Muddy Calves

I haven’t found a good way to imbed my Grandma’s Training Schedule in a blog post yet but I’ve worked out a preliminary schedule. It is essentially out of Marathoning, Start to Finish by Patti and Warren Finke who taught the RRCA Coaching Class I attended last summer.

After following Jack Daniels’ (the coach, not the whiskey) plans for several years for my 13.1 races, this plan seems relatively tame as far as speedwork–I’m planning on doing 4 weeks of hilly fartleks and 5 tempo runs at race paces, maxing out at 4 miles. But it is heavy on endurance–I just ran 13.5 and my long run will be 16 miles by the end of February. Overall, I plan on doing 15 runs of 16-20 miles before the marathon. Currently, 20 (5 times) is the longest but maybe I’ll bump that up to 22.

On paper (or on LCD) it seems to make sense but we’ll see how it looks on the road. I’ve started to experience early-season doubts, you know the ones, “I can’t run 5 miles at 8:30 pace, how the hell am I going to run 26.2 at 8:00 pace”?!

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I know with training it will come but it is still amazing to me how the same doubts pop up at the beginning of every training cycle. I am worried that my body won’t hold up to the training–I’ve nursed the miscellaneous aches & pains & chafing (on some very sensitive bits) so far but the miles are just starting to rack up.

The gut battle is on-going. I started compulsively weighing myself on Tuesday, with my weight ranging from a post-long run, dehydrated 158.4 to a high of 163.8. Median daily low of 162.4, median daily high of 163.8.

I tracked my diet for a few days & the biggest thing I learned from that is serving size. Often one of my servings are two or more legitimate servings. That awareness will help me just eat less I hope. And I’ve implemented the “Banana Diet”, my own invention. Before I snack, I need to eat a fruit (most often a banana). This helps fill my stomach with a healthy food and slows me down–helps me think about what I’m eating. I think I did OK this week, my youngest daughter had a birthday party on Saturday and I was measured in what I ate.

I missed one workout this week because of a combination of a work situation and a couple birthdays I needed to celebrate but overall a good week, methinks.

My second goal for 2012, is to get rid of my Middle-Aged Man gut–I’ve basically become this character from Saturday Night Live, just without the fancy hair:

I have to admit, I’ve been “battling” the gut for a decade–I first realized it had appeared when we picked-up the pictures from my oldest daughter’s 1st birthday swimming party.  (Note: this was back when people put a thing called “film” into a camera. After putting the pictures onto this “film”, the “film” had to be brought to a store that would take several days to copy the pictures from the “film” to the “pictures”. Normally, half of the “pictures” were of things you most definitely did not want “pictures” of–the back of someone’s head, your shoes, your thumb, or your aunt Midge.)  Anyhow, when we got back this bunch of pictures, one of the pictures I did not want included me, my daughter and my gut. Since then, I’ve known about this unwanted passenger  and made numerous half-hearted, short-lived attempts at getting rid of it.

I haven’t been successful:

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Now, I don’t have any secret methods that I am going to use, just try to use more calories that I consume and do some core work to try to tone what muscle I do have underneath. My main problem is I tend to pig out too often–I eat fairly healthy, just too much at times. I’m going to try to not binge and try to eat a fruit (banana/apple/orange) before digging into a “snack”. I’ve got a special weakness for Nacho-Cheese Doritos.

I’m hoping that just by knowing that I’m running 26.2 in 5 months, I’ll have the extra incentive to cut my gut (currently measuring 34 inches sucked in, 37.5 fully extended). I figure if I could probably lose 10-15 pounds of dead weight, possibly speeding me up 6-9%. Not sure if it works that way but that could be roughly 15 minutes of marathon time.

Spent a chunk of time driving around listening to National Public Radio today and of course most of the coverage was deservedly focused on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

At some point, my mind wondered why running, especially at the recreational level is so . . .  white (or at least lacking in African-Americans). I remembered wondering that at Bjorklund last year when seeing an (non-elite) African-Americans runner made the “whiteness” of the race all too obvious but I forgot about that thought until today.

And not to pick on any one organization, I thought that this header image from RunningUSA.org pretty well represents my impression of the racial make-up of most races.

Now I’ll admit, my impression might be totally off-base, maybe the participation by race is closer to the actual demographics of the country and I’m just out of touch. But if my impression is right, I can make some guesses related to sociology, economics, geography,  and culture but they would just be assumptions–mostly based off popular stereotypes and not any actual factual information.

Right now, I’m wondering what part of the running community are African-Americans and other minorities? And if these percentages are different from their proportion of the country’s overall population, why is there a difference?

No answers, just questions.

Ok, my family thinks I’m a geek. Their latest evidence is this excellent documentary by Paul Sanft of Ideatap Studios about Team USA Minnesota, a training center for elite distance runners.

Olympic Marathon Trials from Paul Sanft.

After seeing a link for it a couple of days ago, I had to show it to my family. It went something like this:

“Come here, watch this!”

“See that train, I know where that is!” (0:02)

“Oh, look they’re running on MY route!” (0:04)

“I run across that bridge!” (0:19)

“They’re doing my hill–that’s my hill, that’s where I do my hill workouts!” (0:25)

“Oh my god! Who is that? That’s Josh Moen? He fit me for a pair of shoes & I didn’t even know who he was! Oh, my god!” (0:51)

“See that garbage can! I know where that is, I ran by that garbage can today!” (1:13).

…and so on. I’m not sure when they snuck away but they did at some point.

It is really cool to watch these great runners running on my courses. I especially liked the slow-motion sequences where you can really see their form–I’m looking for a way to slow it down even more so I can see their form frame-by-frame.

For the record, I’m not disagreeing that I’m a geek.

But I’ve got a growing conflict–I’m starting to root for locals and that is making me feel uneasy because, well, they’re Minnesotans.

To back up a step, I grew up and lived in Wisconsin for the first 40+ years of my life and developed a healthy disregard for Minnesota–mostly due to a game played with an mis-shaped leather ball. A sport where my believed home-state team has been World Champions 13 times & counting; Minnesota’s team, not so many (0 in case you need to know the exact count). We’re the big brother and the Minnesota team is the jealous little brother always trying to prove they’re just as good despite the fact that they’re just not.

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Football rivalry & related issues aside, I’m not completely uncomfortable with the concept of Minnesota–I shop at Target & Best Buy and love Famous Dave’s (although I’ve got to point out the first and best Dave’s is in Hayward, Wisconsin). And one of my all-time favorite runner/writers, Ron Daws, came from Minnesota, so the state has some redeeming qualities.

I’m actually learning to deal with the football thing and blend in with the non horn-wearing portion of the population. Heck, I even joined the Minnesota Distance Runners Association (MDRA).

UW Badgers 2011 XC National Champions

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And while I celebrated the Badger’s Cross Country National Title, I’m also starting to root for local runners like Kara Goucher who grew up in Duluth and just qualified for the Olympic Marathon, Andrew Carlson, Matt Gabrielson, Jason Lehmkuhle, Katie (Koski) MacGregor, and Josh Moen. I’m even starting to appreciate Carrie Tollefson, Minnesota’s First Lady of Running, for the rock star she is.

Last week I posted my running goals for 2012 without much explanation.

Well, I can either sit around in my underwear and watch The Big Bang Theory or I can actually write something for this blog (also while sitting around in my underwear). While the goals themselves are pretty straight-forward, I want to explain my motivations.

First, I’m gonna man-up and take ownership. I was pussy-footing around about running a marathon. Well that’s bull-shit. I am going to run Grandma’s Marathon on June 16th, 2012. There, I said it.

I hesitated to actually commit to this because I was not sure if I was willing to properly training for it. I have run one marathon before–Grandma’s 2000–and while I didn’t die, I went into it under-trained and struggled in the second half–I went through mile 16 in about 2:14:29 (8:24 pace). From there on, though, I struggled and ran/walked the final 10.2 at 10:22 pace, finishing in 4:00:14 (watch time).

To confess, while I was happy and proud that I finished, it was not a life-changing accomplishment for me. I guess having started running at 14, I just assumed that I would be able to do it if I tried–I had run as far as 16 miles before I started training for the marathon so I just had the mentality that I just needed to run longer.

I was not even disappointed in how the second half went–I knew I was under-trained. I had some more important things going on in my life (we were expecting our first child and my mother-in-law, who lived 5 hours away, was dying of cancer) and battled a cranky ITB during training so I did not have extremely unrealistic expectations. Although when I went through the half in about 1:50, I started to think I might run a 3:40-ish.  Ha!

And while those final 14 seconds lingered in the back of my mind, I did not care enough to do anything about them. Although every time I told another runner I had run a marathon, I had to confess that those 14 blasted seconds existed.

But I thought I was content running 10 to 13.1 milers–those are great distances to race. They are long enough to be an endurance event but short enough that I can, if I want, jump into one if I’m in any sort of shape and not have to worry about being able to finish.

But then as I started to re-connect with other runners and I heard about their marathon experiences, I got the itch to try 26.2 again. Not sure when the I gave in-in August I was still saying I did not plan on running a marathon. But since September, I have run a 10-miler nearly every weekend “in case” I decided to train for a marathon. I am not only going to train for & finish a marathon but I’m going to run a marathon.

So I am starting my training. I have sketched out my plan, I have penciled-in a couple of practice races and I am going to do it. This coming weekend, I up my long run to 12 miles. I plan on doing 16 by the end of February.

And I am setting an aggressive time goal, 3:29:59. That is about what the race predictors say I should be able to run but considering I am a recycled Marathon Virgin, it should be pretty difficult.

Not sure how these old legs are gonna hold up, but I’m hoping for the best. And I’m sure I’ll bore you with some of the boring specifics.