Slowly Getting Faster?

That's my best 3.1 mile time of the spring and summer by over 20 seconds. Managed to go a little faster each mile, but didn't have a strong kick for the last tenth.

I didn't feel great today at the start. Tired, some pain in my left shin and ankle in the first half mile, but I just wanted to get this one over with.  When the cooler weather comes, I'll be ready.

I've Been to Hill and Back Again

I woke up a little before 6am, and my Vivoactive said it was 72 degrees.  I figuree that was the "coolest" weather I'm likely to have the rest of the weekend, and well, I don't always have motivation, so when I do, I need to make sure I get my butt there.

The sun was already bright by the time I got over to Northeastern.  I got out of my car.  It felt warm already, and I was dreading it.  I decided to make things worse.  I've been running the same 3.1 miles route since April, focusing more on consistency than speed or distance, and running the same route over and over really lets me have a good comparison from run to run.  Was I faster than usual?  How did I feel compared to other days?  It makes it nice when there's a day like Thursday, where I can say "Ok, I felt worse than usual, but it was because I was about 30 seconds/mile faster than usual".

Well, today I decided to mix it up.  I have a hilly 3-mile loop that starts at Northeastern High School in Manchester, goes down Maple Street & Walnut Street into Mt. Wolf, climbs up to Six Street, cuts over to Chestnut, which provides a steep downhill followed by a en even steeper uphill that takes me back to board road and my start.  It's brutal, and I'm disappointed by how non-hilly it looks on this GarminConnect elevation map.  (It looks much more impressive on my phone, but I left my phone downstairs and then I'd have to transfer things over to my computer and it's a pain).

Here's my normal route (my run from yesterday) for comparison:

Anyway, it hurt, but I'm really happy with how it went.  I had a faster pace than yesterday, even on a more difficult route.  It was a few degrees cooler and less humid, but with the sun beating down on me, I still felt like I was boiling.

While my wife and I were training for the Shamrock Half in 2016, we'd run our long run either Friday night or Saturday morning, and then I'd run this on Sunday, and I found it to be a good test of strength.  I think I'll start mixing it in again.  As Frank Shorter says, "Hills are speedwork in disguise."

The Comeback is Real

On Monday, I ran my fastest four-miler of the year.  Today, I ran a 33:54 5K.  That doesn't stack up against my 5K times from 2007-2012, but it's my fastest 5K distance since the beginning of February.  In the 3 good months of running that I've had, this is the first time I've been under 34 minutes and kept a better than 11-minute mile pace.

And they have been good months:

I was a little bit faster in January in February, but far less consistent in getting out there.  Since August, when I got the Garmin Vivoactive, which made tracking all this stuff automatic and totally Brian-proof, my previous highest monthly mileage was 21 miles in January, followed a 13-mile February and a 14.7-mile March.   In April, I ran 38 miles.  May was 43.2, and June, unless I run tomorrow instead of Saturday, will wind up at 42.1 miles.

I used to run 30+ miles every week, and sometimes I can't help but remember that and be frustrated, but the picture above tells the story of the longest stretch of consistent running since January, February, and March of 2016, and I'm sticking with it even as the weather warms up.  This is huge for me.  If I can keep this up during the dog days of July and August, it will be the first consistent summer of running that I've had since 2011.

That plateau that you see above, that's not going to get much higher over the summer.  I'm ok with that.  The mileage I'm running now compares to what I was doing in summer of 2008, when I was reliably running 2.8 miles (2 laps) 3-4x/week at Cousler Park. I ran for almost two years before I attempted a distance over 3.1 miles, but building that base helped me when I did move up to the 10K and half marathon, and it'll help me again now.  If I can grind through the summer, I'll be ready when fall and winter come.

Putting it all Together

I despise running in the summer.  I'm committed to consistency until cooler weather returns, by which I mean getting out for 3-4 miles (usually will be 3) 3-4 times a week, but I've decided I'm not going to put a lot of effort into pushing myself on pace or distance until it does cool down.

Still, it's very nice when I get a slightly cooler, less humid morning like today and what's probably my best run of the year.  I was faster back during the few weeks in January and February, but today I ran my fastest four-miler of the year, 44:33 (11:08 pace), beating my previous best from this year by exactly minute and crushing my four-milers from May and June by 2-plus minutes.  Today hurt.  It was a beautiful morning, but it was still warm by my standards.  But today's run makes me very confident that if I stay consistent, that I'll be able to get myself back to a sub-30 5K and a sub-40 four-miler sooner rather than later.  I will probably never be as fast as I was in my early 30s, and I don't care about that, but I'd like to achieve both of those goals by the end of 2017.

How's your summer running going?

Good Run? I Guess?

Today, I ran my Monday Hill route again.  I felt terrible.  I was breathing heavily almost the entire route, and I needed 3 walk breaks instead of the one I needed last week.  I was writing it off as just "one of those days", when I looked down at my watch and saw that I was finishing a minute faster than my time last week.

So, I'm not sure whether this was a good run or not.  Last week, I lowered my time by a minute from the previous week and felt great.  I think I would have rather felt good with no time change.  I'm certainly still finding my pace again.  I used to be very consistent in my training and be able to tell what pace I was running by level of effort (like the "I'm dying" I put down at my 6:21 mile at Harrisburg in 2011).  Now...I'm not.  Some days I'm faster, some days I'm slower.  I care more about distance than speed, but I have to admit it's frustrating to be finishing 3 miles in the time it used to take to run four.   In my defense, it was 29 degrees F with a wind chill in the single digits.  29F, to me, is long-sleeves or jacket (probably not both), light gloves, visor, ear warmer, and shorts weather.  Single digits is jacket, Under Armour, long pants, hat, gloves.  I dressed for the wind chill, despite my route being mostly sheltered from the wind.  In the bright noon-time sun with little wind, I had way more layers than I needed.  That said, it was brutally cold tonight.  I'm very glad I got my run in during the day.  I love running in the cold, but tonight was way too cold and windy for me.

Anyway, despite not feeling so great on today's run, it caps off another pretty good week of running and fitness.  (Except Wednesday, where I was fitness whole pizza in my mouth!)  In addition to last week's hill run on Monday, I ran 2 on Thursday night with Chris, and then 6 miles in 1:09:50 on Saturday.  That's an 11:36/mile pace, not far off from where I need to be to finish a marathon in 5 hours, whether it be this fall or next spring.  I'm hoping that with more running, more hills, and some speedwork that I'd like to mix in once my endurance is built back up a little more, I'll get a little faster so I have a little cushion should I once again need to walk some of those later miles.

These first two weeks of January have been the best, most consistent stretch of running and working out that I've had since my surgery (mumbles) almosttwoyearsago.

It's something.

(This goofy fleece headband has a hole for a hat brim.  It was more than I needed today, but is still a neat, low-tech piece of gear that I hadn't used before.  The beard is just for show, it's not thick enough to keep my face warm, yet.)

Fog Running

We ran 6 miles today in 1:35. It was about 40°F, misting, and very foggy and damp, so it was tough to dress for.  I broke out a new piece of equipment, a very light Brooks jacket that crumples and zips into a tiny ball inside its own pocket for storage.  It's a piece of gear that is of limited use since it doesn't provide much worth, but it did keep me dry-ish until I took it off at about mile 4. 

Because it fits into a pocket easily, it'll be a good choice for the first few miles of a cool Fall or Spring long race.

I'm feeling good as far as being ready for the Shamrock Half and I'm doing well at establishing a habit of lifting again.  I can't let myself lose momentum again.

Down with Couch-to-5K!

Coolrunning.com's Couch-to-5K Program, I'm sure, has helped many, many people begin running and train for their first 5K.  It's been helping me go back from lazy, post-surgeried couch pototato to elite (ha!) marathoner in just a few short weeks.

Again, just kidding.  I've been doing the Couch-to-5K program since July 19, which is 8 weeks.  There were a few "weeks" of the program that I repeated because I felt like I was still struggling to complete them, and then held myself back again over the last two weeks because been sick with some bad summer cold or upper respiratory infection.  Basically, I've been stuck at "week 4" for about 3 weeks now.

And here's the thing -- I think, if I follow the plan, I always would be.  From weeks 1-3, I think the Couch-to-5K progresses pretty reasonably.  I felt like I needed a repeat of week 3, but then bumped myself up to week 4 and was able to complete several times with mixed success (again, allergies and respiratory illness make for bad training partners).  The jump to week 4, where you are running 5 minutes at a time and your walk breaks are NOTICEABLY shorter, is a big one, but I don't think unreasonable.

But there's the thing:  Week 5 is a bitch.

So let me get this straight, Couch-to-5K.  The longest you've had me run is 5 minutes, and one week later, I'm supposed to run TWO MILES?    The progression to those first two workouts of week 5 seems reasonable, but going from running 8 minutes twice with a 5-minute walk in the middle to running for 20 minutes?  It seems like there needs to be another week or two of transition in there.

 Oddly, it seems like once cross this gulf, the plan proceeds pretty reasonably once again, and it seems like the plan is transitioning the trainee from a program of 3 equal workouts per week to two run/walk workouts and then a "long run", which is how must runners train for longer races.  So, in breaking this down and criticizing it, I do think I see the logic behind it.

At any rate, I feel like I could do week 4 over and over and not really be ready for week 5.  It just doesn't seem like, without doing a lot of other cardio (and maybe that's the point, that I should be!) this this is big leap forward to be expected of new runners. 

So, this is where I get off, Couch-to-5K.  I'm back on the "Run half a mile, walk for a minute, run half a mile" plan that Chris and I have used on the 5Ks I've run w/her the past year and a half.  I used this back in January to try to train myself back up, hoping that I'd successfully physical therapy'd myself through injury. I've done this twice now this week, and there was noticeable improvement the second time, but I suspect it had more to do with the weather being 20 degrees cooler than any actual improvement in fitness on my part from Wednesday evening to Saturday morning.

Basically, what happens is I'll do this as-is for a week or two, then hopefully be able to get through the first mile with no walk breaks, but probably still need them on the second mile.  Then, hopefully, the next week or two I'd need the walk break at the end of the first mile, but then be able to get the second mile without walking.  When I can run 2 miles with no walk breaks, I add some back in and try for 3, and after a few weeks of this, I can hopefully run a 5K again.

So yeah, kind of like the Couch-to-5K.