Running is therapy

Great run tonight. I went over to the barracks trail and ran 6 miles in the dark. Not being able to see, along with moving along at a decent pace allowed me to clear my head and sort things. It’s nights like these that caused me to name my blog what it is currently: “Running is therapy”. Running gives us perspective on so many things.

One thing it reminded me of tonight…I have a whole bunch of races coming up:

• Great Pumpkin Chase 5K
• York White Rose 5 Miler
• Turkey Trot
• Jingle Bell Run

1 mile splits: 9:12, 8:56, 9:03, 9:00, 9:01, 8:40

I wasn’t out of breath at all. I would have been able to pass the talk test, my heart rate bears this out. I *think* I could do 8:30’s for a 10K without trouble. Based on my last 5K McMillan puts me at 7:49 for a 48:37. That seems way too fast to me.

Some stats:
Distance: 6.01 Miles
Time: 53:54 (pace: 8:58)
Average Heart Rate: 155
Calories Burned: 871

I have been off a training plan for about 3 weeks now. While I have been having a lot of fun just making up my schedule and going out for fun runs, I kind of miss the grind a little. I miss the challenge of the long runs I was doing, and building my mileage.

Last night I was discussing with Jen the possibility of taking a shot at a Spring Marathon. I happened upon an advertisement for the Shamrock Marathon on March 16th in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She thought it was a cool idea and I agree…but it’s not without it’s down sides.

There are a lot of reasons to not do it. The first, and largest is that I would have to train through the worst weather of the year for the area of the country where I live. The second is that I would be training over the holidays. I am not exactly what you would call a family oriented person, but I also don’t want to miss out on a Christmas party or visiting friends because I have an 18 miler in the morning…in 3 feet of snow.

Those things alone could force me to abandon a run at it. For now, I will put myself in the undecided column.

Any thoughts? Would you consider a Spring Marathon if you lived/do live in PA?

I feel like I should dye my hair black and cry a lot. Oh wait, I haven’t been 19 in a long time.

I really like this song:

Saves the Day - At Your Funeral

This Saturday John, Jen and I, will be running The Great Pumpkin Chase in downtown Harrisburg.

After this past Saturday’s 23:24 finish (did I mention I ran that in sub 24 minutes?) I wanted to publicly speculate about this race, just 7 days later.

Here is my current thinking. 1. No course, EVER, is as flat as CVRT. 2. I will put a LOT of pressure on myself for this race since I did well (for me) just a week ago.

This all leads me to believe, that for the first time in my new running career I will not PR in this 5K.

This race is also flat, and has the potential to be fast, but it’s not as flat as the last race (so I have been told). That alone is enough to make me think that I will simply run slower. I feel like I ran as fast as I could for that race last week, I am not going to get detectably faster in 7 days (not the way I train :).

Taking all that in, I am going to say just barely sub 24 will be my time (23:56/7:42 pace). Hopefully I can do it. Anything higher and I will be disappointed, anything better, elated.

Happy running!

This morning was the first annual Fall Down on the Trail 5K on the Cumberland Valley Rails to Trails.

Earlier in the week I had read that Bill was going to run this race, and since the actual trail head is 15 minutes from my house, I figured I should run it too. Couple that with all the miles I have been putting in, and the fact that my last 5K was in July AND this was a rail trail (so flat and fast) and I had a recipe for a PR.

I met up with Bill and Mark this morning about 20 minutes before the race started. We took a little warm up jog down the paved part of the trail and talked running. I wasn’t really nervous, because I knew I would PR today, it was just a matter of how much.

My goal pace was 7:45, I took off a little too fast, and tried to reign it in as the first mile was coming to a close. I crossed the mile marker at 7:26. That wasn’t that bad, and I figured I would be fine. I tried to maintain the pace for second mile. The turn around was tight as there was a pickup parked on the trail about 2 feet past the turnaround cone. There was also a water station but at 1.55 miles, and no heat, I wasn’t thirsty. I finished the second mile in 7:34. The end of the second and most of the third got lonely. By this time pace and distance had put most of us where we were going to finish and there wasn’t anyone that was right behind me or right in front of me. I was breathing hard, my heart rate was high and I was ready to be done. With about .30 miles left, you run under a bridge, and that is when the home stretch begins. It’s over a quarter mile so you can’t full out kick from here, but I did start to pick up the pace. Then with about a quarter mile left, you get back on the paved part of the trail and can begin to kick in earnest. I crossed the finish line in 23:24, a new personal record (my previous was 28:48, so 5 minutes and 24 seconds faster) and a 7:32 pace.

Also exciting was Bill’s winning of his age group! Congrats to him!

1 mile splits: 7:26, 7:34, 7:36, and :44 for the last .12

Motionbased Link

Some Stats (Garmin, not official):
Distance: 3.12 Miles
Time: 23:23 (pace: 7:27)
Average Heart Rate: 177 bpm
Calories Burned: 457

I have always been a bit of a lost soul. Never quite sure of myself in most situations, but never lacking in imagination as a tool for recovery.

As a result, it was no surprise to me tonight when I went out for a 4 miler and found myself turned around in a development and unable to figure out how to get out, and my run turned into a 5 miler. Also cool, my pace was a 4 mile pace…that I held for 5.

Also, running in the dark, on streets, in a town, can be damn scary. I need a reflective vest. I have no doubt in my mind if I continue to do what I have been doing, I am going to get hit with a car.

1 mile splits: 9:02, 8:44, 8:39, 8:45, 8:23

Motionbased Link

Some stats:
Distance: 5.01 miles
Time: 44:00 (pace: 8:46)
Average Heart Rate: 160 bpm
Calories Burned: 723

I took a vacation day at work today since I had an appointment I had to keep. However, it wasn’t an all day thing, so I wanted to grab a run.

The plan was 6 miles. When I went to strap on the Garmin it shut right back off. Dead batteries. Which is lame, because I am pretty sure I just charged it. This means that it might have come on in my laptop bag. At any rate, I was disappointed because I didn’t really pay 200 dollars to let that thing sit on the counter while I go running. I will have to keep an eye on it.

That left running a known distance, or running for time. I decided to sorta do both. After reading about an upcoming 5K on Bill’s blog, I thought it might be cool to head down there for my run. Did an out and back of 30 minutes each way ensuring I got my 6 miles in.

I don’t really have stats to share, because only suckers hit the lap button themselves, but I did have a pretty interesting run.

First of all, there was a guy who was on the trail in front of me and he was going at a slightly slower pace than me (I am guessing he was running about 10 minute miles), I decided I would try to reel him in. I caught him, but I did it slowly. I wanted to simulate catching someone in a half, not in a 800M sprint. When I finally caught him, he turned out to be a really nice guy and we chatted for about a quarter mile till I decided I wanted to run solo again and I pulled ahead. He was also a recent Half finisher, though I didn’t ask his time. He mentioned the upcoming 5K and said he’d be there. I might check it out, depending on how my weekend shapes up.

Second, and more significant, I got really sick on the run around the 3 mile mark. From time to time I get chills when I run, even if it’s not really hot out. I also had waves of nausea roiling over me, it was similar to a couple of other times when I have had to quit runs. As soon as it started to happen today, I resolved that I was _NOT_ going to stop this run. I didn’t care if they had to get bloodhounds to track down my corpse out there, there was no way I was bagging this run at the half way point. I kept running, and I almost threw up a few times. After about a mile of that, it started to settle down, and I was able to finish only slightly short of where I started.

I was happy that it happened the way it did and that I was able to make a stand there. I feel better knowing I can pull through something like that on a long run and still finish strong.

Happy running!

I hadn’t ever gone for a 10 mile run before. When I was ramping up for my half, I went from 9 to 11 in subsequent weeks. Today I fixed that.

One of my post half marathon goals is to maintain enough distance to ramp up for another half in a few short weeks. I am not sure how that will play out really, but I figure making sure I am getting an 8-10 miler in every once in while should help.

It was hard. No harder than any other long run really, but still hard. I say that because I don’t want anyone coming to the blog to think “Wow, Nathan can run 10 miles with no problem at all”. While I would love to put on the pretense that I am a super human runner, it’s just not true. Running far or fast is hard, period. That doesn’t mean you can’t slow down the pace to the point where you start to enjoy running, but it’s not easy. If it were easy, everyone would be running everyday. And they would do it fast, and far.

I ran out Trindle road again, same run as my 12 a few weeks ago. That route is played, I don’t think I’ll do that again too soon.

1 mile splits: 9:39, 9:51, 9:59, 9:55, 10:03, 10:11, 10:14, 10:24, 10:18, 9:49

I took off faster than I wanted, mostly because I was FREEZING out there. I was cold for the entire first mile. Uneven splits aside, I am happy with the run.

Motionbased Link

Some stats:
Distance: 10.01 mi
Time: 1:40:10 (pace: 10:00 m/m)
Average Heart Rate: 149 bpm
Calories Burned: 1474

I was on my way home last night to get ready when I realized, I really wanted to go for a run. So I took off and did an easy three before hitting the shower. I had to run the last mile in the dark because I get home so late.

Then this morning, after staying at Jen’s she decided that she wanted to go running. Never one to miss a chance to go running I drove from Harrisburg to Carlisle to get my gear then back to Harrisburg to run Wildwood. It was a lot of fun.

We started out with the idea of doing a 3 mile loop around the place, and then Jen was feeling strong and suggested we double back to tack on another mile for a 4 mile total. Again, who am I to argue with adding mileage. In the last month she’s gotten much stronger and faster.

Apparently I can be persuaded to get up at dawn drive an hour to get clothes and get back, so that I can go for a 3 mile run (that happened to turn into 4).

All this just confirms my suspicion that I am addicted to running. I am not sure I should do anything about it though since I think it might be good for me. :)

…and it’s filled with this red liquid.

I installed Rails and Ruby etc on the new Mac tonight while at the Ruby meeting. It’s actually kind of a process if you don’t use Locomotive. I had to compile everything by hand, it was like using Gentoo again.

I am still using Emacs over Textmate, but that’s mostly because 1. I am too cheap to buy Textmate, and 2. regions (Which I don’t think TM has the equivalent of).