Run to Win

I have been tagged by the Run Faster blog with a running meme, so I thought that I would take the opportunity to answer a few questions about myself that you will hopefully find interesting and useful to your own running. Hopefully you will be able to either relate with these anecdotes or learn something new, and if not then I at least hope that you find some small amount of amusement.
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Thanks for the emails over the weekend; my neck is doing much better tonight than it was a couple days ago. On Friday afternoon, I tweaked or pulled something when I began my run that led to my spending the rest of the afternoon on the couching and requiring assistance to get up. Saturday morning wasn’t quite as painful but wasn’t really much better. Things stretched out throughout the day to the point where I could play with my 3 and 5 year old cousins without being in too much pain, and by Sunday morning when I woke up I could turn my head without anything hurting. I couldn’t turn my head too far, so my wife had to drive home, but it was a definite improvement.

That meant that it was time to try running again this afternoon. I ran a few miles easy with my wife, then picked up the pace when we got to a place in the road where we couldn’t run next to one another safely anyway. I wound up adding 4 loops to the normal route that we were on, which turned an 8 miler into a 12.5 miler. My neck actually felt much better after the run than it did beforehand, which is a definite relief.

I didn’t make my weekly distance quota (95.5km ran of a minimum 100km in store and a preferred 110km penciled in,) but I came close enough and I was so exhausted all weekend that I’m sure the multiple naps helped me heal. This evening’s run leads me to believe that I can get back to my normal running routine tomorrow, although I am going to take a week off from any weight training.

I don’t feel that my training plan has been impacted at all by this minor injury, and I am looking forward to moving closer to my sub-16:00 5k goal for this Summer. I have also made some plans for my next goal race after the 5k races throughout the Summer and Autumn, a 50 miler on January 3^rd.

Today reminds me a lot of my birthday a couple of years ago, when I pulled a muscle in my neck and had to cut back on my training for a few weeks.

I didn’t hear any cracks today, and it isn’t nearly as painful, but I managed to tweak or pull something when I started my run today. I was all of about 22 seconds into the run. Now that it is 10 or 11 hours later, it hurts just as much so I don’t expect to run much this weekend, but hopefully it will have improved to the point where I can resume training again next week.

It has been an interesting week since winning the Cox Sports Marathon this past Sunday. Thanks for all of the comments and congratulations over the past week. It has meant a lot to me, whether it has been in person or on the phone, through email, comments on this site or on others. It’s been a pretty good week that way, and I appreciate it a lot.

Now that my goal marathon for the Spring is out of the way, my next goal is to finally run a sub-16 5k this Summer or Autumn. I have 3 races targeted starting in late August, so my priority for the rest of this month is to recover from a relatively tough training schedule over the past 6 months. It has been one of the most strenuous winters in terms of how much work I managed to get in since I graduated from college, and was well worth it. Now, my body needs a little break.
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I now own a marathon course record.

Well, it has been a very busy day as I prepare to head down to Providence this weekend for the Cox Rhode Island Marathon. I ran an easy 2 and a half miles at lunch time to stretch the legs out, and despite my best efforts to leave work 15 or 20 minutes early I was in a groove and wanted to finish the project I was working on so I left 15 minutes late. (This is not unusual, unfortunately.)

My plans for the weekend originally called for staying with a friend and his brother down in the area. My friend decided to buy a house today, though, so he didn’t really want to go down. Not a problem, because I had another friend that was running the marathon and I was going to split a hotel room with him. Unfortunately, he got injured. So I was back to staying with the original friend’s brother, but he is now going to be out of town this weekend. I found that out tonight, so I got a hold of my injured friend and he canceled the hotel room this morning. It made for an interesting start to my evening. I did sort out my hotel arrangements eventually, though, and I’ll be staying at the original hotel after all. Hopefully I can still take advantage of the 3:00 checkout time.

If anybody is going to be in Providence this weekend and wants to try to meet up, send me an email or leave a comment on this article. I will try to check it before I leave tomorrow morning, and will probably check it tomorrow afternoon or evening after I get to the hotel.

I do not have an overly specific race plan for this weekend. My original range of goals involved an 8 minute span, but since one of my teammates did so well in the Olympic Trials that I now have about a 2 minute goal span. I am going to aim for running at around 6:00 to 6:10 pace and hoping that if I do wind up blowing up in the latter stages of the race that I at least run a PR. That shouldn’t be too tough, and if everything breaks well for me then I’ll make my goals.

As you can see from the elevation profile, there’s a few good climbers but the course never gets over 150 feet above sea level. I’m hoping that my winter hill running through the snow will make this seem like a flat enough course with just enough variation to keep my muscles from getting overworked.

I had a couple of good weeks at about 60 miles since I ran ING Georgia, but my cold came back in the past week and I have been fighting off my cough. It is mostly gone now and I don’t expect it to be a factor during the race, but it did cause me to taper a little more than I would have liked to have before this race. Better to be a little undertrained than at all overtrained, though, so let’s hope I feel nice and rested come Sunday. There have been plenty of phantom and taper pains over the past week or so, but I don’t expect any trouble from my legs on Sunday.

Wish me luck!

It is official. I am now an RRCA Certified Running Coach. As described on the website:

The Road Runners Club of America is the national association of running clubs, running events, and runners dedicated to promoting long distance running as a competitive sport and as healthful exercise. RRCA’s mission is to represent and promote the common interest of its member clubs, events, and individual runners through education, leadership, programs and other services.

My immediate plans and goals for this Summer are to assist in the coaching programs through the Maine Running Company in Portland, Maine. Once we determine what role I am going to play and how many people I will be coaching, I will decide how many private clients I can take on and will set up some online coaching options for the Summer and leading into the Autumn marathon season. If you have any interest in personal coaching from myself, then send me an email and let me know.

If you are interested in pursuing a career in coaching yourself and are interested in taking a class through the RRCA, they have released their Summer and Autumn schedule for courses. The instructors for my class were Janet Hamilton and Mike Broderick of Running Strong, and they will be offering courses in Orangeburg, South Carolina on July 19-20, in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 22-23, and in Arlington, Virginia on October 24-25. Patti and Warren Finke will also be teaching a class in Portland, Oregon on October 3-4.

The class takes 16 hours spread over 2 days. You can read more about the upcoming options in their latest press release: http://www.rrca.org/news/index.php?article=2282

Thanks to everybody for the well-wishes and for the queries about how I ran this weekend. I will keep this very brief since I managed to catch a small bug and am going to spend a few more days resting and not taxing myself.

The flights down to Georgia were uneventful, and it was quite hot when I got there. I managed to get in 7 or 8 miles or so Thursday afternoon and learned my way around the town that I was staying in. I got out to Wes’s restaurant that evening and got to hang around with him and Dee Dee. They are both wonderful folk.

Friday and Saturday I spent sitting on my butt in a classroom learning what I needed to know to pass the RRCA coaching certification test. I would say that about 80% of what they taught were things that I had picked up on my own already, maybe a little more. I really enjoyed the class, especially in the second day when we generated some workout plans for “Joe Runner.” The class had a lot of experienced runners and coaches in it, though, and it was difficult to get to a consensus within the 6 and 7 person groups for how best to structure the workouts.
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