Let's Run Some Intervals

After about five years of running, I’ve finally zeroed in on the perfect training stimulus for myself.  Here’s what I do:

  1) Find a quiet stretch of road that takes about 5-7 minutes to run at “full speed”.

  2) Warm up by jogging to that stretch of road (about half a mile away from home), then running the first interval at about 80% effort, with some short sprints thrown in.

  3) Recovery walk of about 5 minutes (which conveniently completes a lap and gets me back to the start of the quiet stretch of road.
  4) Run as fast as I possibly can sustain for the length of the road.  Target heart rate >90% of max on average, increasing to >95% at the end (for me, that’s 190+, sometimes approaching 200).  It needs to be intense enough to divert all available blood to the leg muscles to maintain the effort.
  5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 for a total of 3 intervals.  Keep track of the slowest of the three intervals for future reference.  This also encourages consistency instead of having one spectacular interval at the cost of the other reps.

I've been doing this about 3 times a month.  Physiologically, this establishes the conditions for maximal oxygen use by the leg muscles, which encourages growth of blood vessels and mitochondria and any other infrastructure that is needed for efficient energy production.  All this infrastructure greatly improves performance on longer, slower runs.

Suddenly, I’m noticing that my heart rate is dropping for a given pace on a normal run, and it’s much easier to do long runs with fewer walk breaks.  All those benefits you’re supposed to get from running lots of miles only happen for me when regular speed work is included.  Now I know.

The Attack Tree of 2012

Way back in the 60s, my father in law bought some woodland in Vermont.  He's no longer able to travel there anymore, so for the last few years it's just been Dawne and myself.  One of the last things he did up there was to build a very nice, 8x8 foot shed to store the mower and other tools.  Unfortunately, before building the shed he only cleared a 9x9 foot patch of land.  So not only does the shed have trees very close to it, but there's also no room for the trees to fall if you did cut them down.  Oh, and did I mention the trees are crowding themselves out and many are dead or dying?

As a result, we've been clearing a number of trees so that the one right near the shed have a place to fall.  If you've never cut down a tree before, it's usually a very simple process: Cut a wedge on one side of the tree (on the side where you want it to fall), then make a back cut.  This leaves a small section of wood that acts as a hinge and controls the direction of the fall.  When everything goes according to plan, you end up with a stump that looks like this:

Now there are several ways this can go wrong.  Most likely, the tree will try and go the wrong direction, but usually when this happens it just pinches the saw in the back cut and doesn't actually fall.  If it's a small tree, you can simply push it over in the desired direction by hand.  It's actually kind of fun to do this with a 30' tall tree.

The other thing that can go wrong, and I didn't take any pictures of this when it happened, is that the tree falls in the desired direction, but gets hung up in the branches of another tree.  In this instance, I whacked the tree with a sledge hammer to knock it off the stump, which made it a couple feet shorter but still otherwise standing beside itself, so to speak.  It actually took a couple iterations of cutting and hitting it with the sledge to get it to fall over.  Whew I thought, glad that's done with.  Just one more very dead tree to cut down today.  And because it lost it's top, it's not going to hang up in any branches.

But this was no ordinary tree.  It was one of the rare zombie attack trees.  The real problem was that it was 6 inches in diameter, but only the center-most inch had any real structure too it.  Dawne had leaned against it earlier and almost pushed it over by herself.  When the saw cut through the structure on the back cut, the tree fell in whatever direction it wanted.  This is not a pretty stump:

And of course, it fell in the worst possible direction:

Oh crap.  Well, might as well get the camera.  Looking at the picture again, I just noticed that the bottom of the tree is several feet away from the stump.  How did that happen?  Anyhow, there was no significant damage to the shed.  Also note in this picture the two trees, right next to the shed, one of which is about an inch from the roof.  Also, you may notice two white birches behind the shed.  Those are actually different forks of the same tree with a very wide base, which is only about 3 feet on the other side.  We may need to call in the professionals for that one.

How does one get a tree off a shed without doing further damage?  I hate ladders, but up onto the roof I went to try and push the tree off.  Too heavy to push.  Perhaps I can just grab a branch and roll it off.  Oh wait, if I do that the branches will try to knock me off the ladder, so I should break as many as I can off first.  And it still doesn't want to roll off easily.  So off the ladder and...

... ah yeah, when I try to roll it some of the other branches are in the way.  So I cut those off with a pole saw and get out the log roller to roll it off the roof.  But first, Dawne suggests that we move the ramp out of the way so the tree doesn't land on it.  Okay, let's put it over... there!  And the tree gets rolled off the roof.

And lands on the ramp anyway.  Grrr, but job completed except for cutting it up into sections small enough to be carried away.

Afterwards, we have a small clearing with a number of stumps to show for our effort:

That was my weekend, how was yours?  :-)

Early Morning Run

I've been trying to increase the distance of my runs this summer, but with the heat of summer and a busy work schedule, I've had to do the unthinkable:  Get up early to run.

So far it hasn't always been pretty.  Yesterday, the alarm went off at 5am, and by 5:15am I was up and turning off the alarm, then downstairs to make coffee because running without caffeine would only add to the challenge.  Finally by 6am I'm ready to tear myself away from Facebook, gulp down a bowl of chocolate cheerios, get into my running clothes, fill my water bottle, make a protein shake for after the run, and out the door by 6:15.

I’d like to say the run itself was ordinary, except that I started off way too fast and faded to slightly faster than a sane target pace by the end.  It was ideal weather and resulted in a personal best for the route.

Arriving back home after the run, it’s time for a second breakfast of the aforementioned protein shake and a bagel.

Then it’s time to change out of my sweaty clothes and get into my greasy ones and go out into the garage to continue rotating my tires.  This is a simple job I like to do myself, even though the last set of tires I bought included free rotation.  It’s not really about rotating the tires, but performing a periodic check of the tires and suspension bits.  It’s also about spending some non-sedentary time out in the garage as opposed to sitting in a waiting room.  And finally, it’s about making sure the lugs are tightened correctly, so they can be easily removed when you have a flat tire in an inconvenient location.  I have had 3 flat tires in my driving career and each one amounted to about a 15 minute delay.

But I digress, and once again, time runs out before the job is finished, and I must shower and run off to work.  In retrospect, I was up for a little over 4 hours, and got in a total of 2 hours of running and garage time.  It always seems that I end up with a 50-50 split of productive time and “overhead”.  I’d like to get closer to a 75-25 split.  Probably the first step towards that is eliminating the first cup of coffee followed by the wait for it to kick in.  Can I really be outside and running within 30 minutes of the alarm going off?  Time will tell.

Ramping up the mileage

Time to dust off the blog and announce that I finally have a foothold at 30 miles a week of "running", having covered 30+ miles for three weeks straight now.  In the spirit of lies, damn lies, and statistics, I included the mileage from my recent hike of Mt. Monadnock to reach 34 miles this week.  On the other hand, if it wasn't included, I'd have the worlds most exhausting 28 mile week.  But I digress.

The reason for this uptick is not only the vague idea that I might try and run a fall marathon, but also that I've recently joined the SQRR team for the Vermont 100 on 100 relay race.  This means I'll be racing three legs totaling about 15-18 miles.

And since this is a multi-leg relay, instead of doing a single long run on the weekends, I'll be splitting the long run into several smaller runs with breaks in between, to better simulate the actual race conditions.  So today it was two 5.6 mile runs (on two different routes actually, total coincidence that they're the same mileage).  This meant coming home sweaty twice, obsessing over the numbers from my run twice, and showering twice (and trying to dry off with a towel that was still damp from the first shower).

Looks like I'm going to have to streamline my running logistics a bit, and maybe even (gasp) not keep detailed track of my heart rate and split times on every run!

Ayer Fire Department Thanksgiving Day 5K Race Report

Perhaps I’m crazy for getting up early on Thanksgiving morning to run a 5K four years in a row.  On the other hand, the people who think I’m crazy probably see no problem in getting up early the day after Thanksgiving to fight the crowds at the mall to save a few bucks on some electronic gizmo.  Me? I’ll just wait till next summer and get the next generation gizmo at a lower price.  Or more likely, I’ll keep my rotary dial cell phone another year.  It’s working rather well thank you very much, but I digress.

This year I decided to add an extra challenge to the race by taking NyQuil the night before.  Let me assure you that NyQuil is neither a performance nor a mood enhancing substance.  I was groggy, running felt especially laborious.  My legs were still sore from an overly eager practice run two days prior.  Expectations were that setting a new personal best would be difficult.

On the upside, I had a plan: Run fast.  As in, don’t try to pace myself and save something for a strong finish, but just go out fast from the beginning and see if I could sustain it.  That plan lasted about a mile and a half, before reality slowed me down and my legs turned to lead.

Then came the hill.  In the last mile there’s an uphill section which I will forever remember as the place where the fat guy in the turkey costume passed me.  This year I used that as motivation and somehow found the energy to sprint past about a dozen people up the hill.

After that I felt like toast (whole wheat!), but at least it was downhill to the finish line.  Somebody passed me during their final sprint to the finish, and I sped up and kept pace.  We both passed a couple other runners, then he started to tire out and slow down just short of the finish.  Engage warp speed!  Where the energy came from I do not know but I passed him in the last hundred feet and set another personal best for a 5K.

So it was that a good start and a very strong finish offset a lackluster showing from mile 1.5 to about 2.5.  Fun stat of the race:  My average heart rate was 175, which if you believe in the 220-age formula means that I averaged 99% of my maximum, with a peak of about 110%.  I never did like that formula.

This makes 3 years in a row I’ve run a minute faster than the previous year.  When I reach my 60s I’ll be doing the 5K in 10 minutes.  Past performance does not guarantee future gains, and other similar disclaimers apply.

In retrospect (as in, after the NyQuil wore off), it was another great morning with all my fishy friends.  I’m thankful to be able to keep doing this, and especially happy that this year I didn’t get passed by some overweight guy in a turkey costume.

Octoberfest 5k Race Report

I forgot to bring my towel.  If you’re a fan of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, you’ll understand why this is cause for great concern.  Luckily for me the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal was a no-show for the race.  At the very least, rain was predicted today, so I expected to finish the race soaked, dripping, and in need of a good drying off.

But I got there early and was the first car in the parking area, or so I thought.  The parking attendant quickly set me straight and pointed out that everybody else had been parking on the other side of the field, closer to the actual location of the festivities.  I am definitely firing on all cylinders today.

This was a small local race.  Small is a little less than 200 runners.  Local as in about 10 miles away.  I could have run from home to the starting line, ran the entire race, then run back home and still not have covered marathon distance.

The course itself is flat by New England standards, with only gentle rolling hills.  No climbs higher than about 50 feet would be my guess.  And the roads are completely closed off for the race.

On to the race itself.  Since I had quite a trail run yesterday and my legs were still recovering from that, I elected to start slowly from near the back of the pack and see how many people I could pass during the race.  And we’re waiting for the sound of musket fire to start the race.  20 seconds.  10 seconds.  And… he’s reloading the musket.  20 seconds, 10 seconds, and that musket sounds quite a bit like an air horn.  We’re off, wet powder be damned.

I take it easy for the first half mile.  People around me are panting somewhat heavily, and I’m calmly breathing through my nose.  The legs begin to loosen up, and I start ramping up my speed.  Mile 1 is complete in 9:30.  I start passing people.  I’m now taking full breaths at a comfortable rate.  I blow past the water stop and Mile 2 is completed in 8:40.  This feels like about as fast as I can go and still finish the race without slowing down.

But the course goes downhill and other runners begin to pick up the pace.  I do my best to match them and pull away again.  Somewhere around here I pass a group of girls from the Groton Dunstable track team.  I must be in better shape than I thought, I just passed a track team!  But I’m breathing heavy, trying not to gasp for air, and the legs are starting to get an unfamiliar burning sensation.  I’m pushing deeper into my limits than I’m accustomed too.

As the finish line draws into sight, I hear a loud pounding of footsteps chasing me down from behind.  Now, it’s not the Bugblatter Beast, but the Groton Dunstable track team passing me by.  My ego forces me to try to keep pace.  I realize how this looks.  A 40-something guy chasing around some high school girls with his tongue hanging out.

And my finish time is approximately 27:20, unofficially based on my watch.  That’s just a few seconds slower than my best 5K time.  So on the one hand I basically matched my best time without giving it my best effort.  On the other hand, I’m sure I could have found 20 seconds in that first mile and finished under 27 minutes.  I’m already eager to run another 5K this fall.

In the end, the rain held off for the race and it was a pleasant way to spend a Sunday morning and have the opportunity to hang out with a few friends from the running club.

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.