Back in the (CIM) Groove + Other Stuff.

I've noted before that back in the day (a few years ago), I ran with a group of runners in Tucson, AZ.  We called ourselves the Interloopers and I was, at that time, pretty fit...I mean for an aging runner who probably isn't as "committed" to running as I once was.  But then again, that's why I liked (and still like) the iLoopers.  They are all very good runners but have the audacity to talk about sh*t other than just running while, well, running.  So I got this idea that I'd give myself some self-motivation if I created my own informal running group.  So I did.  I call it "The Flatlanders" because I live in the flatlands of Davis, CA (see prior posts decrying the absence of bumps in this here town).  I even made a facebook page for it.  You can find it here.  http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Flatlanders/103904643024163

I observed I have three "fans" of this facebook page and that excited me.  And then I realized that the three fans consist of me, my wife, and my son.  But then again, that is ok.  That's not the point.

I've been in search of a running group in Davis, CA that could remotely mimic the Interloopers and I discovered that The Flatlanders is the perfect group.  I mean, if one wants a dysfunctional running group, how more dysfunctional can a group get than having a membership of exactly 1 person?  So it actually all works out well.  (But I'd appreciate others).

Saying that, I have a plan.  Or rather a goal, however elusive.  I want to run under 3 hours for a marathon.  That is essentially 6:51 mpm for 26.2.  I'm pretty sure that if suitably motivated, I could do it.  The issue is the intersection of "suitably" and "motivated."

iLoopers at Napa Valley Marathon (I'm the *large* one)

Fortunately for me, I've enlisted the assistance of Manny, the founder of the iLoopers, to serve as "coach" for this worthy goal.  If you look at the picture to the right, you'll see some iLoopers who jetted in for the Napa Valley Marathon.  Three of them went sub-3.  The rest, on a good-conditions day would have gone sub-3.  Me, well, I'm the *large* one in yellow.  But Manny is the fellow to the right of me in the pic.  (L-R: Steve, Joel, Autumn, Pete, me, Manny, Ken).

Anyhow, my goal is to follow Manny's "teachings" for the next 36 weeks (of course, unfortunately, I've already not totally followed directions).

But here is what the next 3 weeks look like for me (cut and pasted from an email from Dr. K).  

Brad here my schedule starting on monday

the gym sessions may be days off if i feel tired

LT pace is your pace for a 15k -1/2 marathon (~20 sec lower than MP)

7 mi w/8x100(100) @23

Gym 

6 mi w/4x600(400) @2:18

9mi w/6400@LT pace 

Gym +5mi easy

12 (MP+1min)

5 easy  WEEK=44

7 mi w/6x200(200) @43

Gym +5mi easy

7 mi w/6x400(400) @90

9mi w/2x3200@LT pace (90 sec)

Gym +5mi easy

12 (MP+1min)

5 easy  WEEK=50

7 mi w/10x100(100) @22

Gym +5mi easy

7 mi w/4x800(400) @3:08

9mi w/6400@LT pace 

Gym +5mi easy

13 (MP+1min)

5 easy  WEEK=51

For me, "gym" will mean 15 mins of yoga in the morning.  Yes, I do that.  It seems to work well.  

......soooooooo, if you are a Flatlander in waiting, this is what my next 3 weeks looky like.  

That's all I got.  

Out,

B 

 

Back on the Road and More Important Things

A lot can happen in a week.  About 1 week ago I was musing over my (what I now refer to as) Napa Valley Meltdown.  For those who care, they probably saw that post so know what happened to me on that irrelevantly slow jaunt through wine country.

Wine country.  About 45 minutes from here.  Here?  Davis, CA.  A stereotypically small, college town that is both boring and interesting in turns.  Davis, CA.  Less than a couple of hours from Lake Tahoe.  A bit over an hour from San Francisco.  The coast.  Idyllic place to live.  And living we do. 

I like to think of myself as a concerned citizen.  As a (and I hate the phrase) "global citizen."  But of course I'm not really.  I can watch the news.  Get angry.  Maybe contribute some US dollars to this or that.  But really, despite my complaints about all the things that make my heart rate accelerate, still reside right here.  Safe and sound.   And I'm quite happy I am safe am sound.  "I" is an encompassing phrase.  It means my family, friends, colleagues, and strangers who I see everyday but never will know. 

A few weeks back I commented here about the saliency of the Christchurch earthquake to my family, particularly my wife Arlen, who considers ChCh her true New Zealand "home" (she's a Kiwi in case ya don't know).  Ironically or perhaps fittingly, one of our best friends, Martin, is coming here Friday.  Martin lost about everything in that earthquake.  In short, he is NOT safe and sound.

And then last Friday morning, I woke up and saw the headline "8.9 Magnitude Earthquake Hits Japan".  I thought, OMFG.  One need know only a small bit about logarithmic scales to know that 8.9 is unfathomably comprehensible.  It's categorized as a "great quake."  The next level is "epic quake"...a level we as humans have never witnessed let alone recorded.  

But as far as my mind could imagine destruction on the logarithmic scale, the videos, the images, the sounds, and the words resulted in a mental shutdown.  The scale offered by math ceases to matter.  Or perhaps it is offscale. 

How many dead?  Dead in seconds.  10,000?  20,000?  Will we know?  How many will die?  As I write this, there are 50 TRUE heroes...heroes anonymous...working in the nuclear plant losing days, weeks, years of their lives fighting to prevent a nuclear nightmare.   Who knows if they will succeed.  What if they do not?  As I write, they are doing airdrops of water onto the firey furnaces of the melting-down nuclear cores.  This strikes me as pissing on a forest fire.  This stikes me as something not so hopeful.

But of course I have to have hope.  Else I've got to think about what I might be writing this time next week.

And in America, the usual bullshit politics-as-usual persists.  This president disappears when he seems most needed (nb: I have and probably will remain a supporter of the President and I think the alternative right-wing nut bags are idiotic opportunists that will jump on any misfortune to knock down the Pres.), dipshit members of Congress liken the nuclear crisis in Japan to a car wreck, and ultimately, American hubris prevails: nothing like THIS could ever happen here.  As if we have an unwritten pact with the almighty that OUR ingenuity and OUR "God-given" destiny will preclude such things from happening here.  The problem is, it will.  And instead of engaging an inevitability, however distant, we pretend that shit like this cannot happen here.

However wrong the following may be, I have been drawn to the following line from the Blue Oyster Cult song [gulp] Godzilla (yes, I know and don't go there): "History points out again and again how nature points out the folly in man." 

I don't quote that line flippantly.  But it underscores what happens.  We know so little about that which is around us.   It seems clear to me that assigning probabilities to these sorts of things is, well, mostly folly.  In California, we're told there is no chance of an earthquake surpassing the tolerance of the San Onofre nuclear plant.  In Japan, they were told similar remarks.  In Christchurch, people assumed it was amongst the safest places to reside.  

So what is the point here?  Fuck.  It's a blog.  There is no point.  I'm just waylaid by what I see happening in Japan.  I think about all the Japanese students who I have taught in the ICSPR Program at U of Michigan in the summers.  Some simply anonymous students sitting in their chairs.  Some who I have written letters of recommendation for for graduate studies in America.  In Japan.  In Europe.

How are those students?  Are any of them now dead?  Their families?  I feel ashamed I don't remember their names.  I mean I met them.  Drank beers with them.  But I don't really know them. 

Citizen of the world?

Not really. A consumer of news.  Here.  Safe and sound. 

Running is irrelevant.  I was going to write about that but really, it's irrelevant.

Out

B.

Communication Breakdown: Great Weekend/Bad Run/Great Event

Short version: I predicted a finish time of 3:16-3:21; I finished in 3:35:54.  

Long version:

When we last spoke, I made the bold prediction that I'd finish Napa in the range 3:16-3:21.

I didn't. 

Mind you, that's not all that bold of a time I suppose, but it seemed a reasonable guesstimate.  But a guesstimate based on faulty data, a fault all of my own making.  But let's rewind.

Going into the event, I had done more 20 milers than I had ever done before (4) and several runs of distances 15-18 miles.  I didn't do much in the way of speedwork (mistake for this course) but I felt, nonetheless, that 7:30 pm pace was easy.  All my long runs were in the range 7:30-7:40 and so my estimated finish time seemed imminently plausible.

It wasn't.

Here is why (we'll dispense with the ugly, then get on with the nice stuff later).  I trained reasonably well, but trained for the wrong race.  This course is a tough course.  I did not make the mistake of staring at the course profile and, seeing it was net downhill, conclude it was an easy course.  Rather, I made the mistake of not realizing that this course is forever undulating and serpentine.  Some hills were long (both up and down).  But with the exception of the post-20 mile mark, there were very few places where you weren't either going uphill or downhill.  The grade or elevation is irrelevant.  You are always going up or down.  And life has it's ups and downs.

For me, after mile 15, it was all down.  And I don't mean down as in "downhill" but down as in the  sense of someone quagmired in quicksand...going down for the count.  I deduced I made three mistakes.

1. On my long training runs, I frequently stopped (for GU, water, rest) thus making them less 20 milers and more punctuated 5-8 milers.

Happy, unaware.

2. I didn't do enough speedwork.  Hills require intervals.  Period.  I didn't do that.  The course ate me alive after mile 15. I didn't respect it.

3.  I misjudged the route.  I concluded the first half was "harder" than the last half.  No.  Not this route.  The middle 9 miles is where the truth is spoken.

And the truth spoke loud and clear.  At mile 15 I was right on 3:16 pace and then the course came-a-knockin'.  And I had no answer.  I'll leave it to you to do the math.  3:16 thru 15.  A finish time of (essentially) 3:36.

Why was I beaten up so badly?  I train on flatlands.  The steepest hills in Davis, CA (where I live) are the overpasses on I-80.  I didn't make the effort to find the requisite hills to train on.  Blissfully, I ran decently paced runs in Davis and, thinking it would translate to Napa, found out the hard way it didn't.

Damn.  Those last 11.2 miles hurt like H E L L.

In the end, there are no excuses.  I was not prepared for this route. I misjudged the course.  The conditions (rain and a bit of wind) were not optimal but they were not deal breakers.  Truth told, I'd prefer the conditions yesterday to full sun and a warm day and tailwind ANY day.

But the beauty of running is, you live and learn.  So when I run this race again, I'll be ready.  Or hopefully so.  The Running Gods have a way of making one's path belated.

Now to the good stuff.

Some of my Tucson friends.  Look up Tucson/Oro Valley.

I used to live in Tucson, AZ.  A bunch of my dear friends and former running buddies came up for this race.  Seeing them from Friday until Sunday was a wonderful time.  It made the bitterness of a poor race evaporate.

And if I'm disappointed with my own performance, these Tucson guys (and gal) made up for it.  Three of them went under 3 hours; the remaining bunch all close to 3 hours.  But the main thing running does is it creates immutable bonds.  Even if words go unspoken and time between contact seems endless, when you do reconnect, it's as if yesterday was, well, just yesterday and there they all are.  Those old friends.

So in the end, a poor race is more than made up for by a great weekend.  And that's the point.

Three Icons: Beardsley, Rodgers, Benoit-Samuelson

Now to the event itself.  The folks who put the event on know their stuff.  The volunteers care.  It's a great event.  Well managed.  Well thought through.  Period.  We (my wife and son) stumbled upon the panel with Bill Rodgers, Joan Benoit-Samuelson, and Dick Beardsley and were mesmerized.  We then listened to Joanie's keynote talk.  Fabulous.  These icons all here for a "small" marathon.  No.  No complaints about the race management (well one: more porta-potties at the start). 

No regrets.  That's the way it should be in the end, right? 

Out.
B.

Last post pre-Napa Valley Marathon

(Short version: I predict 3:16-3:20)

Long Version:

Today was a good day.  First day of marathon weekend and I love it.  I used to live in Tucson, AZ and ran with a group of n'er-do-wells called The Interloopers.  A bunch of them are coming up to run the NVM (excepting my dear friend Wayne, who didn't make the trip) and I got to hang out with a few of them today as they made their way from Sac to Napa.  They stopped in Davis, where I live, and we got to dine on nice pizza and tell stories and laugh.  Mind you, these guys are pretty good (I used to be when I trained regularly with them) and they all most likely are going sub-3 hours (more on this later) and it was nice to talk to them and remember those crazy days of doing 4:30-5:00 AM track workouts and ridiculously hard distance runs.  Ah ... them days. 

While we dined on pizza at Village Pizza and Grill (why I didn't take a photo escapes me...oh I know why...I forgot to), I realized why I love running so much and how I miss running with these dudes.  While Davis has running groups, they don't have the Interloopers and try as I might, I've never found a crew like these guys here (if you are some random reader, live in Davis, are irreverant, competitive but think there are far more fun things to talk about while running than running, respond to me!). 

Among the things that made me happy was that one of the Interloopers...call him "Manny" is a doctor.  And he made the case that drinking a couple of brews in advance of the marathon is A-OK.  That advide comported well with my world view and so as I type, I'm hydrating ... errrrr .... carboloading with Dogfish IPA. 

But now to the point. 

Predictions. 

Here is my track record in marathons. 

CIM #1: 3:51 (12 days of training)
CIM #2: 3:25 (45 days of training)
CIM #3: 3:35 (28 days of training)

[are you getting the picture with me and training re: marathons???]

SOOOOOO....my goal Sunday is, or perhaps, was, to aim for 7:30s throughout leading to a 3:16 and change.  That seems(ed) optimistic but why aim low.  In looking at marathon calculators, however, a different story emerges.  Here it is:

Based on my 1:35 half a month ago (which I used as a basis), the following predictions emerge:



Runners World: 3:18:04
Marathon Guide: 3:18:58
MERV: 3:19:33
Running Times: 3:21:54

Mind you, I didn't pause in training for the half (in fact the day previous ran 9 miles at 7:20 and the weekend before, ran 21). 

So, here is my prediction.

I will finish in the range 3:16-3:20. 

That's a 4-minute window. 

The weather is a factor--it looks like it'll be sort of crappy.  But them is the breaks.

Looking forward to it.  Looking forward to seeing my friends again.

No matter what, it'll be great.  Hell, it's Napa Valley man.

Out,

B.

Running in a marathon in the rain...any advice?

Weather forecast for Napa Valley Marathon, to be run on Sunday, is (as of this writing) 70 percent chance of rain with 6-8 mph southerly wind (which would be a headwind).  I've only run 3 marathons, none of which entailed running in rain.  Of course I've run in the rain a million times but never this far.  So does anyone have any advice I can steal?

I went to one of the many ubiquitous bike shops in Davis, CA (B&L) today and asked what cyclists do in the rain (our local Fleet Feet had no plausible jackets of any sort) and the very helpful clerk alerted me to the O2 rain jacket.  It seems like it is breathable and waterproof so I decided to get it (relatively cheap [$36] as far as gear goes).

             ...I worry though because I overheat pretty quickly.  I probably will only wear it if it looks like sustained rain (I also am loathe to throw gear by the side of the road in races as a: it's pollution and b: I PAID for that sh*t).  

So if anyone who happens to see this have any thoughts on running a marathon in the rain, I'd love to hear them.

Out.

B.

PS: I'm aiming to run around 3:16 (7:30 pace).

Last "fast" run before Napa Valley Marathon

Me at Asilomar Beach, Feb. 22, 2011

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, SUNDAY.  Five sleeping nights left until 7:00 AM.   Did my last "hard-ish" run today.  Warmed up for 10 minutes then ran tempo pace for 10 minutes (10+10=20 ... yep).  Total distance was 2.83 miles giving a pace of 7:05.  Ran easy for 5 minutes and then did 5 minutes at something under 7 mpm.  Overall ran a total of 7.1 miles with the last 1.5 miles at snail's pace.  So about 5.5 miles at 7:11 pace and the rest slow and low. 

Felt pretty good despite having been on my feet for the three previous hours teaching.  I really have no sense of how Sunday will go.  I think the best case scenario would be an average pace of 7:30 which would translate to 3:16 and change.  Most likely I would hope to get under 3:20.  We'll see.  My training has been spotty.  I'm overweight.  Often have lacked in motivation; nevertheless am looking forward to driving over to Napa on Saturday, staying at the River Terrace Inn, having some fun with some old Tucson friends and towing the line in Calistoga at 7 AM.  If all works out, by 10:16 AM and change, I'll be crossing this finish line. 

Weather forecast not optimal but then it was not optimal for the CIM in December and that day turned out to be one of the best running weather days ever.  So hoping for the best. 

Out.
B