Sidewalks are faster

Time for an update! The timeframe for my last blog entry ended on April 25 so here's what happened since then:

Two weeks after the marathon, I ran a fun 5k with my wife. It was a small field, and I ran with Kristin for the first couple of blocks, just enjoying a relaxed run again. I ended up taking 5th with a time of 22:45. Slow time, but I had a lot of fun doing it. The course had a short trail section in the second mile, which made me think, "hey I should make move here, I probably have more trail running experience than these guys..." .. 20 feet on the trail, foot catches on a root, face plant. No more getting cocky.

My training was spotty for about 3 weeks after the marathon. I had no long races on the horizon, so I put in miles with friends, went to the gym, and relaxed. A lot of 10 milers, but not too many longer runs. During the third week of May I decided to get serious again, so I picked out a race, Lunar Trek, which will be held on July 10th. I'm running the 50k (31 miles) which will be my first ultra-marathon. To be honest part of this is a testosterone fueled desire to get an "ultra" under my belt, as most of the guys I run with have a few ultras in the books.

Starting with Wednesday of last week I started to feel like my training was good again, and I'm approaching the fitness level I had achieved in December and January, and I'm approaching 60 mile weeks, which seems to be a magic number for me, both from a "feeling good" and weight loss perspective. On Wednesday I skipped the normal trail run with the "Lawrence Trail Hawks" to spend some time with Kristin for our third wedding anniversary. I instead ran a road 10 miler late at night, the longest I had run on pavement since November (I think). I ran strong, and found a hilly route in Lawrence to follow (see map).* In fact, I think this is the strongest I've felt on any individual run in about 5 months... I finished 10 miles in just over an hour and twenty minutes. I think I'll be doing this workout quite a bit in the future when I want to run fast on pavement... it has an extremely (for me) steep hill about 7 miles in, where you have to climb up 13th street to campus.





*Note, I think the function of using Google Maps to plot Garmin data of difficult or interesting workouts should be used more by runners for sharing purposes.... on the condition that it doesn't lead to runners parking in my driveway to begin their workout exactly where the route starts. :)

Thursday through Saturday I put in an easy (but sometimes speedy for me) 5 miles a day, with a little weight lifting and core work thrown in for good measure. On Sunday I went out for a 20 mile long run on trails with friends. This was the longest I had run in over a month, and my longest training run since January. Everything felt good, though it was hot and I managed to drain my hydration pack twice. The guys I ran with are a lot faster, and much more experienced in ultra-running than I, but I kept up with them for the first 15 miles. After 15 my legs were drained and my footwork was starting to get sloppy. I knew this was a good time for an injury to occur, so I backed off of the group, and ran the final 5 miles at my pace (this show of restraint may be my first smart move in slowing down to avoid injury... maybe I'm getting smarter.)

Sunday night I ran my newly found 10 mile route (mapped and mentioned above) on sidewalks, this time on tired and sore legs from my long run. The last two miles were hellish, and I struggled to make my legs turn over in any kind of normal way, I think I averaged 10:30 miles for the last two miles, which is slow for sidewalk running.