Keep Running Fast

Aramco Houston 1/2 marathon - 1:16:59

2012-02-04T14:22:00.000-06:00

I ran my 2nd fastest 1/2 marathon and hit my goal going into the race, but I felt I could have done a little better. Race weather was absolutely perfect - mid 40's, not windy - couldn't ask for anything better. Going into the race, I didn't know what kind of shape I was really in and I wanted to be sub 1:18 and I told myself I'd be very happy with sub 1:17 since I only had about 2 months of healthy, pain free training going into the race. My mindset going into the race was to treat it as a fitness test and not have unrealistic expectations and my primary goal was to run a decent time and be able to hold my pace and not blow up.

I woke up a little earlier than normal because I wanted to make sure I got downtown with enough time to get a warm-up in before the race and be able to get to the starting line early enough to be able to get up to within a few yards of the start line. Walking into the GRB, I ran into Jena, a guy I had trained with some last year who had moved to Denver and was back in town for the race. I made sure I signed up to be part of the ABB team challenge because last year they had about 20 - 30 port-o-potties inside the GRB with no lines and it was pretty much the best thing ever. Unfortunately this year they had no port-o-potties inside the GRB and the ABB only got you access to one of the restrooms and they only had 4 toilets in the men's room. I think I would have been better off just getting in line for the port-o-potties somewhere outside. I ended up spending so much time in line, I didn't have time to get my planned warmup in and I had to head straight to the start line after dropping off my bag to make sure I got into my starting corral before the 6:40 cut-off time. I got about a 47 second jog before the crowds were too thick to keep running. The only good thing is with 3 corrals this year instead of 2, I had no trouble getting up to the very front of the corral with time to spare. I saw my friend and co-worker Scott who is training for his 2nd Ironman and one of my primary goals was to beat him since I don't think I've ever been beaten in a race by a co-worker. I thought I would be able to beat him, but it wasn't a sure thing with my lack of training coming into the race.

I had my Garmin for the sole purpose of making sure that I ran my target pace for the first 2 miles of the race. After that I'm pretty much in a groove (or rut) and am locked into the pace I'm going to run and am not going to be making any major adjustments. Since I didn't really get a warmup in, I wanted to be around 6:00 pace for the first mile and then hold 5:50 - 5:55 pace for the first 8-9 miles and then pick it up if I could the last part of the race. I came up on mile 1 and the clock said 5:32 and everyone was freaking out, but the actual time was about 5:52 and the clocks at each mile were about 20 seconds off. I was running with Jena and felt relaxed and really good the first few miles.

I hit my first 5k at 5:54 pace. I had to make a conscious effort not to pick up the pace too much early since I was feeling well and wait until later in the race. I grabbed water and gatorade at a couple of the water stations early in the race because I wanted to make sure I was well hydrated and could finish the race strong. My second 5k split was 5:53 and I was feeling pretty good. Around mile 7, I felt like I was picking up my effort a little bit, but I was running with a group of abou 8 - 10 guys, most who were running the full marathon and it was easier just latching onto the pack. I threw in a little surge at the turn-a-round, a little before mile 9 and put a little gap between Jena and myself. At this point, I started to think that I might have a chance at a new PR and running a sub 1:16 and might be able to make a run at 1:15 if I could negative split the race and run low 5:30's my last 5k. My 3rd 5k split was 5:52.

Unfortunately between miles 9 and 10, all the gatorade and water I'd taken in started to bother my stomach a little bit. After I hit mile 10, I was dry heaving while I was running and I stopped for about 12 seconds to try to throw up and clear out my stomach but I only kept dry heaving and nothing came up. Jena had caught up with me a little before mile 10 and started to pull away and I was terrified that Scott was going to catch me while i was on the side of the road. 6 or 7 guys went by but I quickly got back onto pace and turned onto Allen Parkway with less than 3 miles to go. I could see Jena a little ways ahead, but I just couldn't seem to catch many people. My 4th 5k split was 5:52 (probably about 5:48 pace when I was actually running and not dry heaving on the side of the road) and I passed 2 guys and I was hoping to have a really fast last mile since there were a lot of people just ahead that seemed within striking distance. Unfortunately I just didn't have enough left to pick up the pace and it was all I could do to stay on pace and not drop off. I caught one last guy just before the final turn with a couple hundred meters to go but then he found his legs and started sprinting in and I couldn't stay with him. I crossed the line in 1:16:59 and I didn't realize how close I was to 1:17. I probably would have sprinted a little harder the last 50m if I knew but fortunately I came in under it.

Jena beat me by about 25 seconds, my friend Dan ran the race of his life and had a 3 minute PR and ran 1:13 and I managed to hold off Scott who ran a 1:18. After the race my quads were pretty beat up. I think the combination of running that hard for that long with the good weather and the race being pretty much on concrete for most of it was harder on my legs than any of my training. I was a little disappointed with the stomach issues and I think I could have run about 30 seconds faster without them. In hindsight I didn't need to drink so much fluid when I was well hydrated coming in and the weather was so cool. Being the uber-competitive person I am, I still felt a little disappointed at the end even though I hit my goal times because I think I could have had a legitimate shot at a new PR if I'd done things a little differently with a better warmup and limiting my fluid intake. Overall I was happy with the results and where I was with my fitness level with limited training and I was extremely happy that I had no injuries or discomfort after the race and I feel 100% healthy.

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Since the race my training has been going well. I took about a week and a half of easier running to recover and I'm back on pace to get up into the mid-60's for my weekly mileage. Last Monday I did a 400, 800, 1200, 1600, 1200, 800, 400 workout with about a 400m slow recovery and 800m after the 1600. My splits were 78, 2:38, 3:58, 5:27, 4:06, 2:40, 76. On Friday I ran a 2 x 4 mile tempo run with 5 minutes recovery. The weather was in the mid-70's and over 80% humidity and it was pretty miserable. My good weather goal times were run the first 4 miles at 5:45 - 5:50 pace and the 2nd 4 miles at 5:40 - 5:45 pace. With the warm weather I wanted avg 5:50 - 5:55 pace. My first 4 miles were 5:52, 5:46, 5:44, 5:45 and my second 4 were 5:45, 5:49, 5:50, 5:50. I'm feeling good about my next 1/2 marathon in 4 weeks, but the weather is going to be a crapshoot and I'll just have to wait and see how that turns out.

Finally healthy

2011-12-17T11:42:00.003-06:00

Over the past few months I've made some good progress and finally am pretty healthy and am starting to get back in shape again. I've been able to do full mileage and speedwork the last couple of months although I could tell my achilles and calf weren't really 100%. It didn't hurt, but it wasn't completely better yet. This last week I was able to do several runs where it really felt 100% and I didn't notice any discomfort or lingering issues. I've really been working hard on improving my hamstring flexibility and ankle mobility and I think has really contributed to the injury finally clearing up.

I've been able to get up to 55+ miles a week for the past few weeks and I had one week I hit 60 miles. I'm finally getting back in a little better shape and am feeling a little better about my workouts. Earlier this week I did 7 x 800 at 2:40 - 2:42 with a 1/4 mile jog at 7:45 pace between reps and this morning I did 18 miles with the last 6.5 at sub-6:05 pace. I have 4 weeks until the Houston 1/2 marathon and I think I'll be in good enough shape to run a sub 1:18. I'd really like to be under 1:17, but we'll see how everything goes the next few weeks. 6 weeks after the Houston 1/2 marathon is the Woodlands 1/2 marathon I'll be running in and trying to break 1:15.

5 weeks ago I ran a 10k race up in the Woodlands that one of my co-workers was the race director for and I ended up winning the race. I was a little hesitant to run it because my achilles was still giving me some problems and I didn't want to aggravate it, but I decided I would run the race as a tempo run and keep it to around 6:00 pace. When the race started, a couple of guys just took off and I let them go and settled into my pace and was in 5th place. I went through the first mile in 6:05 and the guys leading ran a sub 5:30 first mile. I just kept my pace steady and saw the guys start coming back to me and caught the leaders between mile 3 and 4 and took the lead a little before mile 4 and didn't look back. My time was a somewhat embarrassingly slow winning time of 37:40, but I think the course ended up being a little long. For a lot of the race we had to run on sidewalks or in a specific lane of the road and I imagine when the course was certified, they measured the shortest distance you could run and didn't measure it on the meandering sidewalks. My Garmin said I was running sub 6:00 pace for most of the race, but it didn't really matter too much since I wasn't running for time.

After the race, our family packed up the car and headed to San Antonio where my wife ran her first 1/2 marathon. Olivia and I got to see her in 5 spots on the course and she ran 1:57 and achieved her goal of breaking 2 hrs. It was extra impressive because the weather was pretty nasty that day and got up to over 80 degrees that day.

Sad News

2011-10-30T11:56:00.002-05:00

This morning I decided to retire....

No, not from running, but I decided to retire two pairs of my beloved Nike running shorts including my oldest (and favorite) pair of lime green shorts. I think I may have had the shorts since college or shortly thereafter and they have served me well. They were becoming a little too frayed and the elastic was losing its elasticity. The other shorts were some navy blue shorts that I wore for my PR marathon, but they are a little beyond their useful life and I didnt want to risk getting arrested for indecent exposure if I kept running in them. (My wife wouldn't let me post pictures of me in the shorts for the blog post)

I've been making some progress on recovering from my calf/achilles injury and I'm able to run fairly regularly and work on building my mileage back up. I've been doing a lot of work on improving my hamstring flexibility which seems to be taking some of the stress off of the calf and achilles. A few weeks ago it was feeling really good and I was running with no discomfort or pain and I think I got a little too excited and tried to ramp up a little too quickly. I hit 50 miles in a week and had one day of some relatively easy 800m repeats. By the end of the week I could tell I should have cut the last run or two a little short or taken a day off, but I was kind of stubborn and really wanted to hit 50 miles for the week. I've been traveling for 2 out of the 3 weeks since then so I've taken it a little easier and only been doing about 30 miles a week. I can run pretty much pain and discomfort free, but when I wake up in the mornings my achilles and calf often are pretty tight.

I'm running a 10k on Nov 12 that a co-worker is the race director for and I'm hoping to run it as a tempo run. The next day my wife will be running her 1st 1/2 marathon in the San Antonio Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon. I'm going to switch from the marathon to 1/2 marathon in January because I'm not going to be ready for a marathon by then. I received an invite to the Woodlands 1/2 marathon in March so my goal is to get healthy and go for a sub 1:15 in that race.

Finally, another blog update

2011-07-17T20:44:00.005-05:00

After a several month hiatus I decided it's finally time to write a blog update. About a month and a half ago I aggravated a nagging achilles injury and have been trying to get healthy to really start training for the fall races. For a couple of months my left achilles was bothering me, but it always seemed to loosen up and the tightness and discomfort would go away 1 - 2 miles into a run and it wasn't really hampering me. In early June I ran the Heights 5k and with a little less than a 1/4 mile to go, my achilles really flared up. I was close enough to the finish that I kept going, but I couldn't even jog normally to cool down after the race. I think I probably made a mistake wearing my super lightweight racing flats that weigh about 3 oz after not having worn them in a couple of months and not doing a lot of fast speedwork. Running a 5k without a lot of speedwork puts enough stress on my legs, but the lightweight flats have a really low heel and put a lot of extra stress on my calves and both of my calves felt pretty thrashed after the race. Next time I get back in racing shape I need to make sure I'm doing strides and/or shorter speedwork in those flats if I'm going to race in them. At one point, my achilles would hurt when I'd start walking after sitting on an airplane and not moving around for a few hours.

I went back to MSHC to get it treated and seemed to be making some progress, but I probably got a little too aggressive trying to get back into the swing of things and it's kept bothering me. We've done a couple of EPAT treatments which is a shock wave therapy that's basically like a mini jackhammer pulsing on my leg. It seems to be helping because my achilles feels a lot looser the week after the treatment and doesn't get real stiff and tight in the morning. I did a relatively easy 5 mile run last week and it still was pretty uncomfortable. I've talked quite a bit with Dr. Leist at MSHC and we did an scan of my stride and I'm going to try wearing my orthotics again.

A couple years ago I got orthotics because I thought they might help with some of my hamstring injuries, but once I started going to MSHC, we determined the root cause of my hamstring issues and so I quit wearing my orthotics. I don't remember the exact timing of when I stopped wearing the orthotics, but shortly after my hamstring problems cleared up, my achilles started bothering me. I used to wear stability shoes but when I was fitted for shoes a few years ago, they watched me run on a treadmill and said that I didn't have any ankle pronation and should be wearing neutral shoes. It also seems like this is about the time when I started getting injured after staying relatively injury free for a while. Even though I don't have visible ankle pronation, my foot pronates fairly significantly and this would put a lot of stress on the inside part of my lower calve which has the most scar tissue and problems. We are going to try either the orthotics or going back to more of a stability shoe to see if that helps clear up the problem.

If I'm going to be injured and miss running, I guess now is as good a time as any. The weather is miserably hot and there aren't a ton of races I'm missing right now. My job has been pretty busy the last couple of months and we have a healthy, happy 10 month old that seems to be starting to sleep through the night on a more regular basis. Now that I can get more regular sleep without regular nightly wakeup calls, if I can get my achilles healthy I should be able to get back to regular training. It's been a bummer not getting out to run with my friends and trying to work out on the elliptical and stationary bikes are so boring. I'll try to post an update in the next couple of weeks on my achilles and hopefully I'll be making some improvements.

Here are a few recent pics of us-

Daddy and Olivia - not in Houston

Family vacation in Colorado

Mmmmm.......Food

Taking it all in

Look what I found!!

TIR and other assorted races

2011-03-30T21:46:00.005-05:00

I realized I only have a few hours left to get my monthly blog update in before the end of March. Lately I've been torturing myself by running races in the heat and humidity of Houston.

Rodeo Run

About a month ago I ran the rodeo run and finished 12th overall in 36:00. It was warm, humid and windy and about the only good thing about the weather was that it was overcast and not sunny. I went in thinking I could run about 5:35 pace and hoped to negative split the race. I ran the first two miles in 11:00 and thought I was going to have a great race and then I hit the first hill. I had been running with about 4 guys, but they pulled away going up the hill and I could never catch them. I stayed about the same distance behind them through about 3 miles and then they started pulling away. When we hit the turnaround around mile 4, we were running straight into a headwind. Fortunately nobody caught me and I stayed ahead of the female winner, but it was a pretty miserable race. I hadn't done really done any speedwork since the marathon and I'd only be running 4 - 5 days a week and just wasn't in that great a shape.

Texas Independence Relay

The week after the Rodeo Run I ran the Texas Independence Relay, a 203 mile relay with an assorted cast of shady characters who were mostly fellow Kenyan Way runners including a couple of lawyers and a Cialis salesman. The race starts in Gonzales Texas which is west of Houston and finishes at the San Jacinto monument in Deer Park. Our team finished 4th overall in 20hrs and 55 minutes which works out to 6:11 pace and we beat the previous course record by over 20 minutes.

I ran 4 legs and a little over 21 miles. My first leg was the toughest leg of the race coming in just under 9 miles and had the most elevation gain. I started the leg at about 3:00 pm and I had a terrible headwind the first 4 miles. Then the hills began. I did manage a 5:40 mile for the final mile after I crested the hills and averaged 6:15 pace for my first leg. My second leg was around 8:00 pm and fortunately it was much shorter and just under 4 miles. It's interesting running along a dark highway when it is pitch black out and hoping there isn't some dead animal or pothole to step on, but I managed 5:48 pace on that leg. My third leg was pretty tough. We had slept in the van for a couple of hours and we woke up and I had the first leg from our van and was still a little groggy and my stomach wasn't feeling so hot after the filet of fish sandwich I'd eaten 2-1/2 hrs before. I think I started running about 2:00 am on this let When I was warming up, I knew that the sandwich was going to come up sometime soon so I ran enough hard strides before I started until I threw up. I figured it was better to lose it before i was on the clock instead of during the run. I started passing people on this leg and I lost count but probably passed between 11 and 14 teams on this 4 mile leg and it came out to a 5:51 pace. My last leg was a 4.4 mile leg in Pasadena and I busted out my superman costume for the team to enjoy. Unfortunately I couldn't find any pictures to post but if Spiller is reading this I'm sure he can picture it with his photographic memory. I didn't want to get shot so I ran as fast as I could and finished up with a 5:41 avg on the last leg. It was a fun race and we had a blast.

Law Week Fun Run

This race wasn't very fun even though it claims to be a fun run. I'm tempted to sue the race director for false advertising. I had played golf out in the sun for a good chunk of the day before the race and didn't stay ver well hydrated and then I woke up the morning of the race and it was warm and humid. I think it was close to 75 degrees and 80% humidity when the race started. I got to the starting line and saw Bill Blancett, Jose Lara and Colin Carroll and thought I would probably finish 4th. My goal was to go for 5:30 pace and I thought I was in better shape than the Rodeo run and I could probably handle that pace for 5 miles. The race started on the edge of downtown and ran out Allen Parkway to Shepherd and came back and finished near the edge of downtown. I hit the first mile right on pace at 5:30 and was in 4th place. Bill and Jose had taken off and Colin was hanging back a little bit. John Yoder and another guy were a couple seconds back. I thought I kept my pace pretty well in mile two, but I only hit about 5:50 for mile two but that was probably the toughest mile of the race. The turnaround was between miles 2 and 3 and John was right on my tail and the other guy was about 5 seconds back. John passed me on the uphill right after the turnaround, but after we crested the hill, I passed him back and pulled a little bit ahead. I thought I was going to drop him there and I knew that if I could stay even with him through 4 miles then I could probably outkick him. As we heading back to downtown, our various fan club members would see us and we'd alternately hear- go John, go Geoff. John seemed to be falling a couple steps back and then somebody told him to go after me and he picked it up again and passed me going up the next hill and I just couldn't reel him in after it. He was within striking distance and I even thought I might have a chance to get him with a mile to go, but I was beat and couldn't make up any ground. He ended up beating me and I finished 5th overall in a painful 28:45 or something close to it.

I'm going to run the 4 the park race on Saturday and hopefully will break my 5:30 pace target if the weather conditions cooperate. My training has been a little more consistent the past couple of weeks, but since I don't really have any major races I'm training for I haven't felt that guilty about skipping a run or two each week so I can have some more time to hang out with Olivia. She's almost 7 months now and is a lot of fun except when she keeps waking up in the middle of the night.

What's happening?!?

Just being cute for the camera

Olivia in the BOB

After the Houston Marathon

Buffalo Wallow 6k - 8th overall

2011-02-20T15:43:00.002-06:00

I always loved running cross country in high school and college and I enjoy running the Buffalo Wallow race. It was a tough day and I wasn't quite in top racing form, but I survived the race. I had a pretty hectic race and my training wasn't the greatest the past week and I did an relatively easy 6 miles the day before. I wasn't sure I was going to run the race because my wife was feeling a little under the weather and was still in bed at 8:00 and I either had to wake her up to take care of our daughter or let her sleep. She ended up getting up at 8:10 so I decided I'd head down to the race (started at 9:00) and hopefully it wouldn't be too late to register. I got there about 8:30, registered and did an abbreviated warmup. The course had changed slightly due to the new pedestrian bridge across the bayou and it seemed like it might have been a tad longer than past years. The footing was definitely a little softer and the course was slower than past years.

At the starting line I saw Colin Carroll and Vaughn Gibbs who I knew would both probably beat me and a few other guys I didn't really know. The course is 3 laps around a ~2k loop. I probably started out too fast since I was right on the tail of the top 5 or 6 guys about 1/2 a mile into the race. During the first lap, the top 8 guys split out into 2 packs of 4 and the top 4 guys pulled ahead. I stayed with the 2nd group of four the first lap and the 1st 1/3 of the 2nd lap and then the other three guys pulled a little ahead. I stayed in fairly close contact through the 2nd lap, but I was hurting by the end of the 2nd lap and still had a lap to go. At that point, I didn't think I was going to catch any of the guys in front of me unless they completely blew up and I was just hoping to not throw up and not to have anyone else catch me. Fortunately I achieved those goals and finished in 22:34. I was about 30 seconds behind the 5th place guy and I think if I were feeling a little fresher coming in and had run a little smarter early in the race I should have been able to finish 5th.

I'm planning on running the Rodeo Run 10k next weekend and then running in the Texas Independence relay the week after that with some fellow Kenyan Way runners.

Houston Marathon - 2:49:14

2011-01-31T20:48:00.002-06:00

I was really happy with my race in tough conditions today. The temperature averaged about 65 degrees during the race with light rain and sprinkles and lots of humidity. I finished 9th in my age group, 39th male and 55th overall.

I knew early Sunday morning that with a mid-60's temperature and lots of humidity my 2:45 goal wasn't going to be happening, but I told myself I was going to run a smart race and see how it turned out. Sean had signed me up to be part of the ABB team challenge and the biggest benefit to that was a private port-o-potty area inside the GRB. I guess not that many people knew about it, but it was almost as good as being one of the elite racers. 30 minutes before the start of the race I probably only waited about 30 seconds instead of standing in line behind 20 people.

Before the race with the humid and rainy conditions I decided not to even wear a singlet since I never wear a shirt when I train in these conditions. It would just be added weight and give me additional chafing so I threw it in the bag before I headed to the start line. I only headed out about 20 minutes before the race and got into the starting corral about 10 minutes before the start. I was a little worried I was going to be able to get up near the front because it was packed and I was having to squeeze through the 4 hr marathon pace group, but I finally made it up to the line just before the opening prayer and national anthem.

When the gun went off, my plan was to take it easy the few few miles and not go out any faster than 6:25 pace the first 2 miles and gradually work up to 6:20 pace by the end of the 1st half. I was right on target the first few miles, but really struggled to pick up the pace much. I was pretty consistent with my splits the first part of the race and my first four 5k splits were 20:06, 20:09, 19:57, 19:48 and I hit the halfway point at 1:24:15.

After the 1/2 marathoners turned around just before mile 9, the course got pretty lonely. One guy blew by me between mile 9 and 10, but I don't think any other marathoners passed me from mile 8 on. Between mile 9 and 10 was pretty rough because I was all by myself, I had just gotten passed and I realized I was only about a 1/3 of the way through the race and I started to think about how much I didn't enjoy marathons, and how bad the weather was. Pretty quickly I decided I needed to focus and quit thinking negative thoughts or this would quickly turn into a disaster. I caught a couple of guys before we turned onto Main and gradually started catching a few more people between miles 10 and 13.

I felt really good at the halfway point and could see Andrew and Ryan from the Kenyan Way just ahead of me. I kept picking a few people off, but I was all by myself going up the Westpark bridge. Last year I had seen myself on tv and I looked horrible at that point, but I felt a lot better this year. The race seemed to be going by a lot quicker and was more enjoyable than in the past. Maybe it's because I didn't go out too hard and end up in bad shape midway through. Suzanne and Olivia came out and saw me just before mile 17. Between 17 and 18 I finally caught Andrew and Ryan and went by them on Tanglewood. I think I got a little too excited as I was catching several people and I thought that with about 9 miles to go I could start picking the pace up and hammer it in to the finish and PR. It was a great plan until I got to mile 19 and realized that I probably wasn't going to keep that pace the rest of the way.

I got into Memorial Park and by this point the field had really thinned out and I could see a couple people up ahead, but I wasn't catching many people anymore. I did make it past the medical tent at mile 22 that I had stopped at the last 2 years to get my hamstrings stretched. I didn't even really notice it this year as I was just focused on trying to not fall off pace too much and make it to the next water stop. Running down Allen Parkway was tough, but I caught 1 woman in the middle of Allen Parkway and 2 guys right at mile 25 as we were heading into downtown. My 20k - 30k 5k splits were the fastest part of my race @ 19:37 and 19:28. My 30 - 40k splits were 20:11 and 20:43. I was slowing down, but I don't think I had any miles slower than 6:45 during the race.

The last mile down Lamar seemed like the longest mile ever. I could see the GRB in the distance and it just wasn't getting any closer. The guy ahead of me looked like he was at least 45 seconds ahead and I didn't have a chance of catching him. I could tell that I was kind of dehydrated and on the verge of cramping, but I kept pushing through. Finally I saw the flag that I thought was the mile 26 marker and I planned to really kick it in when I hit that point. The flag was actually the 1/4 mile to go mark and I tried to pick up the pace and immediately I felt a twinge in my left hamstring as it started to cramp, but it went away when I settled back into my pace. With 150 - 200 meters to go, I made the final turn and tried to start kicking it in and was rewarded with cramps in both of my hamstrings and my left calf. I managed to limp through the last bit and finished at 2:49:14. I was a little under 2 minutes off my PR, but considering the weather conditions, I think this was the best marathon I've run.

2 Days until the marathon

2011-01-28T14:48:00.002-06:00

The Houston Marathon is almost here and I'm about as ready as I think I can be. I've had several really good workouts over the last few weeks that were good confidence builders and I feel as healthy as I've ever been going to the starting line of a marathon. Last week after the Wado 800's on Monday, I did a 3 x 5k workout on Wednesday and nailed it. I took 5 minutes rest between the 5k's and I averaged 6:07 pace the first 5k, 5:51 pace the 2nd 5k and 5:39 pace the last one. I've been running fairly easy and have been tapering since then. I got a massage Wednesday evening and have today off to relax and take it easy.

Hopefully the weather will cooperate on Sunday morning so I have a shot at fast times. They are predicting rain on Saturday and Sunday and low temperatures in the mid to upper 50's. I don't particularly mind the rain and I would be fine with those temperatures in the rain or if it is cloudy, but if the rain passes through and it clears off and is in the upper 50's it could be tough to run a good time as it gets warmer throughout the race.

Sometime Sunday I'll post an update on how my race went.

Wado 800's

2011-01-17T21:56:00.002-06:00

After Olivia woke up 3 times last night and I was up for 30 minutes around 4:00 am, I decided to sleep in and do a workout at lunch instead of the planned morning workout. I decided to do Sean's version of the Yasso 800's which is 10 x 800 @ goal marathon time (2:45 marathon goal = 2 min 45 sec 800) with 1 minute rest. A couple of my faster co-workers who I often run with were heading out the door so I ran 2 miles of my warmup with them and then peeled off to do the workout. My splits were 2:44, 2:44, 2:43, 2:44, 2:43, 2:45, 2:43, 2:44, 2:40, 2:39. The even numbered legs were into the breeze which is why I think they were about 1 second slow on average except for the last one. It felt good to get a good workout in after Saturday's run to forget.

2 weeks until the marathon

2011-01-15T09:57:00.003-06:00

My training has been going pretty well the last couple weeks, up until this morning that is.

Last Saturday I ran a 24 mile run and knocked it out of the park. I ran about 24.2 miles in 2:45 and ran 7 miles at about a 5:57 pace for part of the run and I ended up at 75 miles for the week. It was my last chance to get a very long run in before the marathon and I wanted a good one for a confidence booster if nothing else. One of the best parts about the run is that my legs felt strong the entire time. I wasn't in pain or agony and my hamstrings which have given me fits in years past felt great. I feel like I'm going into the marathon with strong legs for the first time so who knows how fast I can run. In the past I would usually cramp up pretty bad and end up sitting on the couch most of the day moaning about how much my legs hurt. I don't think I'd ever run this long and had my legs feel this good afterwards. I got a massage Saturday evening which helped with the recovery and I soaked in an epsom salt and apple cider vinegar bath for a while. One of the massage therapists I had seen in the past had told me about the benefits of it and how it helps the healing process and pulls toxins out of the body. I googled it to see if there was any truth to it and it seems like there is and I really felt good on Sunday.

The day after my 24 miler I ran 8.25 miles and averaged about 7:15 pace and finished up the run with a couple 7:00 miles. Usually after a long run, I would slog through 4 or 5 miles at a 7:45 - 8:00 pace but I really felt good which was encouraging. I tried to do an easier speed workout on Monday and I planned to run 5 x 3/4 mile @ 5:50/mile pace and then jog a 1/4 mile between but after 2 sets my legs told me I didn't need to be doing a speed workout so I jogged the rest of the run spent some extra time stretching and working on my conditioning exercises.

Because of the cold weather Wednesday, I postponed my hard workout until Thursday evening. My plan was to run 3 x 5k with 5 minutes rest with the first at ~6:10 pace, the 2nd at 5:55 pace and the third at 5:40 pace. I did the workout on a treadmill and I made it through the first 2 on pace before cutting it short. My calf was starting to tighten up on me - probably from running a little differently on the treadmills vs. outside - and I was bored out of my mind running on the treadmill so I cooled down and called it a day. I ran a relatively easy 8 miles friday afternoon and then had to drag myself out of bed this morning for a terrible run.

I was exhausted this morning and Olivia woke up 3 times last night - once for her feeding and two other times she just woke up and needed to be rocked back to sleep. If this weren't the last long run I was doing before the marathon, I would have turned the alarm off and slept in. I was dragging this morning and really struggled to stay with the group and I kept falling back 10 or 15 seconds and then I'd catch back up at the water stops. I probably only averaged about 7:30 pace for the day and I just couldn't go any faster. I'm not sure if the Thursday evening workout and Friday afternoon run just left me worn out or what happened. I didn't eat as much yesterday as I usually do and I didn't eat anything before the run so maybe I was just low on energy. I'm not overly concerned about it and I'll just put it behind me and try to get in one more good week of training this week.

I'm toying with running the Rockets 5K next weekend but not sure about it. I ran a 4 mile race and won it a couple weeks before Boston in 2009 and ran what was probably my best marathon. We'll see how I'm feeling and I'll ask Sean what he thinks. I'm guessing he'll tell me I'm an idiot to run it a week before the marathon but we'll see.

Back in the swing of things

2011-01-05T21:22:00.003-06:00

I've been back to running for almost a week and am finally feeling like things are clicking again. Today was the first day that my legs weren't sore/achy/tired and I felt smooth and relaxed the entire run. If everything goes as planned the next 3 days, I should be over 75 miles for the week. I haven't made it out to any of the morning workouts in the past week because I've still been battling a little bit of a head cold and have just really needed the extra sleep, especially with the extra mileage.

This morning I went in to see my doctor because I was still having issues with my ears stopping up and I'd finished my antbiotics and hadn't really seemed to improved much. He looked in my ears for about 5 seconds and said that I never had an ear infection and I had been misdiagnosed. He said it was extremely rare for adults to ever get ear infections, but he did say that I had inner ear trauma and the eustachian tube on my left side was plugged which was what was causing all the pressure to build up. He told me to take sudafed and use afrin nasal spray and tilt my head and that should clear up the blockage.

Today I ran 11 miles total with an 8 mile tempo run at 5:58 pace. It was a little slower than some of my previous tempo runs, but it was 72 degrees out and I'm still easing back into it a little this week with the high mileage I'm doing. It was a good workout other than some major inner thigh chafing. I'll need to break out the vaseline for the rest of my runs this week.

Yesterday I ran an easy 7 miles at 7:10 pace. Monday I did a fartlek workout with 5 x 800 @ 2:55 - 3:00 and 1/4 mile recovery at 7:10 - 7:15 pace for a medium-hard workout. Sunday I ran 9.5 miles in 68 minutes so I'm at 36 miles so far this week. The first couple of days back to running, my hips and glutes felt really sore and I just felt really tight all over, but everything seems to have loosened up and feels good. My achilles seems to be kind of stiff first thing in the morning, but it felt fine by midday and didn't bother me at all during the run and my hamstrings have felt great the past couple months which never seemed to happen in my past marathon training. The last couple of years I would run with a tube of Ben Gay to put on my legs during the long runs when they started hurting so I could make it through the runs.

I'd dying to get out and run a race soon. I haven't raced since the 1/2 marathon in October (if you even call that racing) and I tend to burn out with lots and lots of training with no racing. I was really struggling with motivation before I got sick so it was easy to take a little time off, but I think it helped me refocus and I'm really motivated to get the most out of this week and the next two before I really taper for the marathon.

A bit under the weather

2010-12-29T12:22:00.003-06:00

Unfortunately I've been a bit under the weather and had to take an unplanned break in my training. About 1-1/2 weeks ago I finished a 70 mile week and thought that I was going to have a good shot at doing about four 70 - 75 mile weeks before I started to taper for the Houston marathon. My training was going well and I had some really good workouts and I was feeling really good about my training. A little over a week ago I started to come down with a cold the day before we left to visit my parents for Christmas and I've been under the weather ever since and haven't run in about a week. I was pretty congested and felt generally miserable with flu-like aches. I had been looking forward to doing some high elevation and hill running for a week in New Mexico, but I spend most of the time resting instead. We flew back to Houston on Monday and I literally thought one of my eardrums might burst from all the pressure on the descent. My left ear had stopped up so bad and the pressure in my ear didn't go away for over 12 hours after we landed. I went to the doctor on Tuesday and was told that I had ear infections in both ears so now I'm on antibiotics and hopefully I will be feeling better shortly.

I also went to the podiatrist yesterday because I had something bothering me on the bottom of my foot that was getting increasingly annoying and he told me I had a good sized wart on my foot right behind my toes. He burned it off and gave me some topical medicines that will hopefully prevent it from reforming and I'm supposed to go back in for a check on it the week before the marathon. My foot's been a little sore today and I'm hoping to get a run in tomorrow and do a semi-long run with the Kenyan Way on Friday and ramp my training back up for a couple of weeks.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a has a happy new year.

Need to update the blog more

2010-12-06T22:26:00.002-06:00

It's been a busy month and I haven't done a great job keeping up with the blog. My training is coming along reasonably well, but I really haven't gotten my mileage up as high as I really should. I've been doing about 60 miles a week, but with a soon to be 3 month old, it's been harder to take the time to get the additional miles in. My long runs and hard workouts have been going fairly well so that has been encouraging. I ran 18 miles on Saturday and averaged 7:00 pace. It was a pretty miserable run the first 7 or 8 miles and I was struggling some just to stay with the group, but from about mile 9 on I finally woke up or started feeling better and had a good finish to the run. Suzanne commented to me this morning that after my long runs I didn't seem as useless all day or complain as much about my legs being in pain as I have in years past. I do feel like they are stronger/healthier which is a good feeling going into the last 8 weeks until the marathon.

I was exhausted from a long weekend so I didn't try to get up to run hills this morning and did a speed workout at lunch instead. I ran a 5 x 1 mile workout with an easy 1/4 mile jog between which worked out to a little over 2 minutes recovery after each one. I didn't really know how fast I would run them, but I went into the workout with a goal of being sub 5:40 on the first and then between 5:30 - 5:35 for the rest. The weather was cool and felt good for a workout. After a 2 mile warmup, strides, drills and some stretching I started the workout. My splits were 5:34, 5:29, 5:25, 5:25, 5:22. It was tough, but a good workout and I got about 9 miles total in on the day.

I'd like to find a good race sometime in the next 5 weeks for a tune up before the marathon. I had wanted to run the Dallas/White Rock 1/2 marathon this past weekend but had a conflict come up and I couldn't make it. Life with our daughter has been lots of fun and she's been a happy and easy baby. Here are a few pictures of her. Suzanne won't let me post any pictures of her diaper explosions, but her are a few nice ones of her.

Last week of training

2010-11-07T15:09:00.002-06:00

Fortunately my training has been going fairly well since the 1/2 marathon and I'm back into the swing of things and had some good workouts this week. Last Sunday, on Halloween, I did my long run and ran 14 miles early Sunday morning. I felt pretty good and averaged about 6:53 pace. The weather was nice in the mid-50's and I only had one water break at the midway point of the run.

Monday morning I made it out to the Kenyan Way hills workout. The weather was much warmer - 70 degrees and humid and we had a 5 x 1000m workout with two big uphills on each 1000. The first one was a little slow at 3:40 as I was still getting warmed up, but the next 4 were 3:30, 3:26, 3:26, 3:25. I think the times were similar to the last time I had run this workout, but somebody commented that the weather was better the last time we had run the workout. I did a total of about 8 miles on the day.

Tuesday - ran an easy 5 miles and spent a while doing stretching and conditioning work after the run.

Wednesday - Met Dan at the park for a progressive run at 5:00 am. After a 3.5 mile warmup, The goal was to do 6 miles starting at 6:45 and dropping 15 seconds a mile and finishing at 5:30. We were right on pace until the sub 6:00 miles. We hit the next to last mile in 5:52 and I finished the last mile in about 5:37. It was a tough workout, but went fairly well. After a mile cooldown I finished with about 10.5 miles.

Thursday - I ran a relaxed 7 miles with a co-worker at lunch. Neither of us had a watch, but the weather was nice and we probably were under 7:00 pace

Friday - no running. I went to MSHC for a treatment on my achilles which has been a little tight since I ran the Hillie Billie relay. It doesn't hurt while I run, but it just feels a little tighter and takes a while to loosen up and I don't want it to turn in to anything major

Saturday - 18.5 miles

I had a really good long run with nice weather - low to mid 40's. Andrew, Jena, Dan and I broke away from the rest of the pack midway through the run and we had a good run. I finished with a couple of quick miles on the cloverleafs and averaged about 6:50 pace for the run. I think that is the longest run that I've done this marathon training season.

Houston Half - a race to forget - 1:22:12

2010-10-24T16:08:00.003-05:00

72 degrees, 93% humidity. Ughh. I knew I wasn't going to run a particularly fast time in these conditions, but I didn't think it was going to be quite so bad. I planned to go out in 5:55 - 6:00 pace and I thought I could hold that pace. I started out at what I thought was a fairly easy pace and thought all the people going out really hard were going to crash and burn. 3 miles into the race I was right at 18:00 and I knew I was going to struggle to hold 6:00 pace. My legs felt real sluggish and I guess the 10 mile race two weeks ago, the Hillie Billie relay, and all my training caught up with me. I caught a few guys by mile 7, but I was running 6:10 plus miles and pretty much quit racing hard at that point. I didn't want to get injured and I wasn't going to have a stellar time or place. If Suzanne and Olivia hadn't been coming down to the finish, I probably would have just stopped at Memorial Park and jogged home. I had passed Tom King and John Hill, but they both passed me back and I just didn't really have the motivation to try to push it and stay with them. Andrew Sharenson caught me shortly after the turnaround too and had a pretty good race in these conditions. The last 5 miles I was just running it like the end of a Kenyan Way long run except usually on those runs I finish with my fastest miles instead of my slowest. I finished in just over 1:22. It was an ugly day, but I got a decent training run out of it and didn't injure myself. I was able to do a pretty good job grabbing fluids at the aid stations which I always seem to struggle with and need some practice for the marathon in January. I'm not sure what my next race will be, but I'll try to run a race or two in November and December before the marathon in January.

Hillie Billie Relay - 1st overall - 10/16

2010-10-24T15:20:00.002-05:00

I went up to the hill country to run in the inaugural Hillie Billie relay which was put on by the same people as the Texas Independence Relay. The Hillie Billie is a 70 mile relay and I joined Jace Heuring, Dan Gollins, Gabe Gomez and Katherine Marshall. They stagger the start times to try to get all the teams to finish around the same time and we started 30 minutes behind the next team and they told us they expected us to take the overall lead 3/4 of the way through the race.

My first leg was a 2.4 mile leg and I decided to wear racing flats. It was still fairly early and not too hot yet and I cruised my first leg at 5:35 pace. My second leg was a 4.9 mile leg and I didn't really get a warmup in because I was in the port-a-potty and Dan cruised his leg faster than I thought and I had to scramble and get out there for the exchange. My first mile was a little slower, but once I got warmed up I started cruising and caught a 4 people on that leg and averaged 5:47 pace. At the end of that leg my calves were pretty tight and I decided I should probably just stick with training shoes for the rest of the runs. The rest of the team was running great and picked off a ton of runners.

The third leg was pretty brutal. I had a 4 mile leg and I started about 2:00 pm with not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was in the low 80's. The first 3 miles had a decent amount of uphill in them and I was averaging about 6:12 pace the first 3 miles, but I did catch several more runners and the last mile was mostly downhill and I ended up averaging 6:02 pace for the 4 miles. My legs were really tired and I spend quite a while foam rolling and using my stick on my calves. Fortunately my hamstrings and quads felt great and weren't giving me any issues.

I really wasn't looking forward to my last leg. We were already well in the lead and it was hot and very sunny out and I was tired and my legs weren't feeling too well. After moaning and complaining for a while I finally got out there and just cruised the last leg at 6:27 pace. I started the leg at 4:00 pm and it was the next to last leg in the race. My first 2 miles were mostly uphill and were at about 6:45 pace, but then I got a couple of downhill miles to finish and was a little under 6:15 pace for the last 2-1/2 miles. We won the race overall by about an hour and it was a lot of fun running with everyone on the team. I think our finishing time was about 7:24 for the 70 miles.

10 for Texas - 1st overall, PR

2010-10-09T20:25:00.002-05:00

I PR'd for 10 miles in 56:58 and won the race by a little over 2 minutes. This was my first race I'd run since the Boston marathon and I wasn't really sure what shape I was in. I knew the weather was good and I'd had a couple good workouts this week and I thought I had a good shot at running under 58 minutes. 2 yrs ago I ran 57:48 at this race and I was hoping to beat that time.

The race almost got off to a bad start as I had to make a mad scramble to get to the start in time. I got up to the Woodlands a few minutes later than I intended so by the time I hit the port-a-john and got a 15 minute warmup in, I had less than 15 minutes to the start. I was at my car putting my singlet on and changing into my flats and I had planned on wearing my orthotics in my flats so I hadn't brought insoles for my racing flats. When I put the orthotics in, they were too big for the racing flats I had and were bunching up in the toe box and there was no way I could wear them. I thought I had worn them in April in these flats, but maybe I was mistaken. I just laced on my racing flats and tried to tighten them up and hoped I wouldn't get too many blisters. I had a pretty hard run over to the start and made it there right as they were starting the national anthem. As soon as it ended I hopped over the barrier into the corral and looked around to see who was racing. I didn't see anyone there that I knew was definitely faster than me. I saw John Spiller and he made a comment that he half expected to see me come running up and join the pack 1/4 mile into the race like I have a tendency to do on the Saturday long runs. He really wasn't all that far off.

The gun went off and we took off and I was basically in the lead from the very start. I felt relaxed and cruised the first mile in 5:47. At one mile there were 2 guys who were right with me. We cruised the next couple of miles as we started going a little uphill and after mile 3 I decided to start pushing it a little harder and started putting a gap between myself and them. We had a pace car and half of the Woodlands cycling club (or so it seemed) escorting us. There was one guy with an orange vest on that stayed with me the entire time and I guess he was assigned to staying with the race leader and then at various miles some of the other bikers would peel off. They must have been assigned certain miles to cover in case somebody needed medical attention so they rode out with the pace car until they got to their mile. When I got to mile 4, one of the bikers told me that I had a 10 second gap on the two guys behind me and at mile five I was over 25 seconds ahead. I was feeling good and pretty much knew I had the race won as long as I didn't get hurt or just completely blow up at the end of the race. After mile 1, the markers were way off and I just had to rely on my Garmin. Mile 2 was about 40 seconds after where it should have been and I'm not sure if any of the other mile markers were really in the right place. My Garmin showed that I was at 29:03 at mile 5 and after that it is mostly downhill to flat the rest of the race.

Between 5 and 6 I started picking up the pace and trying to hammer it and I ran a 5:32 for the 6th mile. I was cruising the rest of the way and was low 5:30's and high 5:20's the rest of the way in. When I got to mile 8 it seemed like the mile marker was about in the right place and that I really had 2 miles to go and I was at about 45:50 so if I ran 5:35's for the last 2 miles I would break 57 minutes. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to hold the pace for the last 2 miles, but I was going to try. Mile 9 was still mostly downhill so I was able to cruise and run it in just under 5:30. The last mile starts with a hill up a bridge over Lake Woodlands. I felt pretty good going up the bridge, but when I got to the top I knew that I still had ~3/4 of a mile to go and my legs were starting to feel a little tired. I just pushed it hard and once I got back into the market street area I knew I was almost done and started kicking it in. When I came around the last curve I could see the clock and it was at about 56:50 so I sprinted in and finished at 56:58.

My splits according to my Garmin were 5:47, 5:52, 5:56, 5:48, 5:42, 5:32, 5:31, 5:33, 5:29, 5:29. My Garmin splits were about 20 seconds short of the finish, but with the various turns and curves and lots of trees I'm not surprised it was a little off. I'm not sure what part of the race was off the most but it was ~2 seconds/mile. I was thrilled with the win and a 50 second PR and excited about running some more races this fall.

Last weeks training

2010-10-09T20:01:00.002-05:00

Sunday - 6 miles around park in evening. Not real exciting run. I was pretty bored and was planning on doing 7-8, but just wasn't feeling any motivation and cut it a mile short and headed home.

Monday - 12 x 2 minutes hard with 1 minute recovery jog. I was pretty tired after waking up a couple of times to get Olivia back to sleep so I skipped the morning hill workout and ran at lunch. The weather was spectacular and I had a great workout. After a 2-1/4 mile warmup I did 12 x 2 minutes hard with 1 minute recovery on part of the 10 for Texas race course. I didn't have a Garmin, but I felt like I was really cruising. The first 6 were somewhat uphill and the last 6 were downhill - similar to how the race will be.

Tuesday - day off

Wednesday - 5 mile tempo run, 8.25 miles total. I planned to do a 4 mile tempo at ~5:50 pace to simulate part of my race pace without pushing it too hard. The temperature was about 76 out, but the humidity was down. I felt so good on the 4th mile and I was going to have a 2 mile cooldown that I decided to extend my tempo run an extra mile and only run a 1 mile cooldown and get back a little quicker. My splits for the tempo were 5:58, 5:54, 5:48, 5:47, 5:43.

Thursday - 7 miles easy - 50:30. Ran a nice easy recovery day with a coworker at lunch.

Friday - 4 miles easy - no watch. Ran an easy 4 at the park and then went to MSHC for treatment with Dr. Leist. my hamstrings and calves have really been feeling good and haven't been bothering me when I run so we are just working on improving some of my flexibility in my hamstrings and calves.

The weather has really been great this week with lows in the 50's and lower humidity and no rain. I wish it was like this all the time.

What a difference the weather makes

2010-10-03T21:18:00.002-05:00

This past week we finally had a cold front move through Houston and the weather has been so much more enjoyable and has definitely been better for running. It finally dropped below 65 degrees for the first time in over 4 months. Yesterday I ran 16 miles at a 6:50 average and I felt great. After the first mile I averaged 6:45 for the next 15. Andrew, Jena and Sam were there and we broke away from the pack after about a mile and started cruising. We ran down to Hermann Park and the zoo and a couple laps around Rice University and headed back to the base. We were doing low 6:40's around rice and sub-6:40 pace the last 4 miles. It felt really good to have a good long run. I didn't even feel like we were pushing the pace that hard, but I could definitely feel it in my hips from cruising that many miles at a fast clip. I guess that's a good thing since all my therapy seems to be doing good. I didn't ever feel anything in my hamstring or achilles on the run.

Earlier in the week I had done a hill workout on Monday and we ran five 1000m repeats on the cloverleafs with a couple of good uphills in each one. I was able to negative split each one and ran them in 3:29, 3:28, 3:28, 3:26, 3:24.

Wednesday I ran a progressive run in the evening after work. It was cooler than it had been and the humidity was down, but the temperature was still in the low 80's in the evening. I ran 7:25, 6:55, 6:38, 6:19, 5:58, 5:42, 5:35. I was hoping to hit 5:30 on the last mile, but I was pleased with the workout. Progressive runs by myself are pretty tough, it was a little warm out, and I was pretty tired heading into the workout. Olivia's been cutting into my sleep a little bit.

Today I ran an easy 6 miles at the park in just over 42 minutes. I'm planning on running one of the 10 mile races next weekend and I'll probably run the 10 for Texas up in the Woodlands. I haven't run any races since the Boston Marathon and I really don't know what kind of shape I'm in. I think I can run it in 58 minutes if the weather cooperates. It will be a good test of where my fitness is at. Olivia has been doing well and I'll try to post a few more pictures this week.

Olivia has arrived, back to running some

2010-09-19T21:09:00.004-05:00

Our daughter Olivia will be 2 weeks old on Tuesday and she's been a bundle of joy in our lives. She has put a little bit of a crimp in my running lately though. It's tough making it out there for all the workouts when I'm not getting my regular sleep. I'm working on getting back to running every day and I've had a couple of good workouts over the past week. Yesterday I made it out for the Saturday morning Kenyan Way workouts and ran 15.5 miles at a 7:10 average pace. I felt pretty good and finished the run with the last several miles being my fastest. On Wednesday I had a pretty good speed workout too in the evening at Memorial Park. My achilles and hamstring have been doing better too and they have improved enough that I don't need weekly treatments on them anymore. Here's a few pics of Olivia-

Training still going well, no baby yet

2010-09-04T16:59:00.003-05:00

I've had another pretty solid week of training and have felt really good. Our baby hasn't arrived yet although it should be any day now. It looks like maybe she has my procrastination skills.

Monday - day off

Tuesday - 8.5 miles at lunch. It was really hot and humid but I saw one of my co-workers in the locker room about to head out so I ran about 5 miles with him and then added on some more on my own. 8.5 miles in 62 minutes.

Wednesday - Kenyan Way speed workout. 2.75 mile warmup, 1/2/3/3/2/1 workout with 1 minute hard, 1 minute recovery jog, 2 min hard, etc... Ran the workout with Claudio and had a good workout. We were moving at a pretty good clip and I had a strong workout. I covered about 3.5 miles during the workout and then did about a 2.5 mile cooldown.

Thursday - 8.6 miles at lunch. I didn't wear a watch so I don't know what kind of pace I was running, but I ran a 6.9 mile loop and a 1.7 mile loop at a recovery pace. I was a little tired from the Wednesday workout, but I got through it and I'm feeling good from an injury perspective and my achilles and hamstring have been feeling pretty good.

Friday - 8+ miles. I went in for a treatment on my achilles in the morning and Dr. Leist said it was looking a lot better and he didn't need to see me for my achilles for 2 weeks instead of my usual weekly treatment which is a good sign. I'm going to go back in a week to get my hamstring treated since they really haven't done anything with it for a while, but I'm definitely showing signs of improvement. I went out for about 8 miles around Memorial park around 5:30 pm. To break up some of the monotony of running laps on the main trail I ran out on the path to 610 along Memorial and then over to Woodway and back through the park and then ran about 20 minutes on the Ho Chi Minh bike trails. It's kind of interesting running back in the woods on the mountain bike trails with lots of twists and turns and ups and downs. I didn't run too hard since I was doing a long run in another 12 hours. I averaged about 7:25 - 7:30 pace and ran for 61 minutes.

Saturday - 16.4 miles - Kenyan Way long run. I had a solid run today and felt pretty good. I was running late like usual but fortunately the group didn't start as early as I thought they might so I ran into them at the corner of Jackson Hill and Feagin and didn't have to try to catch up with them. Unfortunately I lost my car key somewhere on the run. I had dropped my key into the back pocket on my shorts and it came out somewhere on the run. I hadn't realized that my shorts had a regular key pocket so I put it in the back pocket which is really for energy gels or something like that. I realized about 8 miles in that I didn't have my key and I had no idea where it came out. I didn't push the pace too hard until we got into the park and I was feeling pretty good and started picking up the pace. Sam and Andrew had already taken off earlier from the group, but I wasn't sure I was ready to pick up the pace that early so I stayed with the pack. When I was running quicker around the park, Rob caught up with me and was doing a few miles at his marathon pace so I ran a couple ~6:45 miles with him. I backtracked over the first couple miles of the route and looked for my lost key but didn't see it so I had to run back home and add on a couple more miles. I had been planning on doing about 15, but I was happy to get over 16 and my legs felt pretty good. My garmin battery is low now, but I think I did the 16.4 miles in about 1:58 and averaged ~7:10 pace or so.

If our baby doesn't decide to show up in the next 2 days and I get my Sunday and Monday runs in, I should hit 65+ miles for 7 days from Tuesday - Monday. So far this week I've done about 49 miles in the past 5 days.

61 miles last week

2010-08-30T21:03:00.002-05:00

I had a great week of training and some really good runs this past week. I ran 7 days in a row and got above 60 miles since sometime back in April and I felt pretty good.

Monday morning I made it out for the Kenyan Way workout and ran 4 miles of hills and had a really good workout with Claudio. We start out at a medium-hard effort to start with and were really pushing it hard the last lap. It was a good workout and I got 8.5 miles in for the day.

Tuesday was a recovery day at lunch in the blistering heat at lunch. I ran ~8.25 miles in 62 minutes and it was hot.

Wednesday I made it out to the Wednesday morning Kenyan Way workout and after about a 1.5 mile warmup did 6 x 2:00 hard with 2:00 recovery jog between each one. I ran with Claudio again and we had a good workout. During the last 2:00 I timed one of our 1/4's and we were doing 5:20 pace. I don't think we were running quite that fast the whole workout, but we had a strong finish. I ran a 3.5 mile cooldown for a total of about 8.25 miles.

Thursday - 5 miles recovery

Friday - 8 miles at the park. The weather was really nice with lower humidity and I headed out the door a little after 9:00 and ran 8 miles in about 58 minutes. I was down around 7:00 pace at the end of the run and averaged about 7:15 pace. The humidity was only about 50% which was a very welcome change.

Saturday - 15.25 miles with Kenyan Way. I almost made it all the way to the start before the group took off and if I were 20 seconds earlier I would have been there for the start. I had a really good run Saturday and averaged about 7:15 pace for the 15+ miles. I wasn't sure how tired I'd be, but the slightly cooler weather and low humidity really made a difference. The last couple of 15+ mile runs I'd done, I had really hit the wall and struggled the last couple of miles, but I felt really good today. Andrew and Jena and another guy picked up the pace and took off midway through the run and I contemplated going with them but just decided to take it easy. With my mileage increase this week, I didn't want to push it too hard so I kept the pace relatively easy and comfortable and enjoyed the run. When we got back to base I ran a couple laps on the cloverleaf with Jace and Nicki to finish the run.

Sunday - 8 miles at park. Sunday evening I headed out to the park for an 8 mile run. It was warm, but I didn't start until about 6:30 so I had a little cloud cover and the sun was starting to set. I didn't wear a watch for the run, but I think I probably was in the 7:20 - 7:30 pace range for most of the run. I was kind of tired and would have been happy to cut the run short but I wanted to make sure I ht 60 miles for the week so I made it through the entire run.

Training for the Badwater Ultramarathon

2010-08-15T21:10:00.002-05:00

Ok, I'm not really training for it, but that's what most of my runs feel like these past couple of weeks. I've done about 7 or 8 runs in the last couple of weeks either at lunchtime or in the evening when the heat index has been in the upper 90's or low 100's and it has been hot out. I haven't worn my watch on a number of the recovery days because it is so hot and I don't really want to push myself too hard in the heat. I did wear it on Friday morning when I got out at about 9:00 am and did 7 miles at about a 7:00 avg. I did 14.5 miles last weekend with the Kenyan Way and ran about 15.5 miles this weekend. Yesterday the heat index was 86 at 5:30 in the morning before we even got started so I knew it was going to be a pretty miserable day. I felt good through about 9 miles, but between miles 9 and 10 I could tell that I was getting pretty hot and I couldn't hang with Andrew the last few miles of the run. He was cruising and I dropped back to 7:20 - 7:30 pace the last few miles to finish. It's hard to stay hydrated enough on these runs and I felt like I was like a water faucet running when I finished and it took me most of the day to really get rehydrated. I'll be very happy when it cools off. Tomorrow the Kenyan Way fall speed workouts start so I'll be getting up early to run hills in the morning.

Saturday 7/31 - 13.5 miles

2010-07-31T13:00:00.002-05:00

I set the alarm for 5:25 this morning to get up for a 6:00am run, but when it went off I convinced myself that some extra sleep was worth torturing myself running by myself later in the morning. I wasn't sure who all would be showing up today since it was more of an informal run with Sean on vacation and I figured if I was going to end up running by myself then I'd rather get some sleep. I'd imagine that at least several of the people I normally run with were out there, but it's a lot easier to convince myself to sleep in if I assume I'd be running alone. We had gone to the astros game last night and we had tickets in the all-you-can-eat mezzanine section and it was a pretty good deal. $20 for the game and all you can eat hot dogs, nachos, peanuts, popcorn, sodas, and water. Of course my stomach wasn't think it was all that great a deal this morning. I finally made it out the door about 8:45. I did a loop around the park and went out to 610 on Memorial and back on Woodway and then ran down Blossom to the base, did a loop around most of the bayou, down Memorial back to Crestwood and then home. I made sure to plan a route with plenty of water fountains since it would be getting warm out. When I started the run it was about 81 degrees out and the heat index was 86 when I started and it was about 86 and a heat index of 94 when I finished. Because of the heat I didn't push the pace too hard and averaged about 7:40 for the run and finished in about 1:44. I think I stopped at about 6 drinking fountains during he run, but I didn't have any issues with cramping and survived the heat without any real issues. I just wanted to get the mileage in since I didn't get a long run in last weekend and the weekend before that wasn't a very stellar run.

I'm off to chick-fil-a for lunch for a free sandwich since Jeff Keppinger hit the Chick fil-A fowl pole with a HR in the 8th inning so everyone at the game can get a free chicken sandwich today. I don't need to many excuses to go to Chick fil-A for lunch so this one was pretty easy.

Friday 7/30 - 6 miles

2010-07-30T16:28:00.001-05:00

I went out for a morning run at the park and ran into my friend Benson and did a couple miles with him during the middle of the run. I ended up doing about 6 miles. I would have gone a couple more but I had an appointment for my leg treatment and had to get back home for that. The doctor found a really sore spot on my achilles that was sensitive to the touch. It's feeling a lot better after the treatment. It still doesn't really bother me while I'm running but I hope that we can get it under control and it doesn't flare up into something really bad.

Thursday - 7.5 miles

2010-07-30T16:26:00.002-05:00

I went out after work and did about 7.5 miles around the Woodlands. I was feeling pretty decent and averaged about 7:10 pace. My achilles was a little stiff the first 1/2 - 3/4 of a mile but felt pretty good after that and didn't bother me.

Updates

2010-07-28T14:28:00.002-05:00

I've been pretty busy with work and getting ready for the irth fo our daughter in less than 6 weeks and haven't been getting around to updating my blog. My training has been going fairly well. Last week I ran a 2 mile time trial with the Kenyan Way on Wednesday evening and it was pretty brutal. I had run 8.25 miles at lunch on Tuesday, the day before, at a low 7:00+ pace so I wasn't as fresh as I could have been, but I didn't want to sacrifice mileage since this wasn't a race. The heat index was 101 when I left the house and the course consisted of about 2.75 loops of a course at Spotts park with a pretty good hill in it which I had to go up three times. I ran it in 11:35 which wasn't all that impressive, but I really don't have a baseline to compare it to. My first mile (which only had the hill once) was 5:41 and my second mile was 5:54 (with 2 hills). Sean had said it was a slow course based on the morning group's times. It was a good hard effort and I need to start working some speedwork back into my schedule. The best news was my hamstring and achilles felt good and weren't sore afterwards and I didn't feel them at all during the workout.

On Monday I did a little speedwork during my run by doing 6 x 1/2 mile at ~6:00 pace and then running at normal pace for 1/2 mile recovery. I was pretty consistent and hit all the 1/2 mile hard in 2:58 - 3:03 and my recoveries were initially a little quicker than I had anticipated, but I was pretty dead by the end. I did a 1.5 mile warmup and then started the workout. The first couple of recoveries I was running at 7:00 - 7:05 pace and then I dropped to about 7:15 pace by the 3rd one and after the 6th one I was toast and ran about 8:00 pace for my 1.5 mile cool down. The heat index was in the upper 90's but at least I had some good cloud cover.

Most of my easy runs I haven't been wearing a watch lately which is kind of nice because I'm not worried about my pace and I can just run comfortably and the runs are a little more enjoyable.

I found out earlier this week that I got my guaranteed entry to the Houston Marathon through Harra so that is nice I don't have to worry about being left out because of the lottery. I'm a little disappointed that the marathon didn't reserve more spots for people. My dad won his age group in the 1/2 marathon last year, but he might not be able to run this year if the lottery works against him which is a pretty raw deal.

Kenyan Way long run - 10.5 miles

2010-07-17T15:00:00.003-05:00

This was one of the roughest long runs that I've had in a while. I was pretty wiped out from the beginning but I made it through 10.5 miles. I'm sure last night's run took something out of me and I haven't been doing very well staying hydrated the past few days and that probably contributed too. It was the typical warm, humid, miserable running weather that we come to expect in Houston. Fortunately for me, Sam, Jena and Mike, a few of the faster guys I sometimes take off with weren't there to tempt me to push the pace. We had a pretty good sized group and I felt ok the first 6 miles, but I really started struggling after that and I was having to throw in surges just to stay with the group. I made it back to the base with the group at the end of the first loop and we were at about 8 miles. I was toast and knew that I wasn't going to be able to hang for the next small loop so I just waited until the next group of guys made it back to base and took a couple extra minutes and got some extra gatorade. Jace showed up in the next group so I ran easy with him the last 2.5 miles and survived, barely. I'll just put today behind me and hopefully be a little stronger over the next few weeks. My splits for the day were 7:55, 7:46, 7:27, 7:36, 7:16, 7:06, 7:16, 7:16, 8:25, 8:22, 8:20 pace for last 1/2.

John and Claudio told me there was a two mile time trial on Wednesday morning so I may try to head out and torture myself and see what I can do two miles in later this week.

Friday - 6+ miles, still hot

2010-07-17T14:54:00.003-05:00

Went out for a little over 6 miles Friday evening and ran a little over 4 of them with Sam. We were averaging right about 7:00 pace when we were together. I'm guessing I did about 6.1 miles in just under 44 minutes. It was miserably hot out, but I finished the run. Of course I knew that I would probably be kind of shot for Saturday morning's run, but it felt pretty good. I went in to MSHC for another treatment this morning and they spent just about the entire treatment working on my calf and sore achilles and it was definitely loosened up and feeling better afterwards. They told me I was making good progress on some of my single leg stability strengthening exercises and I was doing them a lot better than the week before.

Summer is hot in Houston

2010-07-15T21:43:00.002-05:00

I'm going to make it a goal to start updating my blog a little more regularly, at least for the next month or so. I've been running fairly regularly and I've made a lot of progress with my hamstring. I've done a couple of hard workouts and my hamstring has felt great and I haven't had any problems with it. Unfortunately my left achilles has been a little tight and I'm hoping it doesn't turn into anything serious. I'm a little worried I've been running with Sam a little too much and maybe I caught it from him....

Last night I ran just a shade under 8 miles at Memorial park at just under 7:00 pace. It was my first run in a new pair of shoes, the Nike Lunar Elite. They felt pretty good, but they aren't as flexible as the Adidas Adizero Boston I had been running in. When I finished the run I saw the heat index was 95 and I'm guessing it was probably closer to 100 when I started the run. I probably was pushing it probably a little too hard in those weather conditions and I was pretty wiped out at the end of the run. My achilles was a little stiff the first 1/2 mile, but felt fine the rest of the run.

Today I was still a little tired from last night's run, but I went out at lunch with one of my co-workers. He was doing an easy 4 miles so I was going to run part of that with him and continue on. It was miserable out, but fortunately I had someone to run with. I was pretty stiff and my achilles was kind of sore the first mile or so, but it felt fine after I got warmed up. We got to around the 3 mile mark and I was going to head one way while he went back to the office and I happened to run into another co-worker out running so I turned around and ran with him and got a total of about 6.5 miles in. I didn't stop for water at all on the run and was pretty beat by the end of the run. I spent a while working on single leg stability exercises and stretching and trying to cool off. My achilles was really sore immediately after the run, but felt a lot better after stretching it a bit. I've got another rehab appointment tomorrow so I'll see what they say and about my achilles.

Some running non-running musings

2010-06-23T22:27:00.003-05:00

It's a week until the end of the month so I had better run 6 out of the next 7 days if I'm going to achieve my goal from my previous post of being up to ~6 days/week of running by the end of the month. I've been struggling a bit with my motivation lately. I don't have any races on my schedule and since I'm not training for anything specific right now, I find it way too easy to skip a day here or there. I haven't been doing any speedwork while I recover from my hamstring problems and I find doing base mileage every day to be rather boring and monotonous. It's also really hot out. I'm kind of caught in this spiral where I know that I'm not in great racing shape so I don't particularly want to run a 5K (especially in this heat and humidity) since I know it will be slow. I was thinking of running the July 4 5k, but last year I barely broke 17:00 and I'm not even in great racing shape right now. Since I'm not signed up for any races, I'm not really driven to run 6-7 days a week and if I don't run that much, I won't be in good racing shape so I don't want to sign up for a race and run embarrassingly slow. And since I'm not signed up for a race, I'm not real motivated to run 6-7 days/week and.....

I'd like to run the 10 miler and 1/2 marathon in October and the Park to Park 5 miler which was moved to the fall, but I'm not sure how my training is going to be going in October with a 1 month old. I probably should just work on getting back in good shape and we'll see how racing goes this fall.

Today I booked flights to Cincinnati for my wife and myself to visit my in-laws next month. On Continental it costs $900 for 2 tickets from Houston to Cincinnati, but if we fly from Austin, it is only about $600. The flight from Austin connects in Houston and we'd fly on the exact same flight from Houston to Cincinnati but it's $300 cheaper. What's with that? Seriously. I booked the flight from Austin. I get to drive my wife's car on the way to Austin and I save $300 so it's a pretty good deal for me.

I was watching the US soccer match today on my computer at work and trying to keep it under wraps, but I involuntarily yelled out "Yes!!!!" in the 91st minute and about 4 people come running down the hall to see the replay. I don't know if you could have had a much better finish to the game. I'm still trying to figure out which is more impressive: 59-59 (suspended for darkness) in the 5th set or the US soccer match finish.

Well I'm off to bed now. I'm going to run in the morning and Suzanne isn't going to let me make any excuses in the morning.

6/19 - 12 miles - 1:26

2010-06-19T18:23:00.002-05:00

I woke up Saturday morning and was still pretty sore and stiff from the weights I did on Thursday. I hit snooze on the alarm and ended up running a little late and missing the start. I started the run and then took a shortcut when I got to memorial park and got close to the group I run with and caught up with them another 1/2 mile later. It was about 80 degrees out and very humid and rather miserable. I was feeling pretty good midway through the run and started pushing the pace of the group a bit midway through. We were knocking out the miles at 7:00 - 7:05 pace in the middle of the run and I felt decent until we had about 3 miles left and i knew that I had probably pushed the pace a little hard. I still ended up finishing with a couple of 6:54 miles, but I was toast at the end of the run. I ended up with 12 miles in 1:26.

I had some illusions of going and running the Dad's day 5k after the workout, but I was too beat and a little dehydrated. Today's run was the longest run I'd done since the Boston marathon and it wasn't really that spectacular, but I was able to push through and finish the run fairly strong even though I was hurting the last couple of miles. My hamstrings and legs felt good from an injury perspective and the soreness I had was just related to the lifting I did and being a little dehydrated. My goal now is to be back running 6 days a week by the end of the month and work on getting my mileage back up a little higher.

6/18 - 101 Heat index

2010-06-19T18:16:00.002-05:00

Today's run was rather miserable. I had done weights on Thursday and probably overdid it a bit on the lunges and my legs were still sore and a little stiff. I had gone in to MSHC for another treatment in the morning so I didn't make it out for my run until about 5:00 pm. Since I was planning on running with the Kenyan Way group in the morning, I didn't want to overdo it. A few weeks ago I'd gone out and run a pretty hard run on a Friday afternoon with Sam and I was toast for the Saturday run.

I checked the weather before I headed out the door and it said the temperature was 92 and the heat index was 101. After the first 1/2 mile which was really slow as I loosened up, I averaged about 7:25 - 7:30 pace for the rest of the run. I only did 5.25 miles because I didn't think that an extra mile would really do a lot extra for me other than wear me out or dehydrate me a little more.

More updates and improvements

2010-06-17T21:04:00.002-05:00

Sorry I havent been doing much updating lately. My wife and I took a week and a half vacation to California and I've been pretty busy this week. I think I'm really starting to see some results from my therapy at MSHC and I'm hopeful I'll be able to come back even stronger and faster than before. On Tuesday I went in for another treatment and the doctor was surprised at how my flexibility has been improving and I've actually been kind of surprised myself. Nobody is going to mistake me for a gymnast, but my hamstring flexibility is much better than it was a few weeks ago. I've also been very consistent at doing some strengthening exercises for my hips/glutes and I can tell that I have made a lot of progress compared to where I was 6 weeks ago when I first went in for treatment.

I got a few runs in on our vacation. We went to San Francisco, Yosemite, Monterrey and Napa Valley. One of the runs in Napa Valley literally went straight up a mountain. I knew their would be some uphill, but I was working hard and running almost 10:00 pace going up the hill. It was so steep I couldn't even run normally coming down because I would have wiped out. It was one of the toughest runs I'd done in a while. The weather was so great in Northern California and so miserable back here in Houston. I haven't particularly enjoyed going out run with the heat index in the upper 90's or the low 100's. I've felt pretty good on my runs and I feel like I'm running with better form with the exercises and work I've been doing. The real key will be when I get out on a long run or a harder workout and we'll see how my form holds up when I'm tired.

I was going to try to run with Sam this morning but he's taking a little time off to recover from an achilles injury so I decided to get an extra hour of sleep and just torture myself over lunch. I think the temperature was pushing 95 and the heat index was around 100 and there wasn't a lot of shade on the route I ran. I did 7.25 miles in 53 minutes and it was tough in the heat, especially the last couple of miles. Saturday I may run the Dad's day 5k with one of my friends after my 12 mile Kenyan Way run/warmup. I'm just hoping to run about 6:30 pace and see if I can hang with my buddy. Tomorrow morning I'll try for about 8 miles and then I have another appointment for treatment. That's about what's new with me.

An update on training and therapy

2010-05-31T16:32:00.005-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted, but I've gotten back into running and I think I'm making some progress with my hamstring injury. At Sean's recommendation, I went to the MultiSport Health Center for treatment for my hamstring and to take their FMS (functional movement systems) screen. The FMS screen is a series of 7 mobility/flexibility exercises they have you do and they grade you from 0 - 3 on each one depending on how well you do it. It helps them pinpoint areas of weaknesses or muscle imbalances which can lead to injuries. I scored 14 out of 21 points and they told me that people with 14 or below have a 50% increased risk for injury. The two biggest problem areas that they pinpointed for me were my very tight hamstrings and my hip/glute muscles weren't properly activating so they were weak and ended up forcing my hamstrings to do more work. For shorter runs and races my hamstrings could deal with it and I could get away with it, but for long training runs and marathons this is why they said I was always falling apart really bad at the end. Even in my two good marathons where I've run 2:47 - 2:48, I've really struggled at the end of the race and felt like I was just hanging on and trying to finish. The doctors have been doing active release techniques (ART) therapy on my hamstrings and hips and they gave me a list of exercises and stretches that I work on daily. I can feel a difference when I run and it seems like things are getting better. I haven't done any real long runs or speedwork, but it seems like my legs feel better than they usually do. I can also feel the muscles in my hips working more when I do my exercises before I do a run. I think this is probably a good thing.

I'm not training for anything in particular right now and I'm working on just enjoying my running while I continue to recuperate. I don't think I'm going to run any of the summer 5k's around Houston other than maybe the July 4th 5k. I was pretty burned out both mentally and physically training for Boston and I wouldn't have run it this year if my dad hadn't qualified for it. It was tough training for it because I didn't really enjoy the training, particularly with a bum hamstring, and I felt guilty if I missed workouts. Now that I'm not training for anything in particular, I don't feel bad if I miss a day here or there and it makes it a lot more enjoyable when I am running because i want to be running and not because I feel guilty if I miss a run. I hope to continue making progress and build my mileage back up and be back in racing shape for some of the fall races. I'm not sure how being a new parent and the fall races will mix, but that's my main goal for now.

Friday afternoon Sam called me up and asked if I had been running yet or was going to run and I needed to get a run in so I headed out the door about 4:45. About 5 steps into the run I wondered what I was getting myself into because it was hot out. Sam had left his place about the same time so I headed down Blossom until I ran into him and then turned around and did a little over a lap at the park and then headed out back down Blossom to his place and then I looped back home. I didn't have a Garmin so I don't know how long the run was, but we were doing about 7:00 pace at the park and I think I probably did 9.25 - 9.5 miles on the day in 67 minutes. I was pretty beat when I got home and I checked the weather and it was 95 degrees out. I wouldn't be surprised if the heat index was over 100.

Saturday morning I really wanted to sleep in, but the weatherman on the news had said it was going to be 86 degrees by 9:00 am so I forced myself out of bed to go to the Kenyan Way long run. The temperature was in the upper 70's and it was really humid and I struggled for a lot of the run. I was running with Sam, John and a high school guy who's name eludes me. Sam took off after about 7.5-8 miles and left us behind and I had no desire to try to keep up with him. We'd been averaging about 7:05 pace for the first 8 miles or so and I was just trying to hang with the group to each water stop. We eased up the last couple miles and ran about 7:20 - 7:25 pace the last couple of miles and I ended up at 10.6 miles on the day. I was pretty beat after doing about 20 miles in 2 runs in 14 hours, but my legs felt really good and didn't hurt at all when I was finished.

Sunday I took the day off and Monday I ran 6.5 miles at the park at 9:00. There was a pretty good crowd out this morning with the Memorial day holiday. I averaged about 7:10 pace and finished in 47 minutes. I saw Bill running at the park and passed him going the opposite direction a couple of times. I would have turned around and run with him, but I needed to get back home because somebody was coming over a little after 10:00 and I was running tight on time.

Central Park - New York City

2010-05-11T20:59:00.002-05:00

I was up in New York City for the first time in my life last Thursday - Sunday. My wife had been up in the NYC area for work the first part of the week so I flew up Thursday to spend a long weekend in the city. We had beautiful weather most of the time we were there and had a blast. There was so much to do in so little time. Friday went to the top of the Rockefeller Center and then we took a 3 hr bike tour along the Hudson river and over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn and back across the Brooklyn bridge into Manhattan and back up along the Hudson river. I haven't ridden a bike in quite a while and I had a sore butt afterwards. The weather was so nice out that I barely even broke a sweat. I had wanted to get up and go running Saturday but it rained Saturday morning so I decided to sleep in instead. Sunday was quite a bit cooler and windy, but I went out for a run that morning before we had to check out of our hotel. The temperature was about 50 degrees out with 20 mph winds, but it was sunny out. I hadn't brought a lot of warm stuff for running, so I was trying to decide if I wanted to wear my Boston jacket while I ran. It was my only jacket I had packed and I knew I needed it for the rest of the day and I didn't want to get it all sweaty. I decided to head out and take my chances in the cold. It was about 10 blocks from my hotel up to the south end of Central Park and then I ran a full lap around the park. It was a little harder than I expected with the wind and the terrain had a lot more hills than I expected. The Olympic trials in 2007 did about 4 loops around Central Park and that was not an easy course. I forgot to bring my camera to snap some pics while I was running, but I got started late enough that I didn't really have a lot of extra time to be taking pictures. It was a beautiful day out and after about 5 minutes I was warm enough though the blasts of wind were kind of chilly at times. I did learn that when you run along the sidewalks in New York if you stay on the metal grates above the subway, you get a nice blast of warm air that keeps you warm. According to mapmyrun.com, my route from my hotel and around the park and back was 7.6 miles and I ran it in about 51 minutes which was a little under 7:00 pace. Considering the hills and the wind it was a decent pace. I felt good during the run though my quads were a little sore at the end of the run in the same areas where they hurt after Boston. It was a fun run to do and it's cool to say that I've run in Central Park. I think New York would be a fun place to live for 6 months or maybe a year because there is so much to do, but I don't think I'd want to be there much more than that.

To marathon or not to marathon

2010-04-30T12:54:00.002-05:00

As I've trained for and run my last couple of marathons, I have felt like a tortured and conflicted soul. I really don't enjoy the 20+ mile long runs all that much, and I don't really like running for 2-1/2 or 3 hrs at a time. When I am training for a marathon it seems like my life consists of run, work, eat, sleep, repeat in varying order and I always feel tired and beat up. My body hasn't really been 100% since a 10k I ran on Thanksgiving day and my 2 marathons since then have both been worse than I would have liked as my training has been somewhat limited compared to what I would have liked to have done. As I suffered through a painful last 10 miles of the Boston marathon, I had plenty of time to think about how much I hated running marathons and wondering why I put myself through the torture. I don't enjoy getting up at 4:30 to go up to Conroe to run 20+ miles on Saturdays when training for Boston.

On the other hand I'm extremely competitive and I love challenges. I don't run to stay in in shape or primarily for the social aspect. I run because I'm driven to push myself and I want to win races and set PRs and beat other people in races. I enjoy speed workouts. I like running hard and pushing myself. I know that I have the potential to run a sub 2:40 marathon if I do the right training and stay healthy. After my last two sub-par marathon times, I'm motivated to come back and PR and prove that I'm better than that. One of my friends, Sam, who I've run with over the past couple of years with the Kenyan Way has stepped up his training big time over the past 9 - 12 months and run some impressive times. For the past couple of years we had pretty similar race results and would finish close to each other in races. Sometimes I'd beat him, sometimes he'd beat me. Last fall I PR'd in a 1/2 marathon and he beat me by 40 or 50 seconds. Then we ran separate 10k's on Thanksgiving day and each PR'd and I think I had a 20 or 30 second faster time. Then my training went downhill and his flourished and he ran a 2:40 marathon and I ran 2:54. I really believe that if I could stay motivated and disciplined enough and injury free that if I put in 80 - 90 miles a week consistently for 6+ weeks leading up to a marathon I should be able to break 2:40. Of course that's a big if.

Even though I don't like the training and the pain and suffering of the marathon and I seem to continually be asking myself why I keep torturing myself, there is something that seems to keep drawing me back to wanting to run them. There's an allure and a challenge to the marathon. It's such a brutal and tough race and a true test of who is the toughest person out there. If I'm running a 5k or a 10k and have a bad day, I'm only seconds or a couple minutes at most off of my good race times. Halfway through a race I know that it's only a matter of minutes before I'm done. When you are out there in a marathon and things fall apart with 10 miles to go, it feels like an eternity. I can think of numerous great American marathoners and some of the best US and International performances. Outside of the current crop of US track athletes, I'd be hard pressed to name many great American 5k track stars beyond Bob Kennedy and Adam Goucher. I'd like to have a long streak of consecutive Houston marathons and one day be listed in the program with 20 or 25+ consecutive marathon finishes.

It seems like every marathon I've run has been painful and brutal on my legs. Even in my two good marathons I felt like I was just holding on for dear life trying not to fall apart the last few miles and praying my hamstrings had enough left in them for a strong push to the finish. Some days I wonder if I'm cut out to be a marathoner or if I should stick to just shorter races. I really like running half marathons and they don't seem to beat me up so badly. I know that my wife would love for me to take a break from marathons for a long while. She doesn't particularly enjoy me rolling out of bed at 5:30 or earlier on Saturday mornings to go running and then being wiped out the rest of the day. Some days I think that if I could just train hard for one season, break 2:40 and check that off my list I would be content to stop running marathons, but if I broke 2:40 I know that I would just want to run a 2:37 marathon and finish one averaging 5:59 pace. I probably would never be content. I have a love/hate relationship with marathons. I love running them fast and setting new PRs, but I hate training for them and all the agony and misery that the training and races inevitably seem to bring. Every time I run a marathon I tell myself that I'm just going to quit running them, but then a week or two afterwards I must have forgotten all the pain and misery and I'm inspired to run another one and do better than the last time. If I run a bad marathon, I want to come back and redeem myself and if I run a good race, I want to run the next one faster and improve upon it.

I think I can handle running 1 marathon a year. It's usually the training for the 2nd one that really burns me out. Since I started running marathons I've done two marathons about 3 months apart each year - Chicago 07, Houston 08, Houston 09, Boston 09, Houston 10, Boston 10. I always seem to be in better shape for the 2nd marathon, but I'm also pretty much burned out by then too.

So what's next? My first goal is to get healthy and improve my leg strength and flexibility. In the next week or two I'll be going to Koala to probably start some sort of physical therapy/rehab program to work on my hamstrings. I have some other big changes on the horizon too. My wife and I are expecting our first child in September and that will definitely change my life a bit, and we'll just have to see how fall marathon training goes with a baby girl interrupting my sleep every night. I don't have any plans to race anytime soon. I'd like to run some of the summer 5k's but we'll see how my recovery and hamstrings are doing. I'd rather take a month off and recover and miss the summer 5k's and be able to get back in shape for some of the fall races than start training too hard too soon and have lingering hamstring problems all summer long. The heat and humidity kick my butt and I don't usually run very fast in the May/June/July races here anywhere so it won't give me too much heartburn to miss them. It was quite depressing last summer where I seemed to get progressively slower every race I ran. I still haven't done any running since Boston, but I may go out for an easy run at the Park sometime tomorrow.

Boston bust - 3:04:12

2010-04-21T19:20:00.004-05:00

I'm not sure even where to begin. I've had a couple days to think about my run and numerous thoughts have crossed my mind. I did re-qualify for Boston if I wanted to run it next year. This was a new personal worst for me excluding my first marathon that I DNF'd. I'm disappointed with the results, but the worst part is I don't even really know why it went so bad. I did beat Minnie Mouse though (more on that later) I thought I was in shape to run a ~2:50 or better and I hit the half at 1:25 and things were falling apart before mile 15 and with 11 miles to go, I was no longer running for time, but just to finish. Last year when I ran Boston, I got to the top of Heartbreak Hill around mile 21 and I thought I was going to break 2:45 and I started down it and my legs just couldn't respond. This year I went out easier and my quads were toast before I even got to the Newton hills.

We arrived in Boston on Saturday and was on the same flight as several fellow Kenyan Wayers who I had trained with some - Guy, Andres, Monte, Jiyhe. I arrived at my hotel and saw Jeff, another Kenyan Wayer and I found out that a large group from the Kenyan Way was staying at the same hotel. At the marathon expo, Team Hoyt had a booth set up and Dick Hoyt was there and I got a signed bobblehead of Dick and Rick Hoyt. If you've never heard of them before, they have an amazing story. Rick was born as a quadriplegic and his parents refused to institutionalize him and pushed for him to be integrated into society. His dad (Dick) started running races pushing Rick in his wheelchair and they have now run over 1000 races together including 6 Ironman triathalons. The video on the website might put you in tears.

Sunday I took it pretty easy and stayed off my feet for most of the day. On Sunday evening I was in my hotel room and we were watching a show on the weather channel about the Badwater Ulramarathon through death valley and they talked about this guy that dressed like a fairy in a pink tutu and ran a bunch of races and I thought to myself- I would probably give up running if a dude like that ever beat me.

I woke up Monday and walked about 10 minutes to where the buses were loading for Hopkinton and I got on a bus a little before 7:00 am. After a few minor delays we arrived in Hopkinton and the weather was pretty nice out. It was sunny out and in the mid to upper 40's. I had forgotten to bring sunglasses to the start with me, but I hadn't really planned on wearing them during the race anyway. I found a large group of Kenyan Way runners and hung out with them before the start and I was feeling pretty good about the race and relaxed. The only real complaint I had about athletes village was that they must have used the world's thinnest toilet paper in all the port-a-potties. I don't think it even qualified as single ply. It was more like 1/2 ply or 1/3 ply. I would have to use one hand to turn the entire roll with the other hand very gently pulling the end of the tp away from the roll. If you just grabbed the end and pulled it, it would break off and then getting it going again was kind of like when you have a roll of tape that sticks to itself and it is kind of hard to pull it off of itself. The other funny thing is they had a bunch of military or national guard people around the athletes village and some snipers up on the roof of the school. I guess they were there to take out people who were cutting in line at the port-a-potties. It seemed to work though since I didn't see anyone cutting in line and I didn't see anyone get taken out either.

I started to head over to the start line about 45 minutes before the race to give myself plenty of time. It was warm enough out that I just went with a singlet and gloves and didn't wear arm warmers or a long sleeve shirt which worked out fine. One thing I didn't think about beforehand was that if it was sunny out, I could be out in the sun for 3 hrs in the heat of the day from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm and I ended up getting a nice sunburn on my arms, shoulders, back of the neck and face. That didn't ruin my race, but it sure didn't help it either. I started out fairly easy and was able to stay in the 6:20 - 6:25 pace for the first four miles which were downhill. I felt pretty good the first part of the race and was determined to keep it relatively easy and not push it hard until the end and I really wanted to run a negative split marathon. I was sticking right on my plan and went through the half in 1:25 and I still felt good at that point. I knew that a 2:45 was pretty much out of the question, but I thought that with a relaxed 1:25 first half, I should be able to run a faster 2nd half and I was hoping that I would beat my 2:48 from last year and maybe even PR.

Somewhere between mile 13 and 16. In the 16th mile, there is a pretty good downhill and then the 5 miles of the Newton hills begin. As I got to the first downhill, my quads started hurting like they had hurt last year going down heartbreak hill except this was 5 miles earlier. I had felt that same pain before and instantly I new that my race for a PR and fast time was done. There isn't much more demoralizing than realizing you have almost 11 miles to go and it is all going to be very painful. I quit looking at my Garmin for the most part and just focused on staying relaxed and keeping going. Another problem I had is that I laced my shoes too tight because I was worried about them being loose like they had been on a couple of my training runs and around mile 16, I could feel it digging into my foot. A little after mile 17 I had to stop for a few seconds and loosen the shoe and I saw I had a nice bloodstain on the shoe from it digging into my foot. After I loosened the laces it didn't bother me the rest of the race though.

The Newton hills were miserable this year in contrast to last year when I felt really strong going up them. I kept trudging on and saw my time slip further and further away. Going down heartbreak hill I looked up and saw the back of a Kenyan Way singlet and saw my friend Shawn Emerick just ahead. I told him good luck and finish strong. With a little over 3 miles to go I stopped for a minute to down a bottle of water and a couple orange slices that a friendly spectator was giving away. I don't think that I was staying well enough hydrated during the race even though I was trying to get fluids at every other mile. I don't think the lack of good hydration had anything to do with my quads being destroyed in the first half of the race. Shortly after I started running again I noticed that Jace was just ahead of me and I put in a little surge and told him I'd try to stay with him for a bit. That lasted all of about 15 seconds until I told him I didn't have it in me.

With 3 miles to go I jsut kept thinking it was like running a lap at Memorial park and then I would be done. Somewhere with a couple of miles to go, I get passed by a guy dressed like Minnie Mouse. I just didn't feel like I had anything in the tank and I wondered if it was worse to get beaten by Minnie Mouse or a guy in a pink tutu dressed as a fairy. When I hit the mile to go mark I tried to pick it up a little and started catching a few people and when I was half a mile out I really started cranking it in. With around a 1/4 mile to go you make a couple of quick turns and then get on Boylston and can see the finish in the distance ahead. The crowds are packed 8 - 10 people deep along the road and just roaring and I could see Minnie Mouse up ahead and I started sprinting as hard as I could. I kept getting closer and I caught Minnie Mouse with about 200 yards to go and I kept pushing it in for my 3:04 finish ahead of Minnie.

If I had a bad race and I didn't feel that I had been training enough or if I had gone out too hard or had really bad weather conditions I wouldn't be as disappointed, but I had a lot more mileage and my hamstrings were much better than before Houston when I ran 2:54 and I fully expected to run faster than that, especially considering the good whether conditions. I did 20+ mile long runs up on the hills in Conroe as well as a lot of hill work around the cloverleafs. I got a massage on Friday before the race, but that was 3 days before. My quads were really sore when the therapist worked on them so I don't know if that was a sign that they were in trouble before the race or if I just wasn't recovered from the massage and that hurt my race.

I'm going to take a couple weeks off of running and I may take a little while off of racing and concentrate on improving my flexibility and strength before I start training hard again. My quads are still in agony today and I shuffle around pretty slowly and avoid stairs as much as possible.

My dad ran his first Boston marathon and finished in 3:48. He was hoping to run a little faster, but still did pretty good for his first Boston.

Boston Marathon tomorrow

2010-04-18T15:34:00.002-05:00

We made it safely into Boston yesterday and I'm just relaxing and waiting for the race to get here tomorrow. The weather has been cold and raining off and on but the weather forecast is looking pretty good for the marathon tomorrow. It's supposed to get down to the low 40's tonight so I'm expecting it do be in the mid 40's at racetime. I feel pretty relaxed because I don't really have high expectations of a specific time I think I should be able to run. My hamstring still isn't 100% but it's much better than it was before Houston. I think I've lost a little of my speed from the fall but my endurance is better. I will be reasonably happy with anything under 2:50. I'm planning on trying to run 6:25 pace the first 4 miles to take it easy and then stay in the 6:20-6:25 range for the first half of the race. I really want to try to negative split the race and if it's cool enough then I may wear my Kenyan Way negative split shirt during the race. I didn't realize it beforehand but it seems like half the Kenyan Way group is staying at the same hotel as I am. I've run into 4 or 5 of them in the lobby. It should be a good day for running tomorrow.

4/10 - 5 miles

2010-04-10T20:02:00.003-05:00

Went out for a nice easy run at the park Saturday evening after the 3rd round of the Masters finished up. I did 5 miles in just under 37 minutes. I wasn't running particularly quick, but two guys passed me at the park which was a little surprising. Usually there aren't that many fast people out at the park on a Saturday afternoon. One of the guys was wearing those feet glove shoes that are kind of like a glove for your feet. I think it basically like running barefoot, but gives your feet a little protection from rocks and stuff on the ground. I've seen a few people out wearing them over the past month or two.

Friday - 4/9/10 - 8.5 miles including 6 mile tempo run

2010-04-10T16:59:00.002-05:00

I made myself do a tempo run run Friday evening since I hadn't run hard since last Saturday. I did a 1.5 mile warmup, a 6 mile tempo run and then a one mile cooldown. I probably should have done another mile warmup or so, but it went ok. My tempo splits were 6:05, 6:00, 5:58, 5:54, 5:58, 5:56. It was in the low 70's and I was hoping that I'd be a little quicker or it would feel a little easier, but it went ok. I was running at the park so I lose a little time on the dirt trail and it was fairly crowded out and I was having to avoid people too.

I got a new pair of shoes a week ago that I'm planning on running Boston in (same model as my current shoes), but it's taken me longer to get used to them. The fit just seems a little different. I think they were laced up differently at the store and I'm still working to get the right fit on them. I didn't feel particularly smooth during the run even though I was moving at a pretty quick pace. I stumbled a couple of times and knocked my legs together numerous times. I've been feeling a little lethargic lately. I'm not sure if it is related to my allergies or allergy medicine, but they have been pretty bad the last week. Hopefully I will get well rested as I Boston is a week and a half away.

Thursday - 4/8/10 - 8 miles

2010-04-10T16:58:00.003-05:00

I felt pretty good and ran 8 miles in 55 minutes at the park. Planning on a harder workout on Friday.

Wednesday 4/7/10 - No run

2010-04-10T16:58:00.001-05:00

Had a really long day at work and was wiped out and took the day off

Tuesday - 4/6 - 8 miles

2010-04-10T16:57:00.000-05:00

Ran an easy 8 miles 7:05 pace at the park after work

Sunday 4/4 - 14.5 miles

2010-04-10T16:52:00.002-05:00

I got up early Sunday morning to get a long run in before I headed up to the Shell Houston Open with one of my friends. I made it through the run, but it wasn't a lot of fun. It was 100% humidity and misting on and off and about 70 degrees out. My legs were a little tired and I averaged about 7:50 pace for the first 11 miles. I ran from my house down to Rice and Hermann Park and did a lap around each and back home. Near the end of the run I picked it up a little and averaged about 7:25 pace for the last 3 miles to finish the 14.5 miles in a little over 1:52.

4 the Park race - 6th overall

2010-04-03T14:57:00.002-05:00

I finished the 4 miles race in 6th place in 22:09 and 1st in my age group once you throw out people they put in the wrong age group. This was a tough race and not my best, but considering the week of training and the weather conditions I wasn't too disappointed. When I picked up my race # at Luke's Locker yesterday, Joe Flores told me that Adam Davis was running since the winner got a free airline ticket. Any time a race gives out airline tickets or a decent cash prize you get some of the good runners showing up so I knew I didn't stand a chance at repeating as winner. I wish they had given away an airline ticket to the winner last year!

The weather was warm and it was very humid. When I got up at 6:45 I checked the weather and the temp was in the mid-60's with 94% humidity and it didn't get any better at race time. I like this race since my house is only 3/4 of a mile from the start line. I did a 1.5 mile warmup with my friend Benson and changed shoes and did some stretching at the house and then about 8:20 left to jog to the starting line and did strides while I was on the way. I saw Adam Davis, Luis Armenteros and Junior Mitchell at the start line so I knew realistically the best I would get was 4th unless one of them dropped out.

The gun went off and Adam, Luis and Junior took off and Rudy Rocha, Tom King and Brian Alvarado all were ahead of me and they quickly separated into two packs. I was all alone in 7th place and probably 10 - 12 seconds back of Rudy, Tom and Brian. I've run quite a few races against these guys and usually I can beat Tom and Brian and sometimes Rudy depending on what kind of shape he's in. I hoped to reel them in later in the race. I was still all by myself at mile 1 and went through in 5:23 which is pretty close to where I wanted to be and I was probably 12 - 15 seconds back of the 3 guys in front of me. I didn't really gain any ground during mile 2 and went through at about 10:59 with a 5:35 2nd mile. I tried to pick it the effort during mile 3 and I started to gain a little ground, but midway through the 3rd mile Brian put a gap on Tom and Rudy. I thought I'd be able to catch Tom and Rudy, but Brian was pulling a little farther away.

I ran mile 3 in 5:38 and was gaining a little ground. The last mile was tough and I could tell I was going to catch Rudy and I passed him with a little over 1/4 mile left, but there was too much of a gap to catch Tom and I finished in 6th in 22:09 with a 5:31 last mile. My 21:00 from last year would have gotten me either 3rd or 4th place, but the weather conditions were definitely better then

I was slower than I would have liked to be, but I ran a tough 20 miler on Tuesday and it was hard running in warmer conditions than I've done any hard workouts in. My hamstring didn't bother me at all during the race which I was felt good about. I may think about running the Bellaire Trolley Run next weekend.

I kind of got screwed for the age group awards since somehow they put Luis in the 30 - 34 age group even though he's in the 35-39 age group so I "officially" got 2nd in my age group. I won't complain too much though since 2nd place got a free 1 hr massage at Koala and 1st place got 5 free personal training sessions with a personal trainer somewhere. I'm not sure if I would use those or not, but I can always use extra massages.

Last week of training

2010-04-03T13:42:00.002-05:00

I haven't been doing a great job of keeping my blog updated and when I get too far behind I forget what some of my runs were or how long they were and I had to reset my watch memory since it was full (I only usually wear my Garmin on my longer runs). I'll just give a quick recap of this past week's workouts.

Monday - 3/29 - Kenyan Way hill workout.

I made it out Monday morning for the hill workout and we did 20 minutes of 200 m repeats up one of the cloverleaf hills followed by a 5 minute break and then one mile hard. I started out easy and my first 200 was 44 seconds, but by the end of the workout I was down to 34 seconds. After the 5 minute break I took off pretty hard up the first hill of the mile. We ran on all 4 cloverleafs (up 2 and down 2) and Sean had measured out a full mile. I was running alone and it was probably the quickest mile I've run since sometime last fall and I finished in 5:17. Obviously I've had much quicker miles, but I was happy with the finish to the workout.

Tuesday 3/30 - 20 mile long run in Conroe

Note to self - 20 mile run on hills on one of warmest days of the spring the day after a hard workout isn't always the smartest idea. I took the afternoon off work and headed up to Conroe to try to do a 24 miler. I set out water and gatorade at a couple of the normal water stop locations and started out. The temperature was around 77 degrees and very sunny. I was feeling pretty good to start and was averaging about 6:55 pace for the first 10 miles, but that was a little too quick for the day. I don't think I did a great job staying hydrated enough before the workout started and this was one of the warmest runs I think I have done all year and big chunks of the run had no shade cover. I also misjudged the distance of a couple of loops that I thought were about 3 miles but ended up being about 4 miles. By the time I got to my water stop at 15 miles I was starting to struggle and had to take a little extra time in the shade. My last couple of miles I fell off the 7:00 pace and was running about 7:30 pace but it was tough. My shirt was just covered in salt and I was dripping sweat everywhere. I took about 5 minutes and ate a whole package of clif shot blocks and drank about 20 oz of water. At that point I decided to just head straight back to the car which was about 5 miles away instead of adding on a couple of extra loops to get to the full 24. By the end of the run I hit my last mile (mostly uphill) in 8:20 and I was toast. I finished the 20 miles in 2:26.

Wednesday 3/31 - Day off recovering from last couple of days

Thursday 4/1 - 8 miles

My legs were still a little tired, but I headed out for an 8 mile run Thursday after work. My left quad muscle was a little tight and I had to stop about 5 minutes into my run and stretch it for a while, but it felt ok after that. I averaged about 7:20 pace for the run and finished in just under 59 minutes

Friday 4/2 - 4.5 miles

Easy day Friday afternoon jogging the "4 the park" race course plus a little extra add on. I ran the 4.5 miles in 33 minutes. We'll see how the race ends up going. I didn't really taper too much for this race and I haven't raced anything under a marathon since Thanksgiving. My goal is to break 22:00 and hopefully be down in the 21:30 range.

3/25/10 - Day off

2010-03-26T00:07:00.001-05:00

Needed a recovery day.

3/24 - 5 x 1 mile workout

2010-03-26T00:01:00.002-05:00

Wednesday was my first 2nd hard workout of the week in quite a while and I had planned to do 6 x 1 mile in the evening after work. I found out something that rocked my world and it was kind of tough to focus on the workout. After a 2 mile warmup, my goal was to do 6 x 1 mile @ 5:33 - 5:39 with 1 minute recovery. My splits were 5:41, 5:37, 5:36. 5:34, 5:40. I was mentally and physically shot after the last one so I jogged a 1/2 mile, ran a 1/2 mile in 2:50 and then did a 1 mile cooldown. I was felt with the results considering the circumstances and that I hadn't been doint 2 hard workouts in a week for a while.

3/23 - 6.5 miles

2010-03-25T23:59:00.002-05:00

I didn't get home until about 7:30 but made it out to the park for a couple of laps before heading home. The park was jam packed with people and I was really surprised how many people were still out there as it was getting dark. I'm glad I run to the park and don't have to sit in the traffic of everyone leaving each night. I ran the 6.5 miles in just under 47 minutes.

3/22/10 - Kenyan Way Hills

2010-03-25T23:56:00.002-05:00

I was a little late getting to the workout Monday evening and only got a 1 mile warmup in before the workout. I ran 5 loops of the hills (20 hills total) running up every hill. It was a tough workout for me and I never felt really smooth and I felt like I was stumbling around quite a bit, but I made it through all 20 hills. I did an easy 2 mile cooldown after chatting with Sean for a little bit for a little over 8 miles on the day.

3/21/10 - 8 miles easy

2010-03-25T23:55:00.002-05:00

Sunday evening I headed over to the park wondering how I was going to feel. My plan was to run anywhere from 3.5 - 8 miles depending on how I felt. My legs felt really good and my adductor didn't bother me at all so I did the full 8 miles at 7:15 pace which I was happy with for the day after 19.5 miles. These miles were definitely a lot easier than the long runs up in Conroe.

3/20/10 - 19.5 miles - bugs galore

2010-03-25T23:40:00.002-05:00

I really didn't want to get up when the alarm went off and a 1000 excuses went through my mind. Friday night I had finally opened up a box of thin mint girl scout cookies that Jace forced on me and I probably ate between 1/2 and 2/3 of one of the sleeves of cookies. They were so good friday night but my stomach felt so bad Saturday morning. After dry heaving once, I almost went back to bed, but I decided that I really needed the run and didn't want to have to do it later by myself so I finally pushed myself out the door. I was running a little late so I just ran from the house and decided I'd try to catch the group on TC Jester since they were running from the base towards my house. My timing was pretty good and I got to Washington and TC Jester within about 20 seconds of the group I usually run with. I threw in a quick surge and caught the group right before the overpass north of I-10 that goes over the railroad tracks. I had pretty bad gas most of the run from my girl scout cookies so it was kind of fun pushing the pace and being in front of the group - kind of like my college days. We were running on the bike path along the bayou and there were tons and tons of bugs everywhere. A couple of guys had ditched their shirts at the first water stop, but fortunately I kept mine. When you ran through the swarms of bugs, you could pull your shirt up over your mouth and nose and have a filter to keep you from inhaling the bugs while everybody else was hacking and choking. We were moving at pretty good pace on the way back and got back to base with the last couple of miles at sub 6:30 pace. I was right around 13.5 miles at that point so I headed back to the park for some additional miles. I ran into my friend Benson at the park and ran about 2.5 miles with him before heading home and finished up the 19.5 miles in 2:21. My adductor/groin was a little sore after the run and the rest of the day, but felt better after a good night's rest Saturday night. After finishing the rest of the first 1/2 of the box of girls scout cookies, I put my other 5 boxes of thin mints in the freezer to wait until after Boston is done.

3/20/10 - 8 miles

2010-03-25T23:39:00.001-05:00

8 miles in 57:20 friday afternoon. Felt much better after a day off to recover. Could have run quicker, but had a long run planned Saturday morning.

3/19/10 - Day off

2010-03-25T23:36:00.001-05:00

Needed a recovery day

3/18/10 - 7 miles

2010-03-25T23:35:00.001-05:00

7 miles in 54 minutes. Nothing special today. Easy run by myself at lunch.

3/17/10 - 8 miles

2010-03-25T23:34:00.001-05:00

8 miles easy in 59 minutes. Still a little tired after last few days, but feeling ok.

3/16/10 - Evening Kenyan Way Hills

2010-03-25T23:24:00.002-05:00

This is a nice week at work with a lot of people out on spring break. I was able to leave reasonably early and make the evening hill workout. The workout was over at Memorial and Shepherd which was a nice break from the Cloverleafs. I ran 1.5 miles for a warmup and made it there right before the workout started. My legs were feeling tired, but I was going to push it as hard as I could on the workout. We were running a circuit with 1 shorter steeper hill and one longer more gradual hill. I really like this workout and it is fairly easy to push it hard each time since the hills are short enough that they don't totally destroy you. The workout for the Boston marathoners was 25 minutes continuous. I had a really good workout and was cranking it out on the hills and felt really strong. I didn't wear my hamstring wrap and it felt ok despite doing a hard workout.

3/15/10 - 6.5 miles

2010-03-25T23:22:00.001-05:00

6.5 miles @ 7:40 pace at the park. Legs were pretty tired after 24 miles on Saturday. Not planning to get up early on Monday. Need some rest to recover.

3/14/10 - 24.1 miles

2010-03-13T17:57:00.002-06:00

This was a tough run but it went fairly well. I had to stop at a gas station on the way to use the restroom on the way up so the group was just about ready to take off when I got there. I wanted to make sure I got enough vaseline on and finish my PowerBar for breakfast so they took off and I left a couple minutes behind them. I caught up to the front pack after about 5 miles. I wasn't really that interested in do the entire run by myself so I ran with the group for most of the workout. There were 7 of us - Guy, Monte, Kylie, Jeff, Richard, Gary and myself. I know at least one of them was shooting to hit 3 hrs at Boston and the rest I think were going for the 3:10 - 3:20 range. It was nice having people to run with and talk to because I get really bored running the long runs by myself. I averaged 7:30 pace for the first 17 miles. I probably could have easily averaged 7:00 - 7:10, but I was glad to be out there just getting the miles in and being on my legs for almost 3 hrs. We started picking up the pace some when we were around 15 miles and dropped down to about 7:00 pace at that point. When I got to mile 18 I told the group I was going to pick up the pace and try to get down to around sub 6:30 pace. Unfortunately about that point my Garmin memory was full and it wasn't automatically deleting the old laps off so I only got on split for my last 7 miles instead of individual miles. I averaged 6:30 pace for my last 6 miles and finished the 24.1 miles in 2:55. It was tough, but I got the time in and had a good run and my hamstring seemed to hold up ok. Near the end of my run, I took off my compression sleeve for about 2.75 miles and I could definitely feel the hamstring a little more without it. I think I will definitely need to wear it when I run the marathon. My training is going much better leading up to Boston than leading up to Houston.

3/12 - 8 miles

2010-03-13T15:51:00.001-06:00

Today I ran 8 miles in 57 minutes. I was running 7:00 pace for the first half, but I backed off a little because I wanted to be fairly fresh for the 24 miler up in Conroe on Saturday.

3/11 - 7 miles - 45 minutes

2010-03-13T15:49:00.001-06:00

I had another busy day, but found time to go out for a quick run at lunch. I ran with one of my coworkers and we ran a 7 mile loop in 45 minutes. I was feeling fresh after having 2 days off and didn't have any trouble knocking out 6:30 miles.

3/9, 3/10 - no runs

2010-03-13T15:48:00.000-06:00

Between a crazy work schedule and not real good planning I didn't get runs in on Tuesday and Wednesday.

3/8/10 - Kenyan Way Hills

2010-03-13T15:39:00.002-06:00

Today was one of the best hill workouts that I had in a long time. I ran a 2.5 mile warmup and got there right as the workout was about to start. We were running relays for 25 minutes where somebody would run up the hill and when they got to the cone at the top the next person would start at the bottom. Since most of the people had already paired up and started, Sean said I could just do repeats by myself or run with on a 3 person team with another guy who was out there who was pretty quick, but I hadn't seen him around before. I decided to run with the 3 person team so the two of us would start and run together. The first few laps the guy I was running with wanted to have the lead. If he would slow down and I would catch up or start to pass him, he'd pick up the pace. I don't know if he didn't think I was fast or just wanted to be out in front, but I could tell midway through the workout he was struggling a little and having trouble staying out in front. With about 4 or 5 hills to go, I started dropping him on most of the hills and I finished the workout really strong. The hills we were running were taking me about 50 seconds at the beginning and I was down to 45 second repeats at the end of the workout. I ran about a 2.75 mile cooldown back to the house afterwards.

Sunday 3/7/10 - 8 miles

2010-03-13T15:35:00.002-06:00

Sunday evening about 5:30 I headed out to the park to do 8 miles. It was tough to force myself to do the entire 8 miles, but I got it done. I had all sorts of excuses in my head to cut it short - I was going to get up early and run hills in less than 12 hrs, after a long run 6 miles would have been enough for the day, but I knew that I needed to stay mentally tough so I knocked out the full 8 miles in 59 minutes. My legs are doing alright and my training is going a lot better than it was leading up to the Houston marathon.

3/6/10 - 16 miles

2010-03-13T15:28:00.003-06:00

I didn't get a total time for my run. I managed to stop my Garmin a couple of times and at the end of the 16 mile route it only showed 10.5 miles. I know the route was 16 miles and I think I averaged 6:50 - 7:00 pace for most of the run. I was really tired and a little late getting out the door and missed the start which was probably just as well. Sam was out there and he was cranking pretty fast and I'm not sure that I needed to hammer 16 miles with him which I probably would have done. I caught up with a guy named Gary who is also running Boston and ran with him out to the turnaround point. A 1/4 mile before I got to the turn around I saw Sam and Andrew heading back in. I chatted with Sean for a minute while I got some water and then headed back. After a couple miles on the way back Andrew was stretching on the side of the road and waiting for me. He said this was his longest run back after recovering from a stress fracture in his foot and he hammered it as long as he had wanted. I hadn't seen him since sometime in October or November so it was good to catch up with him.

On the way back we passed a guy out running a little before one of our water stops and he came up and talked to us when we were getting water. The guy was wearing sweats and brown boot looking leather shoes and it was kind of amusing to see someone running with that outfit. He was asking how to sign up for the Houston Marathon and after a bit we realized he wanted to know how to run in the Olympic trials in 2012 since they are here in Houston. We had a good laugh about it since I don't think he is anywhere close to running sub 3:00, much less 2:19 or whatever the qualifying standard. I had been planning on adding a couple of miles on at the cloverleafs to get up to 18, but I was sore enough that I called it good when I got back to the base at 16 miles.

3/5/10 - 6.5 miles

2010-03-13T15:24:00.002-06:00

I ran 6.5 miles Friday evening at 7:15 pace. I had wanted to try to go up to Conroe on Friday afternoon and do a 16 - 18 mile long run but I had too many things to do at work and couldn't leave quite as early as I would have liked. It probably would have been getting close to 4:00 by the time I would be able to start the run and I didn't really like the idea of running as it was getting dark with possible evening rush hour traffic so I did the easy 6.5 and then would just go run the normal Saturday long run with Kenyan Way.

3/4/10 - 5 miles

2010-03-13T15:21:00.003-06:00

Didn't have too much time to get a run in, but went out and did an easy 5 at 7:30 pace at lunch. Legs still felt a little tired after the long tempo run, but it felt good to get a nice easy run in.

Wednesday 3/3/10 - 12 miles including 8 mile tempo

2010-03-03T23:30:00.002-06:00

This was the best workout that I've had in a long time and I didn't have this strong a workout in the month leading up to the Houston marathon. The weather was great - upper 50's or low 60's and sunny out. I headed out at lunch and did a 2.5 mile warmup in 18 minutes. My goal was to do 8 miles at ~6:00 avg pace, but I would have settled for 8 miles at 6:15 (sub-marathon pace) if my hamstring wasn't feeling good. I felt pretty good starting out and hit the first mile in 6:08. I wasn't pushing it too hard and i planned to start a little slower and try to pick up the pace to average 6:00. I hit the 2nd mile in 6:03 and the 3rd in 6:01. I finally got under 6:00 pace on the 4th mile and hit 5:58. My 5th was 5:56 and my 6th was 5:58. I took a quick 20 second water break right after I finished the 6th mile and then got right back up to speed for the last two miles. My last two splits were 5:54 and 5:50. I felt pretty strong and could have kept going at that pace longer. I could feel my hamstring, but it never really hurt or felt like I needed to stop the run. After the workout I did a 1.5 mile cooldown in about 8:00 minutes for a total of 12 miles in 1:16 and I averaged 5:59 for the 8 miles.

Tomorrow will be an easy day and I'm thinking of doing my long run on Friday afternoon up in Conroe. Since I work in the Woodlands I'm already 2/3 of the way there so I might take a couple hours off on Friday afternoon and go do an easy 18 in Conroe. That will give me another long run in the hills and let me sleep in on Saturday morning.

Tuesday 3/2/10 - Day off

2010-03-03T23:29:00.002-06:00

Too long a day at work. Didn't get a chance to run at lunch and when I got home at 8:30 no motivation to head out for a late run.

2/29/10 - 8.25 miles - 60 minutes

2010-03-01T21:00:00.002-06:00

I set my alarm to get up early and run hills, but the downpour bailed me out and gave me an extra hour of sleep this morning. My legs were still pretty tired so instead of doing a hard workout, I just ran for an hour and got in 8.25 miles at lunch. I was averaging just under 7:30 pace for the first half of the run and was running pretty easy, but I got kind of bored and picked up the pace and got down to around 6:50 pace by the end of the run. Nothing spectacular, but another run under my belt on the way to hopefully a 70 mile week.

Sunday 2/28/10 - 6.5 miles

2010-03-01T18:02:00.002-06:00

This was a painfully slow recovery run. I didn't have any injuries, but my body was still beat from the long run in the hills Saturday. I averaged 8:00 pace for the 6.5 miles and finished in 52 minutes. I hate days like these. I really would liked to have stopped after 3 miles, but I needed the mileage. Sometimes I feel like it is a fine line between pushing myself too hard to where I increase the risk of getting an injury and toughing it out and putting in the miles even when I don't feel like it. I've wimped out on enough runs that I felt like I needed to trudge through it. It wasn't a fun run, but I finished it. I knew I was going slow because I saw a woman I know from work running laps at the park and she was going the opposite direction as me, but I could tell she was going faster than me based on where we would keep passing each other. The good news was my hamstring felt good for the run and my body is seeming to handle the increase in mileage pretty well. I really seemed to hit the wall with a couple of miles to go and I was just starving and felt like I was out of gas, but I rewarded myself with a nice steak dinner when I got home.

Saturday 2/27/10 - 22 miles

2010-02-28T21:30:00.002-06:00

Friday night I was pretty exhausted and I think I fell asleep on the couch watching the Olympics between 8:30 and 9:00. Sometime around 10:00 or 10:30 my wife dragged me up to the bedroom to head to bed. I set the alarm for 4:35 wishing I had an excuse to not get up that early, but I knew that I really needed to head up to Conroe for a long run. I had to stop by my office on the way to the run to get my shoes with orthotics and my hamstring sleeve because I knew I would probably be in trouble without them. I got my bag with them and made it to the start right about 6:00 before everyone took off. I think I was probably the fastest person up there on Saturday, but there were a couple of guys running at a pretty good clip to start so I was glad that I didn't end up running the entire workout by myself. I ran with a couple of guys named Richard and Andreas. We weren't going to fast the first few miles, but everyone was tired and it was dark out to start and there were a few monster hills to start the workout. We park at a church on League Line Rd and then run out to the Marina and then head back. Then we ran off on a side road to where it dead ends and then back to League Line road. As we were going down the road I told the guys that last year when we were running on this road somebody had warned us about some loose dogs down near the end. As we crested a hill and could see the end of the road less a couple hundred yards away I start hearing this barking and see 3 large dogs come running towards us at full speed. The two guys I was running with turn around and start to take off and I told them not to run away because it would probably encourage the dogs to keep coming after us. We started yelling at the dogs and when they got to within about 30 to 40 yards I guess we scared them off and they finally turned around and headed back home. Next time I'm running in Conroe I think that I will avoid that road. Then we headed down another road and down a pretty steep hill that I knew would be a ton of fun to come back up. After about 10 miles we picked up the pace some and were averaging closer to 7:00 pace until mile 16. When we got to mile 16 I told the guys I was running with I was going to pick up the pace and try to get down into the 6:20/mile range for the last 6 miles. I didn't quite make 6:20 pace, but I did average 6:30 pace which I was pleased with considering some of the hills in the last 6 miles. If we had been running in Houston where it was flat as a pancake, I'm sure that I would have been down around 6:15 pace for the last 6 miles. I averaged 7:12 pace over the entire run and finished the 22.1 miles in 2:39. It was tough on the legs, but a good workout that I really needed. My splits were as follows:

1 - 8:03 - rolling hills, dark, and still half asleep

2 - 7:40

3 - 7:59 - coming up steep hill from Marina

4 - 7:19 - downhill mile

5 - 8:15 - stopped for a bit when dogs were running at us and didn't stop watch

6 - 7:39 - still coming uphill

7 - 7:18 - going downhill

8 - 7:21 - one of the flatter miles

9 - 7:26

10 - 7:45 - coming up steep hill

11 - 7:16 - rolling hills

12 - 7:07 - more down than up

13 - 7:08

14 - 7:02

15 - 7:11

16 - 7:05

17 - 6:25

18 - 6:32 - some tough hills in this mile

19 - 6:32 - another tough mile

20 - 6:26 - a little easier with some downhill, but uphill at the end

21 - 6:34 - toughest mile of the day - two steep uphills and downhills within 3/4 of a mile

22 - 6:30 - Another tough uphill in first 1/2 of this mile. I wanted to take it easy and I thought about saying that 5 hard miles was enough, but I needed to push through it to finish strong

22.1 - 6:10 pace - just cruising the last 0.1 miles into the finish.

I survived the run without any major issues. My hamstring felt good for a 22 mile run. My sleeve started to slide down my leg and I had to take it off and put it back on around mile 14, but my hamstring felt strong and didn't bother me at all during the last 6 miles. I haven't been using my Ben-Gay either to treat my sore hamstrings. I think the extra stretching and lifting I've been doing is making a difference.

I got a massage Saturday afternoon and it was kind of painful, but my legs felt really good afterwards. The massage therapist told me she can tell my hamstring is doing better than it was before the Houston marathon.

Friday - 2/26/10 - 6.5 miles

2010-02-28T21:27:00.002-06:00

Friday afternoon I made it out for a couple of laps at the park. I had left my bag with my hamstring wrap and orthotics at the office so I didn't have them with me. I didn't wear a watch, but I ran it fairly easy since I was going to head up to Conroe for a tough run early Saturday morning. It was really windy out and there were some pretty fierce headwinds in some parts of the park. I'd guess I was doing 7:30 - 7:40 pace on average, but since I didn't have a watch I didn't know for sure. Without my hamstring sleeve I could feel my hamstring a little more near the end of the run, but it wasn't too bad.

Thursday 2/25/10 - 6 miles

2010-02-28T21:26:00.001-06:00

I went for an easy 6.1 mile loop in 46 minutes. Not too eventful, but my legs felt ok which was good.

Wednesday 2/24/10 - 7.5 miles

2010-02-28T21:19:00.002-06:00

I didn't get home from work as early as I would have liked and I didn't get out the door to start the run until about 7:30. My goal was to do about 9 miles including 6 miles tempo pace, but the workout didn't go quite as well as I planned. Between my hill workout Monday and the 9 miles Tuesday, my hamstring was feeling a little more sore than usual. I don't know if I tweaked something on the hill workout, but I could feel it a little more than usual. After the last two days, my legs felt a little tired too and I struggled to get my first mile below 6:15 pace and my goal had been to start at around 6:00 pace and drop to ~5:40 pace by the end of the 6 miles. Between my legs being tired and running late in the evening when it was darker out I felt like I was stumbling all over the place and after the first mile I decided not to do the hard workout and just do a regular run. I think it is more important for me to get my mileage up and stay healthy than get multiple speed workouts in each week. The rest of the workout at an easier pace felt fine.

Tuesday 2/23/10 - 9 miles

2010-02-28T21:11:00.002-06:00

At lunch I went out for a solo 9 mile run. I was feeling pretty good and cruised at about 7:05 - 7:10 pace and finished the 9 miles in 64:20. It was another good day of weather for running when I went out. It was in the 40's and I managed to beat the rain by about 15 minutes. After I showered and was heading back to the office I saw that the rain was starting to come down so I'm glad I didn't have to run in mid 40's and raining weather.

Monday 2/22/10 - Hill Workout

2010-02-28T21:01:00.002-06:00

Since i was still feeling a little under the weather I didn't get up to run the Kenyan Way workout in the morning, but I did a hill workout on the treadmill in the evening after work. I ran a 2 mile warmup and then did a 4 mile brutal workout on the treadmill. I chose the "hill workout" and selected level 13 out of 20 and then I set the pace at about 7:30 pace. The workout started at a 3% incline and then every minute the incline would increase and then drop back down for a minute to 3%. It basically went 3%, 4%, 3%, 5%, 3%, 6% etc, until it got up over 9%. Then it would drop back down to 6% and repeat back up to 9%. At a 7:30 pace, I was just about to fall off the back of the treadmill by the end of the 4 miles. I don't really like running on the treadmill, but at least doing hills breaks up some of the monotony. After a 1 mile cooldown, I stretched and jump roped for 5 minutes and lifted weights for 20 minutes.

Sunday 2/21/10 - still sick, no run

2010-02-28T20:58:00.001-06:00

I felt pretty miserable all day Sunday and took the day off from running.

2/20/10 - 6.5 miles

2010-02-21T15:48:00.002-06:00

I was still battling a cold and 6.5 miles was as far as I made it. I was so wiped out Friday night I had already decided I was going to sleep in and try to get my rest and recover instead of getting up early. I slept over 11 hrs Friday night and was just wiped out. I went out Saturday afternoon for a run thinking I'd try to get about 9 miles in, but I was so wiped out and struggling I stopped short at about 6.5 miles in 49 minutes. I averaged about 7:30 pace for most of the run, but just felt exhausted and fell down to 8:00 pace at the end so I headed back home instead of doing another lap.

2/19/10 - 8.4 miles

2010-02-21T15:47:00.006-06:00

Still had a cold, but feeling a little better. I ran 8.4 miles in 1 hr. I was pretty consistent in hitting 7:05 - 7:10 pace most of the run. My nose was running quite a bit and I was farmer blowing a lot, but didn't feel too bad.

2/18/10 - Sick - day off

2010-02-21T15:47:00.005-06:00

Feeling under the weather today and didn't go out for a run.

2/17/10 - 7 miles

2010-02-21T15:44:00.002-06:00

I ran a 7+ mile loop in 52 minutes at lunch by myself on Wednesday. The weather was nice out - upper 50's, not too cold, not too hot. My legs were a little tired from the lifting on Tuesday, but felt pretty good other than that. I was starting to feel a little on the edge of being sick, but felt ok during the run.

2/16/10 - 5.5 miles + weights

2010-02-21T15:38:00.002-06:00

I went down to the gym planning just to lift weights and run in the evening after work, but I saw one of my coworkers who was about to go out and run 5 miles so I did that with him and then had a good lifting session. I thought about doing a 2nd run in the evening to get another 4 miles in, but I was tired after the weights and I had run 43 miles in 4 days before today and I really didn't want to push my mileage too high too quickly. I think the weights are definitely helping my legs out as my hamstring gets stronger and continues to recover.

2/15/10 - 10 miles w/Hills

2010-02-21T15:33:00.002-06:00

Late Monday afternoon I did 10 miles including 5 miles of tempo-paced hill repeats at the cloverleafs. My hamstring was feeling pretty good and this was the first real hard workout that I had really done since the marathon. I did 5 laps and each lap was 0.97 miles. It was windy out and it seemed like I was running into a head win 75% of the time. My splits on the hills were 6:06, 5:55, 5:49, 5:45, 5:37. I was happy I was able to pick up the pace on each lap and I think that the wind probably added 5 seconds to each lap. I did an easy 2.5 mile cooldown and was happy to have a strong workout under my belt. I ran into Sam who was showing up for the evening workout right as I left and I ran about a mile with him while he warmed up and I was cooling down.

2/14/10 - 4 miles

2010-02-16T23:07:00.002-06:00

I ran an easy 4 miles at 7:40 pace Sunday afternoon. It warmed up quite a bit Sunday afternoon and was 67 degrees went I went running. The park was packed with people in the nice weather on Valentine's day and it almost seemed like a Saturday out there. I felt really good for the day after a long run and had a good run. I would have run a little farther, but I had dinner plans with my wife and didn't have time for a longer run.

2/13/10 - 20.3 miles

2010-02-16T22:14:00.006-06:00

I had originally planned to go up to Conroe, but I got to bed late and my hamstring had been kind of sore Friday night. I really didn't want to get up at 4:40 and go up to Conroe and risk only making it through 10 or 12 miles. My hamstring really hasn't been bothering me during the runs, but seems to flare up sometimes in the evenings or at night. I ended up sleeping and and set out to do the run by myself. Sean's email had said that if you were training for Boston and couldn't make it up to Conroe you should try to do 30% of the run on the cloverleaf hills. It was cold Saturday morning and that added to my motivation to sleep in. I finally made it out the door around 10:00 and it was up to about 39 degrees but the windchill was in the low 30's. I decided to wear my orthotics for the run which was more than twice as long as the longest run I had worn them on. I headed to the park and did a loop through the park out to North Post Oak on Memorial and down to Woodway and back through the park. I warmed up enough that I didn't need my gloves anymore so I stopped by the house to drop them off after about 6 miles. I wasn't going particularly fast, but I was feeling pretty decent and my hamstring was feeling fine.

I headed down to Blossom and over to the Cloverleaf hills and ran 4 laps. My Garmin was showing that each lap - up two hills and down two hills - was 0.97 - 0.98 miles. I definitely picked up the pace some on the hills and got down to around 7:00 pace. I noticed that my shoe looked kind of bloody from one of my toes bleeding, but it didn't really hurt or bother me that much. I think that my shorter middle toe occasionally digs into my 2nd toe and on some of the longer run cuts it open a little bit. Here are a couple pictures for your enjoyment.

After the four laps on the hills I headed around the bayou and then got back to the

cloverleaf hills with about 4.5 miles to go. My goal for the run was to pick up the pace and try to run the last 5 miles at 6:15 pace. I started picking up the pace when I hit 15 miles for the run and gradually picked up my pace. Without really doing much speedwork since the marathon it's harder than you'd think to run a fast 5 miles at the end, especially on hilly terrain. I was dropping the pace each of the first 4 miles, but near the end of the 4th mile I had to stop and wait for traffic for about 45 seconds to cross Shepherd and that pretty much ended the speed portion of the workout. I had about 30 seconds to go in the 4th mile and stopping that long was just too hard to recover from and get moving quick again. I struggled to get back down to pace and decided just to cool down and run easy the rest of the way back home.

All in all I was pleased with the run. My legs felt strong, I was able to knock out 20+ miles by myself and my hamstring didn't bother me during the run. I wore my hamstring compression sleeve like usual and it really has been helping me a lot.

My splits are as follows:

7:42

7:28

7:33

7:18

7:15

7:21

7:18

7:22

7:21

7:07

7:08

7:12

7:01

6:29

6:24

6:22

6:31

7:26

2:05 - 0.3 miles

Quick update

2010-02-16T13:36:00.002-06:00

Training has been going well lately. I'll try to post a better update with some pictures tonight after work, but I didn't want to leave all my loyal followers in suspense of my training. I ran 20.3 miles on Saturday and had a solid workout with a good chunk of the mileage going up and down hills at the cloverleaf. Sunday I got in an easy 4 miles and Monday I ran 10 with 5 miles at tempo pace on the cloverleaf hills for 43 miles in 4 days. My hamstring has been starting to feel better and I've been fairly consistent about getting to the weight room and lifting twice a week and I've spent extra time stretching which seems to help out a lot too.

2/12/10 - 9.1 miles

2010-02-12T16:52:00.002-06:00

I had the day off from work so I ran a little over 9 miles at Memorial park today. It was rather chilly out. When I went out the temperature was in the upper 30's and the windchill was 29. I wore shorts, a long sleeve shirt and gloves and felt pretty good. The park wasn't real crowded and I had a nice fairly easy run and finished the 9.1 miles in 65:30. Most of my miles were around 7:15 pace, but I had a few just below 7:00 pace near the end. I'm planning on heading up to Conroe tomorrow morning to try ~20 miles in the hills as I get ready for Boston.

2/11/10 - 5 miles on treadmill

2010-02-11T22:36:00.003-06:00

I ran 5 miles at 6:50 avg pace. I despise running on treadmills, but it was 39 degrees and raining and I'm not sure what the windchill was, but it was chilly out. I would have done more, but I was bored out of my mind and took some extra time to jump rope, foam roll and stretch for a while when I was done.

2/10/10 - Day off

2010-02-11T22:34:00.001-06:00

I was ready for a day off and my legs were really tired and a little sore.

2/9/10 - 7 miles easy + weights

2010-02-09T21:57:00.001-06:00

I had a good lifting session at lunch and spent quite a bit of time focusing on my legs. After work I did 7 miles @ 7:25 avg pace. It was a bit cool out, but once I got going I felt good. I didn't have my hamstring sleeve, but I wore my orthotics and didn't have any real issues with my hamstring.

2/8/10 - 9 miles - progressive/tempo run

2010-02-08T22:03:00.002-06:00

I wasn't able to run with the Kenyan Way group this morning because I needed to be in relatively early to work, but Sean had suggested last week I stick to progressive or tempo runs for some of my harder workouts while I work on getting my mileage back up and recuperating my hamstring. I set out at lunch to do an 8 mile progressive run with a 1 mile cool down starting at 7:30 pace and dropping 15 seconds per mile and seeing if I could close at 5:45. If my leg started bothering me, I would shut it down a little early. I started out a little quicker than I had planned and hit my first two miles in 7:20 and 6:55. The next two were 6:35 and 6:15. My leg was feeling ok, so I decided to take it down to 6:00 pace. I was having to work a little at 6:00 pace and my hamstring was feeling alright, but I decided that was a quick enough pace for the day so I cruised the next 4 miles at 6:00 pace. I ran the run with my orthotics and my hamstring sleeve which has helped quite a bit. I did an easy 8:00 mile for a cooldown for a total of 9 miles in just under 1 hr.

2/7//10 - 6.1 miles - 41 minutes

2010-02-07T22:08:00.004-06:00

I ran just over 6 miles on Sunday afternoon with my orthotics and hamstrings sleeve and felt pretty good on the run. I did a loop from my house through the park over to Post Oak lane, down to Woodway and back through the park and back home. I was in a hurry to finish the run and get to a Super Bowl party so I decided to pick up the pace some in the middle of the run. I knocked out a couple of 6:15 miles, but I was kind of disappointed by how much effort those miles seemed to take. I thought those should be a piece of cake, but I was working harder than I thought I should be. I did about 49 miles in the past week which I was happy with for my first week back to running. It may just be that my body is getting used to the mileage again and that is why I've been feeling a little slow the last few days. I have a 4 day weekend next weekend so I'm hoping to be able to get a 18 - 20 mile long run in if my legs are doing ok and get my weekly mileage into the 55 - 60 range. I'm planning on taking next Wednesday off since I'll be traveling for work so we'll see how my legs do and if I can increase my mileage on a 6 day week.

2/6/10 - 12 miles

2010-02-07T22:03:00.002-06:00

I was so exhausted Friday night I decided I'd just run on my own instead of setting the alarm for the crack of dawn to get up and run with the Kenyan Way group. The weather was great out and I ran from my house around the bayou, back to Memorial Park for a loop and then back home. I didn't have my Garmin since I forgot to charge it, but I know the route I ran is about 12 miles and I finished in in 1:29. I didn't wear my orthotics for this long a run, but I wore my hamstring compression sleeve which really seems to be helping me. I really haven't had any hamstring pain while I've been running. It's still kind of tender when I stretch it, but for the most part that is the only time it really bothers me at all. I'm not sure if it was the lifting or if my legs are just tired after this week of running after taking a couple weeks off, but my legs felt a little sluggish and tired again.

2/5/10 - 7.5 miles

2010-02-07T21:55:00.002-06:00

I went out for a 7.5 mile run Friday evening after work and wore my orthotics. The run was a little long for the new orthotics and my feet were a little uncomfortable by the end. My legs felt a little sluggish during the run and I only averaged about 7:40 pace for the run. It was getting dark by the end of the run and I had to slow down some because the path wasn't always well lit and it was hard to see where I was going.

When I finished running I spent about 40 minutes stretching and lifting. When I do hamstring curls, I do each leg individually to make sure that my dominant leg isn't doing all the work. When I was doing the curls with my right leg (not my sore hamstring), I had to stop after a couple and cut the weight back quite a bit because of some pain in my knee. Last weekend I was skiing and I wiped out on a run in a lot of powder and my binding didn't release and I twisted my knee. It was kind of sore and I took it easy for a couple of days and it seemed to feel better after a day or two and I haven't felt it at all while running. I guess whatever I did still hasn't completely healed and I'll have to be careful with it for a while. This is probably another good reason for not racing anytime soon.

2/4/10 - 4 miles with new orthotics

2010-02-04T21:06:00.004-06:00

I got my new orthotics today and I also had my hamstring compression sleeve I had picked up last night so I tried them both out today and the combo seemed to work pretty good. I only did an easy 4 because I didn't want to overdo it with the new orthotics on the first day since my feet aren't used to them yet. The last thing I want is a bruised arch or something else that requires extra time off.

The orthotics have some serious arch support in them, but I think that is what I really need. I had orthotics that I wore the last couple of years of high school and my first couple of years of college but I stopped wearing them. They were basically made of a hard foam material and over time they just got beaten down and I didn't know if they were effective anymore or not since they lost a decent amount of the arch support. They were pretty big and bulky and I would train with them, but I would never race with them. They were too big to fit in my racing flats and they were pretty heavy and would add a decent amount of weight. Eventually I stopped wearing them after a season or two and my junior and senior years of college I battled injuries and I never felt like I lived up to my potential those years.

It will definitely take a little while to get used to the new orthotics, but they are very lightweight and don't seem that much heavier than the shoe insoles. The support is made of carbon fiber and they are light enough that I will be able to wear them when I race as well as when I train which is probably important. I also wore this new compression wrap on my hamstring and it seemed to work well. The one real difference I could tell is my legs and the tendons or ligaments across the back of my knees didn't bug me at all. When I run on uneven surfaces like grass or hit uneven spots on the path at the park, the awkward steps sometimes give me the disconcerting twinges as I think something bad is about to happen to the back of my knee. I hit a few of the spots today where I expected to feel something, but everything seemed very stable which was good news. My goal for tomorrow is doing 7 - 8 easy and then try for ~2 hrs easy Saturday morning which should get me 16 - 17 miles. While I'm working on ramping up my mileage, I'm going to try to concentrate more on total running time on my long runs instead of being fixated on mileage. Sometimes when I have a set mileage in my head, I may run too fast just to get it over with and if I'm not so concerned about hitting a certain number of miles, I can just relax and run for time whether I'm doing 6:40 pace or 7:30 pace.

2/3/10 - 7 miles - 50 minutes

2010-02-04T14:14:00.002-06:00

Ran another fairly easy run and tried to concentrate on my form. I was able to run a route where I was running on grass/dirt for about 3 out of the 7 miles and it was good to be on a softer surface for a while. I averaged about 7:10 pace with a few sub-7:00's in the middle. My legs felt pretty good during the run and I spent quite a while stretching afterwards.

I registered for the Kenyan Way spring program and Sean talked me out of running the Buffalo Wallow 6k this weekend. It's probably the smart thing to do. The course will be really nasty on Saturday with all the rain we've gotten the last couple of days and there is just more opportunity to tweak something and prolong the injured hamstrings. He said I should just concentrate the next few weeks on building mileage, stretching and lifting and not doing anything too strenuous that could aggravate my hamstring. I picked up a hamstring compression wrap and I'll try that out on some of my easy runs. I had contemplated getting it before the marathon, but it had some pretty serious compression and I wasn't comfortable trying it in the marathon without having been able to train with it. Now that I've got plenty of time for training I'll see if it helps out or not.

2/2/10 - 6.2 miles

2010-02-02T21:15:00.004-06:00

Ran at lunch and spent half the run trying to chase down a co-worker who had left a minute before me. Total run was ~44 minutes. I felt good and again my legs didn't bother me during the run, but were kind of sore while stretching. They felt good the rest of the day which was a good sign. I did a good job at keeping good form up until I caught my friend, but after I caught him I spent more time talking with him than concentrating on my form. I found out my orthotics should be here Thursday. If the rest of my week goes well, I think that I will run the Buffalo Wallow 6k. I always loved XC races in high school and college and I like this race a lot.

Finally back to running

2010-02-01T17:24:00.003-06:00

After a couple of weeks off, I finally made it out running again today. I was trying to give my hamstring some extra time to recover before I start ramping up mileage again in preparation for Boston. I did a 6.1 mile loop in 42:20 which is a little under 7:00 avg pace. I spent almost the entire run concentrating on my form. When I get tired, my legs tend to flail from side to side and I think good form keeps my hamstrings from hurting so much. I felt fresh and well rested and didn't have any hamstring pain or issues during the run. I stretched afterwards and my hamstring was definitely still sore, but I only felt it while stretching and I haven't felt it anymore the rest of the day.

I got fitted for orthotics right before the marathon and they should be in this week. I'm hoping that they will help me out with my form and my nagging hamstring issues. I'm also contemplating running the Buffalo Wallow 6k this coming weekend. I was out of town this weekend so I didn't get a chance to try to defend my 2nd place finish from last year's Rockets 5k.

In my marathon recap post a couple weeks ago, I neglected to mention that my dad ran the 1/2 marathon and won his age group (60 - 64) in 1:36:57. He qualified for the Boston marathon back in November and we will both be running Boston in April.