W. G. George And His 100-Up Exercise

A new Chris McDougall article hit the New York Times yesterday and It’s all the buzz in minimalist running land today. In it, McDougall discusses an article he ran accross written by Walter Goodall George in 1908 titled “W. G. George’s Own Account From the 100-Up Exercise.” Read that Wikipedia article I linked above, this dude was the real deal running a 30 year standing world record mile in 4:12.75!

So I HIGHLY suggest you read the article and watch the video that illustrates the exercise.

I like that shot from the video above…I totally used to run like that…it’s funny looking back at it now.

So take on W.G.’s challenge. Give 100 of the ‘minors’ a shot and once you’ve mastered that, try 100 ‘majors’. It’s tough as hell, but something I’m looking forward to incorporating into my strength conditioning going forward.

Down…But Not Out

Where have I been?
Ok. I know. It’s been a LONG while since I’ve updated here. Truth be told, I’m broken.

It started with the knee issue from my summer fishing trip and has now made its’ way to my Achilles/Heel area. What is it exactly, I don’t know. I’ve self-diagnosed it as a minor Achilles tendinitis but “minor” doesn’t equal “easy”. This thing hurts. It got so bad that on my last attempt to run at the quarter mile mark it felt like my heel was going to drop off on to the pavement.

So what have I done?
In short, nothing. I stopped running, jogging, etc and just let it rest. I spent a week icing it and now it’s been over a month without running on it. The good news is that it doesn’t hurt at all anymore from walking or throughout the day. The irritating news is that it is painful and stiff every morning for about 15 minutes until I can “walk it out”. I’m not running because of this morning pain. It’s enough of an alert to me that things are not “normal” down there yet.

What am I thinking?
I’m pretty certain that when I wrote this post in September and mentioned a “floaty” feeling in my knee, not only did I get a lot of shit from people reading this about my use of the word (or non-word) “floaty”, but also I was in the process of creating my current condition. My knee was only alarming me back then when I would extend it so I was purposefully running much more squated and, with my gait placing my foot directly below my ass for most of my running, I was increasing the stretch in my Achilles. Here’s a visual since my writing is usual misinterpreted:

You take that running form adjustment to pushing myself too early into a 6 mile REALLY hilly run and it was simply too much for the Achilles. Again, this is all hindsight. I was knowingly running different and pushing myself too much too soon and didn’t seem to care.

What’s the plan?
Keep waiting it out…for the running part. For me overall, I’ve incorporated a regular regimen of  stretching and Yoga. I’ve spent time researching my issues and am convinced I need some significant balance strength training in my lower extremities (really my lower back to my toes). I’ve been doing some exercises from great resources like Chris Johnson PT and other folks who I feel know what they are talking about and put information out there for us to digest and incorporate. I’m also walking. I’m doing several weekly walks of a 3+ miles. This can be annoying because walking sucks compared to running loose, but if I’m going to get strong and able again it all starts with a strong, pain free walk…

Speaking of Chris Johnson, his post here on the “wobbly runner” is basically describing me now that I’ve taken a hard look at myself. This is why I’m focusing on strengthening my lower body.

After 7 Weeks Off…A 5K Done

Opportunity knocked this week when the manager of our corporate gym called my office and said there was a group doing a timed 5K in the corporate park as part of a “Couch to 5K” group they had started. He asked if I wanted to join up and encourage the participants as they embarked on what would be the first time most of them had run the 5K distance.

“ABSOLUTELY!”, I said assuredly and then hung up.

Wait…I haven’t run in 7 weeks, is a timed 5K really a good idea? Probably not, but since when do I make good decisions all the time!

So today came and I was genuinely excited to run with a group…I was excited to RUN (period). As we lined up I had to mentally talk myself down from charging out at 7min/mile pace and keep repeating, “you’re not 100% go SLOW”. It helped because there were so many folks who were targeting 30mins plus and a few targeting sub-25′s, so I knew I could fit somewhere in there depending on the knee.

It went really well. Obviously not fast, but I experienced no pain. I did have a few spots where the knee felt a bit “floaty” and I did the smart thing and walked.

I like that word “floaty”, but to expand on it a bit I’d say a lot of it may have to do with me babying the leg over the past 7 weeks and there is a healthy amount of just strength loss going on with that whole leg. Having noticed that, I started and finished the run today in the exercise class room at the office with the foam roller, which is always a great way to keep that IT band behaving. I also added 100 jump rope jumps to the race finish and then some pistol squats to challenge that leg. The pistol squats are really what highlighted the marked strength loss in my right leg.

So what to do from here?

I’m not going to sign up for 50 miles next week, but instead I’ll keep jogging about 2 to 3 times a week and mix in a deal of strength (non-weight) training. I’m cautiously optimistic right now and after running today I realize how much I’ve missed that part of my life over the past 7 weeks. When you experience times in your life that you can’t run it really makes you appreciate the ability to run when it’s back in your life…

Radio Silence…

It’s been awfully quiet from my end…right?

Well let’s not beat around the bush – I didn’t run in July.

I took the first week off planned because I had a fishing trip planned and it was going to involve lots of drinking and shenanigans and not a lot of time for running. Fine, I mean it’s only a week? Well…on the second day of the trip we were 40 miles offshore and took a hit from a large wave. I had my heel locked and my thighs braced on the boat side and the wave tweaked and twisted me just right to feel a slight pop/tear in my right knee.

It’s been crap ever since. I tried a few times to run and I can’t get more than a quarter mile without a pretty disturbing pain from the backside of my knee. I became pretty sure that I partially tore something and decided to just rest until walking and jogging from point to point didn’t hurt.

As of now the knee finally doesn’t hurt when I walk and I’ve been able to do a quick jog to the mailbox and back without it feeling like things were floating around in there.

I’m ready to test it out again this week and see if I can run again. I’m starting to go stir crazy with the time off. My sleep is getting messed up and I generally just don’t feel complete and on top of my game without running.

Wish me luck!

It’s Time (Again) To Get RAGNASTY: Ragnar New York 2011

In 2010 I participated in 2 Ragnar Relay’s. The first was Ragnar New England in May and then I ran Ragnar Tennessee in November. Each of these were AMAZING experiences where I met some great new folks and had an absolute blast sharing a van and some stink for around 30 hours running 200 miles!

Well…it’s that time again. Next month is Ragnar New York where 12 of us will pile onto the roads starting at the birthplace of the original Woodstock and ending in Westchester County. Another 200 miles of running, questionable language/conversations, poor eating, no sleeping, a little bit of stinkiness….you know, just a ton of fun!

My 3 legs look like this:

Leg 1 – 8.2 Miles (classified as “very hard”) – 1017 feet of vertical gain

Leg 2 – 5.8 Miles (classified as “moderate”) – 284 feet of vertical gain

Leg 3 – 4.6 Miles (classified as “moderate”) – 269 feet of vertical gain

So that’s 18.6 Miles with 1570 feet of vertical over about a 20 hour period – woooo hooo!!!!

Off to get training!

Danbury Half Marathon

Well, I did it. I finished my first half marathon. I didn’t do it without some serious issues though, which is something you just got to roll with…better yet, learn from…

I particularly like that the photo above is out of focus, because quite frankly…that’s about how I felt before the race. I woke up with a bit of a sore throat, nothing too bothersome. I sat down at the table to have breakfast with the family and that’s where I knew something wasn’t right. I had to force down two pancakes. Now I typically put down 4 of my amazing home made cakes but for some reason my body just didn’t feel like taking in the food.

Oh well, I got a race to get to and I’ve ran over 10 miles before with low food intake, I’d just down my energy juice and have a GU at the ready. So I filled my Ultimate Direction bottle up with my favorite FRS flavor and hit the road!

I felt pretty good lining up in the starting coral. I chatted up a couple runner’s about the weather to see if I should go long or short sleeved and they mentioned there were 30mph wind gusts poised to come head on the entire run…great, long sleeve it is. The race had a bit of a disorganized feel to it and the tip of that iceberg was the late start…I hate late starts, you’re already anticipating the race then you have to wait 20 minutes more, ugh. Eventually we took off!

The start of the race is hokey, you have to do this double loop through the park before it finally breaks out onto the streets of Danbury, Redding, and Bethel. I was watching my Garmin 305 diligently to ensure my pacing was on to nail my sub-1:48 goal (was really sub-1:50 goal, but you gotta stretch it!). Through mile 3 I was right on target! The first four stacked up nicely, I was really doing it – 8:15, 7:59, 8:09, and 8:09…then

Things started to feel funny…not like the climbing rope in 5th grade gym class funny, but something sinister started to creep up from my feet to the very tips of the hair on my head.

My energy levels were plummeting like I’ve never experienced, I was getting waves of goose bumps flushing over my body from foot to scalp. I was hotter than hell, I felt dehydrated, I felt like I needed an I.V. drip of GU to just start feeling normal.

What can you do? Press on…and I did. My left foot fell asleep from mile 4 to 6. Not like, “oh hehe my foot’s asleep”, but like “holy shit, I have to stare at my foot every step I take because I can’t even tell if it’s on pavement!” Never had that happen like that before, it was surreal and agitating. Mile 6 and change is the first hill of the race. I found myself walking half of it. I was mentally battling myself trying to find some type of justification as to why my body was just shutting down on this of all days…

At the top of mile 6′s hill I had to down my GU. I had no choice. I was exhausted already. I knew in the race guide they said there was GU at mile 8 so I had one more coming. I kept pushing through. The hard part of the race was just ahead and every step I took felt like I was dragging myself like a corpse through this thing.

This lovely little race offers 600ft of vertical ascension and you get most of that from mile 8 to 10 in the form of a big ass hill. I reached the 8 mile water station and stopped. I grabbed the Gatorade kid and downed about 4 dixie cups of the green stuff. I then grabbed the GU kid, snagged 2 GU’s from him and proceeded to head up the hill while sucking them down. I took a quick glance at my watch. Holy shit! I was still on pace to finish at 1:48…not sure how but in the mass chaos going on within my head the primal competitive side of me kept me on pace.

It didn’t last long. At mile 9 my left calf muscle felt like it dislodged and was heading for my butt…Massive cramps. I wouldn’t ever really recover from this. I could run .25 to .50 from that point forward then would have to stop, (cry a little), stretch and start the wheels spinning for the next cycle. It became very un-fun.

I got through it. I managed to run the last .75. It’s amazing how you can hide the pain and cramps for that last little bit when you know there are thousands of eyes on you! This was me even looking somewhat put together at around mile 12-ish.

Within 30 minutes of finishing the race, I began shivering uncontrollably…I thought somehow I was starting to experience hypothermia. I told my wife to just grab the car and to get me out of there. I slept the drive home. I got home and could barely stand. I was up all night either fevering or sweating from the last fever breaking. I woke up in the a.m. and could barely breath through my mouth let alone swallow. My wife sent me to the doctor’s right away. “You’re full of strep” was what he said after gagging me on a throat swab. He said I had it the morning of the race and the race probably did just enough to accelerate everything to a speed that knocked me on my ass.

So…oh well. It happens. I finished in 1:54, and I’m still pretty damn proud of that time considering the hell that run put me through. As other runner’s will know, this can only mean one thing:

I need to find my next half to make it up!

Half Marathon Training Update

Wow! Putting my first half marathon on the calendar was EXACTLY what I needed to kick start the motivation that I felt completely leave my body coming into this year. What’s more is I’m no longer an anti-training plan monger…I can’t say I’ve been sticking to mine exactly, but having something laying out what I need to do, how fast, how long, etc is a nice change from just going out and Forest Gump’n it!

I only gave myself 8 weeks to prep and have missed each weeks training mileage by about 3 miles. This week I have kicked it into high gear. The weather is finally a bit nicer, although most of my runs still resemble this:

I just did a 10 miler this morning and tomorrow’s 5 will make this a 27 mile week. That’s the most mileage I’ve run in a week yet! My feet are feeling stronger than ever. The year and a half of running in my Vibram FiveFinger’s and taking it SLOW are starting to show the results in the muscular strength of my feet. In general, I’m feeling really strong right now aside from the occasional excessive fatigue that still builds in my calves. I’m running a little heavy coming out of winter too. My weight crept up to 183lbs and I really feel best at 175lbs so I’ll pay attention to my food quantity intake the next few weeks and hopefully be at fighting weight for the Danbury Half Marathon.

Targeting for the Danbury Half Marathon
I used the running calculator over at McMillan Running to predict a target Half Marathon time. Using a 23 minute 5k as a gauge for what would be a really fast 5k for me at this time, the tool says my targeted half is 1:46:19 or 8:07 minute miles. That seems like a stretch goal for me and my personal target for the race is 8:20 minute miles or 1:49:00 total time. It’s the damned elevation gain from miles 6 through 9 that will be the true challenge.

Looking forward to completing the training plan and progressively hitting an 11 miler, 12 miler, and the race day 13.10!

2011 Goals

I’ve done much thinking about what I’d be happy accomplishing in 2011 in terms of goals and I am finally set on what I want to knock off. Here we go:

Running miles: 800+
-Last year was 600, this is a good addition with the other stuff I want to do

Running races: 1/2 Marathon, 5k PR, 50K
-The half is a good middle distance, the 5k is to ensure my speed work “works”, the 50K is because it’d be awesome

Running sweetness: Entire Appalachian Trail in CT
-I live right by it, it’s 52 miles. Not in one shot, I just want to have run every mile of it by year’s end.

Triathlon: any distance
-A simple one, just to see what it’s all about

Strength situps: 200
-My core is WEAK. I just did the initial test at 200 Situps and can only do 40…ouch. The core is fundamentally your greatest strength for running, for everything.

Strength pushups: 150
-Again, WEAK. I just did the initial test at 100 Pushups and can only do 33…’nuff said.

I feel really good about these goals and think they are challenging, yet very acheivable.

So what about you? What are your goals this year? I’d love to hear in the comments!

Training Plan For First Half Marathon

So yesterday I put the pencil to the paper and signed up for the Danbury Half Marathon on April 3rd. The first thought was, “hell yeah, finally I got something committed to drive my recently lazy ass towards…” Then I thought, “holy shit, thats like 8 weeks away…”

I’ve modified a training plan that looked decent from here:
http://www.halhigdon.com/halfmarathon/inter.htm

and by modified, I mean I lopped off the first 4 weeks!

So here’s the plan people:

I’m also running Ragnar in May then another Half in June – the first half of 2011 is coming together nicely!

I’ll keep you posted here, I look forward to training as I’ve just taken a 2 week hiatus to let the body recover and to avoid the 9 foot high snow in my town…spring, please come soon!

2010 Close Out: My First Calendar Year Of Running And A Look Ahead

I didn’t have any real ‘goals’ for 2010. I just wanted to run, have fun, and get better. It was a good way to approach my first full calendar year of running and as I reflect at where I am today compared to January 1st of 2010, I am much stronger and a much better, smarter runner. So let’s get to it!

Summary/Stats/Analysis
Total Miles = 601
Total Runs = 150

I didn’t realize until Mid-December that I could hit 600 as an even number…that’s the only time I really set a goal this year; to hit 600 miles. I ended up finishing that on December 30th with a nice 8 mile run along the river. I even tossed in an extra mile to get my point across!

Top Day/Week/Month
Top Day = 18.50 miles – RAGNAR Tennessee – 11/5, 11/6 (24 hour period)
Top Week = 21 miles – 2/22 – 2/28
Top Month =  63.6 – December
Races Run = 8

Top 3 Favorite Runs
Easy one! Ragnar New England, Ragnar Tennessee, Kent Pumpkin Run 5 miler.
Here’s why. Ragnar races are just plain fun. It’s a van full of folks who are somewhat like minded (they all run, right?).  It’s an all nighter and then-some. It’s a great physical/mental challenge to run three demanding runs as you get more and more sleep deprived along the 200 mile journey.

The Kent Pumpkin Run was one of my favorite’s because I had a bunch of great friends make it to the run and I got to cross the finish line while pushing my kid in his stroller dressed like a lion. Just friggin awesome!

Top Lessons Learned
Rest is AS important as the run…
No doubt about this one. After Ragnar New England I got cocky and took a day off and paid for it with an IT Band flare up that plagued most of my summer running. After Ragnar Tennessee I took an entire week off and came back stronger than ever. I seemed to use that distance build from the race and the time off the following week to reset my base on acceptable mileage and that’s why you see the big jump in mileage in the above graph in November and December. The rest actually made me stronger.

I can chase speed or I can chase distance, but I can’t do both at the same time…
I started getting faster with my 5k’s in the summer. I got down in the lower 7′s/mile and that took a big toll mentally because I couldn’t get it through my head that I don’t always need to run that fast on training runs…that’s why they’re called training runs! As I started to cement my plan to build my mileage base in November I took my average run from a 3.68 miler (Jan thru Oct) to a 5.92 miler (Nov thru Dec). To do this, my pace is up almost a full minute per mile on the average for the same comparison time frame.

2011 Plans, Looking Ahead
Ok, so I’m not really good at setting stuff in stone…procrastination is one of my most endearing qualities, so much of my race’s just come up and I enter within the week of the race. Having said that, here’s what I want to do in 2011.

Run 800 miles – this is a lofty gain over the 600 I did this year, but I want to get it done

Run a Half Marathon – I’ve still never done it, it happens this year

and my stretch goal…
Run a 50k – I know, I know…half marathon to a 50k? Here’s the deal, I don’t really feel like running a marathon and there are some gorgeous 50k trail runs in New England so I’m thinking I could attempt one in the fall…crazy or doable?