2011 Annual Report

2011 has been over for a few months now, so I think I can safely go ahead and post my annual report of miles, calories, and such. Running total miles were down from 1,534 in 2010 to 1,394 this year. However my cycling miles went up (396 for 2011) and my "other" activities such as elliptical went up to 22 hours. I burned 173,657 calories over 271 hours of physical activity. That is 49.6 pounds or about 1,157 glasses of red wine.

As far as races go, 2011 was an incredible year. We started with RAGNAR Key West. In February, I set my half marathon PR at the Five Points of Life race in 1:27:23. In April, I won my first race, the Cardiosmart 5K. Later in April was the Boston Marathon. The streak continues, but after Boston, some injuries that forced some daily miles to be walked. I took it easy during the summer and then in October won my second race, the Apalachicola Half in 1:27:26. November brought my fastest race ever in the Fisher House 5K, winning my age group in 18:36 for a 5:59 pace and my first ever age-grade-percent performance over 70%. That is going to be a tough set of performances to beat!

Fall race: Run for the Bay in Apalachicola

Continuing in the spirit of blog-posts-I-have-been-meaning-to-write, this past fall, I ran a half-marathon in Apalachicola. I skipped running a full because I spent a good part of the summer building strength in my hip and knee muscles to get rid of some knee pain. I selected the race for several reasons. Having grown up in the panhandle of FL, I was familiar with Apalachicola and the city is not far from my parents' house.

Quaint local shopping

The timing was nice and a good reason to go to the beach for the weekend. Lastly, the race is small and looking at the prior winning times, I realized that I had a chance that I could conceivably win the race based on my prior half marathon PR of 1:27.

The "expo"

Getting to the race too early, my wife took a nap in the car while I enjoyed my coffee and breakfast bar. At race start, the temperature was a lovely just below 50 degrees. After a quick mile-or-so warm up, I lined up for the start. I am going to say that I take issue with one of the claims that the race organizers make on their website (or at least they did prior to the race and as of writing this in March 2012). The claim is that the Half and Full are "two of the flattest courses in America". And while averaging the elevation over the course of the race, this is accurate. What they fail to mention is that nearly the entirety of the up and downhill is in a single bridge at the beginning and end of this out and back race.

Credit: Wikimedia commons user, ebaybe

This is the Gorrie Bridge headed east out of Apalachicola. The start/finish is on the ground of this picture, while the runners must travel out on the course over the bridge. Therefore, one must climb up on top of this bridge and then descend to the islands just visible in the distance. My Garmin did not track the elevation very well, and I cannot seem to find the exact elevation of the bridge anywhere online, but I can say that the entire bridge is about a mile or so long, and it stands several stories above the ground making the grade of this "hill" a few percentage points. Aside from this, the race is exceedingly flat, though. I must also say that seeing the sun rise just as we were getting to the top of this bridge was a breathtaking site and I wish I could have had my camera to capture an image.

Bent over gasping at the finish

I had a solid start to the race. I quickly settled into a 6:45-ish pace and kept it pretty steady for the entire time. We started behind the marathoners and somewhere around 5 to 6 miles, I caught up with the leaders of that group and was actually in the lead of the whole race, behind the pace car, until it turned off to lead the marathoners over another bridge to St. George Island, while I circled back to the half finish. I will say that I could have used a little better signage, or a pace bike directing me since I was not quite sure that I was headed the right way, but it ended up being fine. Now that the sun was up, the temperature started to climb and I was glad to only be doing the half. Being right on the coast, the humidity was pretty high, and I could taste the salty air in addition to my own sweat. Coming back across the bridges, I stopped for a water at about 10 miles and rinsed my head. I had been paying attention during the race as to whether anyone was keeping pace with me. Footstrikes had followed me until about the 6 mile turnaround, but I had not looked back to check. I chanced a glance at about 12 miles when I was climbing the Gorrie bridge again and I saw no one. Just a few 10K walkers, but no one running. I made the last couple of turns through Apalach and crossed the finish line just a few seconds shy of my PR, and in first place!

Victory!

I would run Apalachicola again. The people were very nice and the race is reasonably well organized in a small coastal town that is well worth experiencing for a weekend.

Footstrike, cadence, and new shoes

The last several months have been incredibly busy for me and as such, several significant topics I have been meaning to write about have not happened. Getting into those topics, the first one to mention is that I have switched my "go-to" footwear to match my new after my issues with knee pain and transitioning from a rear foot strike pattern to a mid-forefoot strike with a higher cadence. As it turns out, I had kept several pairs of my old Asics in my closet, meaning to recycle them, so I pulled them out to examine the wear patterns. The first is an example of my Enduro 2's from about 2006.

So with these shoes, while I wore them for several months, the lining wore out more than the soles did. The wear pattern is limited, but you can see in the center of the midfoot, the wear is most obvious in the green line that is running the length of the shoe, suggesting that my foot strike was mostly midfoot. Next up is the same shoe, newer version, from circa 2009.

Now, while some wear is obvious in the midfoot, you can see that I have done something notably different with my foot strike because the heels are shredded! The grey color there is where I have worn clear through the black layer. So, I do not have any particular recollection of changing my stride between these eras of running. The typical total miles/week also did not change that much. My thought is that I was focused on running and did very little cross training and got into a poor-form rut without noticing. The result was the knee pain that I mentioned before. That pain led to some strengthening exercises which have been very helpful for me. Once I started paying attention to my foot strike and my cadence, I found it easy to switch to a midfoot strike, and looking through my shoe history, I wonder if I was not a natural midfoot striker when I started and then got sloppy over the years.

So the one serious problem I noticed with footstrike and cadence changes is that the Enduros were now more difficult to run in. Why? The wedge of the heel (heel-toe drop about 14mm) made the footstrike quite difficult. So I spent a lot of time reading the Runblogger and settled on trying a pair of the Saucony Kinvaras. These brand new Kinvaras have a heel-toe drop of about 4 mm and I just love running in them. At a recent race expo, the local shoe store had some Kinvaras for sale, alas, not my size, but when I was browsing them, no less than 4 people commented on how much they loved them, how quickly they sold, or asked what I thought of them. Clearly, Saucony has done something right, or at least popular.

So, a couple of races under my belt with plenty of miles and my Kinvaras have some wear. A little is on the outer heel (note the grey triangle with black peeking through) but the majority of wear is actually on the outer midfoot. The wear is a little harder to see, but the texture of the ridges is notably worn. I am very happy with the Kinvaras, they feel great, and I have got my next pair waiting in the closet once these wear out.

Thanks Podrunner!

Just in time for my attempt to break three hours at the Albany Marathon this weekend, DJ Steve at Podrunner has dropped a 185 bpm mix on us. I tried it out this morning and it was consistently driving me at a 6:40 pace, perfect!

The fellrnr's wiki

I just came across a wiki authored by an ultrarunner in NC who goes by the nom de plume of fellrnr. As opposed to my very temporally linear blog, I love the idea of a personal wiki like fellrnr's. He has posted a lot a great content about he has become a successful ultra runner including his gear, fueling, training tips, lots of running science, and the recipe for his favorite self made Go Juice. For those who have found themselves accidentally spending an hour on wikipedia clicking from topic to topic, I think you will have the same experience with fellrnr!

Upcoming races

Just got done with RAGNAR last month, pictures of the fun are soon to come. We had such a blast, that I already registered a team for 2013! Aside from that, I have got two races coming up in the next month. First (tomorrow!) is the Five Points of Life Marathon. I have run the half and the relay a couple of times before, so this will be my first time on the 26.2 course. The exciting part though is that I have volunteered through the Florida Track Club to be a pace group leader for the race, the 4:00 group, specifically. That run is then going to be the peak of training for my goal Spring race, the Albany Marathon in Georgia. This relatively flat and fast course is where I am going to make my stand and try to break three hours! The speedwork and tempo training has been treating me pretty good, so I am excited to give it a shot.

VIDEO: Marathon Thoughts

Just awesome....