Category: Running

  • Back into Training, Running, Triathlon

    I’m back running, and this is making me very happy.

    Winter Wonder Wear

    I’ve been into my training regime for over a month. Things seem to be feeling well with respect to my calf, thank you very much. I even ran a race three weeks ago. That race was a remarkable difference from the triathlon in August where I discovered that no, I did not let my calf rest for long enough.

    I decided after the triathlon to let things rest entirely until November first and then ease back in. Now we’re at the end of December (mostly) and I’m feeling like I’m getting my wind back and the leg isn’t calling me a crazy man. I like that. Enough so that I just signed up for a marathon! Ninety days from tomorrow until the race.

    This year’s training is a bit schizophrenic. We deferred our entries into the Marine Corps Marathon from last October until 2011. Also, we’ve been planning for years to run the Mt. Desert Island Marathon this coming October. Which means, if you’re keeping track, Jennifer and I have three marathons planned this year, two of which are within two weeks of each other!

    So, I’ll be doing a lot of long distance running and the training to support that. However, I’ve still not given up on my goal to reduce my 5k time below 21:00. As time and health permits, I’ll be doing speed work and races to address that goal. I’ll keep you informed.

    In case you’re curious, here’s my race calendar for the year, so far:

    I’ll probably mix some other low-key races into that list, too.

  • Foot in Mouth Disease: "Runner" Definition

    A race commentator in New Zealand recently decided that the person who won a race wasn’t “a real runner”.

    You see, Morgan had won the race but because he’s a big guy the race announcer (Mr. Dark a local Radio DJ) felt he simply wasn’t a real runner.

    “What right does the announcer have to say I’m not a ‘real runner’? I train just as hard as any 75kg runner,” Morgan said after the race.

    “It was a throw-away comment … but he certainly doesn’t look like an elite runner, I stand by that.”

    However, he does not take the harsh words back. “I call it as I see it.”

    This guy needs a whack on the head. I acknowledge many different ways to define “runner” but one of the most primary is “wins the race”.

    Personally, my definition of a runner is easy: A signature on a race form. That’s it. If you run a 5k race in 45 minutes, I will still call you a runner.

  • Running/Triathlon Training: State of the Bill

    IMG_9297
    I had a commenter a while back say that he missed my posts about running and triathlon training. Alas, for the last little while there hasn’t been much to post, but here is a general update:

    Jennifer and I are registered for the 2010 Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC. This race is October 31st. Those of you good at math may note that date is about 2 months away.

    We’ve been training regularly for this race, doing quite well keeping up with our schedule. Until… [duh duh DUHHHH] I pulled my calf muscle and Jennifer started having some feeling-well issues. Right now, I’m about 4 weeks behind on my training and Jenn maybe two. But all is not lost! Things seem to be better in my calf and this weekend I will be resuming my exercise schedule by participating in the Peachtree City Sprint Triathlon (Tri-PTC) which, if you recall, I had to walk 2 years ago due to another calf injury.

    I think I’ve given the leg enough time to rest and heal. Now I need to see if I’ve got enough time left to prepare adequately for the marathon. I’ll know that in a few weeks. Jenn is coming along well; if she can survive this CRUSHING SINK OF DEATH known as submitting her tenure dossier, everything will be fine.

    Despite the fact I’m racing a triathlon this weekend, I haven’t been doing any real training for triathlon this summer. I’ve been swimming enough to not drown, but I haven’t been on my bike in weeks. No, I’ve pretty much just been concentrating on running, except for the last 3 weeks where I just Sat On My Butt And Ate Bon-Bons™.1 That will obviously change soon and I’ll be back to doing three-days a week runs at work (please oh please oh please will the humidity drop soon?) and long runs on the weekend.

    I also need to work in some basic strength training. I can’t really know but I blame my lack of any strength training this spring or summer for my calf strain. I plan to go (after the marathon) and get an evaluation of my muscular weaknesses from an expert and spend the winter working on those.

    So, Triathlon this weekend. Marathon on Halloween. I’m sure there will be some other races in there, also. I’ll keep you posted.


    1: SOMBAABB is a trademark of the JBWR community. This is what we do when we’re not doing anything else.

  • Marathon, Concerts, Presentation

    It’s been a busy few days. Lots of stuff going on.

    But let’s start with something funny that I have in common with this girl who ran the ING Georgia Half Marathon today.

    Runner with Her Tongue Out

    Let’s Compare!

    Sticking my Tongue Out!

    That was last Friday while I was giving a presentation on Diverging Diamond Interchanges (Soon to be a podcast at Talkingtraffic.org!) Sticking my tongue out when I concentrate is a habit I’ve been trying to break for years. This is incentive.

    What else did I do? Oh yes: I gave a presentation to the Georgia section of the American Society of Highway Engineers on something that is near and dear to me, professionally, right now.

    Diverging Diamond Interchanges

    A diverging diamond interchange is, well, Talking Traffic is going to cover that in just a few and ’til then you can hit Wikipedia.

    The presentation went very well and I got a lot of good questions from the other engineers and planners in the audience.

    Dimitri and Aelus

    On Saturday I ran the sound board and recording setup for The Extraordinary Contraptions. Pictures of that concert, and one this morning are at my flickr stream. This was at Momocon, which is a free convention put on at Georgia Tech. It’s an anime and cosplay and steampunk convention. Much fun was had.

    North Atlanta Multisport Club

    On Sunday I grabbed my bike and my MARTA pass and headed to downtown to cheer on the other people in the North Atlanta Multisport Club who were running in the ING Georgia Marathon and Half Marathon. I also got some good pictures while following the race route.

    It’s been a good weekend!

  • Race Report: Charles Harris Run for Leukemia 10k

    I ran the Charles Harris Run for Leukemia 10k yesterday in chilly, but sunny, weather (28 degrees farenheit at race start). It was a fun race with a good course. I would do this one again.

    The race starts in Tucker, GA and uses Lawrenceville Highway (US 29/SR 8) for the majority of the race course. As advertised, the course is long downhill slopes with a few uphills for a very fast route. If you race and train around Atlanta, the uphills are pretty gentle. At the end of the course, at approximately kilometer 9, the path turns right onto North Druid Hills road and then right again into a neighborhood. This is very important to realize, and I’ll tell you why:

    First, a digression. I’m a big proponent of running/biking/driving a race course prior to running a race. It only makes sense! Put some eyes on the course to know what to expect and whether or not there are surprises or things that must be planned for. I did not follow this rule yesterday, for several reasons. Therefore, I had a bit of a surprise at the end of the race.

    As I said, the race course is primarily on Lawrenceville Highway which is a 5-lane arterial here in the metro area, servicing traffic commutting to and from eastern DeKalb and western Gwinnett Counties. This means it has gentle hills (probably no greater than 3-4% at maximum, I’m guesstimating). As you approach North DeKalb Mall, there is a long downslope starting at about kilometer 8. If you pace a 10k like I do, this is the time to start using up the rest of the gas in the tank, so to speak, and burn the last couple kilometers as quickly as possible. So, you’re picking up the pace coming down this incline, using it for all you are worth. Then you make the right turn onto Druid Hills. There’s a bit of an uphill here, sharp but not too bad. Then you make another right turn onto Mistletoe Road, with additional uphill, and then finally onto Mt. Olive Drive where you discover that the nice gentle downhills and uphills on Lawrencville Highway were lulling you into a false sense of security!

    There is one very steep, but quick, climb just as you turn onto Mt. Olive at ~9.4k. For me, this wasn’t so bad except there was an equally steep downhill on the other side which I just didn’t have the legs to take advantage of. I’m of the school that says, “If it’s a steep downhill, get that turnover going and use it,” but my legs just weren’t going to go that fast, so I ended up wasting energy and time on the downslope (which will be explained as important in a second). Finally, the last half kilometer of the race is slightly upslope leading to the finish line.

    I had been (sort of) aiming at a sub-50 time for this race and my pacing through the course had led me to think I could do it. Unfortunately, I’d left everything I had out on Lawrenceville Highway and especially on the two uphills leading into Mt. Olive Drive. All I could do for the last bit was hold on and try not to slow down. Faster wasn’t in the cards.

    Final time was 50:01. Two seconds out of my unstated goal.

    Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy with that time. It’s a PR by something like a minute and a half; it’s an excellent time for me. I also can’t say I didn’t run a good race. I managed negative or equal splits the whole way except for one uphill mile (switching to miles now, sorry) in the middle. Who’s to say that if I hadn’t used the downhill on kilometer 8-9, I’d have put up a slower time. However, if I had my druthers, I’d have liked to have pounded those last two hills into submission and not felt like I was just holding on for the finish. It would have been nice if I could have snipped those two seconds off the total time.

    Mile splits were:
    8:25
    8:10
    8:04
    8:12 (uphill section)
    8:01 (also had some uphill but I was nudging into high gear)
    7:35 (mostly downhill but included most of the hills listed above)
    1:34 (which calculates to a 12:37 mile pace)

    Compare that last bit of mileage (0.2 km) to all the rest of the splits and you’ll see what I was getting at about the hills. Going from a constant 8:00 minute pace to 12:37 means that somebody ran out of oomph.

    The lesson here is two-fold! Be aware of the late hills on this course and always check out the races you’re about to undertake.

    As I said, I had a good race, it was fun, and I’d do it again. It was well-supported with plenty of volunteers and safety officers.


    The full race results for 2010 can be found at Active.com which is doing its best recently to piss me off in the same way ticketmaster does; by slapping “convenience fees” of rather extreme amounts onto race registration.

  • Another Late Race Report: 2010 Walton Raider Chase

    Race Start

    I participated in the 2010 Walton Raider Chase, at Walton High School in East Cobb, GA, on January 30. It was a damp and cold day, yet I still set a personal record of 22:59.7! That is 37 seconds faster than my previous PR.

    The course was a hilly and twisty one starting and ending at the high school track. In between in wrapped around and through the neigborhoods surrounding going up and down the hills. Pine Street, if you’re familiar with that very steep hill, is a significant downhill segment just before the second mile marker. Be ready to get those feet moving in order to take advantage of the downhill.

    Unfortunately, the downside to going down on a loop course is that you have to go back up. About half to three-quarters of mile 3 is uphill heading back to the track. Be ready for that, too.

    Overall, this was a fun race that I would do again. It helps that it’s a 5 minute drive from my house.

  • Congratulations to the Marathoners!

    Finishers

    Congratulations to Jenn and Tim for completing the 2010 Disney Marathon. More on the trip later.

  • From a Slow Runner: Bite Me

    The Athena Diaries pointed me toward this NYTimes article. Here’s a quote from late in the story:

    Longtime marathoners like Julia Given, a 46-year-old marketing director from Charlottesville, Va., still find ways to differentiate the “serious runners” from those at the back of the pack.

    “If you’re wearing a marathon T-shirt, that doesn’t mean much anymore,” Given said on the eve of this month’s Baltimore Marathon, where vendors were selling products that celebrate slower runners. One sticker said: “I’m slow. I know. Get over it.”

    “I always ask those people, ‘What was your time?’ If it’s six hours or more, I say, ‘Oh great, that’s fine, but you didn’t really run it,’ ” said Given, who finished the Baltimore race in 4:05:52. “The mystique of the marathon still exists. It’s the mystique of the fast marathon.”

    My first reaction when I read this article was “You Suck”. Who are you to tell me what I am? According to this person, I’m apparently not a marathoner. My marathon pace is just under 12:00. I’ve completed a marathon and all the training. I ran the bloody thing according to my training. I’m a fucking marathoner. I’m about to be a fucking ironman and I bet my pace will be slow enough to cause this person to think, “Oh, you’re not a real Ironman.”

    If race directors want to set cutoff times for when they’ll award finishing medals, fine. If they want to close the race course, fine (although I would like to see them try and put me on the bus in Washington DC at mile 20 if I didn’t make the cutoff), but if you finish a marathon, even if you walk it, you’re a racer.

  • Song Eviction

    It’s a sad day.

    Very sad. Several songs had to be evicted from my running mix. They are:

    Bad Moon Rising – CCR
    Flower – Moby

    But I added:

    Mirilou – Dick Dale & his Del Tones

  • 2009 Resolution Run

    Racers
    Left to Right: Jenn, Me, Courtney. Photo Credit: Sharon Burdick

    It’s becoming tradition (does three years make it a tradition?) for Jenn and I to get up and go to the Atlanta Track Club resolution run on New Year’s Day. This race is extremely convenient to our house, so it would be a shame not to go. Plus, it doesn’t start until 12:20 PM. If you don’t get to snockered the night before, you shouldn’t have any problem getting out the door for the run.

    This race is either a 5k or 10k (you choose). Last year I ran the 10k and crushed my PR in that race. This year I ran the 5k…and crushed my PR in that race. Formerly, my best post-high-school 5k time was 26:12. Now it is 23:43, which shocked the hell out of me. Especially because I ran a 5k a month ago and only turned in a 26:51.

    In retrospect, I’m wholly surprised at this improvement in my time. The 5k I ran last month was a cross country run, with attendant terrain difficulties. And my previous PR had been set during the Kaiser Permanente Corporate Challenge, which runs through downtown Atlanta. The bits and pieces of Atlanta that we traverse are rather hilly. As a contrast, the Resolution Run is nearly flat, with a tiny bump at the turnaround point. Here is my artist’s interpretation of the Profile for the KP Corporate Challenge.

    Kaiser Permanente Corporate Challenge Profile

    Notice the two big hills in the middle. They’re not nice. The one moving up Harris Street (right by the Hilton for those Dragon*Con attendees familiar with the area) is rather steep. And the second hill, (which you can tell by the profile actually goes back in time!) on Courtland is a killer. You have to pace yourself very particularly to do well in this race.

    Then we have the Resolution Run.

    ATC Resolution Run Profile

    It’s just a bit flatter. And there are fewer runners (~1100 as opposed to ~20,000) to jostle you. It all adds up to an easier run leading to a faster time.

    Sharon and David

    Sharon and David came along to be our cheering squad and our pack mules. Thanks guys. It’s always nice to have people at races who will hold sweatshirts and take pictures.

    All the images at the flickr set of the race were taken by Sharon and/or me. I haven’t properly attributed them on the flickr set yet.

    There’s another 5k in a few weeks down in Peachtree City. We’ll see if I can better this time.