Joined by the Mentor

Aunt Mary was in town this weekend, to visit my mother, her sister.  I haven’t seen her since I started running, but I took the first train out to the home of my youth this morning to go for a brisk run with Aunt Mary.  I got out to them just before 8:30, sat for a few minutes, chatting, and drinking water.  Then, everybody went to get changed, Ma put Jack, her enormous dog, on a leash, and out we went.

Mom doesn’t run.  Bad… feet.  Toe surgery, heel spurs, all that nonsense.  But, she likes to walk, and, of course, so does Jack.  Aunt Mary and I walked with them for about two blocks, letting our legs stretch a bit, and then we said “bye now” and set off at a trot.

Now, when I run on my own, I run pretty quickly, and after the 4 minutes, I’m ready for the minute of walking.  We didn’t have my iPod tracklist today, and I don’t think either of us wore a watch.  My plan, basically, was to follow AM’s lead and pace, and then let her know what adjustments I needed.  I don’t know what kind of pace she normally runs, if today was a gentle pace for her, or a standard one or what, but it was definitely slower than my usual pace, and I was able to keep up pretty nicely with her.  Our path had a few hills, but was pleasant enough to look at, and I managed to keep pace without complaint for the first three miles.  At that point, my shoe came untied, and I allowed the moment’s pause to extend to a walk for a minute or so, to refresh my lungs and legs.  After that, it was a short run back to the house.  In the end, we went 3.7 miles, though I’m not sure of the time.  I’d estimate about 30-40 minutes.

It was really pleasant running with her, and I really enjoyed the easier pace.  I think at least once per week (maybe every Sunday?) I’ll try for a similar sort of run, but for a longer period of time.  Nice and slow pace, for no fewer than 45 minutes.  Increase that endurance.

From what I’ve read, the run/walk intervals I’ve been doing are building up speed and strength in my legs and lungs and heart, but they’re not particularly building endurance.  Which means that, even as I get better and better, if I don’t incorporate runs of longer duration, I’ll hit a wall at 30 minutes, and really struggle to continue running after that.  Given that I’m training for a 10 mile race, 30 minutes just, flat out, won’t cut it.  Now, my goal is 75 minutes, so, eventually, I’m going to need to start doing long runs in the 60-90 minute range.  At a 10 mile minute pace, it’d take 1 hour 40 minutes to get all the way down.  Hopefully, my pace will improve over the next year, but long runs will be necessary to get me to the finish line.

I’m discontinuing the run counter in the sidebar.  Partially because it’s kind’ve a nuisance to update, and partly because I’m not sure it’s of any value to me, the runner, nor any interest to you, the reader.

 

Recovery Times

Ran about 3.3 miles in about 38 minutes.  I’m actually confident that both of those numbers are accurate.  Perhaps the first TRULY accurate numbers I’ve had so far.  That’s a pace of 11:25, which is way higher than my last two runs, but I can tolerate it.  I started the run feeling pretty tired to begin with.  I’m not particularly sure why.  My legs were just wimpy when I started running, and the result was that I didn’t recover during the walking sections as well as I would have liked to have done.  Part of the reason for this is that today is a bright and sunny day, easily the warmest since my first run.  Thanks to at least a drizzle during each run, I stayed reasonably cool.  Today I was breathing pretty heavily after only about a mile.

Now, I took the day off yesterday, largely because I had run the two days previous, even though I wasn’t feeling particularly sore or tired.  So, after 48 hours rest, I didn’t have the all-conquering (ya know, for me) that I was expecting or hoping for.  Now, as has already been shown, I don’t know anything.  So, I Googled the subject of improving recovery times for runners.  The second article, for me, talked about tapering your running before a race to improve your rested-ness, and thus, your time.  It also included this tidbit:

Research has shown that tapering effectively improves race performance by 3% to 5%. This means that a good taper can shave 5% off your finish time. When you consider that any one workout will give you less than 1% improvement in fitness, it is wise to err on the side of too long a taper rather than too short a taper. Depending on your race distance you should taper from seven days (for example, 5Ks) to three weeks (for marathons).

Now, obviously, “fitness” is an pretty ambiguous term, and I have no idea how the author is defining it.  If I’m 10% more fit in a month than I am today, does that mean I’ll run 10% faster?  Less than that?  More?  Plus, there’s an issue of diminishing returns.  I imagine that my half dozen runs over the past 9 days are worth much closer 6% than Haile Gebrselassie’s last six runs are.  Hell, my last six might be worth over 6%, given how unfit I’ve been, and it’s entirely likely that most of Gebrselassie’s running sustains his fitness, rather than increases it. The statement doesn’t take into account the quality or the workout, either.  Is my half hour run enough?  Or do I need to run farther, or add some crunches and weight lifting for it to count?

It is nice to think about, though, if I keep running 4-5 times per week for the next 48 weeks, I could be a solid 200% fitter than I am now.  Whatever that means.

 

Learn to Run: The Long Runner

The Long Runner is a marathoner training to run Cactus Rose 100 mile trail race.  That’s 10 times longer than the Broad Street Run, and, I’d estimate about 50 times harder.  Or whatever.  For frame of reference, I’m training for a race which was completed by 19,193 in 2008.  The fastest runner finished in about 46 minutes.  The slowest finished in 3 hours, 15 minutes.  The race he’s training for is so insane/amazing/difficult/intimidating that, last year, only 50 people bothered to enter it.  There we no twenty survivors finishers.  That’s 40% of the field.  And the fastest time was just under 25 hours.  The guy is training to be able to run an incredible distance, when, if you ask me, his biggest challenge is just going to be staying awake that long.

Yikes.

Anyway, he updates pretty regularly, talking about his runs (seems like his regular run is about an hour long), as well as his philosophies on running, races, product recommendations, and any other run-related musings that strike his fancy.  For me, at least, the blog is interesting primarily as a document of someone training to attempt something extraordinary.  That said, it’s also a wonderful source of information as a beginning runner such as myself.

Sure, like myself, you might be wondering to yourself, “what are electrolytes, anyway?”  Long Runner has yet to provide a precise definition, but at least by reading the blog, a guy can get a decent idea of why Gatorade makes such a big deal.

Longrunner’s 100: It’s, like, just 150,000 steps.

 

Not Born to Run, But Learning

There’s a lot to know about running.  Sure, in the end, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, but if you want to keep that up for 3 or 5 or 10 or 26.2 or 100 miles, you need to learn a few things.  Before I began running for the Broad Street Run, I knew nothing about running.  As previously posted, I had to be told to go buy shoes.  Now, I don’t intend to place in the run, or anything.  I’m not trying to become an “elite” runner.  I have a stated goal of 10 miles in 75 minutes, but I’ll happily adjust that goal for reality as we get closer to the actual race.  If I can’t possibly finish in 75 minutes, I’ll shoot for 85 or 90 or whatever.  If I practice run 10 miles in January in 75 minutes, maybe I’ll shoot for 70 or 65 or something.

Right now, I suspect that, through a combination of walking and running, I’d make it about 10 miles in 120 screaming minutes.  (Maybe I’ll try that–a Broad St test run).  Pretending that, by foot, in some form, I can move 10 miles in 120 minutes, getting down to 75 means knocking 3/8ths of my time off (or, for you percentages lovers, 37.5%).  That’s no small task, and, I suspect, just putting one putting one foot in front of the other isn’t going to cut the mustard.

So, we’ll study running over the next year as well as, ya know, actually doing it.  We’ll find some blogs, read some magazines (and maybe some books… maybe), and maybe we’ll harass some doctor into giving us some information on what training and stuff like that do to a body.

We’ll start on the informative posts next time (don’t want to shortchange any interesting sources by lumping them into this post). For now, a quick synopsis of today’s run:

Today’s run lasted about 38 minutes.  Maybe when the first paycheck from the new job comes in, I’ll get a digital watch that’ll countdown intervals and stuff so I can get a more precise time, but for now, I’m more than happy to rough it, timewise.  I figure I’m not off by more than a minute or so, and, for now, as long as I’m over the 30 minute mark, I’m happy.

I traveled throughout Fishtown, traveling 3.33 miles.  Like from Thursday, the weather was cool, and it was raining out, though not nearly as hard as last time.  Something that’s given me a good deal of pleasure so far is how with each outing (all three of them so far), I’ve gotten noticeably better in my pace and in my distance.  I’m especially pleased by this because I’m not actually trying to run faster or farther.  I’m just trying to go out and run.  And, somehow, it’s getting easier.  My first run I paced 12:16 per mile.  On Thursday I ran at a 11:40 rate, and today I ran an 11:25 rate.  My distances went from 2.44 miles to 2.57 and today I finished after 3.33 miles, though that was in 38 minutes.  While the pace might have been improved only slightly in today’s run, my endurance had improved as I had little issuing continuing on for 8 minutes more than planned.

I’m hoping to get up to a point where I’m running 4 miles per outing.  I think I can do this within a couple of weeks.  Obviously, I’ll be continuing to run/walk, albeit over a greater distance, adding the time necessary to cover the distance as my body allows me.

I’ve started clocking the kind of distance I cover biking.  It’s a little over 3 miles (I think about 3 1/4 miles) each way to work.  And though I’m biking the distance, and biking is way easier than running, I’m clocking it just because it is exercise, and I can’t imagine it’s not contributing to my training.  Over the past 4 days I’ve covered about 30 miles on 2 feet and 2 wheels.  About 2/3rds of that has been on bicycle, but while the biking is pretty constant (6-7 miles per day for commute to/from work), I anticipate the running portion will gradually grow. Looking forward to it.