Running Reflections on 2013, going into 2014

The previous year's training on Daily Mile.   Other than missing
a couple weeks in June, had a very consistent 2104 year in running.

The early days of January are often spent looking forward by looking backward.  So with running in mind, I look back to 2013 to see what worked, what didn't work, and use that to build upon in 2014.  It's something I recommend all runners do.   I suppose a blog is a self-indulgent enterprise by definition, but trying to make this post slightly less than totally self-centered, I'll pass along some observations I think all runners could use.

The biggest takeaway from 2013 is that it was one of the most successful years of running I've had in the last five years, and a big part of this was due to consistency in training.  I've battled a bunch of injuries since 2008 and while a couple foot problems knocked me out for a couple weeks in 2013, it was a pretty injury free year.  Late in 2012, I discovered in a routine trip to the running shoe store that I was cramming my size 14 feet into size 13 shoes.  About a month after moving up to a size 14 shoe, chronic soreness in the ball of my right foot and left knee both subsided.  I also have to give a lot of credit for running largely pain free to the leg and core strength exercises I discovered in Eric Orton's fine book "The Cool Impossible".  Finding the right shoe size and working on core strength and balance really made a big difference in 2013, if for no other reason that I found myself a lot less sore at the end of runs and ready to go at it again the next day.  In 2013, I ran a total of 1736 miles which averages out to 33.3 miles a week, about five miles per week more than in 2012.  I also did long runs as long as 15 miles at the end of the year as compared to previous years where about 12 miles was all I could handle before my foot pain  became unbearable.

The other half of the equation is that I did a lot of tempo runs in 2013 at a wide variety of distances ranging from four to fourteen miles.  (More on long distance tempo runs here and four mile tempo runs here.)  I'm a big believer that racing success requires putting the stresses on yourself in training that you'll experience in the race, and tempo runs do just that.  Tempo runs, when done at the right pace, also allow for fast recovery.  Successful training is balancing the yin and yang of tearing yourself down in the right way in order to build yourself back up, and tempo runs worked well for me in 2013 and I'll be doing more of them in 2014.

It all paid off in the two major races I ran this year, the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon in April and the Monterey Bay Half-Marathon last November, as I was pretty pleased with both of these efforts.  I've already started training for an April half-marathon, most likely the Marin County Half-Marathon.

 I wish you all the best for running in 2014 and for those wanting to chat more about running and training, you can join me on DailyMile.

Target, Santa Cruz Half-Marathon: The Fun Begins

If I wanted to make this blog really tedious and dull, I'd write about my running all the time.  Sure, I enjoy running, its often stimulating with even exhilarating and unique moments from tim, but then some runs are about as exciting as washing the dishes.  Running success requires a certain humdrum day to day consistency which when written out, is about as exciting to read as a bus schedule.  Of course, there are days when you have a workout breakthrough, but of course, to build up a solid foundation, you have to come back every 2-3 days and run another strong workout.  So I'm not big on broadcasting about my training accomplishments on the Internet or through social media for that reason. 

 

But then, runners like to talk about running, and "How's your running going?" is always a great ice-breaker question when meeting runners.  And this weekend, I signed up for the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon, and figured it couldn't hurt to share some experiences and discuss how training leading up to the race is going from time to time.  After running for over 30 years, I have my own thoughts about how to train for half-marathons, and figure some of you might actually be interested in reading about this every few weeks.   When the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon starts April 7th, we'll all find out how all that hard work paid off, a running laboratory if you will.  For those more interested, feel free to find me on Daily Mile where we chat about our respective running and other workouts on a more regular basis.

 

As for my current plans for the Santa Cruz Half-Marathon, I figure to have a finishing time in the range of 1:25-1:30.  I'm building up my long runs to at least fourteen miles by the end of the month, with weekly mileage in the 40-45 mile range.  Then I'll start getting speedier with some 3-4 mile tempo runs starting February, and a smattering of shorter interval track workouts in March.  I'll be writing about those workouts with observations and hopefully some insight that might help you with your running.  I'll also be running The 408k, an 8k in San Jose on March 10th as a tune-up for the half-marathon.

 

Right now, the focus is on the long runs and getting a decent amount of base mileage.  And I'm a believe in doing your long runs fast.  It's a counter-intuitive approach and goes against a lot of so-called conventional wisdom out there.  But running long runs fast has worked for me, and I'll talk about that specifically in two or three weeks with a few more long fast runs under my belt.

 

For those who decide to stick around, we'll see where this all leads.



Daily Mile Gadget Dilemma No More

Runners like talking about running. After all, running is what we do, so it's only natural that we talk about it. And so after thirty years of talking to runners I've learned a couple things.

1) The best thing to do when meeting runners is asking questions that get them talking about their running. "How's your running going?" or "Got any races coming up?" are my go to running ice breaker questions.

2) Talking about my running when not specifically asked usually bores people to tears.

Let's face it, in the grand scheme of things, our workouts and our races are not that important. Of course, our family and friends will care about what's important to us, and if that happens to be running, of course they will be interested. But that doesn't mean they want a blow by blow account of yesterday's run. Runners are often deeply invested in their running, and for good reason, but let's face it, everyone including runners, has more important things going on in their lives than running. We have family, jobs, and other activities, and it's hard for anyone to muster up more than a polite enthusiasm about your next 10k. And our training involves a rather mind numbing sequence of times, distances, and other trivia. Do you really care how far I ran yesterday? Didn't think so.

And so for the last fews days I've thought about removing the DailyMile gadget off this blog which dutifully listed each days run with my comments, and today I did just that. It was hard to see the point of having it there. Keeping a daily running log is about carefully documenting each workout so that you can look back on it someday, and figure out what works, and what doesn't work, and tiny snippets of this are not something I think most people would find interesting. Of course, I could try to make it entertaining with witty comments about each run, but what can you really say about a run that's new and fresh that you've already done a bunch of times already. The result was some pretty innocuous commentary on this DailyMile gadget, such as "Felt pretty good, day off helped". Boy, doesn't that sound exciting!

The thing to remember is that running is not about individual workouts. It's really about the totality of weeks and months of hard work, slowly ascending to your goals over the long haul. Sure, you can have a big day and pop a really good workout, but just like distances races themselves, training is a lot about steady persistence. And so a training log book is bound to reflect that, with most days being rather routine.

And just because I can broadcast my daily running log book to the world doesn't mean I should. Running is a rather personal endeavor, and I often only discuss it with my close circle of family members, friends, teammates, training partners and coaches. I'd like to keep it that way.

Keeping a running journal again at DailyMile

Back in the day, I religiously kept a running journal. Actually, the information wasn't all that detailed. If I run a track work-out, I would just list the mileage and might note "track work-out" but wouldn't include the length of the track intervals or the times. It's not so much the information one puts into a running journal, but the thought and concentration involved in putting the day's run onto paper that makes a running journal valuable. Well OK, it doesn't take a lot of thought or concentration to write "7" on a piece of paper after running seven miles, but you get the idea. The problem was, every couple of years, I'd lose my notebook, and would have to start the whole process over again.

Sometime in the mid-90's, I ended my daily devotional of running journal entries entirely. A lot of this was simply because I wasn't running much then, and was well on my way to gaining about 50-60 lbs over the next fives years. There was a time I'd blame it all on marrying the wrong woman, who wasn't a big fan of me running, but I think it's fair to say that my first wife probably gave me a well needed break from running seriousness, just not in the right way.

So as to slowly reclaim back the old running life once lived, it's time to start keeping a running journal again. And instead of an old fashioned notebook, I've recently joined DailyMile to record each day of running. It's got a few new fangled features they didn't have back in the day. The most notable is the social networking aspect of the website, where you can have training "friends", and even send your friends motivation, in the form of icons shaped like a blue ribbon or a green thumbs up sign. If you want to send me motivation, well that's nice, but after thirty years with plenty of runs and races under my belt that have gone horribly wrong, countless running injuries of all type and severity, and a few unfortunate incidents involving either end of the digestive system, a green thumbs up icon from out of the blue is not going to make much difference in whether or not I keep at it.

The really neat feature of Daily Mile is their running route mapping feature, leaving no wild guesses as to how far each run is, or how high certain hills are. I've had some fun looking at the online map of my neighborhood, and think, "Hey, what if I ran this course?", then map it out and immediately get a good idea of what I'm getting myself into, rather than finding out the hard way.

For my other hobby, homebrewing, I haven't found the equivalent of Daily Mile, and wouldn't join, even if it existed. Something about quantifying a hobby changes it. By keeping track of miles, times, and workouts, running becomes, at a certain level, a chore, but it's doing those chores that pay off on race day, so I gladly do them. On the other hand, I just simply like brewing beer and sharing those results with friends, end of story. I have great friends who lie to me, always telling me the beer tastes great, whether or not it actually does. And perhaps because the stopwatch is more brutally honest than my friends, I have no real desire to monitor every last beta acid or religiously keep track of the gravity of the beer over the entire process, which would take a lot of fun out of home brewing for me. Maybe some day I'll enter my home brews into competitions and start keeping more detailed notes on my home brews, but right now, developing a repeatable malt extraction process or agonizing over how the judges are going to perceive my homebrews are stresses I'd rather not deal with right now.

So I keep a running journal, and will remain blissfully unaware of metrics needed to improve my homebrews. And unlike my old running journal written in a notebook for my eyes only, my daily workout are now on this blog via some Daily Mile gadget, for the whole world to see. My training is now a wide open book. Is this really progress?