Personal Highs, Running Lows

Over these last couple of weeks my running has been up and down, mostly down. The good news though, is that just about everything else in life has been awesome. The school year is over and I have lots of free time this summer, which will be extremely great once my body gets back to 100% for running (I'm around 90% right now).

The best news of all is that as of last Friday I am engaged to the most amazing girl in the entire world! We are planning for a wedding next summer which is already extremely exciting to begin the planning and working on coming up with all of our ideas for our ceremony and celebration.

As far as running has been going, it has been up and down lately. A week and a half ago I re-aggravated my hamstring injury while doing some biking, the cross training my doctor told me to do. The running has not hurt my hamstring at all. Since then I have stopped doing any biking and my cross training has become some swimming and aquajogging. I have gone running the last 4 days though and it's been getting better and better with each day. I ran for over 1 hour each of the last two days in the heat and humidity. The legs felt good although the rest of the body was struggling due to the weather.

The other big thing I've had to do this week is to re-evaluate my racing plan for the summer. I most likely will not be racing on the 4th of July so my first race of the summer will be the Jammin' Jamaican Run in Wells, MN. I also will not be running the Rice Street Mile since that race has been canceled this year. The same night as that race was scheduled to be is also the Lifetime Fitness Torchlight 5K in Minneapolis. I've run this race 3 times before but it's been 5 years since I last did it. I haven't decided on that one yet but it's certainly an option. I am also looking at one of 3 half-marathons in August: Gopher to Badger, Mora, and Rochester. I will do one of the 3 but I haven't decided which one yet. A lot will depend on how the training over the course of the month of July goes and when I feel I'll be ready for a half-marathon race.

I am going into the doctor's later on this week to hopefully get the okay to up my training in July so here's hoping all goes well with that.

Stay cool this week everyone!!

Update

It's been a few weeks since I last updated, a lot has been going on. Friday was the last day of school for me as a first-year teacher! I survived my first year and am looking forward to year #2. I also spent all day at the state track meet at Hamline in the wind and rain cheering and coaching. For Watertown-Mayer we had 3 girls and 1 boy make it to state and we had one of our girls qualify and place in the top 3 in four different events! It was a lot of fun to see her compete so hard and do so well.

I am also back into the swing of things with my running. I started back up about two weeks ago and got the okay from the doctor to get back into a steady training plan. The only drawback is that I can't do any tempo or speed workout for another two weeks because of some still minor tightness in my hamstring. I am doing a lot of strengthening exercises to get my hamstring back to 100%. I can go and run steady miles without any problem but I just have to be careful with my pace for a little while longer.

I am heading out on a 10 mile run later this morning. With that run my weekly mileage will reach 45 miles and I am hoping to be up in the mid-50s for mileage next week. As long as things continue to improve the way they are I am aiming to be in the 70s for weekly miles by the start of July and into the 90s and even possibly hit 100 for a week or two before the end of the summer.

Microtears in the Left Hamstring

I went to the doctor on Tuesday after school and found out I have some small microtears in my left hamstring where the tendon meets the actual muscle. It's not too serious of an injury but it's enough to keep me from running for about two weeks. I'm doing a lot of icing, a lot of stretching and I'll be doing some aquajogging a few times over the next week so I can at least get some workouts in. I can start running again at the end of next week as long as everything is feeling all right and it has been getting better each day.

This is probably the best time for me to be forced to take off because I am in between training for marathons. The first week of June will be the first week of marathon training for Twin Cities next fall so I've got a couple weeks before that starts. As long as all things go well, I'll still be on track to get right back into it very soon.

2009 Fargo Marathon

A day with some very high hopes ended with a goal P.R. still unreached. Despite that, I had a lot of fun at the Fargo Marathon. I ran a hard race, I went after my goal, came up short, but I never would have been close to it had I not gone after it. I ended up running 3:01:40 and placed 31st overall out of around 1,250 runners. It was second fastest marathon ever so I'm still fairly happy with that.

The start of the race was very emotional and inspiring. With all of the flooding the city of Fargo had dealt with and fought through, there was a lot to celebrate with this event. The mayor came out to be the official starter of the race. The national anthem was very moving and the invocation prayer by a local pastor was very moving and uplifting. With this being a slightly smaller marathon I was able to get myself directly behind the elite runners and was only about two or three steps behind the starting line. The horn sounded and we were off running down University Drive going right by my old college campus.

I felt like the first mile was so slow, I felt like I wasn't working but it's amazing what adrenaline can do to a man. I ended up running 5:54 for my opening mile! It felt like a 6:40. I went to the bathroom on mile 2 and eased up on my pace. Still, it took me a while to ease up enough to get down to where I had wanted to be at. Ultimately this was probably a big part of what prevented me from running stronger later.

At the halfway point, I was in 14th place at 1:23:19, my 4th fastest time for a half-marathon ever! I managed to make it to around mile 18 holding steady at my pace before the pace began to fall off. At mile 20 I was still in 15th overall but my pace had slowed considerably. The last 6.2 miles were complete survival mode. I averaged over 8 minutes per mile for the final 10K and I just managed to keep running to the finish. In my young marathon career this was only my second marathon in which I did not walk at all (my P.R. of 2:59:01 is the only other one). The finish was very cool inside the FargoDome. Lots of people in the stands cheering really loud, being very supportive just like all the spectators along the course had been all morning.

After I was done, I got interviewed by some local reporters on camera. I don't remember where they were from and for a few hours I couldn't remember what they had asked me. I got so light-headed I couldn't think or remember much of anything about the race. When I went to lunch later, it began coming back to me though. It was a little scary for a while though when I couldn't. Today many of my students were amazed by what I had just done. It's hard to believe that when I crossed the finish line I was a little disappointed that I didn't P.R. or reach my goal time. I still finished a 26.2 mile race in a little over 3 hours. Most people would love to be able to do that. I just have a determination and a drive to try to get better that I don't want to accept a finish like this, despite how good it actually is.

I chalk every race, good or bad, up to being a learning experience. If I don't learn something new about myself during the course of a race, then I really feel I didn't accomplish anything. This is the hardest I've ever trained for a marathon before. Perhaps I trained too hard. Analyzing my training plan will tell me more about that in the days to come. I had a bad hamstring that flared up on me again. I am going into the doctor's in the next week to get that looked at. It also could have played a part. It could be something as simple as I just went out too fast and paid for it late in the race. It could be a combination of all of them.

It could still be that the course was longer than 26.2 miles...my dad's co-worker ran the marathon with a GPS on and at the finish her GPS recorded a distance of 26.7 miles, half a mile longer than it should have been! Now, this of course is unofficial and won't change anything in the final results, but it is potentially a bit disappointing if that were to end up being the case. Half a mile for me meant a new marathon P.R. or not. Oh well, nothing you can do about it. I'm happy about how things are going with recovery and I'll be running again soon and in a few short weeks, training for the 2009 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon and another attack at 2:45 will begin.

One Day Away

It's 6:45 am the day before the Fargo Marathon and I can't sleep anymore. I took the day off of work today to travel up to Fargo so I had planned to sleep in this morning, go for a short run and then hit the road. So far, I'm 0 for 1 on that plan. I've basically been wide awake for over an hour with nothing but the race running through my mind. For me, getting nerves like this is a good thing but getting the sleep is also a good thing. I might have to take a little nap on the drive up to Fargo today.

The weather report is becoming more and more likely to be correct by this point in the week and we're looking at low 40s and partly cloudy during the race, absolutely perfect for me. And those strong Fargo winds, they're gonna be pretty calm tomorrow as well. This is shaping up for a big P.R. kind of day for me! I always look forward to the whole experience of running a marathon and being a part of the entire event. Aside from race day easily being my favorite day of any training season, the race expo the day before has to be a not too distant second. I haven't been to Fargo's expo before so we'll see how it compares with the others I've been to. Just being around all those other runners and all of these companies, races, and stores in one place, being there for all of us runners is just so cool to me! Being at one of these expos is like putting my 10 year old self in a toy store with the candy store attached next door, I'm in heaven!

The goal for race day remains 2:45 or under, a 14 minute P.R. if all goes according to plan. Regardless of what happens tomorrow morning in Fargo, North Dakota though, the ultimate reason why I'm doing what I'm doing will never change: I'm praising God and thanking Him for blessing me with the gift of being able to run the way I do and for giving me the joy and passion to want to do it. It's all about my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I wouldn't be where I am today without Him.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with perseverance the race God has set before us."
- Hebrews 12:1

Getting Excited!

With my 7th career marathon only a little over 4 days away the nerves have truly begun to set in. I'm checking the Fargo weather forecast every single time I hop online. Every moment that I get a chance to stretch out my legs in any way, I do it. There is a water or Powerade bottle almost permanently attached to one of my hands (a Powerade bottle is about half a foot from my keyboard at the moment). I'm going to bed 15 minutes earlier than the night before each night (tonight that means in bed at 8:45 pm). I'm getting very anxious and the race is virtually the only thing on my mind.

Only a few workouts remain and tomorrow I'll be up to do a set of 400s on the track at 6 am. We are hosting two track meets this week (tomorrow and Thursday) so those days, getting a workout in during the afternoon will be next to impossible. I did this today as well and it got me off to a good start for the week. I'm leaving for Fargo on Friday morning to go to the expo and to get my race packet. I just really want to get through this week of teaching so that I can get to Fargo to be ready to race. I honestly don't know that I've thought through and prepped myself for a single race as much as I have for this one. I tend to do better the more prepared I feel so I think this is a good sign!

A Wet Windy Run

Today's run brought back fond memories of last October's Twin Cities Marathon. It was very wet, a little windy and there was a definite chill in the air. I did a tempo workout on the Dakota Trail by my apartment and it felt great. I got my pace down under 6:00 per mile for the final 20 minutes of the tempo and it felt very comfortable. Along with getting in a good workout in the rain I tested a new piece of running apparel during my workout: arm warmers. Many elite runners have been seen in marathons over the last few years wearing these on cool days as a way to keep their arms warm without having to wear a long-sleeved shirt under their uniform. After wearing them in cool wet conditions I can totally understand why many runners have begun to wear them. I have a pair of Asics warmers and they cover my arms from my wrists all the way up to my shoulders. A great benefit to them is that if you get warm and no longer need them, you can pull them right off without having to remove your shirt or uniform to get them off. The particular pair I have also kept my arms dry from the rain as well as keeping them warm.

I know for sure that if it is a cool morning in Fargo in 2 weeks, I will be wearing these on the starting line of the marathon. With less than 2 weeks until the race now, the tapering is really beginning. I still hit 60 miles this week but next week I'll drop down to around 50 miles with one day off as well. The week of the marathon I'll probably get 30-35 miles in prior to the actual race. In the past this level of tapering has proven fairly effective for me. I am also going to begin getting to bed a little earlier this week. During a normal week I can get by with around 7 to 7.5 hours of sleep a night. My goal this week is to get at least 8 hours a night and the week of the marathon between 8.5 and 9.5 hours a night.

It's going to be a good couple of weeks. Getting past this rain this weekend and the next few days coming up, the weather looks to be very good in favor of some ideal marathon conditions. Next weekend I am going to head out to Eau Claire, Wisconsin to watch the 1st annual Eau Claire Marathon to check out the race and the course to see what it's going to be like. May is quite the month for marathoning in the upper midwest: Eau Claire, La Crosse (Wisconsin) and Lincoln (Nebraska) next weekend, Fargo the following weekend, Green Bay in 3 weeks, Madison and Stillwater in 4 weeks and Minneapolis in 5 weeks. With these new marathons I am looking forward to checking them out to see some potential future races that I may run in springs to come.