Category: Run

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There’s a song (off this album) that the boys and I love, from a group that was all “cool” and “indie” way back when I was in High School, and into things that were “cool” and “indie”. The band’s doing lots of kids music now. But that’s cool, right? And I’m still cool ’cause I still listen to them, right?

Anyway, the band’s Trout Fishing In America, and the song is “The Window”. It’s a Polka (a plus, right?), and it’s got an acapella section (another plus, right?). The general gist is that the guys in the band kind of hack up nursery rhymes, kind of like this:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men
HE THREW THEM OUT THE WINDOW
The window, the window,
He threw them out the window
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,
He threw them out the window!

It’s good – Old Mother Hubbard – She threw them out the window! Peter Peter Pumpkin eater – He threw her out the window! Etc, so on, and so forth. Given enough demand, I’ll record a snippet of me and the boys and post it…

OK, so, I suppose that’s enough digression. The half-marathon schedule that I’ve not been using to prepare for New Haven called for 6 miles today. It had also called for rest days both Monday and Tuesday, and we all know how well I followed those.

But, after whining on Monday about being concerned about making 20K on Labor Day (love the rhymes…) I didn’t have much choice but to strap on the sneakers on the way home today. Selected 10K on the Nano, put on the shades, and started beating feet.

Running felt great again. Not having anyone to chase, I kept the pace reasonable. The first 4K were great – loved the voice in my ear each time I clicked off another klick. K#5 was kind of rough, but I pushed up the hill on the southern half of the island.

I went ahead and extended to about 5.5 K on the “out”, as I’ve figured out a way to slightly minimize the hills on the “back”. My calves were a bit tight, so I decided to tip my hat to Galloway, and accept that I was already past my  total mileage for last week.

The walk did the trick – when I started running again, the “tight” was gone, and the road slipped beneath my feet. Awesome.

6.4 miles, 54 minutes.

Oh, and Jon? After I was done, and the automated voice (which sounds completely non-automated) finished telling me the stats of the run, some strange voice with an English accent comes on and says “Hello, I’m Paula Radcliffe, and I wanted to congratulate you on your longest run to date.” What’s not to love about Nike+iPod? There’s even strange women whispering in your ear while you’re hot, sweaty, and out of breath!

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Breathing

So, Jon and I headed out to run on Tuesday. Just a friendly jaunt, mind you, neither of us really eager to beat the snot out of each other. 20 minutes out, 20 minutes back. Enjoy the fresh air, enjoy the scenery…

Riiiight.

So, we head on out of the lab, chatting, enjoying the sunlight and the break from the office. And my legs are feeling great! which is a complete relief after the 6 miles on Monday that almost killed me.

Jon’s a great guy – ran XC in high school (Man, I wish I’d been able to do that), has worked in industry for many, many years prior to coming to the lab, and has, like me, been getting back into running over the last couple of years. Though he hasn’t bitten off the marathon monster. (Mark – drop me a line about this once life settles down for you). But, for whatever reason (probably that I have the 26.2 box checked off), he thinks I can outrun him.

The run out on Burma Road is GREAT! The sun shines, the breeze blows, the birds beat down on our ears (wait…). There’s sails on Narragansett bay, and a wind in our face. Nothing better in all the world.

Jon’s a “Big” breather. I’ve found there’s four types of breathers among runners.

  1. Transparent: These’re folks like me, whose breathing can really be used to gauge their level of suffering. On a good run, the breathing is quiet, and usually accompanied by too much talking. As the level of effort goes up, the level of gab goes down. When the pain sets in, the breathing noise goes up – sucking sounds on the in, blowing sounds on the out, ’cause at that point running both sucks and blows. There’ll be grunting, too.
  2. Big: Big breathers always make noise – suck it in, blow it out. If they’re exercising, they’re breathing – think LaMaz (or however you spell that crock – My wife almost strangled me while delivering our first when I tried to coach her with a “Sniff-Ha”!). Not particularly excessive, not much grunting, just a steady “sniff!”-“Psssshew”.
  3. Loud: Loud breathers are big breathers who sound like they’re constantly in pain. These are the grunters, the vocalizers, the ones who you want to call an ambulence on.
  4. Silent: Silent runners are the ones who we all want to be. Picture a Kenyan crossing the line at 2:15, and these are who I’m talking about – all the effort is into taking air in and blowing it out, and the noise just distracts from that.

Anyway, like I said, Jon’s a “Big” breather. And, not being a competitive guy and all, and feeling GREAT on the way out, I kind of turn it up a little bit, as my radar’s telling me that Jon’s on the edge. So the splits go something like 8:45 for the first mile, and 8:35 for the second mile.

As we’re reaching the turn, I start letting Jon know how many more minutes it is. We end up going about a quarter mile more than I’d estimated for a 40 minute run.

On the way back, Jon runs like a man possessed. There’s no change in his breathing – still a steady suck it in, blow it out, but the pace is a KILLER. 7:45 for mile 3.

Which is where he tells me “Hey, Bill, if you want to go ahead, go ahead. I’m pretty much tapped out.”

And I tell him “Jon, you’ve been killing me since the turn, you go on ahead.”

So, I make a concious effort to slow down enough to survive back to the building, and Jon quickly opens up another 75 yards on me.

Mile 4 is another 8:40 mile, which isn’t too shabby.

I catch up to Jon just as we get to the gate. We walk for a few yards, then I go and sprint up the hill, just ’cause it’s there. Both of us are spent – what a great feeling.

4.6 miles, 40 minutes.

New Haven is going to hurt

So, I did 10K after work today. 6 whole miles, and it hurt. Not quite sure why – well, other than not having done any real distance since the 7 with David a while ago.

It wasn’t a bad hurt, by any means. Just not comfortable like a 6 miler should be 4 weeks before a 12 mile race.

Can I confess something? Earlier I ragged on Nike+iPod for having a “too simple” interface, and a stat screen like a video game.

Well, I think I like that now.

Dunno why, but the “My Records” trophy case is especially appealing. I haven’t put anything meaningful up there yet, but still it’s kind of cool. Especially since there’s no real documentation about what it takes to put something up there. Kind of like figuring out a game without having to open the manual.

Anyway, 6.2 miles today on Jamestown. 10 minutes floating on my back looking up at the clouds and feeling the rollers coming in all the way from Africa. I got funny, funny looks from the folks taking a dive class, all suited up in full body wetsuits when I jumped in in my running shorts.

Good day counting calories today. I think I can drop 5 lbs by New Haven if I keep on top of things.

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Another Good Mile

Went running with Jake this evening, after drill and after mowing the yard (How can I resist Melissa when she looks up at me with the big brown eyes and says “You’re mowing the yard, right?”). One mile in 13 minutes.

But, it was by far the best mile of the weekend.

And one of the best post-runs ever, lying in the freshly cut grass, looking up into a perfect blue sky, and watching the thin stratonimbus clouds roll by.

Redemption

So, rather than continue to sit around and feel sorry for myself, I did, in fact, run yesterday afternoon.

And, y’know what? It felt good

Not wanting to be, y’know, too ambitious after a week off, I set the Nike+iPod for 40 minutes, decided to run down River Road instead of the base perimeter, and set off.

The day was warm, but not painfully so. The birds sang, the breeze blew, and the sun beat down on my ears. ANd suddenly all that other crap didn’t matter. I was running.

  • Floyd? Floyd can take a flying leap if he can’t remember that this is what it’s all about
  • Lack of races this year? That was choice, buddy, and it seems to be working out
  • Anything else in the world? Hey, I’m running here. Look for someone else to bug

4.6 miles in 40 minutes. Not fast, not slow, not far, not short. Just right.

Haze Grey and Underway

Jon (from MA, not MI, and not a blogger)(yet) and I are working out a pretty good running relationship in addition to a good working relationship. Each morning, one of us calls and says “11:30?” The other says “OK.”

Then, about 11, one or the other will call to back out. “OK, fine,” the one who’s going to run, will say.

Then, on the way down to change, we’ll run into each other, and say “Hey, looks like I’ll make it after all”.

And then we run.

3 miles yesterday (3.3, actually). 5 miles today. Always good.

The weather has been what I would consider perfect running weather for 3-7 milers – about 80, humid, and breezy. Wow. Just warm enough to really angry up the blood and get the sweat pump running at full throttle, but not hot enough to be hot. A little bit of haze over the bay, giving the illusion that Rhode Island is bigger than a reasonably sized back yard.

Man, it’s good to be a runner.

Today ended up as a bit of a fiasco, though. In my excitement to get out into the sun, I left my socks at the desk. Decided to give the new shoes a go without socks. Even though it is humid. Even though it is hot. Even though we were going to stretch out the run to 5+ miles.

I got blisters.

Not awful ones, and when I get home and lance them, I won’t even notice them when I make the long run for the week on Sunday. But, bad enough that I had to send Jon on down the road at mile 4, and limp back.

Not that I minded another 10 minutes in the sun.

——-

F. Landis (you decide what the F means, I’m kind of up in the air right now, but leaning towards “Floyd” instead of an adjective) was on NPR this morning. If he is a doper, he’s a darn good liar. I’m sympathetic at this point – the line about “Someone found a bottle of Jack” tugs at me as how I probably would have reacted to blowing up on Stage 16 for most of my life. I can see how the emotion of blowing up would play havock with my body chemistry, plus the strain of two and a half weeks of riding my butt off.

Freakin’ Frenchies.

Once more, with gusto

Another post that may or may not have been abandoned at some point…

———-

The boy (6 yrs) is taking soccer camp this week. More accurately, the boy is going to soccer camp this week. But, he’s also going through a phase where all he wants to do is act a bleeding fool all the freakin’ time. His mom is on the verge of trading him in, and the coach at soccer camp is on the verge of leaving him at backfield, which, for 6 year old soccer is the equivalent of being the kid off in left field picking daisies. (I remember it vividly)

Anyway, after bath, I decided we’d try something a bit different tonight. It was cooling off, about 70, so I decided that it’s time that Jake learns to run.

Yeah, you read that right – “Learns to run”.

‘Cause I’ve come to realize that distance running isn’t a skill that comes naturally to most people. It really isn’t. We’re set up, physiologically, to sprint. The whole “Fight or Flight” response, and that instinct is what’s honed in us for most of our lives, especially in a world of fast twitch video games, sound bites, and deep philosophical discussions summed up in a 30 second ad on television.

So I said “Hey, let’s practice running down to the end of the block and back” – a trip of all of about half a mile. “Sure”, says the boy.

The out went like this – Jake would sprint as fast as he could for as long as he could without breathing, then stop and watch as I jogged by. Then he’d sprint again, laughing hysterically.

At the turn he was really starting to drag, so I summoned up the good parts of the OCS Battalion runs, and we started making up and singing jodies all the way back to the house. Next thing we know, we were passing the driveway – more than a quarter mile without me saying “C’mon, Jake…” I was happy, he was happy, the bees buzzed, the birds sang, and the last rays of twilight beat down on our ears.

Which is when it hit me – people do need to be taught how to run. As silly as that sounds, there is some level of skill involved – regulating pace, regulating breathing, etc. For a lot of us, being stubborn and working through pain is enough to learn those skills. But for others (and looking back, I’m in this category), rhythm, pace, and breathing don’t come naturally at all.

Which is another thing that might come in handy with the whole portable music player thing – running with tunes can be akin to having someone call cadence in your ear. Doesn’t do much for the breathing, unless you try to sing along.

Back on the Road

Went running at lunch with one of the guys on my team. Great time – he’s been a slacker for most of July, I’m in recovery mode.

WX was perfect – 80, humid, breezy – nice ozone haze on the bay rendered the boats beating down towards the Newport Bridge like something straight out of Impressionist France, and with neither of us having anything to prove, the run was the most relaxing thing I’ve done – well, since the RBF meetup on Thursday.

Nike+iPod continues to delight – even without the earbuds, it’s small, light, unobtrusive, and easy to read. I prefer it to my Forerunner by leaps and bounds, and think I like it more than the HRM – nice to look at pace rather than HR, which jumps around during the first part of the run since I’m too cheap to spring for electrolyte jelly. I’m even really starting to like the shoes – the more i wear them, the more they feel like a great pair of socks. There really isn’t much to the shoes as far as structure goes – I think I can feel the road better in the Nikes than in my Asics. The black ones are ugly as sin, though. But they’re light. We’ll see how they last through New Haven at least.

And I’m even looking forward to painting the house.

Hola Amigos

Wow – Sunday night already.

If you haven’t checked out David and April Anne’s reports, we had one heck of a run trying to dodge the rain. I’d elaborate, but David pretty much nailed it. Well, with the exception of April Anne trying to drive me into heart failure as we raced over the state line and back.

Were I half a good writer, I’d work in the classic joke about “Crossing staid lions with immoral porpises”. But, it’s late, and I’m tired.

The run was outstanding, BTW. Trails are great, and AA has a way of suggesting “just a little further” that’s impossible to resist. I think I was still carrying the endorphin buzz when I had a bit of delayed elective surgery on Friday. So no running this weekend. The doc said I should take at least a week off – we’ll see. The legs are dying to go.

New Haven is, what 6 weeks away? And I’m halfway thinking about heading down to Mystic Places Marathon again, but on a lighter training schedule – work up to a 15 or 18 miler, and then just suffer, suffer, suffer through the race. We’ll see. More likely is I’ll run the 10 miler there. The wife’s doing the Tarzan Brown 5 miler the first weekend in November, and also the Old Saybrook 5 miler in two weeks.

But, mostly my mind’s on getting back into tri. The swim has been a complete and total bust this summer, other than cooling off after runs. I need to focus on that next winter, but as I’ve been telling anyone who will listen, this year’s focus on just getting out on the road, without stressing about results, has likely done way more long-term good than anything else I could think of.

But, one of Missy’s women’s fitness magazines mentioned the Josh Billings Triathlon on 17 September – Kayak, bike, Run. Wow. Sounds like a perfect weekend in my book. 34 mile bike, 5 mile paddle, and a 10K. I am so there if the wife says OK.

Other than that, I’m ready to lose some weight. The scales are down to 167 again, which is way positive. The hunger’s not raging, since I’m not creating two hour training deficits.

Oh, one other thing to mention: I’m going to be going to all Linux for recreational computing for the month of August, with the exception (AFAIK) of using OSX to send my runs into Nike. Unless I can figure out how to hack that. Follow the action over at (Site in need of a decent name). Part of the whole big idea thing I’ve been meaning to push for a while. I’m still planning on buying a MacBook in the fall/winter, but am really, really intrigued by Ubuntu – it’s the first Linux distro I’ve tried that really comes close to “just working” by design, not accident. Vista, schmista – grow your hair long, stir up the mulch pit and plant some organic veggies, and do something out of the goodness of your heart.

Jank’s take on Operacion Puerto

So, in keeping with the doping scandal raging through professional cycling, I’m doing a little experimentation on my own. This weekend, I contracted a massive, and I mean like scary massive, case of poison ivy, and spent most of Monday morning trying to not claw my skin off in the office of a clinic in Newport waiting to get steroids. The doc took one look at me and prescribed a massive dose of Prednisone tablets. Truthfully, I was kind of let down – they used to give a big injection for poison ivy, which absolutely rocked ’cause the itching was gone in like 30 minutes. But instead, I get to dope for about 10 days total. Woo Hoo!

To make things better, it’s toasty out here. I promise it was scratching 90 degrees today at lunch when I strapped on the Nikes to go hit my 5 mile lunchtime loop. Wouldn’t be extremely bad, but the humidity is up around 90%, too. But, I went anyway – got to get the green, squiggly line for the day on my log.

The run started out pretty well. Nike+iPod told me that it was only 2.55 to the Gazebo that I’d measured at 2.6 with both the Forerunner and Gmaps-Pedometer, but who’s going to quibble with the sultry voice that whispers in my ear whenever I push her button.

The back was awful. I’m not sure, but I think that the ‘roids have got to be doing something negative to my cardiovascular system – I just couldn’t catch my breath at all. Sure, the heat may have played a role, but even when I slowed way down, it was tough. Which must be why the cyclists topped up on EPO while taking steroids. Strength and endurance.

I took a couple of walking breaks on the way back, but still managed to drag in at a 9:30 something pace overall. Not bad for a doper.

No real new notes on the iPod gizmo. Well, maybe one: I wish that there were a setting where you could request automatic updates from the woman in the ether. I’d like to get my info every half mile or mile without having to think about pushing the button.