It's been several months, but I finally got out there. Just 1.3-and-change miles (a far cry from the five or six miles I did with ease just a year ago) and it was tough. And in a summer of moderate temperatures and low humidity, I pick the muggiest morning in weeks to go out.
Still, it was something. Now, the challenge is to turn this something into more somethings, at least a couple times per week.
I have a couple of motivations for doing this.
The first, and foremost, is to be healthy. When I was running last summer, I was in the best shape in years, and likely my life. My resting heart rate was in the mid-60s (unheard of for me before then), and my weight got as low as 189 pounds, where I hadn't been since high school. Predictably, a lot of the clothing and uniforms I had either didn't fit well, or actually fit better, though more (much more) the former than the latter. I actually downsized my turnout gear in the firehouse.
Now, I'm back up to 207 pounds (still a lot lower than the 244 I was sworn in at nine-plus years ago), and items that fit much better are getting a little - in some cases more than a little - tight again. I've reached the comfort limit of my turnout gear, and there isn't really an option to upsize the gear again, especially since the fire department is about to put seven new members through the academy, and they'll be taking the spare gear.
I have a goal of running the entire Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon. I've done the race once, but only ran about half of it, with not a lot of training. I want to do the whole thing, and the goal for that is next May.
Another reason is to make studying easier. I'm doing a lot of reading and note-taking in preparation for the Captain's test, tentatively scheduled for mid-November. I'm hoping that by getting in shape now, I'll study better. After all, just about every study out there says your brain functions better when the rest of the body does.
And finally, I'm no spring chicken. Everything hurts a little bit each day, some more than others, and it will only get worse. I don't want to put myself in a position to be hurt at work because I pre-hurt myself by letting things go. Getting into shape, and maybe doing a bit of yoga here or there, might help to forestall that.
http://t.co/9EeTZYabOQ. Sanya Richards-Ross was my post-run motivator.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Then Again, Maybe Not.
This wasn't, exactly, the post I had hoped to write after the Marine Corps Marathon. I thought it would go something along the lines of my finishing time, the experience around the event itself, maybe include a couple of pictures I had taken along the route. Perhaps include a list of damaged body parts that every long distance runner at times has to contend with. (Let's just say that Vaseline and/or bandaids are a handy tool to have.)
Instead, my line of thinking lately has been taking one of two paths: either "Making progress! Last year I signed up, this year I signed up and trained, next year I'm gonna sign up, train, AND run it!" or "maybe the half-marathon is more my speed." It can vary from hour-to-hour.
Among other things, it came down to $10. I'm not kidding. After getting back from vacation in the Outer Banks at the end of September, I had one shift at one of the side jobs, and the take-home (after taxes and paying a pension loan) was a little over $10. Like everybody else, I've got certain bills that have to be paid, and a $200-400 weekend in Washington, DC, wasn't going to improve that balance sheet, and in fact, exacerbate it. And that's after figuring in that we weren't staying in a hotel, but rather with friends from my wife's high school days, and whom I worked with way back in the day. The hotel would have been another $350.
One of the ironies of training for a marathon is that you really need to have time to devote to proper training for the race, which doesn't leave you a lot of time to work to pay your bills. In the latter half of the schedule, when long runs were in the 14-18 mile range, that's 3 to 4 hours of running. Unless I really wanted to get up at 1 in the morning before work, or be out til 1 in the morning after work (and after sitting in a car for an hour or so each way, and 12 hour shifts in between), I made sure to take at least one day off each weekend for those runs. Unfortunately, the way EMS schedules work, folks like to be off on the weekends to spend with their families, so per-diems work a lot of weekend shifts.
Cutting out 50% of your potential opportunities to work is no way to make sure those bills are paid.
I'd be lying if I said that the training didn't start to suffer long before the marathon, though. Something was always getting in the way. Soccer, school events, work. In my increasingly undisciplined mind, it was getting easier and easier to justify cutting short a long run here, or skipping a short run there. The end result was that I had run just 15 miles in October, and none after the second week.
A couple other small issues popped up that had to be taken care of which, if they had happened without the other stuff, would not have been a problem, but in the end just made the decision to skip the MCM that much easier.
There have been upsides to the training, which a couple of people, including one of the Marathon Jims, had pointed out, and is that the training is never "for nothing". I'm down to a couple pounds over what has been my lowest weight in probably 25 years, and I now know that I can run at least three miles non-stop, at a pace of around 8 minutes and change per mile, without killing myself (well, maybe not in the last month, but I did, and can get back there again). I've learned to run without music in my ears, since over those longer runs the battery on my (former) iPhone 4 didn't hold up to simultaneous use of the GPS and iPod functions for more than two or three hours. (Though I do wonder how much better those longer long runs would have been, since running for that long is dreadfully boring.) And without music, you are left to your own thoughts, which admittedly I can't say that I have much opportunity otherwise to just think.
And perhaps the most heartening of all is that my nine-year-old asked my wife the other day how old you had to be to run in a marathon. Maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree after all, and I have a future running partner in the family.
So, what to do now? Well, the other day, a colleague of mine from UH-EMS had told me that several members of NorthSTAR were planning a group entry in to the New Jersey Half Marathon in Long Branch, NJ in April 2014, and would I like to join them. Having actually completed the Historic Half this year, and the training for a half marathon is much simpler than for the full, I'm inclined to say yes.
As to a full marathon, like I mentioned before, I'm of two minds. Lately, it's been all half-marathon, all the time...but then I was watching coverage of the NYC Marathon this morning and started to think, "well...." If I do register for the marathon, it'd likely be for the fall (since I have to work - a lot - over the next few months to pay some bills, and we know where that leads), and I'd like another shot at the MCM. Given the popularity of the MCM, I'd have to run in the Spring race, the 17.75K, in mid-April to get an automatic qualifier. On the other hand, that's a lot of running in a month and a half, between the 17.75K, the Long Branch Half, and the Historic Half, which I'm likely going to do again.
Decisions, decisions....
Finally, thanks to all who have offered words of support, encouragement, or just plan "just do it." They were all appreciated, and in each way helped me a little farther along. I'm going to keep contributing to this blog, posting updates on what I'm doing, and how I'm doing it, if for no other reason than to get the jumble of thoughts in my head out in the open, so everybody can see just how disorganized my brain is at times.
Instead, my line of thinking lately has been taking one of two paths: either "Making progress! Last year I signed up, this year I signed up and trained, next year I'm gonna sign up, train, AND run it!" or "maybe the half-marathon is more my speed." It can vary from hour-to-hour.
Among other things, it came down to $10. I'm not kidding. After getting back from vacation in the Outer Banks at the end of September, I had one shift at one of the side jobs, and the take-home (after taxes and paying a pension loan) was a little over $10. Like everybody else, I've got certain bills that have to be paid, and a $200-400 weekend in Washington, DC, wasn't going to improve that balance sheet, and in fact, exacerbate it. And that's after figuring in that we weren't staying in a hotel, but rather with friends from my wife's high school days, and whom I worked with way back in the day. The hotel would have been another $350.
One of the ironies of training for a marathon is that you really need to have time to devote to proper training for the race, which doesn't leave you a lot of time to work to pay your bills. In the latter half of the schedule, when long runs were in the 14-18 mile range, that's 3 to 4 hours of running. Unless I really wanted to get up at 1 in the morning before work, or be out til 1 in the morning after work (and after sitting in a car for an hour or so each way, and 12 hour shifts in between), I made sure to take at least one day off each weekend for those runs. Unfortunately, the way EMS schedules work, folks like to be off on the weekends to spend with their families, so per-diems work a lot of weekend shifts.
Cutting out 50% of your potential opportunities to work is no way to make sure those bills are paid.
I'd be lying if I said that the training didn't start to suffer long before the marathon, though. Something was always getting in the way. Soccer, school events, work. In my increasingly undisciplined mind, it was getting easier and easier to justify cutting short a long run here, or skipping a short run there. The end result was that I had run just 15 miles in October, and none after the second week.
A couple other small issues popped up that had to be taken care of which, if they had happened without the other stuff, would not have been a problem, but in the end just made the decision to skip the MCM that much easier.
There have been upsides to the training, which a couple of people, including one of the Marathon Jims, had pointed out, and is that the training is never "for nothing". I'm down to a couple pounds over what has been my lowest weight in probably 25 years, and I now know that I can run at least three miles non-stop, at a pace of around 8 minutes and change per mile, without killing myself (well, maybe not in the last month, but I did, and can get back there again). I've learned to run without music in my ears, since over those longer runs the battery on my (former) iPhone 4 didn't hold up to simultaneous use of the GPS and iPod functions for more than two or three hours. (Though I do wonder how much better those longer long runs would have been, since running for that long is dreadfully boring.) And without music, you are left to your own thoughts, which admittedly I can't say that I have much opportunity otherwise to just think.
And perhaps the most heartening of all is that my nine-year-old asked my wife the other day how old you had to be to run in a marathon. Maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree after all, and I have a future running partner in the family.
So, what to do now? Well, the other day, a colleague of mine from UH-EMS had told me that several members of NorthSTAR were planning a group entry in to the New Jersey Half Marathon in Long Branch, NJ in April 2014, and would I like to join them. Having actually completed the Historic Half this year, and the training for a half marathon is much simpler than for the full, I'm inclined to say yes.
As to a full marathon, like I mentioned before, I'm of two minds. Lately, it's been all half-marathon, all the time...but then I was watching coverage of the NYC Marathon this morning and started to think, "well...." If I do register for the marathon, it'd likely be for the fall (since I have to work - a lot - over the next few months to pay some bills, and we know where that leads), and I'd like another shot at the MCM. Given the popularity of the MCM, I'd have to run in the Spring race, the 17.75K, in mid-April to get an automatic qualifier. On the other hand, that's a lot of running in a month and a half, between the 17.75K, the Long Branch Half, and the Historic Half, which I'm likely going to do again.
Decisions, decisions....
Finally, thanks to all who have offered words of support, encouragement, or just plan "just do it." They were all appreciated, and in each way helped me a little farther along. I'm going to keep contributing to this blog, posting updates on what I'm doing, and how I'm doing it, if for no other reason than to get the jumble of thoughts in my head out in the open, so everybody can see just how disorganized my brain is at times.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Days, and Weeks, Lost
I was hoping to get through this training program with little or no hitches in getting out there in doing the actual runs. Naive, perhaps, but it still is an improvement over last year, when signing up for the Marine Marathon itself ran headlong into the fact that I was utterly unprepared for sixteen weeks or thereabouts of running. At least this year, I knew there was going to be a lot of mileage put on my increasingly well-worn pair of New Balance shoes.
This year's problem isn't so much the running. I am - or I was - getting out there, four (or at least three) times a week, following the short-medium-short-long plan of training. At the beginning of the sixteen weeks, a run of three miles, even at 11 minutes per mile, meant I was done in a half hour. The long run could still be done in under an hour.
No, this year, the problem is everything else. As John Lennon said, life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans. There had already been one lost day out of four, due to the way my fire department schedule worked. Last week, though, everything went completely awry. It all started with buying a car on Monday, from Auto Lenders in Lakewood. But we couldn't get there before 5PM-ish, and didn't get out until close to 8PM. So there went that day. The next day was the firehouse on limited sleep, and then Newark the next day, which killed the first half of the week. After than, in my undisciplined mind, what was the point?
I had asked that of one of the Marathon Jims, who said, "it happens. Pick up where you left off." So initially, the entire program got shifted forward one week, which meant that I would be short either a sixteen mile run or an eighteen mile run, since it's important to taper properly before the Marathon itself. Now, after reviewing the schedule in the The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer again, I may have miscalculated the start date of the program by a week, or just simply didn't enter it into my calendar as accurately as I thought I had: according to the plan, I'm supposed to have three weeks of 16-mile long runs and two of 18-miles, and my schedule as I originally had constructed it only has me doing two 16s. So, do I drop a 16 and an 18, or two of three 16s?
One of the factors I want to avoid is overtraining. "Ha!", you say, "you're already undertraining, how much do you have to do to overtrain?" Well, it's not so simple. Conventional wisdom has it that one should not increase one's mileage by more than 10% over the previous week. If I calculate wrong (why wouldn't I?) by dropping a week I shouldn't, I could well be adding more than 10% from one week to the next. And that can lead to injury.
On a programming note, Regular readers of this blog - if I might be so presumptuous as to believe that I have regular readers - will note missing entries, especially if you've been following my Twitter feed. I will be correcting that soon enough by adding the entries over the past week or so that I have completed, but not yet documented. To avoid any confusion, the posts themselves will have the date that they should have been written, in addition to the dates that the runs actually occurred. Got that?
This year's problem isn't so much the running. I am - or I was - getting out there, four (or at least three) times a week, following the short-medium-short-long plan of training. At the beginning of the sixteen weeks, a run of three miles, even at 11 minutes per mile, meant I was done in a half hour. The long run could still be done in under an hour.
No, this year, the problem is everything else. As John Lennon said, life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans. There had already been one lost day out of four, due to the way my fire department schedule worked. Last week, though, everything went completely awry. It all started with buying a car on Monday, from Auto Lenders in Lakewood. But we couldn't get there before 5PM-ish, and didn't get out until close to 8PM. So there went that day. The next day was the firehouse on limited sleep, and then Newark the next day, which killed the first half of the week. After than, in my undisciplined mind, what was the point?
I had asked that of one of the Marathon Jims, who said, "it happens. Pick up where you left off." So initially, the entire program got shifted forward one week, which meant that I would be short either a sixteen mile run or an eighteen mile run, since it's important to taper properly before the Marathon itself. Now, after reviewing the schedule in the The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer again, I may have miscalculated the start date of the program by a week, or just simply didn't enter it into my calendar as accurately as I thought I had: according to the plan, I'm supposed to have three weeks of 16-mile long runs and two of 18-miles, and my schedule as I originally had constructed it only has me doing two 16s. So, do I drop a 16 and an 18, or two of three 16s?
One of the factors I want to avoid is overtraining. "Ha!", you say, "you're already undertraining, how much do you have to do to overtrain?" Well, it's not so simple. Conventional wisdom has it that one should not increase one's mileage by more than 10% over the previous week. If I calculate wrong (why wouldn't I?) by dropping a week I shouldn't, I could well be adding more than 10% from one week to the next. And that can lead to injury.
On a programming note, Regular readers of this blog - if I might be so presumptuous as to believe that I have regular readers - will note missing entries, especially if you've been following my Twitter feed. I will be correcting that soon enough by adding the entries over the past week or so that I have completed, but not yet documented. To avoid any confusion, the posts themselves will have the date that they should have been written, in addition to the dates that the runs actually occurred. Got that?
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Week Six - Day Four, Saturday, August 24th
A scheduled 11-mile run, and a decent evening to run it. Reasonably low temperatures, and fairly low humidity. Because of the length, I decided to largely follow the first part of last weeks run, and eliminated the second half, due to construction and a lack of illumination along Whitty Road and North Bay Avenue.
This route took me up OFR to Todd Road, and I traveled the entire length of Todd, instead of turning onto Church. (The upper part of Todd Road is littered with some really spectacular properties, including, presumably, the one I couldn't see, because it was hidden behind stone walls and an imposing iron gate, complete with one of those remote call boxes so the dark-suited, sunglassed security could scrutinize you via CCTV before they permitted you entry.) Then I hung a left onto Silverton over to New Hampshire to White Oak Bottom (where do they get these names?), left onto OFR, and back down past the Parkway. Once past Whitty Road, made a left onto Vincenzo, where I gawked at even more impressive homes (think Italian Villa on 1/100th the land) - one of whom was reportedly owned at one time by Michael Ritacco, the recently (ahem) retired superintendent of the Toms River Regional Schools. Then I looped around on Vincenzo, and continued onto OFR back home.
Once again, I went out with water and nourishment handy, which helped in the later stages. I am finding that being hydrated prior to running is important, but it's a bit of a delicate balance, since options to use a bathroom are somewhat limited. At the same time, one can't depend on just the water brought for the run itself, because that's not enough on these longer runs. Runners World suggests a solution in breaking up the route into, say, five mile loops, starting and ending in a familiar place, like your house, thereby providing a handy place to get water and take advantage of the facilities. Sounds nice, but gets boring after awhile.
Speaking of boring, the playlist really needs updating. I'm just skipping the Nickleback songs entirely - way too angry - and the rest of the selections get played completely almost twice. On these long runs, I can probably add a couple of mellower songs, since I'm just trying to maintain a decent pace, without going all-out. It is a marathon, after all.
I managed to keep most of my breaks to less than two minutes, but now that I'm drinking and eating, which takes a few extra seconds to accomplish, two minutes seems to be the new normal. Until the last mile, I had virtually no complaints, and actually felt pretty strong around mile 7. This is encouraging.
The next two weeks look a bit more problematic. I'm working the overnight on Sunday, which eliminates an early Monday run, since I will not run when I'm tired. A scheduled obligation on Monday evening rules out a run then that day, altogether. Early Tuesday, I'm giving a lift to a friend from the firehouse to work, so I have to leave earlier, then it's straight to Newark on Wednesday. At this point, running looks like it will be confined to Thursday and Friday, since Saturday is a firehouse day. Sunday next week will be this week's long run, to allow for the days off before and after and another missed run.
I'm not terribly worried, though, as long as I continue to get in these longer ones. I just want to finish the marathon, I'm not looking to break any records. At least, not this time.
Ellie Goulding was back as the Nike Pep-talker, recycling the you-did-more-miles-than-last-week bit.
The run.
This route took me up OFR to Todd Road, and I traveled the entire length of Todd, instead of turning onto Church. (The upper part of Todd Road is littered with some really spectacular properties, including, presumably, the one I couldn't see, because it was hidden behind stone walls and an imposing iron gate, complete with one of those remote call boxes so the dark-suited, sunglassed security could scrutinize you via CCTV before they permitted you entry.) Then I hung a left onto Silverton over to New Hampshire to White Oak Bottom (where do they get these names?), left onto OFR, and back down past the Parkway. Once past Whitty Road, made a left onto Vincenzo, where I gawked at even more impressive homes (think Italian Villa on 1/100th the land) - one of whom was reportedly owned at one time by Michael Ritacco, the recently (ahem) retired superintendent of the Toms River Regional Schools. Then I looped around on Vincenzo, and continued onto OFR back home.
Once again, I went out with water and nourishment handy, which helped in the later stages. I am finding that being hydrated prior to running is important, but it's a bit of a delicate balance, since options to use a bathroom are somewhat limited. At the same time, one can't depend on just the water brought for the run itself, because that's not enough on these longer runs. Runners World suggests a solution in breaking up the route into, say, five mile loops, starting and ending in a familiar place, like your house, thereby providing a handy place to get water and take advantage of the facilities. Sounds nice, but gets boring after awhile.
Speaking of boring, the playlist really needs updating. I'm just skipping the Nickleback songs entirely - way too angry - and the rest of the selections get played completely almost twice. On these long runs, I can probably add a couple of mellower songs, since I'm just trying to maintain a decent pace, without going all-out. It is a marathon, after all.
I managed to keep most of my breaks to less than two minutes, but now that I'm drinking and eating, which takes a few extra seconds to accomplish, two minutes seems to be the new normal. Until the last mile, I had virtually no complaints, and actually felt pretty strong around mile 7. This is encouraging.
The next two weeks look a bit more problematic. I'm working the overnight on Sunday, which eliminates an early Monday run, since I will not run when I'm tired. A scheduled obligation on Monday evening rules out a run then that day, altogether. Early Tuesday, I'm giving a lift to a friend from the firehouse to work, so I have to leave earlier, then it's straight to Newark on Wednesday. At this point, running looks like it will be confined to Thursday and Friday, since Saturday is a firehouse day. Sunday next week will be this week's long run, to allow for the days off before and after and another missed run.
I'm not terribly worried, though, as long as I continue to get in these longer ones. I just want to finish the marathon, I'm not looking to break any records. At least, not this time.
Ellie Goulding was back as the Nike Pep-talker, recycling the you-did-more-miles-than-last-week bit.
The run.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Week Six - Day Three, Thursday, August 22nd
Much better today than Tuesday. Instead of doing the scheduled short run, I did the medium 5-mile run I was supposed to complete on Tuesday, which didn't work out so well. If total mileage is an important consideration, by swapping the two runs, I figure my total deficit is a manageable two miles.
Today's run was straight up OFR to just below Whitty Road, made a U-turn, and then went down Lilac back up to Mapletree. Nice and simple. Had two forced breaks, less than a minute each, at OFR and Bey Lea, which was a better idea than playing Frogger. Just about made the whole way, a first at that distance, and pushed it a little bit to get up the hill on Lilac to Mapletree.
Some observations on the non-running public:
Tonight's run. And again, no Pep-talker.
Today's run was straight up OFR to just below Whitty Road, made a U-turn, and then went down Lilac back up to Mapletree. Nice and simple. Had two forced breaks, less than a minute each, at OFR and Bey Lea, which was a better idea than playing Frogger. Just about made the whole way, a first at that distance, and pushed it a little bit to get up the hill on Lilac to Mapletree.
Some observations on the non-running public:
- Folks making right turns onto major roads invariably do not look to their right, either for pedestrians on sidewalks or people like me running against traffic on the shoulder. My second interesting action with a motorist in two weeks.
- People making left turns turn into the far lane of traffic of the road they are entering, then have to over correct to stay in the lane that they're going into.
- Saw more than one person on a bicycle reading their email or something on their cell phone.
Tonight's run. And again, no Pep-talker.
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