Rob, how have you been? Just taking a quick snoop at your log it looks like you've been up and down some and not racing a lot. I thought I might see you at the Santa Scramble. Are you thinking about running the upcoming Winter Flight 8k? I'm planning on it. I'll try not to jinx you if you show up... LOL... but I'm pretty sure any recent woes can't be attributed to me!

 

I'm feeling remarkably better after being on a vegan diet for a little over a week. I'd been kind of sick for about 2 or 3 months and my running was getting slower and slower but now I feel like I'm heading back in the right direction. I'm not sure I'll ever run as fast as I did last fall but I'm thinking there might be a possibility.

 Hi Richard, glad to hear your feeling better ! I have been "up and down" since mid-Oct (although I've been dealing with PF in my right foot for about 3 months that I believe I "caught" from Han and have had to ice and tape daily). After the multitude of quad tears in the spring/summer, started to build back up and got through two 4 wk training fr mid-Aug to mid-Oct, ran a 26:16 for 4 miles in a time trial for a PR so I was looking forward to racing again and targeting the Runway 5k and then Santa Scramble. That began to evaporate when I had another (smaller) quad tear in late Oct.  Missed about a week and felt really strong building back up but in mid-Nov almost broke my right ankle (a medial sprain) running off the sidewalk in a leafy area (the sidewalk slanted to the left and I could not see this through the leaves). That killed any return to racing this year.  My goal now is to run Winter Flight 8k as it works perfectly into my training cycle. I also had thoughts of the Myrtle Beach 1/2 in mid-Feb. I think we'll see if the jinx moniker comes to light this weekend with Clive as he appears to be very (very) nervous about his pace setting duties at the Huntersville 1/2. Aren't you close to Race 200?  What are you targeting for that??

 Hi Richard, glad to hear your feeling better ! I have been "up and down" since mid-Oct (although I've been dealing with PF in my right foot for about 3 months that I believe I "caught" from Han and have had to ice and tape daily). After the multitude of quad tears in the spring/summer, started to build back up and got through two 4 wk training fr mid-Aug to mid-Oct, ran a 26:16 for 4 miles in a time trial for a PR so I was looking forward to racing again and targeting the Runway 5k and then Santa Scramble. That began to evaporate when I had another (smaller) quad tear in late Oct.  Missed about a week and felt really strong building back up but in mid-Nov almost broke my right ankle (a medial sprain) running off the sidewalk in a leafy area (the sidewalk slanted to the left and I could not see this through the leaves). That killed any return to racing this year.  My goal now is to run Winter Flight 8k as it works perfectly into my training cycle. I also had thoughts of the Myrtle Beach 1/2 in mid-Feb. I think we'll see if the jinx moniker comes to light this weekend with Clive as he appears to be very (very) nervous about his pace setting duties at the Huntersville 1/2. Aren't you close to Race 200?  What are you targeting for that??

Sounds like you're just jinxed by running in general! Hope you make it to the Winter Flight. You need to pay me back for beating you by about a minute in that race last year... haha... we won't count it though if you're in recovery mode. I'll work on jinxing Clive Fenster this Saturday in Huntersville. I'm feeling good as far as my general health but I've been dealing with a hamstring issue for 3 or 4 months now and it looks like it might be a permanent nagging injury, and that won't be fixed by any kind of diet. 

The Huntersville Half Marathon will be race #199 for me. I don't have any grand plans for race #200 (that would be December 15th). If the weather's good I'll probably run a small 5k somewhere locally... haven't really picked one out yet. If I don't run on the 15th then my 200th race would be the Mount Mourne Elf 5k on the 22nd, which I'm planning on again. That's a great race even though the course got messed up last year and we ran 3.4 miles. Clive runs that one too... he passed me up last year and said something to me and I didn't even recognize him. I know who he is this year but he's gotten a lot faster so I might not see him during the race this time around. I'll be trying though.

 

Have you looked at the Columbia (SC) HM on the 15th?  I found that one when I was looking for a late-year HM to take advantage of my marathon fitness and try to PR at.  I haven't decided either way, although it would shoot down Mt. Mourne for me.  (Not everyone can race that hard a week after racing that hard. )

I ran the Columbia Half Marathon last year and liked it but I'm not sure it's a great PR course. There's one section in there through a park where the course looks like a plate of spaghetti but other than that it's probably not bad. I don't remember a lot of hills. That's when I was running my best and I finished 18th overall (1:33:34) in the race and won the 55-59 age group by 13 minutes... Oh how the mighty have fallen! 

It's not a huge race (290 finishers last year) and is not nearly as prestigious as the Governor's Cup, which has been around for something like 40 years and is much larger.

Here are last year's results...

http://athlinks.com/time.aspx?eventid=188284&courseid=260225

Why has running become so hard. Ran a little over 1800 miles last 2 years, this year will be around 1500, but just those 300 miles (not doing any midweek med long runs) seem to make a big difference.  Yesterday set out to run a tempo, plan was to run 2 miles in 16 min (HM pace), had to bail after a mile in 7:50, which felt like a race. Maybe its the higher miles lately, will see in a couple of weeks.

Clive, if you pace that 1:30 group, will you still run that Columbia race? or would that be your real race if you pace the 1:45 folks?

Clive, regarding the quad issues. My PT uses ART (active release therapy which is essentially massage therapy) and that has been effective in healing each of the tears. We've been working on tweaking my training schedule (focusing in running "easy" runs easy, not doing a long run the day after a workout, and playing around w/down weeks), building up the glutes since runners ignore these and they can help cushion the quads and form (in addition I regularly do leg lifting, stretching and foam roller).  Are you trading on the German stock exchange as I've seen several 3am posts (unless your back to closing the bars in Cornelius again)?

Richard (and Lynwood), another race to consider next week is the Krueger Reindeer Romp 5k (at the Harris Y). This was the inaugural race for Lynwood several years back when he started to run. I think the course changed from how Lynwood described it (he said it went out back of the Y into the Georgetown neighborhood but I was laughing too hard when he was describing that, as this was his first race, his reaction to the first very steep hill he encountered, his "Gallo-walking" (although at the time he was walking and then running) and his spirited duel with another runner to the finish). I looked at the course map online and its up and down (some steep hills up and down along Chandworth and Rhodes).

Good luck tomorrow!

It was nice to see Clive Fenster at the Huntersville half yesterday... I think he was just moseying along with the 1:45 crowd and seemed to be enjoying himself. Thanks to my new vegan diet I started off great then hit the wall about halfway through and walked 10 times (unless I lost count) throughout the rest of the race and struggled to finish. It wasn't a complete disaster... I was still 3rd in my age group (1:42) but I'll definitely have to figure out what happened and change some things in my diet. It was similar to how I've hit the wall at about 20 miles in the couple of marathons I've run so maybe it was a glycogen deficiency, but maybe it was from lack of protein since I cut out all of the animal products. If any of you have any ideas let me know what you think.

I did go out and buy some NutriBiotic Rice Protein last night and I've started using that. My wife (retired science teacher) tells me that I have to be careful that I get all of the amino acids that I need in a vegan protein so we're looking into that. This rice protein has 18 amino acids listed and she says I'm missing 2 more that somebody says I can get from soy protein (from soy milk maybe??) and kidney beans. Looks like I might be running a lot more fartleks in the future.

I really don't want to go back to supporting busting cows in the head with a ball bat just so I don't miss some obscure amino acid though.

Richard, have you read Scott Jurek's book, "Eat and Run"?  The book describes some of his training and races, but he pushes the fact that he can be a world class Ultra Runner as a vegan.  Each chapter ends with a recipe also.  I'm not switching to vegan, but some of the stuff sounds good. Might be a good source that is fun to read. 

 

mta: congrats on the 3rd in age group also!  Still good to place.

I haven't read it but I was thinking about getting it soon. There are a couple of other vegan runners I've found online that have a lot to say about the matter. Something I think I need to remember though is that I'm not the same as these world class runners. I'm a 60-year-old who's not nearly as serious about the running as they are and less inclined to eat some of the stuff that they tout... I like to keep the food kind of tasty and the running kind of casual if you know what I mean. So I've got to figure out what works best for me.

... building up the glutes since runners ignore these and they can help cushion the quads and form (in addition I regularly do leg lifting, stretching and foam roller).

Based on what I've heard from both the trainers at Precision Fitness and a few runners who go/have gone there, quads are largely over-used and glutes under-used among runners.  It's worth not only strengthening the glutes, but perhaps re-training them to fire more and also looking at stride modifications to shift the workload from quads to elsewhere.

... Are you trading on the German stock exchange as I've seen several 3am posts (unless your back to closing the bars in Cornelius again)?

Poor sleep habits lately.