LSD beats OCD

Today I had the opportunity to do a semi-regular long, slow distance run. Running long is a double whammy. You have to set aside several hours for the run itself, plus several additional hours of lying on the couch afterwards if you’re pushing your limits on distance as I did today.

The advice on these runs is to start slow and finish fast. But, no matter how slow I start, I usually get slower and slower as the run goes on. Today I was determined to go out so slow that I’d have something left to really push with in the final hour.

Enter my Garmin watch. It can display heart rate, pace, time, distance, lap time, and a number of other things. It can also do “workouts”. For example, if you want to run intervals, it will time the intervals for you and beep at the end of each time period.

There are two fundamental problems with this watch. First, while it can display a lot of information, it can only display a few numbers on the screen at a time. So you end up having to page through the screens to get all the information. I have the same problem with my Ford Escape. In that, you have to hit the “info” button to cycle between the trip odometer, MPG readout, miles to empty, etc.

In both cases, I get too fascinated with the numbers and OCD makes me end up cycling through them, which takes my focus away from other things such as watching out for oncoming trucks (conveniently, that applies to both running and driving).

The second problem with the Garmin is that it can do a lot of wonderful things, but it never does them quite the way I expect. Case in point: Today I was trying to start out slow, slower than I can actually “run”. Anytime I need to run an average pace slower than about 11 minutes, I use the run/walk method promoted by Jeff Galloway. So in the middle of my run today, I decided to use the interval timer of the watch to let me know when to run and when to walk.

Now, when you do a “workout” with this watch, and the workout completes, the timer stops. However, if you simply hit the start button again, you continue timing from where the workout ended. So, it would make sense that if the timer were already running, and you started a workout, it would just add on to whatever time had already been counted by the watch, right? Nope. It resets the time and distance to 0 when you start a workout. Oops, I’ve now divided my long run into a series of smaller runs that need to be all added up to get the total time and distance.

So here I am, running along and thinking about how to use an Excel spreadsheet to do the totals for me. But you know what? After a few miles, you cease to care about such things. All that really matters for future reference is that I ran approximately X miles in T time. It’s probably even slightly OCD to be keeping a log of my runs, but a certain amount is called for so you can track progress and figure out what works and what doesn’t. But at some point, you just need to get out and run, and not worry about all these numbers.

Now, I will spend the rest of the evening trying not to figure out how many kilobytes of data per mile my watch generates.

Oh, and about the run itself. I did manage to hold my pace down to 12 minute miles or slower for the first 9 miles. Then I stopped at home to use the bathroom and refill my bottle, and then back out for some of the hardest sub-11 minute miles I’ve ever run. In years past, I never pushed myself this hard on a training run. However, that was before I ran a marathon and found out just how far you can push yourself and how much pain you can actually feel. Today was nothing compared to mile 24.

Attack of the Zombie Trees

My idea of cross training is to walk through the woods with a chainsaw and cut out the dead or undesirable trees. It’s part of owning a tree farm (more on that in a future post) and a great way to be outside in the fresh air and get relatively low intensity exercise for the entire body.

The problem is, dead trees tend to be found where the forest is overcrowded, and the weak trees lose out in the survival of the fittest. In short, sometimes there’s not a lot of room for them to fall over. They become zombies. They resent my attempts to get them to lay down. They throw branches down on me. Once in a great while, they respond to my attempts to physically push them over by snapping in two, so that the top half can fall back at me and smite me mightily on the head.

I can tell you from experience that a small branch falling from 30 feet up hurts like hell when it hits you directly on the head. So as dorky as I sometimes feel wearing my bright orange hard hat for dinky jobs, it’s a good habit to be in. I can also tell you from experience that a 15 foot section of zombie fir tree falling from 30 feet up packs quite a wallop, but it didn’t hurt a bit.

So between dealing with zombie trees and a trail run that included getting lost in a field of ferns and prickers (while wearing shorts, of course), it was very nice to have a boring session running on the treadmill in air conditioned comfort.

Literally Running an Errand

As much as I don’t like bringing a car in for service, I hate doing my own exhaust work even more. But since the truck has an exhaust leak, the question becomes how to drop it off for service, get in a morning run, and still make it to work in time for a group meeting.

The answer, of course, is to drop it off and then run back home, hop in another car, and go to work. And so it was that I got up at 6:30 and fueled up with a bagel and almond butter. There are two things to be aware of with almond butter. First is that if you let it sit in the cupboard for several months before you open it, it will separate into oil and cement. Secondly, it has a magnetic attraction to freshly cleaned white table cloths. But I’m getting off track.

Getting into my running clothes was a bit of a challenge today, on account of if my head was attached, I’d be searching the house for it. After circling the house twice looking for the socks I was going to wear, my loving wife asked why there were socks on the dining room table. “Oops, sorry” is a more politically correct response than “they’re hiding the almond butter smudge”. But at least now I’m ready to run.

Next up, make a protein shake for after the run and lay my clothes out on the bed. I’ll have about 15 minutes to drink, shower, and change from the end of the run until I need to leave for work.

Okay, get the truck keys, clean out the interior (you do not want your mechanic to find “Culture Club” in your cassette deck), driver’s license, and EYEGLASSES! Uh-oh, I don’t usually run with my glasses on, and legally speaking, I need them for driving. A quick search through “that drawer” and I find a pair from 20 years ago. Pop off the clip-on flip-up blue blockers, wash the lenses, and I’ve got a pair that I can wear while driving and leave in the truck. Wow, my eyes were different 20 years ago. It’s like I’m looking at everything in a fun house mirror. But I’m legal to drive now, so off we go.

Drop off the truck, wait for the Garmin to find a few satellites, and we’re running. Slowly. Did I mention this is the seventh day in a row that I’ve run? But the weather is absolutely beautiful, and I run by some of the best scenery in Pepperell. Scenery is a good excuse to walk for a few moments and take it all in.

Have I mentioned that I’m the secretary of the local running club? And that I’ve run the Boston Marathon? Combine the two, and what happens is that whenever I take a walk break from my run, somebody who knows me is sure to drive by and make a comment. So having received my daily “motivation”, I continue on running.

And I make it home a bit earlier than expected. This is a problem. I’m not in a hurry, and soak in the shower for a few. Guess what? I’m not early anymore. By the time I made it to work, I was the last one into the meeting, but still made it before they had the Skype connection to the Budapest office up and running. I’ll let the reader decides if that counts as late or on time.

Countdown to Boston

I’ve spent a fair amount of time today trying to write down my thoughts about tomorrow’s Boston Marathon. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s simply bigger than I am capable of comprehending.

On the one hand, it’s “just a marathon”. I show up at the starting line, wait in the impossibly long line to use the porta-john, run at a pace I think I can sustain, grab water along the way as needed, and collect my finisher’s medal at the finish line. Just like any other race.

But, this is an event on par with the Super Bowl or the Indy 500. The best runners in the world will also be running. It’s the oldest and most prestigious marathon in the US. There will be 500,000 spectators lining the streets and cheering the runners on.

What makes this race different than most others is that people who don’t run know about it, and people who do run put it on their bucket list of races to enter. People can relate to me saying “I’m running Boston” in a way they simply can’t when I say “I’m running Stu’s 30K”. In short, people get excited that I’m in the Boston Marathon.

Simply put, tomorrow is shaping up to be a life-changing day. Today I should be able to run a marathon. Tomorrow, God willing, I will have run a marathon, and arguably the most significant marathon in the world.

But for my purposes in actually running the race, it will have to be “just a marathon” until I reach the finish line. This means sticking to my usual race routine, and more importantly not getting carried away and running too fast at the beginning. Because really, like any other race the way to get from the starting line to the finish line is to simply focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

Having said that, I’ll probably be up at 3am obsessing over what to wear. And hey, I’M IN THE BOSTON MARATHON, HOW COOL IS THAT!?!?!?

Observations from an easy treadmill workout

47 days to the marathon! My biggest training accomplishment today was remembering to throw my water bottle into my gym bag so I’m not constantly hopping off the treadmill to fill up the thimble sized cups that are available at the water cooler. Not that I really needed the water today with my short and slow walk, but building the habit of having water handy means I don’t need to think about it in the future.

Another variation I tried today was to work out on an empty stomach before lunch. Somehow I seem to have this fear of starving to death during a run, and try to avoid running on a completely empty stomach. But since an easy day was planned, it made sense to force the body to work off of what was in long term storage. This worked out really well, as I had more energy after the workout than before it started. Of course, that might also be the result of having a meeting just before the workout.

On the downside, the fitness room was packed during the lunch hour, and the TV had the noontime news on. This is not life affirming. I couldn’t hear the stories over the noise of the equipment, which made me more aware that the images on the screen were quite vivid. There’s somebody getting punched in the face. Here’s the security video of an armed robbery. And finally, a car running down a bunch of bicyclists (I found a print version of the story here). These are traumatic events you might witness firsthand a few times in your entire lifetime, so by my count I had a lifetime of trauma condensed into a 30 minute capsule. All while I was trying to have a positive workout.

So the plan tomorrow is to do another easy workout in the morning before breakfast. Hopefully I’ll have my water bottle and there won’t be any news on.

A Run in Pictures

Having found out that my camera case slips nicely onto the belt of my water bottle holder, I took my camera on a run with me just before Christmas. We start on my street having just left my driveway:


Past the neighbor with the horse:

Out onto a secondary road:

Past Flat Pond:


Past the new development where they're cutting down a lot of trees to put up mini mansions:


Past the cutest little humble house in town:


Past the field with cows, but sadly the pigs aren't out today:


And finally, around the quaint little country store before heading back home:

Mill Cities Relay Race Report

So why exactly am I standing outside in the dark at 6am on a cold Sunday morning in December with 50 other people? It’s the pre-race meeting and “pep rally” for the Squannacook River Runners just prior to this year’s Mill Cities Relay. I’m severely undercaffeinated. It makes it more fun to try and recognize people who are bundled up beyond recognition. Our club had eleven teams of five runners each. Somehow my teammates and I are able to find each other and hop into a minivan. To make that a bit more of a challenge, the teams were reshuffled late yesterday.

Since I am neither driving nor the team captain, I didn’t think it was important to know details such as where the race actually starts. That changed the moment I saw our fearless leader attempting to both drive and operate a Garmin at the same time. Suddenly I’m the navigator trying to give directions to… um… that green circle on the way zoomed out printout of the city map.

Actually it was pretty easy to find. At this hour in the morning, most of the traffic in that area was people heading to the race, so you just follow a car with a 26.2 sticker on the back. There were many to choose from. Interesting side note: Of the 5 people on our team, I’m the only one who hasn’t run a marathon. Yet.

The race starts at 8am, and also around that time everybody who isn’t running the first leg is hopping back into their cars and heading to the first exchange point. This leads to a bit of gridlock between runners on foot and runners in cars. Plan for a bit of delay if possible. Worst case scenario is that a runner is faster than expected while the drive takes longer than expected.

Luckily that didn’t quite happen to us. We showed up at the exchange point for the start of my leg with about 15 minutes to spare. I had just downed a GU and was about 50 feet into a slow warm-up jog when I hear my name being shouted frantically behind me. I turn around and see Frank (who has our team ”baton”) go past. Turns out we miscalculated his estimated arrival time, and he was running a very fast leg to boot. So much for a warm-up, let’s start by doing a full out sprint trying to catch up with Frank as he does his finishing surge to the handoff point.

It’s slightly downhill at the start. According to my watch, I’m running the first quarter mile or so at a sub seven minute pace. This can’t last. So I back off to what would still be a personal record smashing pace for me of about an 8-minute mile. A few people start running past me. They’re flying. Nobody has ever passed me so decisively in a race before. I check my watch. Yep, faster than I’ve ever gone before. Hmmm…

This shows the two key differences between a relay and a normal race. First, unless you are running the first leg, you’re not quite sure exactly when your leg will start. Second, which also does not apply to the first leg, you can be way behind slower runners and way ahead of faster runners.

Back to the race. My stomach is telling me it doesn’t like sprinting immediately after having a packet of GU. My legs are telling me they don’t like sprinting the day after doing a long run. So I backed off to something that was barely a personal record pace for me. I’m still running faster than I ever have in a race. So why is everybody passing me?

What always amazes me is that no matter how exhausted I am, when the finish line (or handoff point) is in sight, the body finds a way to go a little faster. I finished my leg averaging my fastest race pace ever at the end of my longest week of running ever. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing.

And this is where I’ll end the story. Everybody on the team beat their estimated pace for the day, and we finished twenty seven miles in a total of three and a half hours. That won’t win any prizes, but it was solidly in the middle of the pack, and a really adventuresome way to spend a Sunday morning.