The Finish Line is Just Another Starting Line

My apologies, nonexistent readers, for not updating you in almost a week. Most of the week was spent icing my shin or knee and trying to keep both elevated, so there wasn't much to report.

On Thursday, I felt well enough to run again, but I decided to leave the hydration belt I hate behind and just see how my leg and all of its sore components felt. The answer was, they felt better. I did start feeling a little bit of shin splint after about ten minutes, but after another half mile it loosened up and felt fine. I was supposed to do a forty-five minute run, but without any hydration or nutrition I settled for thirty-one minutes and 3.26 miles.

Between Thursday and Saturday, I picked up the Nathan Speedbelt 4 that I talked about getting the last post. I loaded up the bottles with water and electrolyte replacement drink and set out Saturday morning to run the Nike+ Human Race 10k. That belt is light-years better than the other one. It doesn't bounce around at all, and I barely even noticed it.  There is a small pouch on the front that's perfect for a bag of sport beans, of which I ate a small handful every two kilometers. About 400 meters from the finish I felt a twinge in a rather personal adductor muscle, but I kept going because I was so close to the end. This was my longest run so far, and it was tough, but I finished it in 1:00:09.  That completes the One Hour Runner program, which segues directly into my half-marathon training program.

Remember that Shoes Challenge I was logging runs for? I WON! THEY'RE SENDING ME SHOES! I don't know what shoes they are, but I'll probably just put them on the shelf until I mile out my Equalons.

After I recovered from my Saturday run, we went to the State Fair using the pass I got from my last 5k. We had a good time, enjoyed the fair food and saw all the animals (I saw a lot of mutton that didn't know it was mutton, yet).

Sometime over the last week, I went green on Nikerunning. Which is cool, but it means that I have 465 miles to go until I hit blue.

This is probably a good time to mention that I've signed on with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Make Cures Happen program. I'm hoping to raise $1000 for research into blood cancers, and everyone reading this blog can help. No donation too small, and no donation too big.

Running for...Fair Tickets?

Saturday was supposed to be week 9, day 3 of One Hour Runner, a 55 minute run. I started with my usual half-bagel with cream cheese and added a bag of extreme sport beans. It was hot and I just felt exhausted. I only made it about thirteen minutes before I just completely ran out of energy. I'm also just hating my hydration belt more and more every time that I run with it. On Saturday it was bouncing around and the buckle was punching me in the abdomen. I think it would be fine for hiking, but it's torture for running. I'm about ready to give up on it and get one of these instead:

The reviews on Amazon and other sites are pretty good, and my friend Michelle just finished a full marathon using one on Sunday. She spoke highly of it, so it's probably worth a try. The heat was supposed to break after Sunday, so I decided to shelve the run for Monday and headed home. I really should have pushed ahead.

Speaking of Sunday, I ran the Arizona State Fair 5k. I completed the race in 29:09, coming in 75th overall and 8th in my division. I think that's a respectable finish. One I can improve upon for sure, but I'm happy with it.

The author posing with "Midway Marge," a State Fair mascot.

Included in the registration for the race was a pass for 5 to the Arizona State Fair. Admission is usually $10, so I've rounded up four friends to go next weekend.

Monday showed up right on schedule, cooler but still unseasonably warm, so I tried the 55 minute run again. This time I skipped the pre-run sport beans and just took a bag of the non-caffeinated variety as a refueling snack. I felt better, but after 2.6 miles I developed shin splints in my right leg for the first time. Actually, my whole right leg was getting sore; my quad, knee, IT band and ankle were also acting up. All of those I could power through, but the shin splint was too much. Somewhere around week 6 of the Couch-to-5K program, I was experiencing pain and weakness in my right knee, which I traced to a bad habit of turning my right toe in when I got tired and lazy. I think I was trying so hard to keep from turning my right toe in that I was just out of balance and landing really hard on my right foot. I'm going to spend the next couple of days icing my shin and knee while loading up on ibuprofen. I'll try for running 45 minutes on Thursday; if that's successful I'll push ahead to 6.2 miles on Saturday.

I don't need to run around in circles....

Condition: I hate running laps. I like for my run to have a start and a finish, and there's something demoralizing about running around in circles, even if they're really big circles. I realized that this had actually become an anxiety, causing me to map out long and complex routes to avoid running laps.

Problem: The Phoenix 10K consists of two laps of a 5 kilometer course, so I'm going to have to run the laps to complete it.

Solution: Exposure therapy. I learned this from watching Obsessed. The best way to get over an anxiety is to confront it head on. Plan a run that includes multiple laps of the same course.

So, that's what I did. This morning was week 9, day 2 of One Hour Runner, a forty minute run. A park near my house has a small lake with an island. Running all the way around the lake is 1.1 miles, adding in the island makes it 1.5. Guesstimating that my pace would be a little under 10:00/mile, I decided to go for three laps including the island, which would leave me about a five minute cooldown walk to my car at the end.

I got up at 5:30, had half a bagel with cream cheese and a bag of caffeinated sport beans and then drove over to the park. It was still pitch dark for the first lap; except for a few geese and a couple of fishermen, I had the park to myself. By the time I started my second lap, the sun was breaking the horizon and I was sharing the pathways with walkers and homeless guys collecting cans. I downed most of another bag of sport beans with some water on the loop around the island. On the third lap I was wishing for sunglasses, but the fastest way to get to them was to finish the run. I got the five minute warning just as I hit the bridge to start my last island loop, and as I came around the south end of the lake I completed my forty minute goal.

So, do I like running laps now? No. Still not my favorite way to put miles on my shoes. But with 1.5 mile laps, it's a convenient way to stack up some distance without actually going very far.

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I just got a Facebook update from the Runner's Den about the Arizona State Fair 5k Fun Run/Walk. Apparently registration includes admission to the fair and Stone Temple Pilots is playing that night. Hmm...

Running for Beer & Pizza

It's been a long few days, and I haven't had time keep you updated, nonexistent readers.

On Thursday night, Laurel and I attended the Training Kick-Off Party for the P.F. Chang's Rock 'N Roll Arizona Marathon & Half-Marathon. We had a good time and made contact with several charity running organizations. I'm probably going to sign with either Team-in-Training or the Shade Foundation. After making the rounds at the expo and listening to a pep talk from Josh Cox and Susan Loken, we did the 3.5 mile run. It was completely disorganized; everybody just walked up to the starting line and started running. Cox was supposed to be leading the run, but he started from all the way in the back and worked his way up to the front. I paced him for a couple of minutes before he pulled away from me. Unlike my first 5K, I started in the middle of the pack at my own pace of about 9:13/mile and moved up slowly. This will be my strategy for future races. After the run we came back to free beer and pizza. How awesome is free beer and pizza? Infinitely awesome.

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On Saturday morning I was scheduled for week 8, day 3 of One Hour Runner, a fifty-minute run. I got up and got dressed, but had a hard time motivating myself to get out the door. I finally dragged myself onto the street and ran the first quarter-mile before I realized that I had forgotten my hydration belt. I knew I would absolutely need it, so I headed back home. By the time I really got underway it was almost 9 o'clock am. Still feeling unmotivated, I slogged out of my neighborhood and into farmland, cursing myself for picking the route. There were no sidewalks and the shoulder was rough, so I ended up running towards traffic on the rarely traveled roads. I had to stop and walk twice to safely cross busier streets, but I kept pushing and pushing myself as the Nike+ announcer counted down my time. When she announced "one minute remaining," I checked the distance and was disappointed to hear only 4.83 miles. I decided to keep going until I crossed five miles, which only took another minute. When I finally paused Nike+ and checked Runkeeper, I had already hit 5.18 miles. Adding a few hundredths for the time it takes to start Runkeeper after starting Nike+, and subtracting a few hundredths for crossing the busy streets, I calibrated the workout to 5.1 miles. Some days I feel great at the end of a long run, but this was not one of those days; I felt just as crappy for the rest of the day as I had before I ran. The upside, though, is that I finished the run and qualified for the Shoes Challenge.

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On Sunday, Laurel and I stopped into The Runner's Den and registered for the 34th Annual Phoenix 10k. I'm scheduled to run seven miles just two days before this event, so I'm confident about finishing. I'm aiming to finish in just under one hour, so I fully expect the elite runners to be crossing the finish line as I'm completing my first lap.

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I just looked at the video highlights from the Kick-Off Party and I'm briefly visible talking to Ron from The Runner's Den.

Running for Shoes

I waited until after nine o'clock pm last night to go for my run so that it would count for the Shoes Challenge. It was the final run for week seven of One Hour Runner, so I loaded up my hydration belt with water, sports drink and sport beans. The moon was full and accented by a few streaks of clouds; the air was calm and 72°.

I set my iPhone for a 45 minute workout and started down the trail, mouthing the words to "My Neck, My Back" by The Vandals. I cruised along past horse pastures and stalled housing developments, heading for the park. By the time I reached the halfway point I was on the far side of the lake. Small groups of fishermen were clumped in various spots, enjoying the cool evening and probably hoping for a free dinner. I took a handful of sport beans from their pouch and chewed them slowly, washing them down with some water. As I came around the lake, the moon was reflected perfectly in the nearly still water. Someone's unleashed pit bull ran alongside me for a couple hundred yards, reminding me of passage in Great Races, Incredible Places where a Klondike Relay runner was being paced by an actual grizzly bear. After a quick loop of the island, I reluctantly turned away from the lake and started back towards home. Before I knew it, I was hearing the five minute warning. With one minute remaining, I opened up and sprinted to the invisible finish line, completing my new personal distance record of 4.65 miles in 45 minutes.

When I got home and synced my run I was already in second place, so I obviously wasn't the only one trying to get a jump start on the challenge. By the time I checked it again this morning, I had dropped below fortieth.

I learned a few things on this run:

• Night running is pretty awesome now that the evenings have cooled off.
• Sport beans are even more awesome. I finished that run feeling great and I attribute that to the beans I ate at the halfway point.
• The hydration belt works best once the main water bottle is at about 75% capacity. It stops bouncing around and rides evenly. I only drank about 50% of the bottle, anyway, so I'll just fill it to 75% for future long runs.
• I've decided to just round all the remaining run times in OHR to the nearest five minutes.
  

Tomorrow starts week eight of OHR and Thursday is the Training Kick-Off Party for the P.F. Chang's Rock 'N Roll Arizona Marathon & Half-Marathon. That will count for day two and I'll finish the week with a fifty minute run on Saturday.

Rule #1: Cardio

What most people don't get is that zombie movies aren't really horror movies; they're disaster movies. Nobody cares about the zombie characters. It's fun to see them get killed in new, imaginative ways because they've lost their humanity. No, zombie movies are about how survivors cope and continue to survive, how they learn to depend on themselves and each other. I am generally not a fan of movies with fast-moving zombies like the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. It's an unsurvivable, apocalyptic scenario. Most movies of the genre, however, focus on the outbreak stage, with one notable exception being Romero's Day of the Dead.

Zombieland, however, is set in the inevitable wasteland that our planet has become after a fast-moving zombie outbreak, and I loved it. It was loud, crass, violent, funny and a little touching, all at the same time. You can read a review of it on a thousand other web sites and blogs. All I'm going to say is that we had a great time seeing it and now we're making sequel speculations.

In other news, I received my prize from the first T-Shirt Challenge. It's a nice dri-fit shirt with an individual race number.

I'll be wearing it when I do the Human Race 10K on 10/24, which will coincide with the last day of One Hour Runner.

This evening I'll be doing week 7, day 3 of OHR, a 45 minute run. I have to wait until after 9 o'clock pm local time to have my run count toward the Shoes Challenge that's starting up tonight. I'll be using my hydration belt and carrying a bag of Sport Beans that I got on sale at REI.

Tenacious with a capital T!

For some reason, yesterday morning's run didn't sync properly on nikerunning.com. It showed up in my dashboard and applied to my goals, but did not show up in my list of runs, and more importantly it did not apply toward any of my challenges. I emailed Nike+ support about the issue, and they said that if it didn't show up in 48 hours they'd have their IT department look into it. Not being content to let it go, I got dressed and did a one mile run last night (8:27) to be sure to get credit for the day on the T-Shirt Challenge. When I synced that run, not only did it propagate everywhere, it seemed to force the morning run through as well. All's well that ends well.

We tried to go see Zombieland last night, but the theater smelled like it was already full of the undead. We traded our tickets for passes, and we're going to try again Sunday morning at a different theater in the same chain.

This morning was week 7, day 2 of OHR. I did 3.68 miles in 34 minutes. I didn't quite meet my pace goal, but I've got plenty of short runs left in the month for that.

New Month, New Goals

Yesterday, I completed all of the goals that I set for the last four-week period, so I set all new goals for the next four weeks:

• Run 15 times.
• Run 60 miles.
• Burn 8000 calories.
• Complete 5 runs at a pace of 9:20/mile or better.

All of these goals are due by 10/30, and they're built around my training schedule for the same period.

To start it off, and to get in a run for the current T-Shirt Challenge, I went out did two miles this morning. It was another beautiful, chilly morning, 62° here in Phoenix. I was actually shivering for the first quarter mile. I finished the two miles at a pace of 9:19/mile, so it goes toward all of those goals.

I think I've finally gotten my Nike+ sensor calibrated properly. It was dead on with Runkeeper this time.

This weekend is looking pretty busy, but I'm going to try to go see Zombieland at some point. It has a very high rating on the Tomatometer for a zombie flick, so I have high hopes for some quality zombietainment.

Brrr...This is awesome!

I stepped out the door this morning, clad in lightweight polyester moisture wicking running garb, and encountered a foreign sensation. I was actually cold. Fall has finally rolled into the valley of the spun, and a sunny 65° morning greeted me. I shook it off and started down the road, warming up quickly. I took my usual thirty minute route, but this time I encountered rabbits, squirrels and various other wildlife enjoying the cool morning. By the end of it, I was hot, sweaty and tired, but I was able to relax on my patio to cool down. I think I'm going to enjoy running a little more over the next few months.

As of today, I have 23 days until the Human Race 10K and 108 days until the Rock 'N Roll Arizona Half Marathon.