when you come to it" and cross each bridge both ways.

my Garmins view of this run

I won't bother with you my observations on the first and last bridges crossed ...

p.s.  After getting home, I found these kinds of problems have gotten plenty of attention - see for example Seven Bridges of Königsberg

Scott Jurek - Appalachian Trail day 22

I took a chance on finding Scott Jurek on his AT trail adventure today, and had the best of luck.  I parked in Washington Monument State Park, and after a quick trip to the top of the monument for a look-around I got on the Appalachian trail heading south.  I passed the South Mountain Inn (which marks the top of the Alt-40 hill climb at the start of the JFK 50 Miler) and continued south down the trail.  In less than an hour, I ran into him running down the hill from that antenna farm at the top of the hill.

Scott seems to genuinely enjoy people coming out to run with him - although I have to wonder if he's not losing some real time over the period of his record attempt giving time for selfie photos with fans!  I heard several people ask about what he was missing, and he seemed to be craving Thai food and vegan ice cream (never had that ...).  And any vegan deserts - but nobody had any of that.  There are lots of pictures of Scott running - but here is one of him eating (it is eat and run after all)

Scott has great supporters in his wife and ultra community.  I met Karl Meltzer during his AT attempt last year and saw him momentarily again in Washington Monument Park today,  And I wasted some of his time with a selfie (thank you Speedgoat!).  I didn't get one with Scott - that's  30 seconds saved.

If you bring nice gear out on the trail, it can get a bit trail-worn before you know it.  If it's really good gear though, that's OK.  Scott has taken a couple of weeks of hard wear on the trail.  I think I heard him say this is the hardest thing he'e ever done.  But I was impressed with how well he's moving and how strong he's climbing.

Good luck Scott!

links:
Scott Jurek's Facebook page
Frederick News Post article

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!

Bernd Heinrich

I really admire this man's passion for running ...

Bernd Heinrich

And other things - he's one heck of a tree climber.

I'm currently reading his book "Why We Run", and liking it a lot.

Scott Jurek video/interview

Nothing really special to see here, but it's just nice to hear 'what's up' with Scott Jurek in this interview from the UK ... I'm almost (not quite) sold on the idea of going to run in the muck ...

run faster!

This year it seems I'm running slower than ever.  Even when it feels like I'm just blazing on a downhill, I'll check the pace my watch is showing and see that I'm barely running a pace I ran for 5K last year.  I believe that a long stretch of easy long runs this year is the reason.  While the good news is that my endurance base is not too bad, it seems I'm going to have to actually do some hard work to get some leg speed back.

One short extract from a Bruce Fordyce interview in Ultra Running magazine back in 2005 ...

Mark: What are the most important things an “average “ultra runner can do to improve performance?

Bruce: Run faster not longer! When I went to Chicago for the U.S. 50-mile championship, I thought I was better prepared than my American competitors because I had focused more on running fast than longer, which of course is not to say that long runs should be ignored.

Bruce ran a 4:50:51 at that 1984 AMJA U.S. 50-mile championships in Chicago.

What an endurance runner is really looking for is running efficiency.  An efficient runner is going to cover distance with less effort, and probably faster.  I'm adding some faster training runs (interval workouts) to try to improve my speed and efficiency.