“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” -Benjamin Franklin
Admittedly, that quote is a bit of a melodrama for May, but looking now at that graph above I can totally see why my knee started to hurt on those last two runs (5/24 & 5/28)…
Let me explain. May was my month for Ragnar. I was to run 15-ish miles in a 20 hour period and do it at race pace. In hindsight I didn’t prepare…at all. I had one two-a-day run on the 5th and that was about all this data shows of someone actually preparing to race that event.
I still managed to log 55.6 miles for the month and would have eclipsed my highest month yet if I hadn’t felt an old burn in my knee that I haven’t felt since I wore shoes a year ago. The burn was the runner’s knee that constantly kept me from running more than a mile and was spurred by less than perfect running technique (to say the least). Since the switch to Vibram’s and creation of this blog at the same time, I’ve never felt one ounce of pain, anywhere…Until this past week.
Ragnar essentially was running a six mile leg, cramming into a van, then running another leg several hours later. I simply didn’t prepare my body for this. I haven’t raced since before last winter. I didn’t ramp my mileage up and do long runs. I didn’t really do much, but I totally ignored that and just took for granted my body and the fact that preparation is everything.
So, on to the knee. After that 2 mile attempt on 5/28 I realized I needed to stop. I went for a three day ice, rest, elevate regimen that, as of today, seems to have done the trick. My plan now is to get back into running on Thursday and get back to the basics. A real slow start up with mileage and then tweak in longer runs for the weekends.
You have to train for the runs you want to run. I want to run these events at a bit longer distance (1/2 marathon) so I need to stretch the mileage and build my technique to it. Can’t wait to get back at it!
We’ve been lucky enough to share land at our condo with a boarding school who has a really nice, hillside single track/grass field lane cross country course. I wanted to shoot some clips of the trails and me running them in my KSO’s since our family will be relocating a bit north in a couple of months…have no fear though, the new place is just off the Appalachian Trail!
Enjoy the short video on your Memorial Day weekend, hope you get to hit the trails this weekend!
Well, it was a week ago today that our 12 person team set out on the 192 mile journey from New Haven, CT to Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts. The adventure, The Ragnar Relay, was instantly a memory of a lifetime from the moment I ran my first leg. For those not familiar with the event, it’s basically 12 person team’s with two vans, 6 team members in each van. You take off as Van 1, Runner 1 and work all the way through Van 1, Runner 6 then you hit a major exchange where Van2, Runner 1 takes off and this process repeats for the next 26 or so hours until you end up at the finish line.
The most curious part for me was how the logistics work and most importantly, the hand-offs. Here is an example exchange between two of my Van Mates at a standard exchange:
It’s really pretty simple. As the runner you wear a slap bracelet (think 1988!) and you just give that to your next runner and they take off out the chute.
The course was extremely well marked. We had only a few instances of runner’s saying they were confused but none ever got lost or really went off in a direction for extreme distances. That’s a big undertaking when your race course is 192 miles across two states!
As the runner’s in your van are doing their legs you will “leap frog” them and offer them support and encouragement. This is what separates this race from any other out there. In a Marathon your support may be intermittent with friends and family at certain mile markers, but imagine them roving in a van and continually supporting you along the whole journey…awesome!
That’s a good example of the support you can give your runner’s along the way. And don’t take my “pick her off” reference as poor sportsmanship. We all know how good it feels to pass folks on the course and during this race you get the opportunity to pass a bunch if you can tweak your speed just right!
You can also see that video was shot as the sun was rising…like 4 something in the morning. Many people ask, “so you run this at night too?” Absofrigginlutely! I slept for 25 minutes the whole race and you can hear Matt in the video say he slept 30 minutes on the van floor. This is all part of the fun, sleep deprived delierium!
You also will encounter runner’s from your other van while you head to the next major exchanges. Here we run into our runner from Van 1 as we head to a major exchange.
That’s what this race is all about. Fun. It’s just a great time.
So, How Did Team, Chuck Norris Kicked Our Team Name’s Ass Do? I’m glad you asked! We finished 25th out of 178 teams (coolrunning.com results) and 3rd place in the corporate division! I’m really proud of those results and the team did an AMAZING job!
So, How Did I Do?
Again, glad you cared enough to ask! I’m really proud of the showing I put out.
Ragnar tells you to use your 10K pace as the pace you should use when we did our initial calculations with them. The number I was working with was 9:21/mile, which is a respectable per mile distance time for me. Here’s how I did:
Leg 1 (5:39pm): 5.91 miles in 51:05 – pace 8:39/mile
Leg 2 (2:02am): 3.61 miles in 29:00 – pace 8:02/mile
Leg 3 (11:04am): 5.80 miles in 50:10 – pace 8:39/mile
I killed my predicted time. I was running pretty comfortably at the 8:40/mile pace and my 2a.m. leg felt like butter and I was cooking at almost 8/mile flat (that’s cooking for me!).
Here’s my final run, final exchange – it was HOT
I felt great after that last run. Sure, my leg’s were tight and the cumulative effects of not sleeping, running, and being crammed in a van was all catching up to me…but this event was SO fun and our team was so great that I just felt that oh so awesome runner’s high!
And of course, we finished as a team…192 miles of fun and running came to an end
Did you notice the FiveFinger’s Love! In the video of us catching up with our runner from Van 1, he’s rocking the Black/Grey Camo KSOs and I of course was wearing my trusty black KSOs (now with 500 miles on them!). We also had one other team mate running in KSOs.
Next Friday at 1pm our 12 person relay team will set off to hop scotch 198 miles from New Haven, CT to Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts in the New England Ragnar Relay.
I setup a team micro site for us at milesbehindme.com/ragnar which is a great way to communicate for these types of events if anyone is planning one in the future. Now we’re a week away and putting the finishing touches on what will certainly be a lifetime memory.
This will be my first real test of endurance. I am running 3 legs at 4.8 miles, 4.7 miles, and 6.8 miles for a total of 16.30 miles in about an 18 hour period. Legs 1 and 2 I am pretty confident on, but that last one…it’ll be a doozer! It’s that battle of mental tiredness and mental toughness and I’m hoping the toughness factor overcomes…
I’m sure my next post will be a wrap up of the event and some photos and maybe even some video action!
“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” -Benjamin Franklin
Well, it was a week ago today that our 12 person team set out on the 192 mile journey from New Haven, CT to Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts. The adventure, 
I setup a team micro site for us at 