20-26 February: Week in Review, and Club Challenge 10-Mile Report

Okay, dates, times, distances:

20 February: 10 miles (74 minutes), Canton/Fells/etc.
21 February: 4 miles (29 minutes), Canton/Fells/etc.
22 February: 6 miles (42 minutes), including a "tempo" Patterson Park loop
23 February: 3 miles (25 minutes), APG
24 February: 8 miles (56 minutes), Canton/Fells/etc.
25 February: 2.5 miles, Campus Hills speed loop, 3.5 miles, treadmill hill program (51 minutes total)
26 February: 6 miles in the morning (40 minutes), 5 miles in the afternoon (35 minutes), all Canton/Fells

Total Time: 352 minutes
Total Distance: 48 miles

Definitely a decrease in mileage from the past couple of weeks, but considering that I didn't have a 30-ish mile run thrown in there, still decent volume, and overall, an appropriate draw-down, considering that the runs on the 24th through the 26th felt awful.

And speaking of which, Club Challenge . . .

The Club Challenge 10-Mile Race, hosted by the Howard County Striders, is a race that I've made a point of doing for the past few years, since it's the major Falls Road Running team race of the year. That's the fun part. Everything else about the race - the brutally hilly course, the end-of-February-when-nobody-is-totally-in-shape-yet, the distance (which is too long to be run outright "fast," but too short to just rely on endurance) - is, well, challenging. Every year, I wind up questioning my sanity around Mile 4 of this race, and every year I wind up finishing anyway, and totally forgetting how bad I felt the next day. That said, this post will not fully convey how bad it felt, since I've already partially forgotten that, but rest assured, it was worse than however this sounds.

Since this is a "relatively" short race, a relatively short summary is in order: I started out at just over 6 minutes for the first mile, hit the second mile in around 12:20, the third mile in around 19:20, and after that, the hills started coming and really did me in. The first couple were okay, but after that, I have never felt such blinding, excruciating pain in my quads when climbing a hill. The pain gradually disappeared on the flats and downhills, but of course, after a few miles on that course, there is never enough of either to regain any sort of rhythm. I ended up finishing in 1:06:37, which is 12 seconds faster than what I ran last year, but 1:48 slower than my fastest time at that race (although I think that may have been run the year that the course was 0.15 miles short).

So, in a way, not really much different from last year, which leaves me wondering how to feel about my performance. It was a strange race, because the limiting factor was not my aerobic fitness, but the fact that past the third mile, my quads felt like they might explode at any second. Other than my quads, I felt fairly strong, so it may just be that insufficient recovery from my weight room sessions was the culprit. By comparison, last year, I had done a 20-mile run the day before the race, and was incubating some kind of cold, hence my mediocre performance. That said, last year, I think that I performed closer to my theoretical capacity at that point. Even if I had been less sick and tired on race day last year, I don't think I could have gone that much faster. This year, had I not come in on a "bad" day, I think I would have had a faster time in me.

All water under the bridge at this point, but it does point to increased volume and sharper, more aggressive speedwork as the way to build from here (surprise, surprise). The diet and core exercises and all that seem to be working at the moment, so no need to mess with any of them. Hopefully, a better test of where I am will come this Saturday, at the Seneca Greenway Trail 50K.

January 2010 - A Month in Review

It's been a while since I posted here, and that's not for lack of running, but lack of time to write about running. Here are some reasons why I've lacked time to write:

1. I closed out 2009 with a 100-mile week, and started 2010 with 150 miles in 2 weeks. (Since then, I've backed off a little, hitting roughly 50 miles a week). These weeks were on the strength of at least one 25-mile run in each week.

2. I've been on the ultra-healthy "Ultra-Metabolism" diet of nuts, fruits, vegetables, and limited meat and fish. (That's the gist of it - to learn more, read the UltraMetabolism book.) Somehow, I've lost about 5 pounds, and I feel more energetic and healthy than I did before. As a side effect of the diet, I've also learned to be very efficient at cooking and cleaning dishes, all while going to school and holding down a full-time job. Life expert right here. :P

3. I was in a minor car accident that totaled my 2001 Honda Civic. (Incidentally, this didn't stop me from running 25 miles that same day, to make 100 miles for the week.) It's in the process of being resurrected as a "salvage" vehicle right now, because, with only 120,000 miles on it, it still has a lot of life left in it. In the meantime, I've been driving around a Jeep Liberty (fun) and a Hyundai Accent (not so fun).

4. I've been shuffled through three positions now at work in the last month, and I'm taking classes two nights a week (Tuesday and Thursday), until 10 p.m.

So yes, a lot going on. And running is definitely in the mix, and I'm looking forward to a number of races this spring, including (but not limited to): Club Challenge 10-mile, Seneca Greenway 50K, National Marathon (pacing 3:00), Boston Marathon (hoping to run 2:5x, faster than 2:57:13 that I ran last year), Frederick Marathon (pacing 3:10), Bull Run 50-mile (if I get in), Massanutten Mountain Trail 100 (if I get in), Old Dominion 100 (probably, for the heck of it - I loved that race), Western States (the real goal race in all of this), Badwater (if by some random stroke of luck I get in), and, well, who knows from there, but that's a pretty busy schedule already . . .

But whatever, bring it. I like a challenge.