Running Shorts

May 28, 2017 Burlington, VT 2:45:32 -- 17th Place Another marathon, another disaster. At least I finished this one. The Flying Pig Half beat me up more than I thought it did, and I never really recovered. Enter a marathon a little over the edge, and you'll end up with thigh smash before mile 10 and pitiful walking breaks after mile 20. But I don't want to dwell on this one too much. Lessons learned, for sure, but I'm really trying to approach my running from a much more positive mental framework. So this recap is going to be slightly different: I'm going to focus on some of the things that went well over the course of the whole spring season and then pick out some new things to work on over the summer and fall. POSITIVES Found joy in running again.  Stayed injury-free. Actually, my Achilles felt better as the season went on. Won the premier local race in an event record time. Returned to the same fitness level pre-injury. Refined what works for me in t...

Not racing for all of the last fall season got me thinking: do we race too often? Like most running-related questions, the answer is simple; but unfortunately, that's where it gets complicated. I decided to break this down into two parts with two different answers. And really, I think these parts speak to the divide between the competitive sport and the participant activity. Part one focused on high school and collegiate cross country and track athletes. This one will cover more of the road, trail, and ultra racing scene. So. Do we post-collegiate (or non-collegiate...or heck, let's just call it "open" runners) race too often? No. In fact, I don't believe we race often enough. [He writes, with a 5k last weekend and a marathon this one.] Back in the day, athletes like Bill Rodgers might race nearly every other week, at any distance from the 5k to the marathon. Seriously, scroll down to the bottom of his 1977 log -- he competed in an astonishing 26 races, in...

Flying Pig Half Marathon 1st place 1:08:32 -- event record Well, I finally finished a major Flying Pig race -- I just had to drop down to the half. Actually, I did this race more out of a feeling of local obligation than true motivation. My focus really remains on the Vermont City Marathon, which is now less than three weeks away. But a minor race can be a great tune-up for a goal race; in fact, I think it's often the best preparation. (Just wait for my next blog post to explain that.) And that's what this race really was: a tune-up, practice for the real deal in Burlington, VT. So instead of focusing on the mile-by-mile details of the race (I pretty much ran solo the whole way and won by something like three minutes), I want to focus on my plans coming into it and how successful I was at executing them. 1. Run the first 9-10 miles at a controlled effort and then shift gears to race the last 5k. On this one I was very happy with my execution. I didn...

Ok wow, it's been a while. I have been running, I promise. Last fall I got so frustrated with my nagging Achilles injury that I just had to completely shut down. I got stuck in a cycle of: start running again, feel good, slowly feel that goodness deteriorate, end up back at square one needing more time off. Nothing seemed to be helping, so I finally just checked out of running entirely. After a few weeks in a walking boot, I decided to give it a cautious go one more time (this is around the beginning of November). I played it very safe, running without a schedule and entirely by feel, and by the end of December I was able to hit 60+ miles per week. Most importantly, though, I was simply enjoying running again. My goal for January and February, then, was to work in aerobic base training while gradually increasing my mileage and re-establishing some semblance of consistency.  I mostly succeeded -- my mileage didn't make it up to where I wanted it, but my base training went ...