Leaving 13 Behind
Today is Tuesday December 31, 2013. I am taking a rest day
from running and working out. Last week, I rested on Christmas day, so this is
a good day to take a break. Except for the 100 pushups I have been doing the
last 30 days. I saw this 30 day challenge, and I thought it would be an easy
way to build upper body strength. Well, it is not physically hard, you can do
them at any time throughout the day, in any combinations of sets. Doing them
all at once (4 sets of 25) is pretty hard if you try to get them done in 5-10
minutes. I have done that, but if I am doing a long run or a hard bike workout
that same day, I space it out. Most
days, I will do 20-35 first thing in the morning, and do and then more sets
throughout the day. I really like to get them done before dinner, because I don’t
like to exercise on a full stomach. Doing them day after day has been hard,
especially with the holidays, and a few days I had a cold. Not sure if the
results are visible, but I did progress from a max set of 25 to a max set of
50, and for functional strength, I have felt stronger. I am going to keep doing the pushups, maybe
not 100 (50-100) a day, and maybe not every day (5-6 days per week), but I like
the habit it has formed. Laura has been doing them too. She is pretty diligent.
She has also done 100 sit-ups, maybe to make up for doing modified ‘girl
pushups’ on her knees, or maybe just to work her core.
Yesterday, John met me at our local high school (LincolnWay
East) to do speed work on the indoor track.
The workout was 4x800 with 400m rest intervals. We warmed up for a mile, and then started our
watches. We adjusted the intervals to
fit the distance of the track (8 laps per mile in the outside lane). The first lap was ahead of pace – John’s
pace is faster than me, but I actually was at his pace, and he was a few
seconds faster than me). We paid for our
enthusiasm later, and John ended up a second off his pace, and I was 2 seconds
behind mine. One thing I noticed was
that the gap between us widened the most on the turns, so either John sped up,
or I slowed down, or some combination of the two. Overall, it was a good workout – we were a
little slow, but there are 16 turns per half mile on an indoor track. Plus, I might have had an error in the
conversion from 800m to half mile, so I will have to check my calculations.
Happy New Year everyone!
Last night was pretty low-key for the Nolan’s. We had dinner
at a restaurant in the neighboring town, Tinley Park. Tin Fish has been very nice the 4-5 times we
have been there, and this carried on the trend.
We split a crab-stuffed avocado for a starter/salad. I had grouper, and my wife Laura had a
Hawaiian fish, which we had not encountered when we were in Hawaii for our 25th
wedding anniversary in October. We
ordered Belgian Chocolate Mousse to-go, and went home to watch a movie or 2
en-route to midnight. When we took a
break from our movie, we opened the carryout containers, with forks and appetites
ready – and saw two meticulously prepared – Crabmeat Stuffed Avocados. Talk about a Buzzkill!! I called the restaurant with a few choice
words, and had them remove the charge for the desserts. The salad was very good, we love crabmeat,
avocado, but not for dessert. Laura had
a bad cold, so we went to bed after the New York New Year’s Eve
celebration.
I celebrated New Year’s
Day by going to a CompuTrainer session, run by our friend, and local Ironman
Legend /Biking guru – Bernie Conway.
There were 7 of us there to help him beta test his setup for group
cycling sessions at his OneFortyPointSix Cyling Lab. I brought the mixing for mimosas, and a few
of us toasted after a invigorating hour-long session of long and short
intervals. Bernie announced he would be
holding a six-week session, so we are going to sign up for that.
We had a big snow on New Years’ Day, so our office gave the
option to work at home. Since I did not
have to commute, this gave me time to run a longer tempo run. There was still snow on the street, so I used
my YakTrax. I also had ski goggles I
borrowed from a friend, since the wind-chill was near zero. After a 1 mile warmup, I headed on my four
mile route, which I planned to extend with a half-mile out and back. I was warm
enough with 3 shirt layers, plus a jacket, and my new running mittens. My first couple of miles were at a good
pace. Then I realized that I missed the
street for my out and back. I went on
another street that was snowier, and maybe that started to slow me down. I finished right in front of my house, and
cooled down with a lap around the block.
I ended up with a 7:54 pace, six seconds fatser than my plan calls for,
but I really slowed down in miles 3-4.
We had a good snowfall on the first 2 days of the year. On Friday, the snow stopped – but in some
places around the Chicago area, they issued Blizzard Warnings, even though
there was not going to be any snow falling.
The definition of a blizzard is blowing snow with wind above a certain
speed. The cold temperatures produced a
really dry, fine snow, which is easily blown around in the 25-35 mph winds they
predicted. When I got home from work, I
could see that the streets had been plowed and salted, so there should be good
footing for a Saturday long run. In
spots where there were big open fields to the south, the strong south wind had
blown snow onto the streets, but it only affected 1-2 blocks on my 8 mile
running route.
John got to my house a little after 8 o’clock. We were
starting late to let the bind die down, and give plows a chance to get
out. I had already walked my dog around
the block, and I could see our neighborhood streets had a lot of drifted snow
than they did the night before. In fact,
instead of running the long way around my block, I planned for us to run
towards the closer corner to the east, which was clearer, and would cut the
7.85 mile loop closer to 7.5 miles, so running 2 loops would give us the 15
miles for week 2 of the 16 week F.I.R.S.T.
marathon training plan.
I had forgotten to check my pace for this run, so I started
thinking it should be 8:30, because last week was13 miles @ 8:45 min/mile. But most training plans don’t increase
distance and speed up pace at the same time, so it turns out this week was
STILL 8:45. I knew John’s pace was
faster, so I figured we would split the difference.
Our first mile hit a more and more snowy stretches (last
night they were ‘spots’ of 10-20 feet, now they were long stretches of 100-500
feet where ¾ to all the street was covered.
Still, we did manage about 8:15.
We crossed a busy street (Townline Road), and entered a newer
subdivision, which meant fewer trees, more open lots and more drifted
snow. At about mile 1.5, we get a couple
of sharp turns on a steep downhill, and we actually had to wathc our footing. Then we start what my wife, Laura calls ‘The
Never-ending Hill’ It is close to half a
mile, and has a gradual incline, with a few plateaus, and ends with a steep
ascent and 2 quick turns to cross a busy street (Francis Road). Usually, John and I have no problem with this
hill because it is early on the route.
But today, we were running uphill, into a strong wind, with powdery,
loose snow underneath, and no Yak-Trax.
We must have looked like Shaggy and Scooby running away from some
ghosts/thugs.
The next leg of our run was every bit as barren and windswept,
but it wasn’t uphill, and since the street went straight south, there were dry
spots in between the drifts. After 3
miles, we hit a very wooded neighborhood, and did not mind the hills that came
with it. At 4 miles, we were at the far
SW corner of the course, and had the wind mainly at our back all the way
back. Now we had crossed fully from my
town of Mokena into the neighboring town of New Lenox. The streets were well-plowed and it seemed
like they were freshly salted, even areas that had the worst drifts the night
before. With the wind and better
footing, we picked up our pace. We
decided that if we hit more snowy streets, we would just double back on the 2+
miles of good roads we had just run. The
streets got a little snowier as we looped back into Mokena, but the rising sun
and Saturday morning traffic had dispersed some of the snow, so it was much
more bearable than the first part of the route.
The last ¾ mile before my house is a stretch where we say
we’re ‘heading for the barn’, and tend to speed up a bit. Today, with a tailwind, and the relief at
clearer streets, I must have pushing it.
But we were only halfway done with our run, and John reminded me “Is
this how fast you want to go?” So, I
reined in a little bit, and we got to my garage.
I had left our water and Gatorade inside the garage, so it
would not freeze. So I hydrated and had
a Gu (new favorite flavor - Salted Caramel!) while John went in my house to use the bathroom. My shirts were feeling soaked, so I took off
my jacket and 3 shirts, and I put on 2 dry shirts, and a dry jacket.
We had 7.something miles, so decided to double back on the
route until we hit 3.75-4 miles, and then turnaround. The few times we have run the route in this
direction, people always remark that it seems harder. The first part “heading out of the barn” was
harder, because we were now running up a slight quarter mile incline that
usually helps with its downhill grade when we finish the route; plus we were
running directly into the south wind/SW wind, as we would for the next 3 miles. When we turned around, we had a long hill
ahead of us, but no wind, and sure footing, and only 3-something miles to
go. This time, when were here heading
for the barn (for real), my legs were not as springy, and it was the usual
setting where John pulls ahead of me. I
made up some ground and stayed on his shoulder a while longer, and when we hit
15 miles, I just pulled up and jogged.
I had not thought about it before, but this was the first
time I ran more than 13 miles in almost 20 months. I had run Boston in April of 2012 (my 13th
one), and then did a half-Ironman that summer.
Then I had surgery in December of 2012, and was rehabbing my knee at
this time a year ago. Last summer was
another half-Ironman, so I did not go past 13 miles all year. So, in the first week after 2013, the year
after I ran my 13th marathon, I got back above 13 miles.
It’s good to be back.
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