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The 2015 competitive season wraps up.

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So, I’m done racing for 2015. I reached my goal of 12 competitive events today at the YMCA 5K Jingle Bell run. Despite spending part of the year injured, I’d say it was a success.

Some statistics, because I’m wired that way. Overall, I did 126 kilometers of racing, equivalent to around three marathons. The 12 races broke down as five 5K runs, one 8K run, three 10K runs, and three half-marathons.

In 2015, I also had:

8 PRs

4 top-15 finishes

3 top-10 finishes

1 top-5 finish

4 top 3 finishes in my age group

and I cut my 5K PR from 21:06 down to 20:06 by the end of the year.

Race reports to come from the last three races including the Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon. Also, I have a new crazy plan which involves running half marathons in as many of the US national parks as possible, and I’m going to hopefully start with a 25K race in the Everglades Ultras series in February… but more on that later.

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All 2015’s bling, pictured.

My Outlook Becomes More Optimistic. No Thanks to the Internet.

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Well, the groin definitely feels better now. Some time ended up really being all it needed. As I said before, I have been rehabbing like a crazy man, though I don’t know if it really sped things up or not. I’m still giving it another 4 days and then I’m going to ease back into the running (and I’m going to tape and wrap the shit out of my leg because I’m totally paranoid now about re-injuring it). It’s still a little sore when I get up in the morning, but it seems to loosen up within a half-hour after that and feels pretty normal for the rest of the day. Some range of motion limitation is still there too.

The internet was a constant source of concern for me during this thing, especially when I started reading about slow onset groin injuries and the chance that it could be tendinosis, which is apparently horribly slow to heal and would put me out of commission for 6-10 weeks at least. It doesn’t seem, however, that this is what’s going on. I think there may have been an inflammatory component, but it was likely a muscle strain that never fully healed and just ended up getting worse over time.

I don’t know if I’m going to attempt my first marathon this year. I think I need to become a bit more seasoned as a long distance runner before I tackle it. Besides, it’s pretty obvious to me that my real talent is in the shorter races, especially the 5K. So tentatively I have decided to scrap the marathon plans for 2015 and have planned a schedule which will see me do 3 each of 5K, 8K, 10K, and half marathon distances. I can always add or switch to a marathon if I change my mind. I just felt that running became much less fun for me, and much more like a job or a chore, once I started the really high volume marathon training weeks, and I don’t need that right now. I think I’ll be ready to meet the challenge at some point, but that point is not now. So, my next race is an 8K in about 2 weeks and should give me a pretty good idea of where I am at rehab wise. Can’t wait to lace up and get out there again.

Rehab, and a difficult decision.

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It’s hard to blog about running when you’re… not running. I kind of feel like this:

The groin strain I’ve had has kept me out of action for a couple of weeks now. Today was the first day I actually got up and felt no discomfort from it at all doing daily activities (although the discomfort had been minimal for about the last week or so it was still obviously there). A test run, however, proved it wasn’t 100% yet and I shut things down after about 10 minutes.

So, a change to the race schedule is definitely necessary. After much deliberating about it, I have decided to push the first marathon back to the fall and the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. I’m also going to miss the Mercedes-Benz 10K tomorrow in Oakville (I could probably physically run it, but I’m too concerned about reinjury). And I will be trying to change my registration in Cleveland from the marathon to the 10K, so at least I can get something out of the weekend, since Cleveland is not a race that allows deferrals. I could maybe try to run the marathon, but the combination of recent recovery from injury and undertraining is a recipe for disaster, and I just feel like I’m not willing to take the risk at this point.

I’ll be looking for another race to replace Oakville and right now the tentative plan is to do the Rotary Huron Shore 10K Run in Southampton, Ontario which we can do whilst visiting the home folks.

So right now, I’m trying to aggressively rehab my injury with daily cross-training. I’ve been alternating the stationary bike with core strengthening exercises and runners yoga. So far, it seems to be working – things have gotten a lot better in the past week.

I don’t consider my inability to run Cleveland a failure, so much as it is a setback resulting from mistakes in training. Unfortunately, I tried to do too much, too fast. Looking back, the timeline I set involved trying to go from being an overweight couch potato to a sub-4 marathon runner in 8 months, and it was just too aggressive. I do feel rather pleased to have gone from my sedentary status to a 1:40 half marathon runner in less than half a year; that, I think, was a great accomplishment. But I’ve had to face the hard truth that I need more distance running experience (and a lot more core strength and flexibility) before I tackle the marathon. That was a conclusion which wasn’t easy to come to, but it was the correct one.

Going forward, I think I’ll focus on the reasons why I started running again in the first place and try not to get derailed by obsessing over the competitive aspects. And, I intend to have a more comprehensive plan for training for the fall. Until then, I’m just going to bide my time and build my strength as best I can.

Arghh. Repetitive Strain Injuries Suck.

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You know, walking around with an icepack strapped to one’s groin is pretty much exactly as fun as it sounds.

This thing seems to be getting a bit worse with each long run I do. And it’s pissing me off. I’ve been finding that I can go back to midweek training after a couple of days, get some short runs in, everything’s OK, then another long run, and:

I kind of like the agonized way the word pain is written in the picture above. And it’s in red too. Seems to fit.

Anyway, I had a real crappy 17.5 miler this weekend. In addition to the aforementioned discomfort in the groinal region (inguinal is the proper term, but I prefer groinal, even though it’s, well, not actually a word) I didn’t hydrate very well and the thing turned into a death march by the end (it was my first long run in above freezing temperatures and apparently I forgot that I sweat while I exercise under normal circumstances). I’m sure I looked like I was trying to chase Rick Grimes down or something. Fortunately no one decided to stick a penknife in my brain in the interest of public safety.

So, now the dilemma. Should I push on, and continue this unfortunate cycle, with the hope that I can nurse the injury enough that I can still get some training volume in and run a relatively fast time after my taper? Or should I hop on the dreaded stationary bike for a couple of weeks, sacrifice training volume, and show up to the line healthy but probably unable to do much other than maybe just break the 4:00 barrier?

I think I’m going to pick door number two, unfortunately. I’ve obviously been overtraining, so I’ll be shutting it down until my next 10k in a couple of weeks. It’s not like I was going to BQ with my first marathon anyway. We shall see how things feel next week, but this is going to limit the number of long runs I can do (it looks like I’m going to have to settle for one 20 miler instead of the three I was planning).

I guess it beats hobbling around like I just got hit with a sledgehammer by Kathy Bates.

I’m Bored, and Don’t Feel Like Putting the Work Into a Formal Blog Post Today. So Here’s Some Funny Stuff I Found.

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First, the e-cards. As a health care professional, I find this one pretty topical:

 

Next, consider the following triptych. There’s me a year ago:

Followed by me now:

And finally, me in a couple of months (I hope):

Aaaand also, and still true…

Finally, I found this out yesterday: when asked whether he was keeping in shape on a treadmill, Noel Gallagher of Oasis said he thought running was for “fucking squares“. He’s probably right. Instead, maybe this (yes, I know only a handful of dudes in a secluded monastery haven’t seen it yet, but still):

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWu9o5zrj3g

That is all.

Just Finished My First 40 Mile Week of Training. Ow.

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So, it turns out 40 miles is a lot of running.

It took me quite a long time to figure out how to fit everything into a reasonable schedule and be able to ramp the mileage up without worrying about work schedules, or getting hurt. One of the problems I had was the sheer number of marathon training plans out there, and trying to pick between them. Pfitzinger. FIRST. Galloway. Jack Daniels (did a double take with this one, obviously). Higdon. BAA. Hanson. And so on.
The opinions for and against these sorts of plans seemed to revolve around a couple of important questions. First, what should be the maximum weekly mileage to aim for prior to tapering? And second, how long should the longest runs be?

HigdonMarathon

I wasn’t really prepared for the wide variation in answers to these questions proposed by these plans. In terms of the longest run question, the runs varied from 14-16 miles (admittedly, these distances came up in plans designed just to get runners across the finish line, and I’m looking to do a bit better than just finishing) to 29 miles (this in the Galloway plan, which emphasizes intermittent walking with the running and a very slow pace, which was a deal breaker for me, though I know it works for lots of people).

GallowayMarathon

Now, I’m a novice at this. I know that the goal with a first marathon should be to make that finish line with time being de-emphasized, but I’m stubborn. I want to run a sub 4:00, and am shooting for sub 3:45. Based on my race times at shorter distances, the calculators available to estimate my marathon time tended to spit out around a 3:25-3:30 time. This, I knew, was completely unrealistic.

I felt, according to the bulk of what I read, that multiple 20 milers were probably necessary to reach my goal, but more than 20 miles was probably a concern for me given my propensity for inflammatory type injuries and this training distance was probably best left to the elites.

Interestingly, the most scientific approach to marathon time projection I found came not from Runner’s World, or Running Times, or any of the other major sport-specific publications, but… from Slate.com.

It used real world data provided by runners from over 4,000 races in order to more accurately predict the marathon time in particular. The methodology used was sound, and the results seemed a lot more accurate than with other calendars. It solved the weekly mileage question for me too, as training schedules were surveyed, and the runners who logged 50 miles per week prior to tapering performed better than those who did not (the average being 35 miles).

The calculator and methodology can be found here.

So, I am actually doing a sort of hybrid between the intermediate Higdon and the FIRST program, with the mileage coming from the Higdon, but my running pace more similar to the FIRST (I do my long runs at the slowest marathon pace I would be satisfied with, i.e. a 4:00 marathon pace, rather than 60-120 seconds per mile off pace). I also alternate shorter, easier workouts with longer ones, and take back-to-back days off.

Just for illustration, this week’s runs included:
Tuesday: Speedwork – 8 miles total, including warm-up, cool-down, and 5 x 7 minute reps at a 6:45 mile pace.
Wednesday: 5 miles at slightly faster than marathon pace (around 8:20-8:30 mile)
Thursday: 7.5 miles at marathon pace (8:45 mile)
Friday: 3.5 miles at slightly slower than marathon pace (around 9:20 mile)
Today: Long run of 16.3 miles, at slowest marathon pace I’d be happy with (9:10 mile) followed by 2 days off.
Total: 40.3 miles.

As far as injuries are concerned, it’s gotten to the point where I’m basically managing a couple of minor injuries (left groin tendonitis and right medial tibial tendonitis) and trying to keep them from becoming bigger problems, using the same ice, compression, elevation, intermittent rest, and use of anti-inflammatories that I’ve used before. And it seems to be working, although we shall see if this holds when I get up to 50 plus miles in a couple of weeks. Anyway, now I’m off for a couple of days, so at least there’s that.

I’m gonna go eat some cupcakes now.

Well, sh*t is about to get real up in here…

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…because I just officially signed up for both the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon and the Great Lakes Marathon Series.

Also, and probably more important, I will be fundraising for gastric cancer advocacy and research through supporting the Debbie’s Dream Foundation with my run, due to a close family member who has recently been stricken with the disease. Here is a link to my fundraising page: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/mcfarlanetom/clevelandrun.

So it’s on. Can’t back out now. Also, thinking about getting one of the snazzy GLMS training shirts:

GLMS-Training-Shirt

They only take cheques (or, I guess, checks??) in US funds, so will have to work that one out…

Canadian Winters (and the Dubious Joys of Running in Them)

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Running in cold weather sucks.

I love my country, but with regard to my tolerance for the cold, the place of my birth sometimes seems like a bit of an unhappy accident. Let me be blunt: I hate the snow, I hate the freezing temperatures, I am not a winter sports person, and every day that goes by in the less salubrious months of the calendar here I pray for an end to the frigid horrors (which, I would surmise, makes me not unlike the vast majority of Canadians, if we’re being perfectly honest).

Now, the problem: I had just committed to myself that I was going to run the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon in May, and thus the training, or at least part of it, was going to have to take place in the winter. I therefore had to steel myself for the eventuality of heading out in, shall we say, rather less than perfect conditions.

This, it soon transpired, created a few logistical problems. As a rather extreme and unfortunate example, I had never heard of genital nip before I started seriously running. It is not a comfortable experience. Apparently there are shorts with a special lining designed to ward off just such a circumstance. This is one of the things no one tells you about cold weather exercise. (So, guys – be warned.) Also, it’s difficult to prepare for the effort involved in running when there is deep icy slush on the roads. The first 10 mile run I put in was not only slow, but my hamstrings hurt for days afterward from the effort of just lifting my feet out of the frozen quagmire. Trying to pick one’s way down a road that is a solid sheet of ice is no fun either. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have any serious falls, but I certainly slipped a few times, and again, extra effort is required staying upright that saps one’s energy and resolve.

The alternative, of course, is staying inside on the hamster wheel. This is what I tended to do when the weather got really cold, or the roads were slippery enough that I just didn’t want to bother with them. The running community on the internet has lots of things to say about treadmill running, and just like most things there doesn’t seem to be any consensus about it. The most damning criticism leveled at the treadmill seems to be “it’s not the same as road running.” Well, duh. In January in Canada, it’s a hell of a lot warmer, for one thing. I realize that it’s not a good idea to train for road racing entirely on a treadmill, but I would never do this, or advocate doing it. I have, however, found that mixing treadmill runs in with outdoor ones has allowed me to get mileage in and reduce the amount of wear and tear from repetitive strain, since the impact is much lessened with the cushioning a treadmill provides versus a hard asphalt surface.

I’ve had a few fellow runners who seem to feel this is anathema, and their reasons usually boil down to the following: lack of wind resistance and road surface makes treadmill running too easy (that’s why I mix it up, and I still seem to be able to go pretty fast on my road runs), you run the risk of overstriding during speed workouts and ending up with hip flexor and hamstring pain (funny that, but my hip, hamstring, and shin pain got better when I started using the treadmill), and using a treadmill all the time will screw up your ability to innately find your pace in the road (last 12 miler I did on the road I set 8:15/mile for my goal pace and wound up running within 5-10 seconds of that for every single one of my mile splits – enough said).

As for dealing with the crushing boredom of doing a two-hour run on a treadmill – well, I still haven’t figured out a strategy for that yet. Suggestions are welcome.

We runners are a crazy lot, and I’ve still found myself out there when the weather is insane. I’m not alone. Exhibit A:

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That’s fellow Cambridge Harrier Mitch Free, after one of his competitions this February (photo courtesy George Aitken). All in a day’s work in the Great White North…

Fat Dad Gets Less Fat. With Shin Splints.

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Even though I was clearly overweight and hadn’t really done any formal exercise program since high school, I still had this weird notion that I was sort of in shape. After all, I could run 3 miles on the treadmill, right?

(An aside: actually 3 miles turned out to be not 3 miles. My treadmill runs 10% slow for some reason. I discovered this when I tried to run on a hotel treadmill on a business trip and almost got shot off the bloody end of the thing. I figured it was the hotel treadmill that was wrong. Then it happened again, and again, at different locations. Finally, I had to face the truth that mine was wonky.)

When I started to have trouble breathing last summer, I had several investigations done and nobody could find anything wrong. Echo, spirometry tests, CT scans, everything was fine. My doc sent me for a fitness assessment at a local physiotherapy place for completeness sake. On the surface I was all bravado about it, but underneath I think I knew it wasn’t going to go well.

I arrived at the physio clinic and was taken into a back area by a dude who kind of looked like Tony Little without the long, bleach-blond hair. He asked me a few questions, primarily about what my recent activity level had been.

CELEBRITIES_tony_little_300co_01

“Actually, I’m a runner. I run 15-20 miles a week,” I boasted. (Totally not true, by the way, but I guess I must have felt particularly macho that day.)

“Oh, okay. I’m gonna get you to do a 3-minute step test then. You should have no problem with this at all,” said Almost Tony Little.

The 3-minute step test is basically exactly as it sounds. You step up and down on a foot-high bench at a 96 bpm pace. The test is intended to measure how quickly one’s heart rate returns to baseline afterward as an indicator of one’s aerobic fitness level.

“Huh,” said Almost Tony after I finished.

Shit. I didn’t like the sound of that “huh” one little bit.

“Am I scaring you or something? I must be, because your test results are below average,” he went on, rather smugly I thought. So much for machismo.

He then went on to measure my hip-to-waist ratio, and my flexibility, both of which also proved to be subpar. My old corpse seemed to be having a bad day. “We just need to get your lower body a bit stronger. You ought to do some squats,” Almost Tony advised solemnly.

I wished I had a little flag so I could wave it around. Squats, woo-hoo. Fantastic.

“And you know – it wouldn’t hurt to join a yoga class to work on that flexibility. Plus there are other fringe benefits, with the scenery and all.” He winked with both eyes weirdly.

Ummm, yeah. OK. Thanks Almost Tony.

Of course, I never did any squats. Nor did I run out and join any yoga classes with the intent of staring at women’s bottoms. Instead, I went home and railed to Lori about how inaccurate the step test was.

In the end, the breathing problems turned out to be 100% related to anxiety and not to anything physical. And I finally came to grips with the idea that maybe, just maybe, I needed to do something about my slovenly habits.

This was around the beginning of August 2014, and I pledged to myself that I was going to run at least 3 or 4 miles 3-4 times a week. Additionally, I ditched the booze for a whole month. Completely.

By October, I had lost 13 pounds, and the running was a lot easier. Unfortunately, a new problem had emerged. I had never really had issues with shin splints before (probably because one of the advantages of sitting on a couch all the time is that you don’t tend to get them), but suddenly the sharp pains along the sides of my shin bones in both legs had gotten bad enough that they were hampering my ability to go up and down stairs, much less run.

So, it was back to the internet, where I found about 50 different opinions on shin splints. Heel striking causes them. Not heel striking causes them. Weak calf muscles cause them. Overpronation causes them. Run with them wrapped, run with them taped, don’t run with them at all. And so on.

I did find out through a gait analysis that I overpronate (I tend to run slightly splay footed), so I bought some shoes to correct that. It didn’t seem to help much, so I added taping, icing, and elevation, and judicious use of anti-inflammatories to my routine. Eventually I got the pain down to the point where it was manageable. Changing my running schedule to try to avoid doing too much also helped.

The thing that wound up being the magic cure for me was compression stockings. I had a pair that I got as a sample at work and decided to give them a shot one day – and I couldn’t believe the difference they made. I never run without them on now.

Getting the pain in my lower legs dealt with was a huge part of my decision to go ahead with the marathon training. Now all I had to do was actually get started.

Why I Run, or, Liquor?!? I Barely Even Know Her!

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I used to be one of those annoying overachievers.

As a high school student, I was a four-sport letterman, a top honors student, and my graduating class’s valedictorian. One of the sports I lettered in was track, and my best distance was 3000 meters. And yes, youth was wasted on me, just like it is on all the other kids out there. Thirty-something seemed impossibly old to me at the time, to say nothing of forty.

The intervening years were not kind.

My biggest problem: an appetite for excess, primarily with alcohol. To wit:

OK, maybe not quite as bad as that but you get the idea.

The long and the short of it was that I found myself in my late thirties, depressed, overweight, in terrible shape, and drinking on almost a daily basis. The problematic thing about alcohol is that it’s awesome, at least for me. Alcohol can:

– Give that Milli Vanilli video a strange glow of profundity
– Render disco listenable
– Make COPS at 2am not only watchable but seem like an Ibsen play
– Make me laugh hysterically at cat memes for two hours straight

And so on.

So what does this have to do with the reasons I run? Well it’s what you probably think, but maybe not to the degree you think.

Because see, I still love booze. And I have no intention of giving it up. What I realized, however, is I need to give up spending my evenings with it every day. I would like to spout platitudes about how running changed my life, how it made me give up the bottle and fixed my depression, and I lived happily ever after, amen.

Nope.

I still battle depression, though I’m no longer overweight or out of shape. I still drink, though not to the degree I used to. What running does for me is it acts as a kind of buffer. When I run, I’m less depressed, and I’m less inclined to chug a bottle of wine and watch retro 80s videos alone in my basement until the wee hours. It gives me goals to work toward, and I know that my excesses will hamper those goals. Maybe there’s an element of endorphin related satisfaction there too, I don’t know.

So, that’s why I run. To save me from myself. A prosaic reason? Yeah, probably. But new agey stuff aside, it makes me feel better. And as long as it does I intend to keep doing it.