No I'm not talking about the first year of Obama's presidency. I'm talking about my last race of the 2009-2010 indoor track season. I got in all the workouts I wanted from my very carefully planned training schedule, I was feeling good and healthy after my week long cold. I weeks worth of good sleep, and didn't even have to shovel any snow. I had been steadily chipping away at my baseline mile time of 4:44 from the first meet of the season, and things were looking good for a sub 4:40 mile to finish up the season. Then it came time for the actual race and everything fell apart.
I got boxed at the start even thought it was one of the slowest fields of the winter. I lost touch with Mike, who went on to run exactly 4:40. My race slide into a series of 200 meter repeats at 36 seconds a piece. Every lap I told myself there was still time to recovery with a big move but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I finished with a time of 4:47.4. Three seconds slower then what I ran back in December!
- Maybe I still wasn't recovered from my cold.
- Maybe the stress little Miss Perks is weighing on me more than I realize.
- Maybe I peaked too soon and my best race was 2 weeks ago while I was sick (it was my fastest time of the year)
- Maybe the Moon was lined up with that nasty little dwarf planet Pluto and my magnetic alignment was out of whack.
Whatever the case, indoor track is over and it is on to bigger and better things. Or at the very least, longer things. This weekend is Johnny's Runnin' O the Green. A flat out and back 5 miler in downtown Rochester. Unless Miss Perks arrives first I'll be doing the Spring something or other 15K in Mendon on March 27th. Once the baby is here I'm planning on taking 2 weeks off. That's right 2 weeks with 0 running. Well maybe just a mile or two to get some fresh air.
After watching "Faces of America" on PBS I was inspired to do a bit of searching for some family history online. I quickly turned up this little gem from the New York Times archives.
This is the first time I can remember trying to run a race while I was sick (although I was mostly recovered). I had a cold all week, but was feeling OK this morning. I thought all the rest would make for a good race, after all I only ran 15 miles this week, bad idea. I felt great the first 400 meters then just crashed. I was exhausted by 800 meters and had no kick at all the last 200 meters. I finished in 4:22.3 which while faster than 2 weeks ago is still 4 or 5 seconds off where I would like to be.
Next week is the mile, and my last indoor race of the year. Hopefully I will be fully recovered and ready to go by then. Just a few nights of good sleep should do wonders.
This is a bit late in coming but here is a quick rundown of the indoor meet last week at Cornell. Lisa, Mike and I all drove to the meet together and we met up with Mikes older brother and my cousin Emily and her husband Will. The Cornell track in the exact opposite of the Barton Hall track in Syracuse. Barton Hall is very round with no more than 20-30 meters of straightway, Cornell had 50-55 meter straights with very tight turns. I think the RIT track is a good middle ground, enough straight away to open up a bit without all the stress on the knees going around those tight turns.
Mike ran in the first race of the day, the 5000 Meter, which is 25 laps on an indoor track. He ran a great race hitting his splits on every lap and setting a new PR of 16:28. He finished 3rd in the race, although the Finger Lakes Runners Club results page has him coming in 4th. A 16 year old kid stopped running after 24 laps, and when questioned by an official timer insisted he ran all 25 laps. I'm sure he just lost track, but he his going to be upset the next time he runs a 5K and misses his time by 45 seconds. I do wonder how he could believe he dropped 1 minute 40 seconds off this 5K time from Dec. http://www.pcrtiming.com/racedata/2009/12/wonderful/WONDERFULOVR.HTM (Yes Matthew Johnson I'm talking about you)
I ended up in the 2nd fasted heat of the 1500M, winning the heat by a healthy margin with a time of 4:23.7. I would have been better off running in the fastest heat which had a group of runners who finished between 4:19 and 4:21. My guess is everyone in the final heat put down 4:20 or faster for their seed time, even the ones who ran much slower. I put my seed time as 4:23, maybe next time I should put my goal time, not the time I have actual run.
My training is shaping up well for the final race of the season on March 7th. I've just started to sharpening phase of my training with some 200's. This week it's 400's then 300's on the final week of hard training. February 28th is another 1500M race, this time at RIT. My goal for that race is to run the first 800M in 2:17 then see how I can finish.
Whenever my training for a specific race starts to wrap-up my thoughts begin turning to my next target race. The 1 mile indoor race I'm running on March 7th will be my last race of the indoor track season. I've been gearing all my training since early December to peak for that mile. I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but I can't help but look forward to my next big race. Ideally that race would be a return to Grand Island in Buffalo, NY for a Half Marathon on May 1st. That would give me 8 weeks to prepare for the half once I taper then race the mile. I have put together a whole training plan, with lots of miles, and lots of tempo and race pace running. I think my training for the Dutchess County Classic last September lacked enough long tempo type intervals and had too much running at 5k pace. Also I've got another 8 months of mileage under my belt (or under my feet i guess). I think I could be primed for a big half marathon PR, with one little problem.
The baby is due April 11th, and I am pretty sure I will not get much if any quality rest before May 1st, and if I do have a chance to rest I would probably need to spend that time running. So do I scrap any plans to race again until next fall and just try and sneak in as much mileage around naps as I can until then? i guess you can never really know how these things will play out. For now I'm just going to plan as if I will be able to run and hope for the best. Maybe we will have a sleepy nonfussy baby… but I doubt it.
I've been feeling banged up the last few weeks, much more so than normal. My feet hurt, which I first I thought might have been plantar fasciitis but now I think they are just sore, my knees feel creaky and I shuffle around the house for the first 15 minutes I'm awake every morning like an 80 year old man. Maybe it is just what I think an 80 year old man would feel like but in reality it is what a 35 year old man who runs 60 miles a week on the roads feels like. My overall training volume hasn't increase in the last month or two, but my I have been doing all my miles including speed work on the roads. All last spring, summer and fall I did almost all my running on the canal trail or the trolley trail. What running wasn't on those trails was my speed work, which was done on a nice bouncy track.
Hopefully the tracks will clear up by the end of the month even if the trails don't (last year it took until April for the trails to clear). At least that will spare my body the double whammy of running on the roads and running very hard on the roads. I'm doing a few less miles this week because of the race on Sunday, and I'm not doing a 2 hour long run either, so hopefully I'll be feeling a bit better as I move into the last few weeks of my indoor track training.
1500M this Sunday at Cornell, goal time 4:19.anything.
Usually that means a day you plan to run hard, followed by a few days that you plan on running easy. Today was suppose to be an easy day, but it felt way too hard. Some days the idea of being able to run fast just seems absurd. Today was a hard day.
There is something particularly gratifying but distinctly painful about 2 hour runs. Mike and I did our second 2 hour run this Sunday at Mendon, this week in some pretty cold and windy conditions. At around 1 hour 35 minutes everything just seems to tighten up and every step seems to get heavier and heavier. I'm wondering if drinking some Gatorade halfway through wouldn't make a big difference. I heard Jack Daniels comment in a podcast that you should fuel on only some of your long runs, and then just to make sure you can handle taking in the fuel during a race. Since I don't plan on doing any races longer than half marathon I don't really need to practice taking in anything but water, but if it makes the overall experience of the long run better every few weeks I guess it is worth it.
It is hard not to question the value of running for 2 hours when you are in the middle of a winter track season where your longest race lasts under 5 minutes, but it seems that all the elite milers put in many more miles than me. Hopefully there will be some pay off on March 7th. Last fall I didn't do any runs longer than 1:45 during half marathon training, which probably explains my collapse in the last 3 miles of the Dutchess County Classic.
This coming Sunday will be a break from the long runs, as Mike and I are heading down to Cornell for an indoor meet. He's doing the 5000M I'm doing the 1500M. I am fairly confident I can break my 4:32 1500M PR, as that converts to only a 4:50 mile 
We are very excited to announce the 1st annual Wa Wa Wally Waddle 5K Run/Walk for Segowea. On May 16, 2010 the Friends of Segowea will hold the first of hopefully many annual Wally Waddle 5K runs at Vassar Farm in Poughkeepsie New York. The race will serve as a fund raiser for the Capital Campaign. In addition to the 5K run/walk we will also have a 1 mile kids run for children 13-years-old or younger.
We have setup an official Wally Waddle webpage at www.friendsofsegowea.org/waddle were you can find out all the details as well as register for the race. Hope to see you there!
I wish I had a picture of me running the 400 meters at today's Syracuse Charger's All-Comers meet, I'm sure I looked very fast. There is something thrilling about running a race with a staggered start. You feel fast just standing there waiting for the gun to go off. If you are like me you get a bit thrown off by the extra command sprinters get, made worse by the fact my "ready" and my "set" position are exactly the same.
It is nice to know that even at my advanced age I can still get around the track at a decent clip. I ran a PR of 57.91, greatly aided I admit by not wanting a 16 year old kid to beat me. About an hour before the 400 I ran and won the 1 mile in a time of 4:43.3, just over a second faster than last weeks time. Some day I would like to run a 400 and an 800 and not have them preceded by the mile. Maybe this summer I can see how fast I can really run those sprints.
Next up is an indoor meet in Cornell on Feb. 7th. I'll be running the 1500M.