Aching Back to the Future

This past Saturday started out as a lovely day. One week after my longest run of the year and a 10K race in successive days, a bit of muscle soreness the first few days of the week, I ran a decent hilly 8 miler on Saturday morning.

So at 10 a.m. I was excited to bring my boys to the Los Angeles Zoo and have some fun. 'Twas a beautiful day to be outdoors.

But my 4 year old was being a brat.  He was goofing around inside the minivan and just would NOT get into his seat. The little guy was messing with me. So I finally lost my patience and bent over to pick up him, when ....ZOWWWWW....an electric shock went off in my lower back.

IMMEDIATELY I knew as was done for. This was exactly the same painful sensation I first encountered in my froggy encounter on August 7, 2009. Deja vu. So as I winced in pain, I wondered if I could even make it to the zoo when I couldn't even stand up straight.

But as pissed off and sore as I was, I was determined to go to the zoo with my kids. So I found one of my back braces and we enjoyed the rest of the day. Of course, I had to walk like an old man and not bend over, but I got through the day.

Sunday and Monday training was shot. Advil temporarily helped but what I really needed was to start the chiropractic work right away. So I did. I felt it working right away.  I've been through this several times now and know the drill.

This morning it was still sore but I was able to sloooowwwwwly jog 30 minutes with a back brace on. Felt good to get out there again. Tomorrow I'll be back at the chiro's office.

Taking things in stride. But I do have to figure out how to eliminate this back spasm issue as it ain't fun.

Singapore Marathon Here I Come...I Think!

A few months ago a close friend who grew up in Glendale but has lived in the Far East for a number of years asked me about how I trained for a marathon. That prompted me to write this summary "26.2 Training Tips For Your First Marathon." But he hadn't committed to a particular marathon at that point.

David and I are both in our mid 40s and he never really ran, though in recent years he took up cycling and started committing himself to the sport, waking up at 4 a.m. for long rides, shedding pounds, etc. Reminded me of ME in 1993 when I started running.

So I blurted in my reply email to David that if he commits (notice that word is a recurring theme), then I'll join him.  What the heck. Would be fun to support him in his first marathon while finding motivation to run it too.

Two weeks ago he emails me his registration form to the Singapore Marathon on December 5th. Discount early bird pricing if registered by June 4th. After obtaining spousal approval, without much more thinking...I SIGNED UP!

Here we are just 2 weeks later and race organizers say the marathon is completely full. Whew, glad I made the decision to sign up quickly!

I'm now signed up. But now I have to do the REAL work...TRAIN. I've been running at a base level of 30 to 35 miles per week this year. So today I went out for a 1 1/4 hour run and felt good...though my left knee problem is still there. Hmm, I'll have to work on that.

All for now....

I Had a Damn Good Run Tonight!

Tonight I had a damn good run. One of those rare runs when I had absolutely NOTHING to complain about.

Because of my own bad habits, my morning runs have generally been miserable. I don't get to sleep until 1 a.m. and when I wake up at 6:30 a.m. I'm cranky and just not enjoying my morning runs.

Tonight I felt peppy and perky. The air temperature was 57 degrees, no wind. My legs felt light.  I smiled when I ran. I ran alone. There were very few cars and people on the road. I could have run all night.

There was a spring in my step tonight. Maybe because Spring began 4 days ago. Or perhaps because my body seems to finally be adjusting to the Daylight Saving Time 1 hour "spring forward" 10 days ago.

I enjoyed the smells in the air. I could smell jasmine all around. It was great. I thoroughly appreciated the absence of wood burning fireplace smoke that clog my lungs and make me cough and wheeze during winter nighttime runs. Heck, not a single lighted cigarette was apparent tonight. That made me happy.

Why were there no cars on the roads tonight? I was alone and loving it. No speeding race cars on the roads. No worries. It was a peaceful, easy feeling tonight (to quote one of my favorite Eagles songs).  Perhaps American Idol kept people in their houses this wonderful Wednesday night.

Tonight was a night when my running felt so effortless that I pondered what should be my next big race to train for. It has been 3 1/2 months since my last race, the Santa Barbara Marathon. I had intended to run the Great Race of Agoura half marathon this coming Saturday but family plans prevent that.

Yes, I will be looking for my next race now. My body feels good, rested and ready for the challenge of gearing up again for competition. I've been doing an easy 30 miles per week, so its not like I've been sitting around eating bon bons or something.

It is nights like this that keep me motivated, after 17 years of running, to train.

It is nights like this that I'm reminded that running is not only great exercise, but enjoyable. I've been in kind of a running "rut" for 3 months. But...I'll be back. Soon.

Wow, This is Good Reason to Run a Marathon the Day After Thanksgiving!!

Via: Online Schools

Free Form Training Runs Add Spice to the Daily Routine

Today was President's Day, one of 10 Federal holidays that I get paid not to work.  The banks, libraries, post office and stock market were also closed, though I know many people that worked anyway, including my real estate agent, the guys across the street putting a new roof in, the FedEx guy, the workers who made our sandwich at Subway and my boss (no, he doesn't work at Subway).

Perhaps coincidentally (to the fact that a new roof is going up across the street), I discovered a roofing nail in my car tire yesterday. The tire remained inflated overnight so I decided to drive the car to a local tire shop where I found more guys who had to work on this fine holiday. Twenty minutes and $20 later I was off to the gym for my standard 20 minute workout.

At this point I was about an hour into my "quick" errand to fix the flat tire but I wanted to slip a quick run in while I could without my wife knowing (shhh....don't tell her...she doesn't read this blog as she hates the fact that I run).  But I figured I could get away with a 40 minute run and quickly slip in for a shower before she shes me.

So I took off on my run, with no plan in mind. These are usually my best runs, the ones where I have no idea where I'm going. So I head south from my gym and decide to figure it out as I go. About 10 minutes into the run, it dawned on me that it had been probably 10 years since I ran up a particular hill in Newbury Park.  This was the perfect opportunity to do so.

In Google Maps this area is called the Potrero Open Space, accessible at the crest of Wendy Drive (there is parking available). I accessed the trails from Reino Road and found a trail that took me to the top of the hill and back down towards Wendy Drive. There were some challenging, rocky hills that I had to walk up but once I made it to the top of the hill, I was rewarded with panoramic views of Newbury Park.  Instant gratification!

I do plan to do this trail again very soon, now that I'm reminded how cool the view is at the top! But next time I'll have to bring the video cam!

All told, I ran about 46 minutes, got a nice hill/trail workout in and was able to slip in to the shower without my wife noticing the sweat and dust on my legs.  I rewarded myself (and my wife) by taking the kids out the rest of the day.

On a side note, still no races on the calendar for me, but I'm doing about 35 miles per week. Just enjoying running for the sake of running at the moment!

Training Without Any Goals in Mind

It has now been 7 weeks since I ran the Santa Barbara Marathon and I'm still in kind of limbo mode, still running, but without any particular goals.

Some friends are urging me to train for the L.A. Marathon, but that's only 7 weeks away and I don't have enough time to train sufficiently for that.

I had planned to run the 25th Anniversary Great Race of Agoura Hills' Cheseboro Half Marathon on March 27th, but I already have several other commitments that day.

When there's a race paid for and committed to and calendarized, I train harder. There are other races out there I could pick, but I think I'm procrastinating because a) deep down inside I'm feeling like I don't have the desire to train "hard" right now and b) I'm enjoying just getting out there and running without any particularly urgencies, goals and pressures.

We had a lot of rain the other week and somehow I managed to stay dry all but one day that week. I LOVE running in light rain and in between storms, when the air is clean and cool. 

The only thing I don't like about the rain is that it muddies up the trails that I usually run in. So I'm relegated to the roads when it rains. But I don't mind.

This time off from running hard and racing is good for my body and brain. But I'm still doing about 35 miles per week, so it's not like I'm completely slacking off.

And as I start to feel stronger and gradually build up the mileage, what I've been doing once or twice a week is "fartlek" (yes, I know, I reacted the same way when I first heard that term, and in fact still do). Fartlek is Swedish for "speed play" - a training system where fast burst of running are interspersed with slower running.

The beauty of fartlek, other than its cool name, is that you can do it anytime in any workout. What I like to do is run a long road with cross streets, running one block fast, one block slow, one block fast, one block slow, alternating to get a little speed workout in without the inconvenience of driving to the track.

By introducing a bit of this fartlek training into some of my everyday runs, I ease my way back into the mindset of training hard and picking a new race to conquer!

Running Has Been the Constant in My Life for 15 Years

Ever since Cinco de Mayo 1993, the second most constant, recurring activity in my life has been running.  The only other more consistent activity I can think of is my habit of brushing my teeth and using Listerine 2 times per day and flossing every night.

Yes, I started running on May 5, 1993 and diligently started tracking the number of miles I ran each day on an Excel spreadsheet.  This same spreadsheet is now over 6,000 rows long as I continue to add to it.

This spreadsheet is nothing too fancy.  Basically started out by jotting down how many miles, rounded to the nearest tenth of a mile, I ran each day. There is a column showing cumulative year-to-date mileage and later I added columns to show 7 and 10 day rolling average.  There is also a cumulative mileage column along the lines of the odometer on my car.

In late 1998 I started thinking, wouldn't it be interesting to see how much of my life is spent running each year. So I started tracking the number of minutes run each day along with the mileage.  Eventually I stopped tracking mileage on a "precise" basis (e.g. driving the course to get an exact tally or wear a device that measures mileage like the Nike+ iPod chip that I quickly grew tired of) and started estimating mileage based on time run and running effort.

The next year, 1999, was my personal record for most mileage run in one year: 3,645 miles. It took me 28,809 minutes, or about 480 hours, not including stretching and showers, to run those miles.  I ran a decent 2 hour, 36 minute marathon that year, one minute off my personal best time. That's the last time I ran under 2 hours, 40 minutes in a marathon.

But I 'm not so sad.  I had a good string of marathons from 1996 to 1999 (6 sub-2:40 performances). While injuries, aging and life has prevented such performance since then, I have not stopped running.

Through thick and thin, girlfriends, breakups, marriage, kids, job changes, good times, bad times, happy times, stressful times, sadness, frustration and everything else life threw at me, I've continued running.

I write this literally at 1:20 am on a Thursday night.  It was 11 pm when I started, but my 4 year old apparently has the stomach flu and I've alternated between keyboard and changing sheets. But I still plan to drag my lifeless body out of bed at 6:30 am to do my daily run.

Running keeps me sane and whole.  Without running, I wouldn't feel good. Even when I don't feel good, I go out there and run. Running is "me" time, time that no one can take away. Running is my rock. My good friend that I can turn to when I need to clear my head.

Been Running Since May 5, 1993 and Tallying Mileage Ever Since

Since running the Santa Barbara Marathon on December 5th, my training has been pretty sparse.  I took the first 3 days post-marathon off and ran only 10 miles the entire week.  Then more recently, my bad back problem made a reappearance and I was hobbling around for a week, walking like an 99 year old man, beginning on Christmas Eve.  Thanks to my stellar chiropractor I was back in action after 2 treatments.

On New Year's Eve, after dining on sushi with my 6 year old and reading Power Ranger stories to my 4 year old, then after a couple glasses of bubbly, I updated my 16 year old, 6,100 row Excel spreadsheet that tracks my daily mileage.  In fact, I updated the spreadsheet while celebrating the New Year with my Twitter friends.

Yes, my obsessive compulsive side forces me to jot down how much time and how many estimated miles I run each day in my daily calendar book, then periodically (used to be weekly, then monthly, now annually) I updated the manual scribbles from my book into the monster spreadsheet.

If I lose this spreadsheet, I lose a big part of me. This 1.3 MB spreadsheet is the Bible of my running. I used to study it like I was studying for an exam. It was fun to see trends...weekly mileage, how I did in a race after running at a certain level, etc. Now it is more chore than anything. But it is something I must do.  It is a 16 year running journal and I'm determined to maintain it.

My running began on Cinco de Mayo 1993, the day after telling a marathon runner co-worker, in my drunken stupor at a chili cook-off, that I would run next year's Los Angeles Marathon. While I don't remember the specifics of that first run, I look at the spreadsheet and see that I ran 3.2 miles that day.

Something I DO remember about that first run is that I had to stop because, as I recall, my ankle hurt. So I ran a few blocks, stopped, started again, stopped, and so on. I see in the log that the next day I did not run, but the day after that I ran 3.2 miles again.

How did I know it was 3.2 miles and not 3 miles or 3.5 miles? Well for many years, in my youth and without wife and kids and life's goings on consuming my time, I would literally drive the course I ran and track it on the car's odometer.  I drew a map of my neighborhood and tracked distances for various courses, streets, turnaround points, etc.  But I was really into it back then.

Today I measure most all of my runs by time, not by actually measured mileage. I have a pretty good gauge on my running speed and generally can estimate fairly well what my pace is, be it 7 min/mile, slower or faster.  Obviously it isn't 100% accurate, but based on the 42,900 miles I've run between May 5, 1993 and December 31, 2009, I think my pace estimate is pretty well dialed in.

So here's to a Happy New Year and New Decade 2010 and may you resolve to track your mileage in a monster Excel spreadsheet like me!

For the record, I logged 1,971 miles in 2009 over the course of 14,346 minutes (or about 239 hours). Wow, that is a lot of time spent running! But I love it!