Muddy Calves

This race was two weeks ago and my memory isn’t that good so I’ll give the briefest summary: Went out too fast (6:43 first mile, 7:30, 7:36), mud, down-pour, and lightening.

I especially wanted to do this race because it is in the Town, Oulu, Wisconsin, that I grew up in.  It was at the baseball park 2.5 miles from my home–I spent many hours there playing, and later coaching, baseball.

The 5k  (closer to 3 miles to Mr. Garmin) which I ran started at 8:00 and about 8:05 it started to rain, which was fine, and around 8:08 it started to rain real hard.  All of that would have been great if there wasn’t some high-in-the-sky lightening that was a bit unnerving but I never actually heard thunder.

If you look closely at this picture, you’ll see the reflective strip is, well, reflecting.  My father took this picture and because of the rain clouds it was dark so he needed to use his flash.  The flash freaked me out at first because I wasn’t paying attention and out of the corner of my eye it seemed liked lightening.

It also looks like my left shoe lace is flopping around again.

The one thing that the rain effected was the 1 mile run got moved from 8:45 Saturday to Sunday afternoon.  That was a bit of a bummer because my girls ran the 1 mile but because of my schedule, I had to leave before they walk/ran.

My 11 year old.

And the six year old in jeans.

The best illustration of what a home-town race this was for me, there were five race officials at the finish area.  My aunt and uncle were the clock reader and race director.  I spent a lot of time during the summers growing up with them and my 3 cousins.  My uncle was running at that time so they brought me to a lot of the races I did in the 80s.

After passing the finish line, I ripped off the tag at the bottom of race number and handed it to another aunt and gave her a hug.

I didn’t notice it at the time but my  mother was writing down numbers along with the only non-relative at the finish.  However, this “outsider” was a girl from my high school class–we went to school together from Kindergarten to 12th grade.  So while not related, she is a good friend.

Bjorklund is 13 days away from when I started to write this. Considering that it takes about two weeks for your body to adjust to a work-out, there really isn’t any more training I can do for this race.  The hay, as they say, is in the barn.

All I can do at this point, is to do something stupid and injure myself.  And, not coincidentally, I may do a 5k or 10k next week.  I allegedly won a free entry to the ALARC Legends 5k/10k a few weeks ago but haven’t actually received any follow-up information saying I won.  I know that I should not race, but if it is free I’ll have a hard time resisting.   Doing a 10k hard, but not all-out, would probably be OK–it would give me a reasonable time estimate.  But I’m leaning towards doing the 5k to see how close to 19:59 I can get.

I feel good about this training cycle–I did not suffer any serious injuries and actually got all my work-outs in.  I cut back my mileage when I started to struggle so I’m giving myself a bit of credit for showing some patience.

The time between now and the race is a little dangerous–I’m tapering slightly; just one easy, short-long run and either the race and maybe a light, easy tempo session next week and some strides just to give my legs a chance to move some.

I haven’t set a final goal time, but I had originally hoped to PR (93:39, 2007 Tour de Eau Claire) but doubt I am in that good of shape yet but I could challenge my course PR (95:47, 2002).

Recently, Mighty Mur Lafferty talked about Leveling Up in her I Should Be Writing podcast.  She talked about how one of  the things that troubled her in her writing career is that there are not clear-cut mile posts that show you are getting better as a writer.  She contrasted that to Dungeon & Dragons-type games where there are distinct and clear levels that characters can achieve.

Running does not have that problem–there is a simple and clear way to measure our progress and status.

This week, I leveled up.  I am following Jack Daniels’ training program found in Daniels’ Running Formula.  Daniels recommends that runners use the time from a recent race to establish their VDOT (an approximation of your VO₂ Max).  The paces you run for your work-outs are determined by your VDOT.  My paces were based off of a race I did in the beginning of February.

Thursday, I was scheduled to do a three-mile tempo run.  I did not look at my watch until I had run a half mile–I was running 45 seconds per mile faster than I was supposed to be and, more importantly, feeling strong.  When I went through a mile still running significantly under the prescribed pace the workout shifted into a time-trial.  I pushed reasonably hard for the entire 3.1 miles and ended up running about 30 seconds faster than I did in February.

Nearly enough to push myself up two levels in Daniels’ VDOT calculations.

Wow!

And this was in Practice;  “we’re talking about practice“.

It is nice to know that the training is having an effect.  Some days, when I’m trudging through an allegedly easy day much slower than my target race pace and feeling awful doing it, worry floods in, “if I can barely run this 6-miler at this slow pace, how am I gonna run 13 miles faster?”

Confidence is nice to have.  To have an authority like Daniels or Eric McMillian say that my 5k time predicts that I should be able to come close to my goal time and to have used their predictions in the past and know they are reasonable, removes a burden.

Helps prevent panic.

This is a training race but I still want to do well and to get a good feel for where I am. The weather is going to be a little rough, about 34° F at race time, 30% chance of snow and windy.

I took a look at my recent runs and my best was the Ron Daws 25k.  In that race, I went through 13.1 in roughly 1:46 so that is the bare minimum I want to run.  My “A” goal is 1:40 (7:38 pace) and a “C” goal of 1:44:48 (8:00)–somewhere between is a “B”.

This is just too cool. I mean, I upload my Garmin data all the time but Ryan Hall uploaded his information from his2:04:58 Boston Marathon at Garmin Connect for everyone to see. Just bleep’n cool.

A blogger I follow pointed out a new blog, Jenna Boren, Keep on running that looks promising.  Jenna is a runner (ha! that’s an understatement, she is a RUNNER, having run in the 2008 Olympic Marathon trails) , a chiropractor, and, perhaps best of all, another Packer fan living in the Twin Cities.  Boren’s first post, Ouch….why does my butt (ha, ha, butt) hurt every winter? takes a general look at what causes injuries, especially if you’re running on snow & ice throughout the winter or making Defensive Player-of-the-Year type plays during the Super Bowl.