Running Program - Week 15

Well, bummer. My new shoes turned out to be the wrong ones. I was excited to try a completely new shoe, but after running 54 minutes in them my right little toe kept getting pushed under the toe next to it. The result: three separate blisters on the bottom of my small right toe. I'm still trying to figure out how three blisters fit on such a small surface area. Oh well, thankfully Striders has a great return/exchange policy. You have 15 days to exchange your shoes for another pair, no questions asked (within reason, obviously).

I'm thinking I just didn't take quite enough time trying the different shoes on. I tried on somewhere around 6 or 7 different pairs of shoes. When I went in this week, I just told them to bring me out some Mizuno's, I'll stick with what I know works. They brought out three pairs, and I think I spent just as long, maybe even longer, with those three pairs than I had the previous week with 6 or 7 pairs. I'm glad I did.

My right foot appears to be quite different from my left. The three they brought out were the same size as my old pair. But with all three pairs, my big toe kept getting a bit scrunched up to the toe of the shoe when running. I actually had to increase half a shoe size to get the right fit. So, I ended up with the Mizuno Wave Inspire 7's. And I know they will work because the day I bought them I ran almost 9 miles (Saturday). It probably wasn't the smartest way to really test a new pair of shoes, but I felt I took plenty of time at Striders to know they would be fine.

For this coming week I plan to do 30/60/90 since the week after will be VERY difficult to get all my running in. So, I'm thinking go for it this week, then a recovery week after that. Still loving every minute of it (except here and there during long runs on the treamill...)

Running Program - Week 14

I continue to be surprised by what my body is able to handle each time I increase my miles per week. It seems like when it comes to my long run days (Saturdays) that I could just keep on running. But, I made a promise to myself that I would take it slow this time around. So far, it has worked wonderfully! At this rate of progress, in just a few weeks my short recovery runs will be just as long as my long run when I began running six days per week.

I have a couple of specific thoughts on which I would like to touch this week. By the end of the week I would have come to about 350 miles on my first pair of running shoes since I started running last year. Just remember, that time includes about 9 months recovering from an injury and rekindling the fire inside to run again. I had also noticed over the last week or so that my right hip and feet were a bit more sore than usual after my medium and long runs. So, I decided that it was time to replace my shoes.

It was a bitter sweet experience driving to Striders in Layton, Utah (the BEST place to shop for running shoes) and finding a new pair of shoes. Do you remember that feeling as a child when you finally have to let that old, dirty, torn up teddy bear go? Yeah, that's the kind of feeling I had knowing it was time to just let this pair go and move on to a new pair. It's rather surreal to think back on all the places and paths I have run in those shoes, all the sites I've seen, getting attacked by a dog, and the wonderful experiences of running while wearing them. I know, it sounds kind of crazy to have this emotional attachment to a simple pair of running shoes, but to me that's how it is. Mizuno Wave Nexus 4's, you will always be my first love. ;) My new pair for the winter/spring will be Saucony Guide 4's. Seems pretty crazy to think with my current weekly mileage that I could go through these new shoes in 10 to 12 weeks.

My other thought is based on two random but very related experiences. About two weeks ago as I was heading out for my long run, my father-in-law saw me heading out. We exchanged greetings, and seeing me in my running gear he simply said, "Heading out for a run, eh?" To which I replied I was. He then jokingly asked, "What are you running from?" Without much thought, I simply said I was running from myself.

I didn't think about that experience until a few days later. I was listening to a local radio station and one of their commercials was for their afternoon talk show. Two people host the show and they were simply doing the advertisement by playing the recording of a discussion they were having. It happened to be about running. One of the hosts (obviously not a runner) asked something like, "Why are you running? I mean, what's chasing you?" After hearing this basic question, it got me thinking. After some thought, here is my answer to that question.

Who is chasing me? I will give the same answer I gave my father-in-law: myself. Not my actual self, but some other future me that I don't want to become. I look at where I am in life (turning 31 this year, married, father of 3) and where we as a family are heading. We have a very bright future ahead of us, and I refuse to live a life now that will end up preventing me from fully enjoying all that God has in store. I refuse to not sacrifice time and energy now and end up like 1/3 of those in this country who are obese. I refuse to give in to indulgences now so that I end up like 11% of those over 20 and 27% of those over 65 living with with diabetes. I refuse to end up with the myriad of health problems that are plaguing this nation as a result of very poor choices in diet and exercise. I refuse to not teach my children at a very young age the great importance of eating healthy and exercising.

When all that my family is working together to achieve comes to fruition, I want to have the physical, mental, and emotional well being (all three areas are inseparably linked to our diet and exercise habits) to fully enjoy the fruits of those labors.

Running Program - Week 13

It was a great week for running. That actually surprises me to say considering how awful I was at staying up late many, if not all, nights and feeling like a zombie just about every day. But I managed to get a run in every day, even if it was at 11:30 or almost midnight. Which is absolutely terrible and makes me wonder how much easier the runs would have felt had I given my body sufficient rest for more recovery.

Another interesting event this week happened with my Friday recovery run. I had stayed up late Thursday night and woke up late Friday morning. But I knew that if I was going to be completely rested for my long run on Saturday that the Friday run needed to be in the morning. So I hopped out of bed and quickly got ready to run the 22 minutes on the dreadmill. When I first began treadmill running I would find some free online TV shows (Hulu, Amazon, etc.) or put on a movie to pass by the time. But even doing that it was difficult not to constantly look down at the time and distance on the display. Well, during my last trip to Wyoming, I surprised Kelli with a Nook. I have since started using that to read while I run on the treadmill since it is so thin and fits nicely on our treadmill. I'm able to increase the text so I can easily read while running, and it sits in just the right spot so that it covers the time and distance displays. I've been pretty good at checking my time to make sure I don't go too long, but on Friday the time just flew by. I got so absorbed in the book I was reading (The Time Machine by H. G. Wells) that when I finally checked the time it was already at 27 minutes, five minutes beyond my planned time. I'm thinking I will get a lot of book reading done this winter. :D

I was also impressed with my long run. The same amount of time as last week, but almost 0.3 miles longer. As a result, I'm thinking it's time to up my total time again and slow things down slightly. I may shoot for 25:50:75 and keep the paces around 9:50/9:00/9:20. I may also have to look at doing a "rest" week that tapers back a few weeks to give my body a bit more recovery time.

Running Program - Week 12

The last two weeks definitely show why keeping up the mileage and traveling away from home can be a major pain. Especially on the days when I had to drive more than 5 hours. That's what happened at the end of week 11. After being away from my family for two weeks (which takes enough of a toll on me emotionally), I got home that Saturday. Of course, after driving for almost 6 hours (part of it through some Wyoming mountains during a snow storm), my wife and kids were excited to see me so I wasn't able to do that run until much later in the evening. I was tired, it was dark outside, and I tried to get a 60 minute run in on the dreadmill. It certainly didn't happen. I was too exhausted after that 46 minutes.

With my first week home (and no work from all the extra time while out of town doing field work), I decided to kick up my times by 10%. I can honestly say it was challenging. Especially my 40 minute run on Thursday. It was a long day of fun with my family that included going to the local indoor kiddie pool and swimming all over with the kids for over an hour. We were all exhausted after that. Even with an afternoon nap, I didn't get the energy to run until almost 11:00pm. Since I only got the 40 minutes Thursday night, I added an extra 4 minutes on my Friday morning run. And despite all that running longer (and during a very tiring part of the week), I was able to achieve a new personal record for distance and time on Saturday! For the first time, I broke the 7 mile mark.

I'm thinking I will hold the same times for this week. I'm not exactly sure how my body will react to "real" life again (both jobs, Church calling, family, etc.). Plus, last week did leave me a bit more tired than I have been used to over the last twelve weeks. I'm sure as I head into these longer (for me) distances that I will have to give my body two or more weeks to adjust to the increased time/mileage.

Running Program - Week 10

I had to take a couple weeks off of full out running for a few weeks, hence no real updates until today. As I explained in my previous post, my ankle got tweaked from being attacked by a dog while running. So, I decided to take week 8 off of running almost completely. I did do a tiny bit of running, but for the most part I exercised on a stationary bike while staying at a hotel. Which brings me to another minor set back.

It appears that I was pushing too hard on the stationary bike that by the end of week 8 I began to develop plantar fasciitis. Ugh...I was scared of it at first. But, after some great advice from friends and researching more on how to care and prevent problems, I was able to get in a fair amount of running during week 9. My 60 minutes of running on Monday of week 9 was a result of me going absolutely crazy from not really running very long for over a week! It was a bit dumb, but my whole thought that evening was, "I don't care if this hurts, I just want to run!!!" :)

So, with a lot of extra stretching and keeping my foot taped, when week 10 rolled around I felt good and ready to get back into running every day again. I opted to continue where I left off from week 7 but to reduce my pace a bit. I admit, the first three runs were pretty tough. Especially since my thigh/buttocks area muscles on my right leg were really tight and causing my right foot to point inward and land where my left foot had been. Quite a bit of extra strain on my body as a result of improper running form.

To fix that I began focusing on making sure to do butterfly and pretzel stretches to get those areas really stretched out. By Thursday right foot was pointed outward just a tad, and by Friday and Saturday I was back to my old proper running form! Just in time, too. That 60 minute run was pretty brutal since I had to do it after standing on my feet for 5 hours working and running around noon, so it was much warmer than what I am normally used to. Had my form been out of whack I don't think I would have made it through the whole run.

Another life circumstance that has made running a bit more difficult than usual over the last month has been traveling for work. I've been out of town for two weeks at a time doing construction oversite. During that time, morning runs are almost impossible to do if I want to run outside. I don't really care to go running around in pitch black darkness in a place where I'm not completely familiar. So, while traveling, my running has been exclusively evening running. I have always struggled more running in the evenings. However, it has been good to get used to it since morning runs are not always possible even when life isn't quite so hectic.

Anyway, despite some set backs and the ever busy life of traveling out of town for work, I'm just so happy to be back running!!!

Running Program - Week 7

Life got busy...but I continued to stay committed with my training. I can't really remember a whole lot about what has happened over the last three weeks except for this week other than I have been having a hard time running slower (slower than 9:30/mile). The only times I've been able to run slower than that has been when I've used a treadmill. It may be time to increase my expected/planned paces (10:00/mile for short days, 9:30/mile for long, and 9:00/mile for medium) by 0:15/mile or so.

I did do something I hope doesn't come back to bother me, and that was increasing my overall distance by more than 10% for this last week. I knew with some things coming up in life that I was going to have a bit more time for running, so I decided to go ahead and up my overall times (20/40/60) to where I would like to hold it for a few weeks. It also brings me to the 20 to 25 miles per week average I'd like to hold until I figure out a specific date for a race. I looked for some races, mainly 10k races, but with how busy I'll be over the next few months I couldn't find one that matches my schedule. Maybe I'm being a wimp, but I just don't think trying to squeeze a half marathon in before the running season ends would be the best for me.

Physically, I'm still doing great. I was so excited to run longer and farther than I ever have before yesterday! Before yesterday, my previous longest was the 10k race last year in July (finished in 56:22). As I explained in a previous blog post, that was the race I injured my knee and couldn't run for quite some time. During my run yesterday, however, I did have something happen that I really hope doesn't cause me problems. For the first time, I got attacked by a dog while running. The owners had no fenced front yard, two dogs just out in the front, and as I ran by both came straight for me. One took hold of my right foot and began to the whole head shake while biting down thing. Thankfully, I was able to pull my foot free (with some minor tearing to my shoe...grrrr) and continue running while the owner came out cussing at his dogs. Whatever, dude, your fault for just letting two dogs that attack random people run loose.

As a result of that little episode my right ankle got tweaked. It just hurts a bit when I turn it to the outside. While the pain has been less and less, I'll have to be careful when I head out to run tomorrow. If it's still bothering me I may have to finally take a recovery week. Although I'd much rather be out running!

Running Program - Week 4

For the first time with increasing my mileage, I felt slightly challenged this week. Then again, I don't know if I would chalk it up to being challenged, or just having a bad run day. My Tuesday (28 minute) and Saturday (42 minute) runs were the only two that challenged me. Mostly the Tuesday run. I'm not sure if I missed out on some sleep or ate too much garbage on Monday, but that run kicked my butt. I wasn't feeling too hot for the Wednesday easy run. Then come Saturday, I think the reason that was a bit harder was running a bit faster than I probably should have. I feel that in my current condition, my long runs should be somewhere between a 9:15 min/mile and 9:30 min/mile pace. I ended up running just under 9 min/mile.

Anyway, even with those two, I feel comfortable to increase to 15/30/45 minutes for this coming week. I'm still not sure where I will hold steady. I was initially hoping to progress slowly enough (no more than 10% increase each week) to run a half marathon before the running season ends. However, after looking at the best possible scenario (continually increasing 10% every week), the earliest I would have a long run the distance of a half marathon falls on week 15. That would put me in the last week of October/first week of November. And that's only IF I were to increase every single week. I'm not sure I could keep that kind of progress going that long as I'm sure I will hit some weeks where I won't feel ready to increase and will repeat the same times one, two, maybe three weeks in a row. Maybe I could find a 10k to do.

It's odd, this is really the first time I've been running without a real goal in mind. Like I explained in my last post, when I started up running I was going for a 10k. Did way too much way too soon and paid the price. When I started up again this year, my initial goal was to do a Sprint Triathlon. But, as in a previous post, triathlon training has to be put on hold for a few more years. So, for now, I just run. :) And while doing that, I look to improve little by little. I guess my big goal is to run a marathon next year. I plan to continue to improve and increasing mileage with this running program through the winter. Which will be a lot easier to do with the purchase of a treadmill a few weeks ago. So, I look forward to doing better and better to be in great shape next year. Maybe do a half marathon early on, throw in some 5k or 10k races, and ultimately shoot for a marathon.