A note for you SCA types, then some other stuff

My other blog (whaddya mean life?  I ain’t got a life! … bet you don’t know what song that is from…) is a combination of woodworking and, increasingly, SCA posts and entries.  If even READING about running terrifies you or makes you want to eat Bon Bon’s in protest, but you know I’m in the SCA, and that’s what you are interested in, the other site has less mundane info in it.

I seem to be back in the same weight rut I fall into from time to time.  It’s like I save up my weight loss and then do it all at once.  Whatever… As long as it keeps going down, I guess I’ll have to be OK with it.  One would think, though, that consistently running 30+ miles a week would have SOME consistent positive impact…

Today is a day off so I will fill it with loading my truck up with about 700 board feet of lumber and then heading over to a friend’s house to make armor… I will let that hang and you can draw your own conclusions…

I have not been stretching as much as I should be and it is starting to show.  Yesterday during my run my foot started to fall asleep and my glute/hamstring area got real tight.  I enjoy my stretching and don’t really know why I stopped.  I think I just got a bit lazy.  But now is not the time for it.  I’ve got 5 months so I need to refocus and work hard on 3 things.  Stretching, hill work and eating right.  These are my weaknesses right now.  Putting in the miles is not a problem.  My lungs feel great.  My body responds well to the extra miles and recovers quickly.  I just need to stretch (easy), run hills (hate it) and eat right (always the most difficult thing for me).

Not that I’m going to fall apart and just drop everything the day after I’m done with the race in October, but marathon training doesn’t allow for many mistakes.  If you don’t do something like stretching consistently, your body lets you hear about it around mile 12.  If you eat wrong… well… I don’t even want to think about the consequences of that at mile 12…  or any other mile for that matter…  I guess I’ve kind of gotten complacent in this “douldrum” period where the race seems a long way off.  But with the turn of the calendar page tomorrow, I’m down to about 4 1/2 months and I still have a LONG way to go in my training before I will feel even remotely up to the challenge.  Most people usually START their marathon training about now, but I have had a long climb to get to this point and it’s time to reload for the stretch run.

Flaming nipples

Distance: 6 mi

Time: 52:38

And, no, I don’t mean some punk band or porn… ya pervs…

Hi… I’d like to talk to you about something very… personal. Something only a male runner would know about. A condition known as… flaming nipples.

What the hell am I talking about… you ask?

WELL! Let me tell you!

Some distance runners, but not all, suffer from a very painful problem where their shirt rubs EXTREMELY painful and uncomfortable blisters on a certain (and usually benign, on a male) part of the male anatomy (I’m afraid if I say the word too much I’ll get a nastygram from WordPress… so we will just call them “they which cannot be named”…). While some of you may find this hilarious (a pox on your entire family for thinking so…) it can be a very nasty little problem. I personally have suffered from this for as long as I have run, when I was 160 pounds and when I was 240 pounds. It doesn’t seem to be related to weight much, even when you have Manboobs like me. It is, however, very painful and can be frightening when you finish with a run and find blood on your shirt. Then you can’t have anything touching “they which cannot be named” for several days afterwards without screaming like a 5 year old girl.

I have tried many different types of shirt material with limited to no success and running without a shirt in the winter is stupid and in the summer is just not an option (think “Fuzzy Michelin Man” running at you on a trail… that’s just… wrong… I couldn’t do that to my fellow runners). The only thing I’ve found to be successful in preventing this condition is the man form of pasties. Those little dot shaped bandaids (no… not the medicated ones for corns… I’m not THAT stupid) you put on things like puncture wounds. I have invested nearly as much in them as I have in shoes… and to answer your questions before you ask, yes, that means DAILY for the last year, and, yes, it hurts when you pull them off and, yes, hair gets caught in the sticky stuff and, yes, my wife laughs at me every time she sees me with my shirt off just after I’ve run (and I don’t blame her… it IS kinda funny).

Just one of those random things nobody but you runner types would understand… Thanks for listening…

Planning some cross training

Distance: 4 mi

Time: 36:50

Still sore around the edges but not bad.  Today was just a shakedown to get all the leftover junk out of my legs.  I started out really stiff but loosened up pretty fast and felt good the whole way.  In two weeks I will run 18 miles and then do my midway taper.  I am already looking for good hill runs (there are a lot of them around here) and thinking about doing some sprints and cross training for a couple of weeks.  I will still run a bit but I am going to try to work on some different muscle groups for a while.  I can kind of feel that as long as I am moving forward only, I am pretty strong.  But if I have to make a lot of turns or climbs, etc., I feel unstable.  I’m hoping that a couple of weeks of hills and maybe trail work and some mountain biking, in addition to a consistent hill day for the rest of my training, will add some strength, since the KC Marathon has a couple of big hills in it.

…it’s a theory anyway…  I’ll let you know if it worked on October 21…!

OH! I know! … Random day off thoughts…

On this Memorial Day, day off for me, I just have a few random thoughts.

First, I don’t hurt as much as I thought I would.  Which, given the fact that I was miserable yesterday (it literally felt like I had the flu… nasty headache, body aches, etc.) after my long run.  I’m a little sore around the edges but other than that…  it’s all good.

It was with great sadness (ok… maybe not…) that I said goodbye to the toenail on my big toe this morning…  Yeah… gross… I know…  At least I know I’m healing and I can move on now without worrying about it.

I’m thinking of switching my long runs to Saturdays.  Sundays have suddenly become very busy and I’m pretty useless(er) after my long runs.  Also, now that my long runs are pretty serious (18 miles is next!), I really need to focus on that alone for the day.

Since there is absolutely no way that I can possibly do just one thing at a time, I have decided to do a complete kitchen remodel, right in the middle of my marathon training.  And, yes, I’m doing everything myself.  All the way down to planing the wood for my cabinet doors and faces… sigh…  It’s either going to be the most amazing thing I’ve ever pulled off or they will find me curled up in a fetal position in my half done kitchen, wrapped around a hammer and a fifth of Jack Daniels… wearing only my running shoes…

Note to self…  From October 21 until January 1, 2008… NO PROJECTS OR STUPID IDEAS ALLOWED!!!

The 32 mile, 16 mile run

Distance: 16 Miles

Time: 2:41

umm… ouch…

Ok… so maybe taking a week off to nurse my injured toe DID effect my endurance a bit…!  I started off running very slow, about 10:20 miles.  The first 10 miles were nice, if a bit muggy.  But nonetheless pleasant and comfortable.  My times slowly came down to around 9:50 miles, which was fine.  I didn’t really care, I just wanted to finish.  But something happened when I hit mile 12.  I was perfectly comfortable from the waist up, but from the waist down, I kind a fell apart.  I took a Hammer Gel at mile 12, drank a good amount and still dragged in.  If I had gone another mile, I wouldn’t have made it.  When I stopped, I was not even breathing hard, but it took two attempts to get up into the truck.  My legs were done.  And they have been complaining ever since.  Here’s hoping that two more weeks of consistent training will get me back up to the point that my next goal of 18 miles is actually realistic.  Right now…?  I’m just not sure!

Annoying, happy jogger day

Distance: 4 mi.

Time: 36:43

I was scheduled to run 6 today but the combination of me running 16 this Sunday after taking a week off to let the eggplant heal, plus an odd set off little blunders including forgetting to change before I left for the trailhead (which made for some interesting front seat theatrics), forgetting to lock the truck and having to turn around (luckily I hadn’t gone far), forgetting to put bandaids on various owies, and so on… made me decide it might be a good idea to just relax and go easy.  I haven’t been that disjointed in quite some time and I really have no idea why.  Nothing was bothering me.  Heck, it’s Friday fer pete’s sake!  Sometimes you just have to roll with it.  I didn’t try to do anything like intervals or maintaining a set pace… I just ran.  It was actually kind of fun…!  I played “annoying, happy jogger” and waved to everybody, stopped to pet a pooch and hummed my favorite songs pretty much the whole way.  I liked it so much I might just make it a habit…!

Just me and the trail

Distance: 4 mi.

Time:  36:29

Seems that Columbia is on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule when it comes to workouts.  Yesterday, everybody was out… today… 5 people in 4 miles.  Not that I’m complaining.  I love the solitude that running provides.  And running longer distances, I love the total self reliance.  There are no excuses, you can’t fake it.  When you are 8 miles from the car, you had better be prepared and LISTENING to your body at all times.  If not, it’s a long (and usually dark) walk.  And you answer to yourself alone.  When the consequences include things like walking long distances because you hurt yourself, ran out of energy or didn’t prepare properly. Or you get blisters because you thought “these old socks will be ok”, or worse, you toss that greasy lunch you had at about mile 6 because you weren’t thinking when you ordered…  The responsibility all comes back to you.  There are only so many times you can say “that was stupid” to yourself before you start to modify your actions.  It’s too bad it isn’t that way in the rest of our lives.

And on the other side of that coin, when you have one of “those” runs where everything works, the weather is great, the people on the trail are all smiling, you blow your PB away by 2 minutes, the clouds break, the lights shine down, the angels sing, you lose 10 pounds, etc., then you get to (although sometimes we don’t) take credit for it because what you are doing is WORKING.

But the bottom line in both scenarios is that it all comes down to you.  The good and the bad.  Nobody in the office to blame it on (or take credit for it…!), it’s just you.  I think that makes me, personally, a better person.  It makes me more honest and dedicated in other parts of my life.

…it’s bewildering what I think about when there is nobody on the trail but me…  scary…

quick six

Distance: 6 Miles

Time: 54:49

Took it easy today and still ran just over 9 minute miles. My last mile was an 8:30, just to push it a bit at the end. Tons of people out on the trail today and the city of Columbia has finally finished an extension to my favorite trail that basically makes it start right in the heart of the city, which is good and bad. It’s good in that there is plenty of parking and it’s a pretty area. It’s bad in that there are a lot of restaurants right in that area. Great when you are hungry after a run but hard on the pocket book and slightly nauseating after a long run…! Today wasn’t bad as far as the smell of food went, and I was able to resist the call of the deep fryer. I’m sure it will be different after my long run on Saturday…!

Whoa… easy boy…

Taking today off to try to calm my excitement a bit about being able to run again.  Coming back after a week off and running sub nines two days straight (when I’m supposed to be training at 9:30s) may not be the greatest idea.  So I’m going to relax today and then try to ease into a six miler tomorrow.  I may still try to run 16 this Saturday, but we’ll see.  Sometimes excitement= overtraining, which is a bad formula when you are trying not to get injured (again).

It is slowly heating up towards summer, which means earlier and earlier start times for my long runs, and perhaps even switching to early morning runs during the week on at least a few days.  I remember last year running at about 8:30 at night and it was still 90+ degrees outside.  Blech…  I hate that feeling.   But running the rest of the year around here makes up for it!

The Joker’s Wild Half Marathon should be interesting.  July 7 in St. Louis freakin’ heart of America humidity Missouri.  Even with a 7am start time the pavement should be “warm” by the time I hit the finish line.  All the more motivation to run faster and get it over with!  Hopefully I will have adjusted to the hotter temps by then.  I ran a bit last year in the heat, but nowhere near as far or as hard as I’m running now.  Hopefully the 40 pounds I lost will mean something for my endurance and heat tolerance.

Elephant feather

Distance: 4 miles

Time: 34:26

Well that week off seems to have done more good than harm…!  If I was concerned about losing fitness, this run showed me I don’t need to worry about it.  I felt light as a feather (…ok… an ELEPHANT feather… but, still…) and strong all the way to the end.  I do think I need to temper my excitement a bit now and slow it down a bit if I want to keep the positive wave going.  If the rest of the week goes according to plan, I will be running 16 miles this Saturday so I need to calm down and refocus.  But MAN!  …it’s good to be running again… heh!