Ouch!

I went on a long run at the Oklahoma River Saturday a week ago with Ross. The plan was to go 11 miles. We've both entered the Route 66 half marathon that's coming up in mid November so we've been working our long runs up to get ready for it.

My left foot had been bothering me a bit for a couple of weeks. I've had some pain on the top of my foot which had concerned me a bit since, as I understand, that's a symptom of a possible stress fracture. However, I had the same thing crop up for a month or so as I was training for the Memorial Marathon earlier this year and it cleared up by itself well before the marathon.

We met at the Devon Boathouse around 7:30 on a cool and misty morning and took off. The plan was to run out five and a half miles then back to get 11 miles. As soon as we started, the foot was bothering me a bit but not enough to concern me. We stopped for a minute around the 4 mile mark because Ross thought there was a water fountain off the trail. I mentioned that the foot was bothering me some because it had progressively got worse as we ran. Ross asked if I wanted to stop but I thought I'd be okay and said no, so we continued on.

We ran around an 8:45/mile pace on the way out. When we hit the 5.5 mile mark we stopped, turned around an walked for a couple of minutes as we both consumed a Gu, then took off again. We picked up the pace on the way back to about 8:30/mile. As we ran my foot began bothering me more and more and by the time we had hit around 8 miles it was really starting to hurt and was affecting my gait as I tried to favor it.

If I had been by myself I think I would have quit at this point and walked it on in, but stupidly, I felt the need to keep up with Ross and I kept going. I know Ross wouldn't have had any problem with it if I'd told him I had to stop so it was pretty foolish on my part. With about a mile left, we crossed the river to the side we'd parked on and as we got back on the trail, a runner was there just in front of us. Ross' competitive spirit kicked in and he picked up the pace to catch the guy. I tried to keep up but as the pace quickened I began falling behind. Finally as we neared the 10.4 mile mark I stopped and began limping back watching Ross and the other runner go off into the distance.

As I limped back I began realizing I was in worse shape than I thought because now, even walking was feeling pretty painful. As I neared the Chesapeake Boathouse I saw Ross walking back to meet me. We walked back to our cars together and discussed how I was feeling a bit before we both headed home. When I got home and out of the car I found I could hardly walk into the house. I had planned on going to the fair with Peggy, Lyndsey and K. Lee after getting home and cleaned up, but after I showered and tried to get around the house a bit I realized there was no way I could do that. I tried to stay off it as much as possible and kept it raised the rest of the day, hoping it would be better the next morning.

Unfortunately it was no better on Sunday and was now quite swollen so we ended up going to an emergency clinic that afternoon. They x-rayed it then a doctor came in to take a look. He told me he didn't see anything on the x-rays but also cautioned that if it was a stress fracture that wouldn't show up on x-rays for 8–10 days. He told me I shouldn't do any running for 7 to 10 days and asked if I'd like a walking boot. Since I could hardly walk and it was very painful to try I told him yes. He also prescribed some pain medicine since I had slept badly Saturday night because it had hurt all night. He told me they would have a radiologist look at the x-rays and let me know if he saw anything. On his diagnosis, he put down that I had a sprain.

My poor foot on Monday evening.

I felt a bit better after seeing him since my impression was that he didn't think it was too serious. And he was a runner too. It was really no better Monday through Wednesday morning, but as the day wore on Wednesday it began improving significantly. Thursday morning the clinic called me. They asked how it was doing and told me the x-rays showed I had a bit of arthritis in the foot and a small bone spur on my heel (which has never bothered me). They said both of those were fairly typical for someone my age. And they confirmed that no fracture showed up. Finally they said if it kept bothering me to come back or see my family physician or they could refer me to someone.

It's been a week now, and it has continued to improve but is still not completely healed. There is still just a touch of swelling near my toes and I still can't step off on my toes without pain so I continue to have a slight limp. Obviously, this has put a big wrench in my plans for the Route 66 but I'm hopeful I will be able to continue training and run the race. I'm planning on no running until next weekend which will be two weeks off, and hope I'll be able to run on it by then. I still worry a bit that I could have a stress fracture which may keep me from running the half marathon.

I guess the only good thing that has come from this is that I've definitely learned my lesson about paying attention to my body and know I need to call it a day if something is truly hurting.

BTW, I'm still working on a Memorial Marathon report. Obviously, that's been coming along very slowly, but I'll get it posted up here soon. Promise!

More weather

Thought I'd throw another weather update out this morning. It's still early and the variance in different forecasts shows the weather people still aren't real sure what it's going to do Sunday. Depending on what forecast you look at, they have the low ranging from the low 50's to the low 60's. And the highs ranging from the low 60's to the upper 60's. All those temperature ranges wouldn't be too bad, although I hope the low in the lower 50's is the accurate prediction. The rain chances are of much more interest IMO. They are all saying chances of scattered thunderstorms and giving chances ranging between 30 and 40%.

Here's Sunday's forecast from the Weather Channel's website.

Weather Channel...hoping for a lower low temp.

They're tending toward lower rain chances but warmer temps. And here's KOCO tv's forecast.

KOCO channel 5...nice low, but don't like the rain chances.

So, I think it's still anyone's guess as to what we'll end up with Sunday morning. At least it doesn't look like it's going to be like it is today. Warm morning and a high around 90!

Weather

I know it's pretty useless to watch the weather much until a day or two before the race (last year they were unsure about rain until the morning of the marathon), but I can't help keeping an eye on the extended forecasts. Right now, the local weather people are predicting a warm week but cooling off some and chances of rain toward the weekend. Channel 5's extended forecast sounded pretty good this morning. A low of 50 and a high of 68 Sunday. But also a 30% chance of rain. I sure don't want a repeat of last year, but if those temps end up being accurate and it doesn't get rainy, you couldn't ask for much better weather this time of year in Oklahoma.

Countdown....1 week

The marathon is one week away.  I'm pretty excited about it this year compared to last year when I had much more trepidation.  Last year was my first big race at such a long distance.  I did the half marathon but really felt like I finished poorly.  My legs gave out on me starting after mile 10 so the last 3 miles were a chore.  I feel like I've trained much better this year from the standpoint of getting longer training runs in.  Last year I only went 9 or 10 miles in my training and only did that a few times.  This year I've done better about completing long runs in my training.  I have routinely run 8 and 9 miles during the week and often was able to get in a 13 or 14 mile run on the weekend.  I don't think I'll have a problem with my legs giving out on me like they did last year.

Yesterday (Saturday) I met Rendon at the Chesapeake boathouse for a 13 mile training run.  This will be Rendon's first long distance race as he just started running this year.  He and I ran in an 8K race in February so he could experience a race environment but this is stepping up quite a bit.  He has put in at least a couple of long training runs of 13 miles or so but I'm not sure exactly how many he's done.  I know I've been running more than he has but then I'm much older so I need the training worse.

Anyway, we met at the Chesapeake boathouse at 7 am on Saturday.  The weather was ideal for running.  There was hardly any wind at all and the temperature was about 49 or 50 when we started.  We headed west on the north side of the river.  I really enjoy running along the river as it is scenic, you don't have to worry about cars, and you also get to see other runners which always inspires me.  Rendon started out very strong so I let him lead out.  He was probably running at about an 8:40 p/mile pace which is a little faster than I usually start out so I lagged behind a little bit.  Rendon ran strong for 5 miles and then started to slow down a bit.  I finally caught him a little after passing May avenue.  At Portland avenue we crossed over the river and ran on the south side.  We continued west almost to Meridian where the trail ends and you have to turn around.  It had been about 7 miles so we walked while I ate my GU pack.  Rendon had already eaten his.  He had vanilla bean and I had chocolate.  I liked the chocolate and Rendon said the vanilla bean was also pretty tasty.  We probably walked for about a minute to a minute and a half and then resumed our run.  My legs felt strong and I just seemed to be in a good groove so I continued on at about an 8:40 pace which is where Rendon started us at the beginning.  We saw some rowers on the river including the OU women's team.  They were also having some Olympic tryouts this weekend for kayaking so there were some others out there too.  We ran back east on the south side of the river until we got to Robinson and then crossed over back to the north side.  There's a small water fountain in a park by the cross over so I stopped and got some water.  Rendon did the same thing when he crossed over.  DG Productions sponsors several races around the city for runners and they were holding an event for victims of sexual abuse (green ribbon).  As I was coming down the final 1/10th mile to the finish line the race started so I found myself running against the tide of runners starting their race.  I had to move off the path onto the grass in order not to collide with other people.  I guess I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Plus, it was at the beginning of their race so they hadn't really had a chance to disperse very much and were pretty tightly packed.  I finally gave up and stopped my running app with a hundred yards to go or so.  My GPS showed the run to be 13.84 miles.  When I got to the finish line I noticed the track continues around on the south side of the river so I think it's just one big loop.  If I had known that I could have not crossed over at Robinson and just run back to the finish line on the south side of the river and avoided all the traffic.  Lesson learned.  My time was 2:02:54 which felt really good.  I had stopped a few times to look around, guide Rendon since he didn't know the route, and feel I could have run even faster if it had been the race.  So I feel good about next week and I hope everyone else does too.

I know R Jay and Curtis are doing the full marathon so they've got a big test ahead of them.  Maybe I can run a full one at some point but I knew I wasn't ready after trying a 17 mile run back in late February or early March.  I'm excited to see everyone at the race.  I will miss Thais dearly but it makes me happy that we can run in the Memorial Marathon in memory of our sister.  It's neat that Leslie and Elfriede are going to run the 5K too.

Marathon movie

I had hoped to get some video shot last year and put together a little movie of our race at the Memorial Marathon. However, the bad weather kept that from happening. I'm really sorry we couldn't get that done, since that was our last opportunity to get one made with Thais.

I want to try again this year though. Lyndsey is going to try to shoot some video with my camera and we'll see what we can get. Maybe Sherry can shoot some too. Obviously we'd like to get as much video of our family participating as we can, but that will be a challenge with over 20,000 people running. But even some short snatches can be incorporated with other shots of the the event, so I'm optimistic that we can get enough to put something together.

If you have a digital camera, it almost certainly will shoot video. This is awfully late, but if any of you have a chance, it would be great to shoot a couple of short bits of you training. Just something like a shot of the road/trail where you're running and you coming into view then running by the camera. Or a shot of you running off into the distance. Any little bits like this could be used in a movie. Here's a real short example I shot w/my iPhone of Ross during one of our runs by the Oklahoma River.

If we can't get enough shot to make something worthwhile, I can save everything and then try to get some more the next time we're running together...here, or maybe SLC next year and combine it all into a single movie.

The Memorial Marathon is coming up fast.

The Memorial Marathon is less than two weeks away now. I ran my last "long" long run this just passed weekend. I had hoped to go over 20 miles this time (ran a 20-miler 3 weeks ago), hopefully 22 or 23, but ended up just doing 20.

As you know I've been dealing with a chronic ankle problem for over a year now. Usually it's just irritating but when my mileage really starts going up, it begins getting worse and starts making my foot hurt too. After the 20 miler three weeks ago, it was really sore for several days. The following weekend I thought I should cut back the long run quite a bit to ease up on the ankle. Ross and I ran the trails along Oklahoma River, just under thirteen and a half miles. My ankle and foot felt much better after that run than they had after my previous two long runs.

I had hoped to get a long run in while we were all in Salt Lake City last week, but couldn't find the 3 hour block of time I would have needed so I ended up going almost a week with no running at all. I decided that was a good thing/bad thing. It seems taking almost a week off did my ankle a lot of good. It's felt much better and on the two weekday runs I did last week it held up well. I ran fairly hard on those runs too. Of course the bad thing is that I'm running the full marathon and I really need to be getting all the miles in that I can, so a week off, three weeks before the event is not great timing. But considering with Saturday's long run, I've run 31 miles this past week and the ankle feels pretty good today, the time off was probably worth it.

I'm really glad that Curtis will be running the full marathon with me. I have a real tendency to start running too fast if I'm feeling good, and I'm hoping Curtis will be able to help me keep my pace down, especially early. On my long run Saturday, I kept the pace between 9:00 and 9:30 for the first 8 miles, but began picking up the pace at that point, running mile 9 in 8:42. I ran at the Oklahoma River and for the first 9 I ran out the north side of the river four and a half miles then back. So after the 9th mile I was at the car and stopped to drink some water and took a 5 or 6 minute break.

Then I took off for another 11 (or hopefully more) miles, crossing over the the south side of the river this time. I was still feeling good...I slowed my pace a bit, to around 8:50/mile, but still faster than I should be running for a marathon. I kept that pace through 13 miles. Finally on the 14th mile everything began to catch up with me. I began to quickly run out of energy and started increasing the frequency and length of my walking breaks. At the end of mile 16 I stopped and rested for 4 or 5 minutes then slogged on. The last 4 miles were really a grind. As I finished the 18th mile I began getting muscle spasms in my calves and would have to stop for a few moments before continuing.

Gray, warm, humid and windy. :P

When I arrived back at the Chesapeake Boathouse where I had parked, I was at 19.9 miles. As mentioned at the top of this post, I had intended to run over 20 miles...maybe 22 or 23, but I had nothing left now and decided 19.9 was all I was going to get that day. So this run was actually worse than my previous 20 mile run. I was definitely feeling discouraged and worried about going 6 more miles in two weeks.

But I'm telling myself I had a lot of things working against me Saturday. The weather was way less than ideal: it was a very warm morning. 72 degrees when I got up just after 5:30. The humidity was high and it was very windy, between 20 and 30 mph. On top of being warm and humid, since I was running by the river and didn't want to carry any water with me, I had to run a 9 mile stretch with nothing to drink, then an 11 mile stretch. I also forgot to bring any Gu with me which may have given me a boost at the halfway point. I can't control the weather we get on race day, but I can control my pace and fuel and fluid intake, so hopefully, better management of those factors will help me. And, in my experience, running with someone makes it easier to push thru when your body starts wanting you to give up.

Mile 18, running directly into the 20+ mph wind.

You're supposed to taper back your miles two or three weeks before your marathon. I'm not going to cut my weekday miles back much if at all since I really haven't been running as many miles during the week as I should be anyway. I will take it easy next weekend though. I'm planning on doing a 10 - 12 mile long run which really does feel pretty easy to me after the long runs I've been doing over the past couple of months.

I'm hoping we get lucky on the weather. A morning like today would be great...low 50s, sunshine and the high for the day only around 70. Really looking forward to seeing everyone again, under better circumstances than a week ago. I hope everyone else is ready!

The 2012 Elvis Run 10K race report

This past December I had the toughest unmotivated stretch I've hit since I began running. I had decided I couldn't afford the Route 66 Marathon and then my chronic ankle issue began really bothering me due to the high mileage I ran in October and November. All month I had a difficult time pushing myself out the door. I intentionally cut back my mileage hoping my ankle would heal up some. I was running one evening a week, four or five miles then putting in a long run of 10 to 14 miles on the weekend. Once I got going on my run I would almost always enjoy it and be glad I went, but was just feeling kind of blah about things. At the end of the month I decided to take a look at the calendar on the OKC Landrunners' website and see if I could find a race or two to enter and hopefully rekindle my recently lagging enthusiasm for running.

I settled on the Elvis Run 5k/10k which was scheduled for Saturday, the 7th (prize for best Elvis costume!). I've wanted to run a 10k ever since I ran my first 5k in August of '10 and I seriously considered entering the Elvis Run last year. I signed up the week of the race and got in one "training" run for it...I ran a couple of fast 1 mile intervals Thursday night at the park and then ran the two mile home at around an 8 minute pace. With that, I decided I was as ready as I was going to be.

I thought about a goal time, and some kind of strategy, but was really unsure about was a realistic goal should be since this was my first 10k. There's a great tool available for free online, the McMillan Running Calculator. It has a large list of race distances. You select the distance of a recent race you've run and enter your time and it will calculate your expected time for all the other distances it lists, as well as give you your appropriate pace for various training runs (long run, tempo runs, easy runs etc.). I had entered my PR 5k time in it after the Susan G. Koman 5k in October. As I was thinking about what I should expect to run the 10k in, I remembered I had printed out the results so I dug them out to see what my expected 10k time was. It said I should be able to run a 10k in 49:22 at a 7:56/mile pace. That seemed incredibly optimistic about my abilities to me. I can run a 7:56 mile. But 6 of them? Without stopping. Seemed pretty doubtful to me.

Next I went to the online pace calculator at coolrunning.com and checked the pace for a 55 minute 10k which came to about 8:50/mile, something I knew I could definitely do, without too much effort. So I knew I could run it in 55 minutes, but doubted I could run it in 50. I formed a vague plan to run the first 3 miles or so a little under an 8:30 pace then pick it up to near an 8 minute pace over the remainder and see how I ended up. I figured that would finish me between 50 and 55 minutes, and a bit closer to the low end of that.

I got up Saturday morning, put on my running clothes, ate a piece of toast and double checked to make sure I had everything. I had originally intended to not wear a jacket because, unless it's really cold, I always get to warm with one on once I've run a mile or two and end up taking it off. The temp was in the upper 30s and there was a bit of wind...enough to make it feel even colder. I knew I'd be standing around for a bit waiting for the start and I'm a wimp with the cold so I went ahead and took the jacket. I pinned my bib to my pants since I figured I'd shed the jacket at some point during the race. With that, I got in the car and headed for downtown.

An Elvis-costumed runner getting ready to race.

I arrived about 20 minutes early and found the parking was pretty packed. There were more people there than I anticipated. I got parked and headed toward the Chesapeake Boathouse where the start would be. I had to pick up my timing chip first since they didn't pass them out with the race packets. That didn't take long though and I headed to the porta-potties to take make sure I could run for the next hour without needing to stop. Finally I headed to the starting area, found a place among the runners and waited for the starting gun.

I got a pretty good position awaiting the race start.

The gun sounded and the crowd surged forward. The paved path along the Oklahoma River is a bicycle/walking/running path, so it's not real wide, maybe the width of a wide car lane on the road, so at the beginning it was fairly crowded with all the runners on the narrow path. Still, I got off to a fairly quick start. I was still unsure how fast a pace I wanted to run. I started around an 8:30/mile pace, but picked that up as the runners began stringing out and the initial crowd thinned.

Since the race was along the river, the course went out and back. As I neared my first mile, I saw a sight I'll always remember. The eventual winner of the 5k had made the turn around and was coming back. He was in full Las Vegas Elvis regalia complete with a wig, running as hard as he could. It was impressive! (He finished in 16 minutes and some change.)

By the end of the first mile I had settled into a comfortable rhythm around an 8 minute/mile pace. I was now focusing on a runner or two in front of me until I'd pass them, then I'd pick someone else. At the mile and a half point the 5k runners were all turning around so there was a bit of traffic there. Once you passed that point though, it thinned out a lot because now there was no one left but 10k runners. I finished the 2nd mile in 8:01. On the third mile there were a couple of guys right in front of me. I finally overtook them and now virtually the only person I could see for a long ways was a girl in a pink tie dye running shirt 60 or 70 yards ahead of me. I focused on her and kept my pace. She was moving along at a pretty good clip so I gained on her very slowly. I was getting pretty warm by this time too, and decided I'd take my jacket off at the turnaround.

As you neared the turnaround you could get a good feel for how many runners were in front of you by the number that were coming back toward you. There weren't a lot, so I thought I must not be doing too badly. I had almost caught the pink shirt girl as we came to the turnaround and she slowed a bit at that point and I passed her. I grabbed a cup of water from a volunteer and stopped and walked for 10 seconds or so as I downed it, then took off again, made the turn and started heading back to the Start/Finish. As I ran away from the turnaround  I pulled my jacket off and tied it around my waist, while mostly managing to keep my pace.

As I headed back the runners were really strung out. I passed a lot of people still running out to the turnaround. There weren't many people near me going my direction. I was beginning to watch closely for the signs marking each kilometer now, as I was beginning to feel the effects of the effort. Over those next couple of miles there were three girls in front of me that I focused on. I eventually caught and passed the first two, however the last one was going every bit as fast as I was. I followed right behind her for a half mile at least, but couldn't get past her without expending a lot more energy than I wanted to.

As I got to the 8k mark it was getting really difficult to keep my pace. My legs were getting heavy and I was beginning to feel I was running out of gas. I knew I was on pace to finish near 50 minutes though, so between that and trying to catch that girl in front of me I kept pushing. With probably a bit less than a half mile to go, the path went downhill fairly steeply as it went under a bridge that crossed the river. I sped up a bit down the hill, but then as it started back up, I slowed and the girl, who I had almost caught kept her pace and started to pull away from me. Apparently keeping that pace back uphill was a mistake though because she slowed dramatically shortly after that and I flew past her. Finally, I could see the finish ahead. I picked my pace up a bit, as I had slowed some over the last mile. Finally, with a couple of hundred yards left I managed a weak kick and made it to the finish.

My Garmin read 49:59, so I knew my official time would be right around 50 minutes. After walking around a bit and catching my breath I got a bottle of water and watched runners come in for a few minutes. They posted the results fairly quickly and I saw my official time was 50:02. I'd met my (I thought) wildly optimistic time goal of 50 minutes almost to the second! Out of 155 runners in the 10k I had finished 23rd. And in my age group of 50–54 males I finished 2nd (out of 8). That meant I'd get a medal since the top three finishers in each age group received one. That points out the advantage of entering a race with a relatively small number of runners in your age group! I didn't let that stop me from being pretty proud of my medal anyway.

My Elvis Run 10k medal for finishing 2nd!

Here are my mile splits:
8:17
8:01
7:52
7:58
7:54
8:07
Then I managed a 7:23 pace over the last two tenths mile. Much better than I had imagined I could do, especially holding the sub-8 minute pace on miles 3 through 5. Once again, running proves to me that you can almost always do better than you think you can.