Post Race Impression

The Tom King went down this morning, and I ended up cutting about 9 minutes off last year's time! As of this writing, the official times haven't posted, but my time was 2:10 and a few ticks.

This was not accomplished without some pain. Probably, I trained fewer miles and less carefully for this year's run - my fifth time - than for any other so far.

I felt pretty tuckered at moments in the miles between marker 11 and the finish, and both hips and both feet are feeling their age and more. I ran through the knee pain, and never did experience much of the discomfort in calves and ankles that bugged me in training. I tried running past a couple of little aches in my feet, but they waited in the bushes for me as I hit 11, and jumped back bigger than before. I really noticed the change at this distance, as a whole list of little aches started up.

Afterward, the effects of overexertion were evident quickly, as my feet and left calf stiffened and cramped. In the men's room to change to dry clothes about 20 minutes after the finish, I was startled by a cramp in my pectoral muscle at the right shoulder when I leaned over to pull up a sock. My system was definitely overtaxed today.

Kid Kate ran away from me just as we reached Mile 1; saw her again at the turnaround, briefly. She finished at about 2:07, and vows never to do this again -- boring and painful is how she described it.


That's it for now -- I'll be back on the road by Tuesday for 3 or 4 miles, and we'll see how we're feeling.

On Aches and Pains

It's probably inevitable that an athlete will at some point be injured. It's certainly happened to me several times over my slow running career. I've dodged the ACL and rotator cuff injuries, more or less -- mainly because jogging doesn't involve those.

So, you're on your x-many mile run, and some part of your body begins to complain. There's a decision to make: keep going or stop. Some pains you can run past, like the little stitch in your side that comes and then disappears as you warm up. Some you might try to run through -- the aching knee is not going away, but if it doesn't hurt too badly during the run, and doesn't make you suffer when you're not running, you'll keep on going.

I run past the stitch in my side -- I never experience one anyway when I'm in good aerobic shape. I run through the knee pain, since it settles down as I finish the first mile or so, and doesn't hurt that much on the stairs or getting in and out of cars. Many years ago, QMH was jogging a charity 10 K when she stepped on a pebble and turned her ankle. Not feeling that bad, and not knowing a shortcut back to the car, she let pride tell her to run the rest of the course. That same ankle has been in horseback riding accidents too, and it hurts often.

One risk of running through a pain is that you'll compensate elsewhere in posture or stride, and cause a longer-lasting injury. In a fairly small way, I discovered this a year ago, when I was having trouble with the 10-mile training threshold. Running beyond about 8 miles just seemed labored and awkward. Finally, I realized that I had been looking down at my right toe, where our greyhound Mareo had taken a test bite and left a fraying hole in the nylon upper of the shoe. I was concerned about pebbles getting in, and trying to decide whether the shoe was still serviceable for the full 13.1 mile run. Once I got my chin back up, I stopped having the problem.

Not for the first time, though, I notice this season that my calves, ankles and feet get very fatigued on uphill segments of my fairly hilly neighborhood run. This got so uncomfortable one time a week ago that I walked most of my course rather than run through the pain. Just yesterday I walked the last 25 or 30 yards up my biggest neighborhood hill near the end of a brisk 4 mile training run. No pain or discomfort in between runs, so I've decided to do nothing at all.

I reason that the Tom King course is so flat, that with a tiny adjustment in arm swing, I can get through Saturday's race without suffering. Stay tuned for the post-race wrapup.

One week to go

With QMH out of the running (out of the walking mostly, too), our daughter, Kid Kate -- a standout high-school sprinter who professes to hate any run longer than 200 meters -- is stepping in for our JumpStart Jog fundraiser. Kate is 17 and stubborn; although she has done very little training for the distance we're about to tackle, I expect her to fly through the half marathon on youth and guts. Last Saturday, after much bickering about the dwindling days before the Tom King, we started a ten mile run at the campus of her school, JPII. There's no track at this new school yet, but the coaches have sketched out a two-mile circuit that traverses parking lot and playing field. Kate led the way, immediately pulling away from me, of course. Matters got plain scary for me when I hit a stretch of lumpy grass and a coarse gravel lane that I'd have to negotiate twice in every lap. No doubt the track team kids have developed strong ankles and good balance from training on this obstacle course. I knew that at best the extra effort would wear me out. I was also afraid I'd turn an ankle or twist a knee just a week before the Tom King.

So, I decided to run around and around the parking lot for two hours, clocking about twelve miles at a carefully measured pace. Meanwhile, Kate charged through her ten miles, pausing several times to catch up with her phone calls and text messages, and then went off to the dance studio for a hip hop rehearsal.

Youth is wasted on the young.

Lost my driving wheel?

With QMH's recent benching (well, couching is more accurate), I have trained almost entirely by myself for the coming Tom King Half Marathon. Running alone is pretty typical for me, but for every one of my four half marathons I have done most of my long distance training-up with her. Her situation is that in late January, completely out of the blue, she became A Person With A Bad Back. Without warning and without any history of troubles, she ended up in the ER with exploding pain in her right leg. Pain medication keeps her more or less comfortable, but for close to seven weeks now, no treatment has had much effect on the underlying spinal disruption.

Losing my training partner has triggered an unanticipated worry. Way back when we were bicycle tourists, I used to say that QMH was the leader, no matter which of us happened to be riding in front. When she was the lead cyclist, I followed her pace whether or not I felt it was too slow. On my turns as leader, she never failed to tell me when I was holding her back or pulling away.

When it comes to long runs, I fear I don't pace myself. I worry that in the adrenaline rush of the real thing, with Kid Kate running away from me, I'll spend my stamina prematurely. This has happened on recent training runs. Several times in the past two weeks I have found myself either winded or leg-tired early in a four or six mile run. Once last week, I wound up walking close to three miles when my feet and ankles began complaining insistently.

So, it's a real concern, running without my leader by my side. I hope to regulate my pace and my mood with music.

Endorphin Encounter

You know about endorphins, right? The Wiki link a few words back discloses that the some of the brain scientists who discovered our naturally synthesized feel-good chemicals named them by melding their working term: "endogenous morphine." Some people experience an exercise-related endorphin rush called "runner's high." Like, euphoria, yessssss.

I've only been seriously training for the Tom King since February 20. Other years, the training gets going in November, so I'm coming from pretty far behind. Still, owing to two theatrical productions in the last year, my weight is lower. Maybe someday I'll describe my "hell week" weight loss plan.

This week I have run 6 miles on Sunday, 2 fast ones on Monday, 3 hard ones Tuesday and two pretty good 4's on Wednesday and Thursday. I can finally say that I'm back to running, instead of *getting* back to it. Oh, and those endorphins are working, Dude.

It's much like writing. The pain and difficulty levels range from tedious to excruciating, but it's better if you whack at it regularly.

And running or writing, it always feels much better when it's done.

Back on the trail, lamely

More than a year has passed, yes, and it's been a busy one. My focus on running has had some blurry stretches since we finished up the 2006 Tom King. QMH's knee problems remain, with additional discomfort from an ouchy ankle she seems to injure quite reliably every few years.

Like many people, I let my priorities slide. Sometimes over the past year I let as much as a couple of weeks pass between runs. The cumulative feeling is that running almost always feels like getting back to running. Very seldom does it feel like maintenance or training up.

But here we are, about a week before another Tom King Half Marathon, which I will run for the fifth time. I'm 55 now, and this year will be different in a lot of ways. This dispatch posts on March 9, the Friday before the race. Many miles (but not as many as other years), and many circumstances (way more than other years) have spun out already.

I'll be back in a little while to articulate some of 'em.