DNS - Did not start

Another acronym from the runners' glossary - did not start (DNS). I had intended to run the Fayetteville Half Marathon but couldn't. The calf was not ready.

I've now had a DNF (did not finish) and a DNS (did not start) so I guess next is the DNR (did not register) and DNCRTSRINEARA (did not consider running the stupid race, I'm not even a runner anyway). Sigh.

This calf injury has been quite frustrating. It was mild, no bruising, no swelling, no big deal at all. I was walking normally, with no pain, within a day or so. Every day thereafter felt like I would be back running again tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. Every time I gave it a little test with a jog or a hop, the pain returned.

I've been doing all the right things. I've continued my daily exercise regimen on the bike where the calf doesn't hurt at all. I make sure I exercise it just enough to get good blood flow but not enough to worsen the injury. I massage it. I ice it. And of course, I've eaten plenty of pie too. I think I read somewhere that was good for recovery. Ok, maybe I made that up but I'll let you know how it works out.

We are still going to Disney in January, race or not. Disney is a big event and I may never return to run it again so I am hoping to walk/jog the thing just fast enough (7 hours) to earn the finishers medal.

Soldier Marathon

 

DNF - Did-Not-Finish. Sigh. This is another first for my running career. This is the first time I have pulled out of a race. It was a very, very difficult decision. After pouring yourself into training for months it is very difficult to let go of a goal. Ultimately, I think it was the correct decision though.

I was feeling great through 3 miles then I felt a twinge in my left calf. At first I thought, or hoped, it was a cramp. I wanted to ignore it and make it go away. It came and went for the next couple of miles, keeping that hope alive. After 6 miles though it became a continuous and increasing pain. It was undeniable at that point. It was an injury and not a cramp. Immediately my mind shifted gears to focus on the Disney Marathon in January. I had to stop running to minimize the damage.

Let's back up.

The Soldier Marathon is held at Fort Benning, Georgia where both of Shelly's sisters, Julie and Miranda, are stationed. They are both doctors. Several family members signed up for the half marathon as a stepping stone to their first full marathons at Disney in January. Training for the HM were Miranda, her husband Jeremy, Julie's husband Kevin and their son Reed. However, Jeremy and Reed had recent injuries that prevented them from starting the race. Out of the 5 of us, only 2 finished the race.

Congratulations to Kevin and Miranda! They finished the half marathon with times of 1:50:43 and 2:04:58 respectively. Take a look, they were both wearing awesome.

I was the only member of the family to sign up for the full marathon. With only 8 weeks between the Soldier and Disney marathons, I realistically could not expect to make improvement between them. What I could do was maximize my chances of getting everything right on one of them. I prepared to race the Soldier as my primary goal race but then my plan was that if the weather was bad, or if I experienced an injury or illness, or if I made some horrible pacing mistake, I would have a second chance at Disney. My goal is to break 3:10 in one of these races. Good plan in retrospect.

Prior to the race, I put this table together to help me visualize how my training for this race compared to my previous efforts. In each case, I looked at my training log for the relevant data in the 4 months leading up to the race. If you are training for a marathon you can compare this table to your own training.

	Average miles/week	Peak miles/week	Number of Long Runs (17-22)	Number of Medium LR (11-16)	Result
Little Rock (Mar 2010)	25.8	40	2	7	3:59:05
Chicago (Oct 2010)	37.8	48	4	12	3:29:11
Boston (Apr 2011)	47.0	66	7	16	3:17:02
Soldier (Nov 2011)	58.1	75	9	21	DNF

Looking back at the table now and knowing an injury derailed me, I suppose it is possible that I overtrained and that contributed to my injury. I must admit it is possible. I don't really think so though. I increased my training the right way. I increased gradually and scaled back periodically to allow my body to recover and adapt.

When the injury occurred, I wasn't running particularly fast, just slightly ahead of my 7:15 goal pace. I had rested well in the two weeks before the race, so there was no lingering fatigue in my muscles either. It was cold (33F) but before the race I warmed up reasonably well. I felt loose. I cannot find a satisfactory explanation. I'm chalking it up to just one of those things.

As the man says, "I'll be back".

Recovery run

Running the trail along the river bank.
It promises I will pass more miles than people.
I'm not looking at it tonight.

The sky is overcast.
It delivers a light mist along with the distinctive smell of autumn.
I'm not looking at it tonight.

A leaf drifts in the breeze.
Its friends rustle, waving red and yellow, cheering it onward.  

I'm not looking at it tonight.

The river glows as the sun goes down.
The lights of the city flicker across the wave tops.
I'm not looking at it tonight.

I'm carrying my stopwatch.
The strap is wrapped around my left hand, as always, but
I'm not looking at it tonight.

Prairie Fire Half Marathon

I broke one of my rules to run this race.  Whenever I am at an event with multiple race distances, I want to run the longest one.  I want to be one of the "real" runners.  In this case there was a full marathon but I chose not to run it.  I opted for the half marathon instead.  This half marathon was a perfect opportunity for me to improve on my PR and fine-tune my expectations for my target marathon still 5 weeks away.

This was a partial homecoming for me.  I graduated high school and college in Kansas, though neither in Wichita.  In fact, I was able to see one of my former high school classmates at the finish line.  That was a nice treat.  I felt sorry for her later though when I realized we didn't even let her catch her breath before we snapped a picture of her.  She looked great but she was worried I would post the pic on Facebook.  So I didn't.  I put it here instead.  However, I can't really explain how we went to high school together, since she is clearly half my age.

The course is ideal.  It is very flat with only about 100 feet of rise in the first half of the race and an equivalent drop in the remainder.  The weather in Kansas is always a question mark though.  Some days in Kansas are so windy that flags unfurl completely horizontal, even the flags hanging indoors. As it happens, race day was wet.  The first half of the race was a light mist but the last half was rain.  I needed wipers on my glasses.  There was a little wind but not much by Kansas standards.  Temperatures were in the low 60s throughout.  Although the weather could have been better, it could have been worse too.

Photo album

My recent training has been averaging 60 miles-per-week spread out over 6 days.  I often run twice a day.  One day a week I ride my stationary bike and allow my running muscles to rest.  A typical week includes one long run (18-21),  one medium-long run (11-15), one lactate threshold run for 30-40 minutes, one day of faster intervals, and several slow recovery runs.  Most of my running this summer has been at about the same pace as my training last winter but once the weather started to cool it became clear that I've actually made some good improvements.  I was really hoping to prove that with a good showing in Wichita.

My goal was to start at about 6:40 per mile pace for the first 6 miles and then adjust either up or down depending on how I felt.  I'm usually a pretty disciplined runner and this race was no exception.  Some runners use a fancy Garmin GPS system that can calculate their pace automatically.  I do it the old fashioned way with a stopwatch and mile markers.  My first mile was 6:41 according to my stopwatch.  My second mile was 6:38.  At this point in the race I could already tell I was running too fast.  I slowed down into a more comfortable 6:45 pace and felt much better.  It doesn't sound like much but 5 seconds per mile can make all the difference.  I was able to hold that pace pretty much throughout the rest of the race.  At about mile 10 I started to feel some cramping in my left calf but was able to keep running through it.

I finished in 1:28:17 for a new personal record.  I placed 24th overall out of 1549 runners and 3rd out of the 75 men in my age group.  This was also fast enough to give me guaranteed entry into the 2012 NYC Marathon!  It is a good thing that it is 13 months away.  It may take us that long to plan all the things we want to do in New York.

This result also gives me some confidence that a 3:10 marathon is a reasonable goal 5 weeks from now in Georgia.

Winslow Half Marathon

The race was held Saturday, September 17 in Winslow, AR.  The course is "beautiful" and "challenging" which is race-director-speak for hilly.  When I signed up for this race I was confused about the course.  It wasn't on the road that I thought.  Instead, it includes about 7 miles of dirt road with lots of loose and uneven rock.  This course is closer to a trail race, albeit an easy trail, than it is a road race.  This is certainly not a good course for a PR.

Once I realized my mistake on the route of the course, I quickly changed my plans.  I decided to treat this as a training run and ignore the clock.  I decided to hold back a little and save myself for the Wichita Prairie Fire Half Marathon, which I added to my schedule in October.

I have been training very hard this summer towards my full marathons scheduled later this fall and winter.  It is difficult to know how you are doing when you are running in the heat of the summer but I am optimistic that I am still improving.  I am averaging about 60 miles per week, with 70+ on several occasions.

The weather was very nice, upper 50s throughout the race.  There was a little wind and a little misting rain in the air but that was not really a factor.  However, the slow and steady rain all day Friday before the race was a factor.  It was no friend to the dirt roads or to the runners.  The course was simply awful in a few places.  It was a sloppy mess.

A total of 126 runners showed up for the half marathon.  That is pretty good for an inaugural event in a small town.  Many were unprepared for the dirt road course.  I overheard several comments about it at the start line as the word spread.  I'm not sure anyone was upset, more like surprised and daunted by the unexpected additional challenge.  The race organizers did a pretty good job from my perspective.  However, next year I think they should hold an awards ceremony after the race and give out some sort of plaque or ribbon or something to the overall and age group winners.

Photo album

Given the challenging course, I told Shelly that I would be very surprised if anyone broke 1:30.  I decided to be content with something in the 1:40s and focus on a speedy recovery so I can continue training hard next week.

I decided to run totally by feel.  I left my stopwatch in the vehicle and ran without it, which is unusual.  I wore my trail shoes, which is also unusual.  I had good footing mostly, but my cleats sure did pick up a lot of mud.


I did better than I expected.  I finished 4th overall with a time of 1:34:10.  I was wrong about the winning time.  One guy did break 1:30.  Not only did he break 1:30 he broke 1:20 too!  He finished in 1:18:51.

Midnight Madness 50 Miler

The race was held in Tulsa, OK on a 10.3 mile loop surrounding a section of the river.  Temperature at the midnight start was 85.  At the time I finished it was 97.

Without exception, every person who heard I was running this event said I was crazy.  I laughed, but I didn't argue.  As I began the training, I quickly realized this was a much different event from a marathon.  It is an endurance event while a marathon is a running event.  I learned that running ultra-long distances is hard no matter how slow you go.  In the last few days before the race, I determined to focus on finishing, staying healthy, and recovering quickly.  I had been saying all along that I didn't care about my time, but finally it was true.  I really didn't care.  I decided to run during the hot night and walk during the even hotter day.

Photo album

I came prepared with 5 different pairs of shoes.  I found during training that I could only run in a pair of shoes for about 20 miles before they became soaking wet.  Since there were 5 loops, I allowed for the possibility of changing shoes for each.  Shelly kept them at our tent where she sat up all night.  The plan was for her to get some sleep while I ran.  Things didn't go according to plan though.  At one point in the night a sprinkler came on and soaked our camp site while she was in the bathroom.  She came back and found all our stuff was wet, including my last 3 pairs of shoes and the bathroom scale I used to monitor my hydration throughout the race.  The scale was electronic and did not survive.

The race started off very uneventful.  I settled in to a comfortable 9:30/mile pace.  We alternated clockwise and counter-CW loops.  I drank as much gatorade as I could stand.  I basically lost 1 lb of fluids per 10-mile lap.  That was pretty good, but to accomplish that I had to run feeling bloated with all the gatorade sloshing around.  In the days after the race, my ribs hurt more than anything else.

My experience was humbling.  It went pretty much like I planned, except it hurt a lot more than I visualized.  It was a good plan.  Finishing was never in doubt.  It was amazing how bad I felt though, even walking.  I probably ran too fast in the early race.  Others who started slower were able to continue that slower pace long into the hot daylight hours.  Kudos to them for knowing themselves better. 

I saw the young lady who won as she passed the 47 mile mark.  I moved off her line and told her to "bring it on in".  She smiled and told me I was looking good.  Ha ha.  Nothing impresses me more than someone with so much talent who is still willing to support others.  She was awesome.  She finished in 7:02!

I finished #64 out of 150 people who started.  Only 105 finished.  My time was 12:12.  You could have timed me with a calendar.

Backstory

After a Sunday afternoon visit with my grandmother in the spring of 2006, I came to the realization that people of her generation got a lot more exercise in their daily life than we do today.  Then it hit me.  Part of my problem with sticking with an exercise program had been the days off.  One day of rest becomes two, then three, and so on.  Pretty soon I wasn't exercising anymore.  That night I climbed on my stationary bike and began a streak of continuous daily exercise - a really, really, long streak.

The first few days, all I could manage was about 15 minutes on the stationary bike.  Within a week though, it was 20 minutes, no problem.  That was my original goal, 20 minutes a day because that is the conventional wisdom.  I tend to push myself though, and soon my goal became 25 minutes, then 30 minutes.  Within 6 months I was doing 40 minutes a day.  At that point I decided no more.  I may do more than 40 minutes, but I won't hold myself accountable for any more than that.

I do some form of cardio exercise for at least 40 minutes a day.  Sometimes I run.  Sometimes I ride.  Sometimes I carry my luggage up and down a flight of stairs in an airport for 40 minutes and garner strange looks from everyone around.  I just make sure I do something every single day.

It was 9 or 10 months of exercise before I even got on a bathroom scale.  I didn't want to be disappointed by what it said.  When I finally did venture onto the scale, I had already lost about 50 lbs.  That was awesome, but I still vowed to not make that my focus.  Any day I workout is a success regardless of what a scale might say.

I lost maybe 60 lbs that first year, followed by, perhaps 25 and 15 in the subsequent years.  My total weight loss is now somewhere between 115 and 120.  I don't know for sure.  With glycogen depletion and hydration variation so much a part of marathon training, I never know exactly what I weigh.

Along with the weight loss, I was also pleased to see all symptoms of diabetes disappear.  When I was originally diagnosed my morning blood glucose level was 280.  With medication, I was able to control it, but I hated how the drugs made me feel.  They gave me an "afternoon swoon" where my blood sugar level would drop quickly.  I hated that roller coaster.  With exercise and weight loss, I found my blood glucose levels are very good and stable, even with no medication.  A typical morning now is 85.  I still consider myself "pre-diabetic" and monitor my levels periodically, but so far so good.

I almost didn't finish the Boston Marathon

Photo album

In the last 2 miles I was beginning to get muscle cramps.  I tried to slow down a little to ease the pain but after rounding the last turn, with the finish in sight, my right calf totally locked up on me.  I couldn't run.  I couldn't even walk.  I hobbled to the side of the road in agony and stretched and rubbed it till it felt like I could walk again.  Then it immediately locked up again.  I looked towards the finish and for a brief moment I really didn't think I could make it.

The crowd was awesome the entire course but even more so at the finish.  They had seen this drama play out countless times before, many times that same day.  They knew I could make it even if I didn't.  There were people standing there at the side of the road with me giving me encouragement and telling me just what to do.  "Just stretch it out."  "Give it a minute."  and "You can do this."   They were awesome and they were right. Eventually I was able to continue again towards the finish.  A cheer erupted in that small area of the crowd and I knew it was for me specifically.  Wow.

Just as I got a good walking stride going and started feeling better again I heard a weird thing from the crowd.  A cheer like no other I had heard all day -- "I love you!!!!".  I looked over and it was my wife Shelly!  She stood there just a few feet away.  That was all it took.  My walk became a jog and then I ran across the finish.

Introduction

My sister Andrea thinks I should write a book.  She thinks people will be interested in my story, how I used a daily exercise regimen to lose weight, fought back diabetes, and re-discovered my inner athlete.  I think she is biased.

Nonetheless, this blog will allow me to record my story about my running specifically and my fitness journey more generally.  Most entries will likely be race reports since that is what I enjoy reading in other runners' blogs.  It is nice to be able to learn from my peers.  Perhaps someone will be able to learn from my mistakes.