It's Supposed to be Fun

            For some reason I got it stuck in my head a long time ago that I was a real runner if I made it to 20 miles per week. Probably something I read in one of the running magazines that said it should be easier to lose weight if you run that much or more. This sounded good to my ears, given that I was overweight as a kid and got picked on for it. I didn’t really focus on eating or my other habits—just get to that number and you’ll be fine.

            That was my mindset as I achieved my weekly goal of 20+ miles for 29 consecutive weeks in 2016-17. That’s about 689 miles over nearly seven months miles when additional miles north of 20 are included. I worked hard, ran five times most weeks, and made sure I got out there when the weather was cold (for Georgia) and when Mother Nature turned up the temperature. I ran in Houston when K-State played in the Texas Bowl, in Kansas City for my niece’s wedding, and clicked off a sub-22:00 5K on a steamy Saturday morning in March.

            So I’m very proud of my effort level.

            My mistake is that I focused too sharply on the goal and not on the fact that running is supposed to be fun. I always enjoyed stepping outside my door and taking off, but I didn’t allow myself much deviation in the routes I chose. I have a couple of four-mile courses, two that are five miles, plus various loops I can use to add a little extra distance as needed. It was good running, it just got to be monotonous. That plus some life changes ended my streak the first week in June.

            Giving myself permission to not run took a little getting used to. I felt like I had to get out there or I would get fat and out of shape. Like I was chasing something that shouldn’t be chased. That I would become the 11-year old kid on the playground that I used to be.

            But I’m relaxing now as I work back into things, just with less structure and intensity. I am making a greater effort to run socially—I ran with our Fleet Feet group at 7 AM on the Fourth of July, and I met the group at a local pizza shop for a three-miler that has a free beer at the end. Plus I’m giving myself the OK to not run if I feel like it. I feel like my fitness level hasn’t really dropped off—my paces and splits are about the same.

            I’m still setting goals though, just lowering the bar to between 15-20 miles a week and creating less stress and more fun in my life.

Big Recycling Box in the Sky

I had to retire another pair of shoes a few weeks ago. I wanted to have a Viking funeral or a bonfire or something but then the fire department would show up followed by the police, so I chose to not do those things.

So I just took my old Nike Pegasus 30 to the recycling box at my running shop, letting them end at the place where it began. Before I started working at Fleet Feet I would show up at the weekly Monday Night Group Run event and one day the Nike rep had Pegs for us to try and a pair to give away via drawing. I so rarely win things like this so I didn't get my hopes up but I heard my name called and a few days later I went home with these dudes:

Nike Pegasus 30, men's 9 1/2 with elastic laces

These were even a favorite at my old running store in Tuscaloosa. Our Chief Running Officer always loved them because they were so soft and comfortable. Store manager Voldemort liked them because they were the shoe Nick Saban wore on the sidelines at Alabama football games, meaning Tide football fans gobbled them up when we got them in. Ol' Voldemort couldn't even pronounce Pegasus but that didn't matter as long as the cash register kept up. It's still a running joke for the First Lady and me-- we call them what he did-- Nike 'Paygus.'

My first run for them was a nine-miler on a Saturday in September, 2013. Probably a little long for their debut, but I wrote AWESOME in my running log that day, after I'd scrawled OMG! in the space for Monday's demo run. So I guess I was a fan right from the get go. They'd been making this shoe for a long time and it seemed as though they were on to something.

The Pegasus took me through the streets of Atlanta in March, 2014 for the Publix Marathon. That was the time my wife actually had to help me down off the curb so I could cross the street on our way back to the hotel.

Last ride for these old friends was a four-miler a few weeks ago on a sticky Georgia morning. 533 miles for these old foot soldiers.

Twilight 2017

The last Saturday in April got me up early to run the Twilight 5K. If I run a race the previous year, then I'm more likely to pay a visit the following year as a way to see how I've been doing. I PR'd this race last year at 21:40 and I was hopeful of having a good run.

Race conditions were sunny with temps near 70 degrees Fahrenheit-- warm and sticky for the 8:30 AM start. I wore my red Athens Road Runners short-sleeved top and Brooks two-in-one shorts, along with my Adidas Supernova Sequence 8 stability shoes. I'm still a really big fan of these shoes. They're very soft and comfortable, and I ran well in them during the Give Thanks 8K last Thanksgiving.

There was a course change for 2017 and it began with a downhill start. I did try to get toward the front for the start so as to avoid other traffic, and flew out of the gate. 3:11 for my first half-mile split. I should have been alarmed, but I felt pretty good at the start. What I didn't remember is my fastest splits were very close to 3:30, and that was when I'd go to the track for 800 repeats.

But I kept on going. Maybe I felt like my training was going to get me there. I just remember not feeling as cautious as I should have.

I know a running friend locally who is much faster than I am. Seeing him out ahead of me a little bit, I decided to keep him within sight and let him be a rabbit. Yeah, that didn't last long. My next two splits were closer to the norm at 3:24 and 3:22. My friend had scooted away and I hadn't even made it to the hills on the back side yet. I even pulled over for about 10 seconds to catch my breath because I just couldn't go anymore at that point. I always try to keep going no matter how bad it must look, but my heart rate was way up there, I'd gone out too fast and now it was time to pay for my mistake.

Making it back onto the course and around the last two corners, I saw my boss from Fleet Feet, who gave me some good encouragement in the home stretch when I thought I didn't have anything left. My watch had 21:43 when I crossed the finish line, which differed from the actual finish time of 21:55. Took me the rest of the day to figure out why. I'd stopped my Garmin when I stopped running, which is a bad habit I've formed even out on my training runs.

The amazing part was still to come-- I placed second in my age group despite running about 15 seconds slower than in 2016, when I finished off the podium. Here is the proof:

It still qualifies as a Shiny Metal Object. 

Strange thing is that I didn't want the free beer and breakfast after the race. My tune changed after swallowing two bottles of water. I drank a yummy Terrapin Sound Czech (a light pilsner) but still skipped the free food. Just wasn't hungry.

No real changes to the training-- 25 miles this week after an eight-miler on a cool Saturday morning.

Not Running

We runners see lots of inspiration. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, even a simple search on Google Images will turn up a wide array of tips on getting out the door and fighting inertia.

It’s a battle I fight every day, as well. But today I’m up against something different. I’m telling myself not to run.

I did 5x800 Saturday and then rested Sunday as is my custom. After church Sunday I seem to have eaten some food that did not agree with me and I spent a couple days with a stomachache, then feeling that all-around soreness you feel when you’re on the back end of being sick. I prudently skipped my Monday run, knowing I wasn’t too far off of making my weekly and monthly goals.

Then Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:45 with a stomach that felt like it was bowling a perfect game. Made it a rough morning. I probably could’ve made it through a four-miler, but it’s everybody’s nightmare to be caught out there with no place to go. So I scratched today’s run as well.

Part of it is that while I love to run, I don’t want it to take up too much time in my life. I don’t want to become subservient to my running habits—I want to give myself permission to skip a day or two as the situation dictates.

The challenge here is that skipping Monday and Tuesday make it harder to meet my weekly (20) and monthly (95) mileage goals. So while I can be OK with skipping a few days due to illness, it seems I’m not fully able to let go of my weekly goal streak (24 weeks) or my monthly streak that sits at four.

I have to admit that the best thing out of all this was the sleep. I stayed home from work Monday and slept an extra three hours, which is better than staying home from school and watching game shows like Press Your Luck when I was a kid. Kind of felt like I was playing hooky from school.

It turns out running is easy. Not running is hard.

519

          So here in Georgia we had one last cold snap last week when low temps fell into the mid-20s. Balmy for some, pretty chilly for us.

  

         What it meant for me is that I got out my Smartwool socks for the first (any probably only) time this season. There’s a fair amount of yellow color to these socks and it showed through so that when I bent down to begin my prerun stretch I noticed something:

I managed to blow a hole in the forefoot of the right shoe.

          These were my Saucony Ride 3 shoes that I got in June of 2013 when we lived in Tuscaloosa. The wife and I went to one of the outdoorsy-type stores to get her some sandals, and I my eyes lit up when I found the Rides on sale for about $30 in a size 9. That is a deal you just can’t pass up.

            This was the end of an era when many shoes were larger and foamier, and as a result bulkier. The Ride 3 had EVA foam in the midsole and progrid cushioning. The Runner’s World write up shows them being pretty stiff and having a 15-millimeter heel-to-toe differential. That feels about right. Of course now their shoes have a drop of 8 mm, the shelf isn’t as high, and they’ve got the supersoft Everun foam in there so that you feel like you’ve got a pillow on each foot.

           

forefoot treads are pretty well done for

            My first run with the new kicks was on June 26, 2013 when I headed out for a sweaty seven-miler and did five miles at 8:15 pace. The last ride (see what I did there?) was a neighborhood four-miler on a cool January morning a few months ago. They got some desert work when I went to see my folks in El Paso last summer, giving me my first real taste of summer running in the southwest.

the sockliners are out, as I used Green Superfeet
inserts in these neutral shoes

            I ran in them for almost four years and 519 pain-free miles overall. Then they just start to come apart. Pffft. If you can’t judge a football recruiting class until three or four years down the road, maybe it’s OK to wait a similar length of time to review a shoe.     

            They did right by me. Great shoes. Seriously.

Hoka Arahi

One of the best things about working in a specialty running shop is that occasionally the shoe companies will float shoes to store employees as a way to help us articulate how awesome the shoes are to our customers.

I picked up a pair of Hoka One One Arahi seed shoes at the running store a few weeks back. I was pretty excited, since my current experience with the Hoka Infinite (their first actual stability model) is outstanding.

The word on the Arahis is largely positive—very lightweight and responsive. It’s a stability shoe, but a closer relative to say, the Brooks Ravenna than the Adrenaline. One difference is the Arahi has developed a new concept by providing stability through use of a “J-Frame,” wrapping the heel from the outside (lateral side) around the back and up to the midfoot on the medial side.

 

So I took off on my favorite five-mile time trial route in my brand new wheels. This route is sidewalk nearly the whole way with very little traffic coming out onto the busy morning road. It’s mostly downhill for the first half, but the fun ends when I turn uphill and into the theater parking lot. I do a brief circle around and then cover the same ground on the way back. I use it as a way to track my fitness level.

The first few miles were as uneventful as you’d ever want them to be. I always say the highest compliment you can give a pair of shoes is that you barely notice you’re wearing them. That’s what I felt for the first little bit, until I felt a burning sensation on the balls of both feet. I’d never felt that in any other pair of shoes and it was the last thing I was expecting.

This feeling was more about discomfort than actual pain. It didn’t get any worse so I was able to keep doing my thing. The run itself was a good one. The only Strava segment I have is about 0.6 and a slight uphill and ends at a traffic light which then begins another climb. I run quite often, just not where a lot of other runners go, so there aren’t a lot of comparisons with others.

I took the Arahis out again on Wednesday of last week and the same thing happened a few miles in—this feeling that my feet were on fire. I’d taken off in a new pair of Adrenaline 16s a few months back and felt that the toe box was a little narrow at first, but then I got used to them and of course they’re wonderful. That’s what I was thinking would happen on my second trip in the Arahis. No dice. I am still hopeful that it’ll be different.

Otherwise I’ll have to look at options. Arahis are stability shoes so I don’t want to use inserts. Perhaps a second pair of socks or even a little body glide-type lubricant. Heat means friction, which in turn means movement. I do have plenty of lace left over so another choice could be to minimize said movement by using that last pair of eyelets.

I have fresh rubber and I will come up with a solution in order to make them perfect.

Holt 5K T-Shirt

So I've finally come to the conclusion that I have too many race t-shirts. This is a big thing for someone like me who has a bit of a hoarder streak. I don't have 19 cats or every issue of Runner's World. I don't even race a whole lot.

This is the front of the shirt, with the houndstooth ribbon
paying tribute to the Tuscaloosa tornado April 27. 
Definitely a dark day, and certainly one I'll never forget.

But I do have shirts from races I ran in North Central Kansas nine years ago, and many more going forward from the time I was a midwesterner, which ended in 2009. I just don't have it in me to let go of them. Perhaps I'll set them aside and have a quilt made. Just send the shirts in and the company makes it for you. Their ads are in the back of the running mags.


One of these shirts is from the Nucor-Holt 5K, which I've written about here and here. This one comes from the 2011 effort, when I let a guy pass me right at the end.


I have my own thoughts on why there aren't any sponsors, but I won't share them here. I'm just starting to cycle out some old race shirts and wanted to share the stories behind them.

Back of the race shirt.

As far as actual road work, things are going very well. 18 consecutive weeks of 20+ miles. I haven't lost any weight mainly because my diet sucks, but I still like where I'm at when I step on the scale. 

I ran an back on Saturday in the light rain, making 26 miles for the week. I'm at 68 for the month, 27 miles away from my monthly goal of 95 and already more than the 58 I ran in February 2016. 

Good stuff-- I'm pleased with it.