Since the Komen Race For The Cure is coming up in a few weeks, I decided to see how my little science experiment has affected my running endurance. Thanks to my shoulder issues, I haven't ran at all for a while and I'd only been doing short sprints for a while before that. So, a fast two miles was in order!

I tried to just maintain the fastest pace I could keep going. I did one mile out, one mile back to end up with the two miles. I was met with the good ol' fish hooks once again. It was hard to breathe and felt like my lung capacity has definitely dropped. Other than that, I felt fine. ;-)

Splits:
out - 7:57
back - 7:50

It's good that I was faster coming back, but quite annoyed by the times. Really, I did 10k at a faster pace than that a few months ago! So, time to add in two or three mile runs in the morning until race day. I'll still do my other workouts in the evening and see what happens.

Since my shoulder had been hurting, I haven't been able to run (swinging my arm was incredibly painful). My shoulder's been doing better, so I decided to head out to the track and give it a shot. For the most part, I felt pretty good. My shoulder didn't bother me too much and my legs felt a bit springier than before.

I did some warm ups and then did 50 yard sprints. I still find it a bit odd that 21 miles into a marathon, I was able to breathe and talk like nothing had happened. But after just five 50 yard sprints I was breathing fish hooks. I'm thinking I might start doing two mile runs a couple times a week to make sure my cardio stays at least a little bit up to snuff.

My times were about the same as the first time I tried the sprints, but my legs felt quite a bit better than before. The times were 6.7, 6.62, 6.67, 6.84, 6.8.

I touched 9'9" today, an inch higher than last week and three inches higher than when I started. That puts me at a 21" vertical at the moment.

The depth jumps are getting easier. Jumping off the 4th step doesn't affect me anymore and almost seems like a waste of time, so I now do one set off of it and two sets off the 5th step. Landing from the 5th step doesn't jar like the 4th step did the first time, but I can't quite stick the landing from there. My knees bend a little more than they should on landing.

With the rim touches, I'm now touching about 9'4" or 9'5" on each one. Since my shoulder still hurts too much to lift weights at the gym, I've started doing single leg squats at home instead of squats at the gym. I used to be able to do sets of 10 of those without any aid, but I'm definitely nowhere near that now. I have to hold onto something to finish all 10 and I have balance problems when I try to do them completely unassisted. Another couple of weeks and I think I'll have them down again, though.

Last weekend, I hurt my shoulder playing volleyball so I haven't been able to do as much this week. I've still been able to do my leg workouts, but no running or weights. I either severely sprained the muscles in my shoulder or I partially tore the rotator cuff. Now, a week later, it's much better, but still sore.

Sticking with the plan, though, I went ahead and measured my VJ again. I've gained 2 inches! Woohoo!! Last time, I could touch 9'6". Today, I touched 9'8". I touch exactly 8' when standing, so that gives me a 20" vertical.

I'm glad I'm making at least some progress. I would've been real upset if nothing changed. :-)

I did back and biceps last time, so this go 'round was chest and triceps. I strained a muscle in my bad shoulder doing bench press, which was a bit annoying. I wanted to also do shoulder exercises, but decided against it since my shoulder was hurting after the first exercise of the day.

( Chest, triceps, and squats )

I did the depth jumps and rim touches again this morning. They weren't as bad as last time, so hopefully I'm getting better. I'm also hoping the depth jumps won't cause me to have stress fractures in my feet. There's an awful lot of force on the landing.

Depth jumps are when you jump off of something and try to stick the landing. I don't have boxes I can use, so I decided to use my stairs. The goal is to do 3 sets of 10, so I did one set off the third step and the last two sets off the 4th step. The concept of the depth jumps made more sense when I used the 4th step. I was a bit surprised how much more impact there was.

( Why depth jumps kinda make sense )

After the depth jumps, I did 3 sets of 10 "rim touches". They're supposed to be done on a basketball court and you're supposed to jump up and touch the rim 10 times (hence the name). However, I don't have a basketball court in my house and I can't jump up and touch 10 feet, yet. I do, however, have 9 foot ceilings. Good enough. 3 sets of 10 jumping up and touching the ceiling. Those were MUCH easier than the depth jumps.

Since I've started doing weights, I want to record where I'm starting at. Given that I've always been more of a distance person, strength has never been my strong point so the numbers aren't exactly impressive.

( back,biceps, and squats )

Doing the squats with free weights instead of using the machine made a HUGE difference. The weights I did were almost easy using the machine, but gave me problems with free weights. My hip flexors and calves got much more of a workout from it. Yet another reason to try to avoid using the machines for weight lifting.

OK, bad attempt at a Steven Wright reference with the subject line. Anyway, I'm about a week or so into my experiment and it's been pretty painful so far. Going from pure distance work to pure sprinting appears to shock the hell out of your muscles. Who'da thunk it?

The first time I did track work, I did some warm ups and dynamic stretching before doing 50m sprints. After 5 of them, my muscles seemed to be fatiguing, cramping, and all sorts of not-happy-with-things reactions. So, I stopped after 5. All of them were under 7 seconds, which isn't too bad considering I'm not a sprinter.

The next time I tried that workout, it felt like I pulled my left glute after the 2nd one. I couldn't push it through the 3rd one, so stopped there. I think part of the problem was I had started to adjust to the sprinting and was able to push harder. My times went from being around 6.7 seconds to 6.2 seconds. 1/2 a second drop over that distance is pretty significant.

I kept the plan of doing weights twice, making sure I did squats each time to start getting used to lifting with my legs. Those workouts don't feel too bad, but I've now got a pretty good, full-body DOMS going.

I measured my VJ again and it's, effectively, the same (about 18"), maybe 1/2 an inch higher. Considering I'm sore all over and still feel a twitch in my left glute, I think that's pretty good, actually.

Last year, I decided to try to run a marathon. I went from viewing a 5 or 6 mile run as a horribly long way to run to viewing it as a relatively short run. The question was, could I run a marathon within 6 months if I followed the training? Turns out, yes I could. That was experiment number one.

I recently took up volleyball and found out that I have no "hops". It's not surprising. Distance runners can't jump. It's just a fact of life. My current standing vertical jump is about 18". I'm 6'2" and can no longer touch the rim on a basketball court. Everybody seems to agree that the best jumpers are tall, thin men. That would be me. I'm currently 6'2" and, thanks to the aforementioned marathon, weigh about 155 pounds. I have the right build.

So, now it's time for the next science experiment. If I dropped the endurance training and focused on sprinting and explosive work, how much can I increase my vertical? Would it be possible for me to get my vertical up to, say, 30"? If so, how long would it take?

I stumbled upon this post
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Strength-Training-3320/effect-long-distance-running.htm
and had to do a double take. Running one mile a day is considered long distance running??? WTF???

OK, so I need to modify my workouts. Distance runs are out. Annoying amount of track work is in. 50 to 100 meter wind sprints will be my shorter runs and 200 meter sprints will be my "endurance" work. Two days a week I'll hit the gym to do weights and will try to work in a "jump until fatigued" exercise whenever I can. I'll measure my vertical once a week to see what sort of progress is, or isn't, happening.

We'll see where I'm at 6 months from now. Let the games begin. ;-)

This was my first ever 10K race. I ran cross country in high school, so did plenty of 5K's there. Then, last November, I jumped up to half marathons and a marathon. After having a really good 5K 2 weeks ago, I set my goal for this race to be 50:00. That would put me at about an 8:00/M pace, which is about right for me.

( Gory details )

Splits:
1 - 7:19
2 - 7:49
3 - 7:42
4 - 7:32
5 - 7:55
6 - 7:57
0.2 - 1:26

Total: 47:44 (7:41/M)

Since the marathon, I've been focusing more on speed than endurance. I've been doing 10 mile runs on the weekends (most of them, anyway) but started doing more sprint work during the week. I found out about the Schlotzsky's 5k a couple weeks ago and figured I'd give it a go and see where I'm at.

I did a ~5k training run last week and ran it in 23:05, so I figured breaking 23 minutes was a good goal. As long as my legs weren't tired going in, I should be able to do it. The course is the same as the Komen race, so it's a fast course. The first mile is mainly flat but slightly down hill, then up hill for about half a mile, and then all down hill from there to the finish.

( Gory details )

Splits:
1 - 7:19
2 - 7:16
3 - 7:14 (1.1 miles, 6:35/M pace)

Total: 21:49 (7:02/M)

Since it's kind of annoying to ride near my house, I decided I'd invest in either a trainer or rollers for my bike to get in some riding during the week at home and go do long rides elsewhere on the weekends. I opted for the rollers figuring that my technique is probably horrible and it would be good for me to have to work on my balance. Well, they arrived today! So, had to try them out.

I've read a little bit about how goofy the first experience is on them, so I was expecting some weirdness. The whole "use a doorway" theory is quite sound. I used a hallway. Given a choice, go for the hallway. Having walls to reach out to for support is nice. I beat the hell out of my elbows, but that's OK.

However, there's one thing that nobody had ever mentioned in any of the articles I'd read about these things. It has to do with mounting your bike on the rollers. Now, here's how I've always gotten on a bike. Don't know why, just always have. I straddle the bar, move one of the pedals forward, stand on that pedal, this causes the bike to slide forward, which moves the seat under your butt and you're seated and moving all in one fail swoop. This doesn't work on rollers.

Here's what happens when you do that on rollers: your weight pushes backwards on the bike, which causes the rear wheel to go flying off the back of the rollers, which causes your handlebars to go flying towards your groin. Now, luckily for me, in the first attempt my bike made at assaulting my genitals it missed any vital targets. But, for all the guys out there who might be thinking of trying the rollers, wear a cup if you have one. I do have to say, that was one Important Safety Tip (tm) that sinks in after the first time. Sit on the seat, then start pedaling.

I was eventually able to get going on the things, though. I moved them to the kitchen so I could watch TV while I rode. I had my fridge on one side and the island thing on the other. I was able to go about 5 minutes at a time without falling over, so there's hope. As I got comfortable, I'd naturally start speeding up. My balance wasn't good enough to manage reaching down to switch gears, so the speeding up part is usually what caused me to go haywire and have to stop.

After that fun, I headed to the gym to do some laps in the pool. I had watched this clip on a loop at work and noticed a couple things I thought I was doing wrong. He seems to keep his elbows pretty wide and his arm is almost completely extended when his fingers enter the water. So, I tried to concentrate on keeping my hands outside my shoulders and doing big windmills with my arms while doing 50m laps. I got my 50m time down to under 1:10, but my feet started cramping after a while again so I couldn't try to go further on each iteration. After about half an hour, I called it quits.

Now that the marathon's over, it's time to remember how to bike and swim so I can get ready for the Capitol of Texas triathlon in May. I ordered a set of rollers, which haven't come in yet, so the bike gets to wait until the weekend. Instead, I headed off to the gym to do laps in the pool.

I did two 50m laps to warm up a little and then figured I'd do laps until I either went a full mile or something broke down. Well, 800m in my calves and feet started cramping so I stopped.

I didn't feel too bad swimming, but I still have the feeling that my shoulders will pop out of socket if I pull too hard (I have bad shoulders). I tried to just go at a comfortable pace, focus on reaching forward, pushing backward, and breathing cleanly. I managed to do all that and ended up doing the 800 meters in 24:13, almost a full 3 minutes slower than I did it back in October.

I'm hoping to swim at least twice a week here for a while and I'm going to head over to the YMCA and see about their swimming lessons. I'd like to get faster at swimming, mainly so I can get it over with quicker during the race.

OK, technically I did finish. In a time of 4:39:58. My goal was to run the whole thing without stopping. That didn't happen, hence a DNF as far as I'm concerned. My legs weren't 100% and I blame it on the ski trip I took the week before the race. One of three things happened:

1 - Skiing was more of a workout than I thought and my legs were still worn out from it. Doubtful since my legs weren't ever sore from skiing and I never felt physically tired from it.
2 - Skiing was less of a workout that I thought and my legs had become unaccustomed to long runs (I hadn't run much in almost 2 weeks due to the ski trip).
3 - I wasn't completely over the nasty head cold I caught on the trip.

My race splits are here.

( Gory details )

All in all, I guess it wasn't terrible. I can say I did a marathon (though I still can't really say I ran one. Not to me, anyways). I did get to have a "marathon experience" of pushing my body further than it wanted to go and fighting through it to finish the course.

I think it'll be nice to get back to reality where 10 miles is a really, really long way to run. From here, I'm going to stick to 5k and 10k races, with maybe one half marathon a year thrown in as a long race. The next time I try to do a marathon, I'll be shooting for 3 hours instead of 4. No telling when I'll get there, if ever.

Final time: 4:39:58 (10:41/M)

Tried to do the food thing right and take another shot at a marathon distance training run. Didn't bonk, but as tends to be the case almost every single time I try to run more than 13 miles, I had to deal with a 20 mph headwind. It won.

( Gory details )

At this point, I think I'll go ahead and sign up for the Marathon but have no intention of actually finishing the race. I talked with stuckinord about running half the race, waiting for her and her buddies to catch up, then gallowalking it in with them. I think that's the plan I'm going to take into the race. Try to PR the 1/2, then keep going as far as I can. Once my legs start to blow up, hole up at the next water stop and wait. I might actually make it the whole way, but I doubt it.

5.3M Splits (rest in parenthesis):
1 - 51:52 (1:42)
2 - 49:00 (1:43)
3 - 49:31 (3:19)
4 - 1:08:57
Total: 21.2M 3:46:08 (10:40/M)

OK, yet another vain attempt at making it 26 miles in a single workout. And, yet again, I fell about 10 miles short. On the plus side, I figured out what was causing my hip to hurt. If I relaxed too much, or my legs got too tired, I would stop pushing off with my left foot. It started hurting about 5 miles in today, then I started concentrating on pushing off and the pain went away. So, of course, something else had to jump up and stop my run today. My good buddy from SA, Mr. Bonk, came back to see me. It's been a while. I've missed him...

I've got a 5k loop around my house, so the plan today was to run a bunch of laps around it (hopefully 8 or 9) with a water stop at my house after each loop. As I tend to do every now and then, I ran out of food at home. All I had to eat for breakfast was a PowerBar. I had two of them and figured I'd nibble on the other one as I ran and hoped it would be enough.

I felt good for the first few laps. Well, the 2nd lap where my hip started hurting wasn't so fun. But I figured out what was causing the pain, so it worked out OK. As I was finishing the 4th lap, I felt the "something poking me in the floating ribs" feeling I had in SA (and haven't felt since) when I took a deep breathe. Dammit. I know what it means. And I know what's coming. I hoped the water break might help, or the stuff I'd been eating and drinking during the run would finish digesting and save me.

No luck. As I started the 5th lap, the feeling was still there. About half way through the lap, I felt my legs start to fill with cement. By the end, it took all I had just to keep lifting my legs off the ground. Game over. Thank you for playing. Try again next week.

Splits (rest in parenthesis):
1 - 27:42 (1:59)
2 - 27:37 (1:27)
3 - 28:01 (1:30)
4 - 28:08 (2:00)
5 - 29:32

Total - 15.6 miles, 2:27

First off, I'm in a band. I play bass for a singer/songwriter named Amanda Lepre. We have videos up on youtube from the last (first) time we played at Red Eyed Fly in Austin, you can see them here. I'm the skinny one playing bass. I know I didn't look up at the audience much. There was no audience. 5 of our guitarists friends showed up and that's about it. We're going to be playing there again on the 10th (tomorrow) at 10:00 if you're in Austin and extremely bored.

Anyway, our drummer (Dave) told us at the last practice that his friend sings for a band called Velvet Brick that would be playing at Red Eyed Fly on the 9th (tonight). They would be filming for a BBC documentary at the show, so it might be fun to go. I said I'd try to make it (didn't know if I could make it down there after getting my run in after work) and our other two band members said they wouldn't be able to go. Turns out, I did have time. Dave didn't show, so I was the only one that went. Not too bad, only a $5 cover.

Velvet Brick was supposed to start at 9:00. The first band was done at about 8:45 and VB were set up, sound check done, right around 9:00. However, they didn't actually start playing until about 9:20. Before their second song, they bring up some friend of theirs out of the audience to play guitar with them.

About half way through the song, out of the back area comes one of the TV cameras. So, I turned to see what was going on over there. With the cameramen were the two hosts of TLC's What Not To Wear. You know, the pretentious woman and the man who dresses like a 1970's golfer? Those two.

They go up, tell the band to stop playing, and call over the guitar-playing friend's fiance and give her the "we have a credit card for you" shtick. Everybody cheers. Yay! Woohoo! Whatever.

I'm not sure when the show might air (since they just did the credit card bit), but if anybody who watches the show sees an episode where they stop a band named Velvet Brick, playing at Red Eyed Fly in Austin, to do their thing with the artsy-chick fiance of the guitarist, look for me in the audience shots. I'm in the back (forgot my ear plugs), wearing a white baseball cap, looking around like "This is bullshit. Do we get our $5 back if the band doesn't play anymore?" ;-)

I told myself I wouldn't sign up for the marathon until I've done a training run of at least race distance. I have no doubt that, if given an afternoon, I could traverse 26 miles on foot. So, just crossing the finish line means nothing to me. If I can't run the whole thing, there's no reason to spend the $100 entry fee.

I tried again today and came up short. Again. 16 miles seems to be my limit. About 12 or 13 miles in, my hips started hurting. By 15 miles, I had to stop every few minutes to stretch in order to keep going. I decided to call it quits after 16. I probably could've finished 10 more miles doing that, but that would've been an awful lot of pain for no good reason.

Either my legs can't take that much pounding (it's also possible my form breaks down after that much time) or I'm bonking. I'm going to try again later in the week by doing 5k laps, drinking 8 oz or so of gatorade after each lap. That should be a more accurate simulation of what the race would be like. If I can't get in 8 or 9 laps, I'll probably have to put the marathon off until next year.

On the plus side, the 16 miles only took 2:35. So, even if I did 12 minute miles for the last 10, I'd still end up around 4:30 for the full distance. Which isn't awful.

I did 14 miles last week, so planned on doing 16 this week. Friday night, the news said that it was supposed to be windy today. There was actually a wind advisory and they were expecting 20-30mph winds with gusts up to 40mph. It's expected to freeze Sunday, so I figured I'd deal with the wind instead of the cold. There's a chance Sunday will also be a bit windy, so the wind by itself is better than the wind and cold combined.

I got up this morning, ate breakfast and got ready to go. I decided that normal running clothes would be enough. It was supposed to get up to 55, which isn't quite cold enough for extra clothes. Turns out, though, that they got the wind thing right. The wind was pretty intense. It was so strong that, when running into it, it was blowing the water out of my eyes (IST - wear sunglasses next time).

I forced myself to finish the run, but fighting the wind for close to 3 hours took its toll on my legs. They were quite sore at the end of it. I did OK food wise, though. I had a decent breakfast and bought a double chocolate harvest grain Powerbar (the only flavor I don't gag on) on the way. I filled my Fuel Belt with Gatorade and filled it back up at Auditorium Shores. I finished most of the Powerbar during the run and never really felt like I was going to bonk. My muscles were sore, but that's about it. After a hot shower and a nap, they seem to have mostly recovered.

I ended up stopping three times during the run. Twice to pee and once to refill my bottles. While taking walk breaks don't seem to be my thing, taking pee breaks every six miles or so seems unavoidable.

Total time: 2:59:50 (11:02/M)

The first time I tried the run/walk method, I tried to PR my 5.3M course and failed. I went out too fast, got too tired, and felt miserable doing it. Then I tried to PR the course without taking breaks and succeeded, so the walk thing doesn't seem to work for me as far as posting better times is concerned.

There was one more claim that I wanted to try out. Galloway says that your legs will be fresher at the end of the run if you take breaks. So, the plan was to do a 4M/35s interval with the caveat that I wouldn't walk after completing four miles. Also, I wouldn't shoot for a PR. Just run at a brisk, yet comfortable, pace and see how fast I could run the last 1.3 miles.

For each of the first 3 miles, I hit right around 8:45. Which made sense because that puts me at about an 8:10/M pace with 35 seconds of walking. Not a bad pace. I felt like I was pushing a little bit, but not too much. The brick feeling coming off the walks didn't feel quite as bad as it did last time, but it was still there.

After crossing the 4 mile mark, my legs gradually started to feel like they were filling with sand. It was a weird feeling. They felt really heavy and it felt like I was slowing down pretty bad. Breathing was getting harder and I thought my split for that mile would be around 9:00, if not higher. Until I hit the 5 mile mark and checked my split - 7:56! The only time I've run that mile close to that was my PR run when I ran it in 7:59.

Since I only had 1/3 of a mile left, I decided to try to speed up and push myself through the end of it and try to gradually build to almost a full sprint. My split for that stretch - 2:16! I've only ran that stretch faster once, after running 9:00 miles the whole way.

So, even though my legs felt like crap I still ran the final 1.3 mile stretch faster than I ever have. Even my PR runs were about 20 seconds slower. Scientifically, I have to say that part of the Galloway experiment holds up. They may not have felt like it, but my legs definitely had more energy left.

Final time: 45:11 (8:28/M)

Once again breaking open the book of "Gotta Try It At Least Once", I decided to give Yasso 800s a go. I'm not sure I did them exactly as you should. I just know that you're supposed to pick a target time for your 800s and "jog" that same amount of time in between.

I decided that I would alternate 400s and 800s, since it would make it easier to know exactly where I started each one at. The goal would be to run each one in 4 minutes. According to Mr. Yasso, if I could do 10 sets without stopping, that means I should be able to run a 4 hour marathon. So, why not? Worst case, I get a decent 80 minute workout out of it.

First thing that struck me about doing this: do you have any idea how hard it is to take 4 full minutes to jog a quarter mile? I think slowing myself down that much was probably the hardest part of the whole thing.

Things were going pretty smooth until the 7th one. When I finished the first turn and started down the back stretch, a nice, stiff, COLD wind hit me right in the face. Cold winds in Texas are always a sign that bad things are on their way. I finished my 7th and 8th 800s, fighting the wind, and started my slow 400 before my 9th 800. It started to drizzle. I just looked at the sky and said, "C'mon, I've only got two more!" The sky politely replied, "Uh, no. You've got ONE more."

Just after I started my 9th 800, it started to rain pretty hard. It's always annoying to run into a wall of needles, so I decided that would be it. Just after starting the 2nd lap, I decided to sprint the rest of the way and call it good. Taking a break to wait out the rain would defeat the purpose and spending 10 more minutes fighting the rain seemed pointless.

My times (800s in parenthesis):
1 - 3:18 (3:54)
2 - 3:42 (3:54)
3 - 3:35 (3:56)
4 - 3:42 (3:50)
5 - 3:40 (3:48)
6 - 4:03 (3:44)
7 - 3:49 (3:43)
8 - 3:50 (3:43)
9 - 3:55 (3:27)

So, Mr Yasso thinks I should be able to break 4 hours in a marathon. I've done two 1/2 marathons right at that pace and they both killed me. We'll see if I can maintain my current 1/2 marathon pace for twice as long by the time February rolls around.

Interestingly, I ended up running 6.75 miles in 1:07, which is just over 10:00/M. That's one hell of a way to run 10 minute miles! :-)