I am facing new beginnings

The end of the year; one last run, but one beginning something all new.



Got over three miles done today and my training program is officially kicked off. I'm not thrilled with how unsteady the run was - lots of walking. You can see that in the heartrate part of the graph, up in the rainbow colored bands. Other parts of the graph are elevation, cadence, and pace. Very windy today, hard to work against it. Perhaps Wednesday's run will turn out smoother.

It is the beginning of my training program and I'm nervous. I feel like this is my first time. Only the first time around, I could do 3 miles without stopping by the time I began training.

I'm trying to catch up to all those New Year's resolutions I failed to follow through on this year, many of which will help me become a better runner. I better get into the good habits now, while I still have time and I am not consumed by work.

I also began using a new medication today, which involves a whole new nebulizing system. I was on colistin many years ago and it hurt my throat and caused asthma attacks and so was taken off of it. But with my asthma management I've got now, perhaps it will be better for me this time around. Colistin is an every-other-month twic-daily treatment, with the in-between months filled in with TOBI, as I have done for many years. And it doesn't have to be kept cold, like TOBI. However, it does have to be mixed fresh from powder for each use - which involves a lot of syringes and wipes. It involves a unique nebulizing system, that uses a vibrating mesh screen to mist the medicine, rather than compressed air through a small hole. The new system is literally whisper-quiet and is very fast, needing no more than nine minutes for the colistin treatment. But it has a lot of parts and requires careful cleaning each time. There's a lot of stuff surrounding use of this medication - and it will complicate travel. My days of not having to check my suitcase are over - at least in the odd months.

With the new training schedule, potentially meeting a running partner this coming weekend, determined to get some core training worked in, and now on this whole new medication and nebulizing system, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. I failed to get down to the surface of my desk by the end of the year, as I'd intended, but MAYBE by the end of the week.

I am a thirsty runner

Got a pretty good 4-miler in on Saturday. This run was squeezed in between other commitments, so I felt a little rushed, but it turned out OK. There was some walking still, evident from the graph in the minor dips, but look how regular those intervals are! This was the first time I really got up to Prospect Park and I ran over to the water fountain at 9th street, making the whole route exactly four miles. I'm a little surprised my Nike+ recorded this accurately, as a matter of fact.

The only downer was that I was counting on the water fountain, but it was shut off. Of course it was - it's winter. What was I thinking? So I was pretty thirsty going home, but not thirsty enough to drop cash on a bottle of water.

The run was slow, but not horribly so. I had a good last kilometer, quite steady and smooth. The big dip you see in the graph was me stopping to deposit a check. Didn't take but a minute, but you know what that can do to your pace charts.

Tomorrow beings the official training for St. Louis half-marathon. I'm nervous because I am still not doing three miles unbroken by walking, but that might change soon. I've taken some steps toward becoming a better runner, one of which was to respond to several classifieds on NYRR.org advertising for running partners. I have had one response and we will try to coordinate something next weekend. I know it can take a while to find the right person as a running partner, so I'll be patient. I just hope my CF doesn't get in the way.

The other step is that I have finally, finally, FINALLY, upgraded my hard drive, installed Windoze on a separate partition, and put the Polar running software on there and managed to actually sync my watch! What this means is that I should have much more detailed graphs and information and really start training in my optimal heart rate zone.



This is an example of the graph that I see in the Polar trainer software. The online version is similar; perhaps clearer to read. This should be very informational as time goes by.

This graph is from a short walk tonight. It's 1.1 miles. If you click the graph, you'll get a bigger version. The colored bands in the very back are meant to indicate workout intensity, as indicated by heartrate, which is the jagged graph with the thin red line. You can see a coughing fit about 7 minutes into my walk. The thick red line is altitutde - I was headed downhill, after all. I will probably not track this one often - only on new courses and maybe during races. The yellow line is my cadence, or strides per minute. Being walking, you'd expect this to be fairly constant. Any breaks are explained by pausing to wait for a light to change. The blue line at the bottom is actual pace per mile. Again, those dips are happening while waiting for lights to change. I hope to post another graph Monday with an actual run.

I am wiped out on Christmas Day

Christmas Day did not bring the hill workout I thought it would. Instead of staying in NY, my mother and I conspired in the eleventh hour to fly me down to South Carolina to surprise my sister and father. I flew to Charlotte, rented a car, and drove to Greensville, where I first stopped by where my sister works and surprised her. It was a nice moment, though I was embarassed when the waterworks started. We had a quick lunch together and then she had to get back to work. I drove to her house and surprised my father there.

Christmas morning began like every other Christmas morning: with me wishing people would learn how to take opportunities to sleep in to actually do it, for pete's sake. We all watched as my sister opened her gifts (I hadn't brought any with me) and then had breakfast. We learned that Country Crock Shedd's Spread doesn't make for good hollandaise sauce. After eating breakfast and slurping the last of two cups of tea, I headed outside for a quick run, wishing I had brought running pants instead of shorts. But I had a nifty new pair of 180s gloves and those were quite toasty.

My run was interesting, if not particularly good. For one thing, I had my very first tumble. I was running along a public road w/ no margin and had to be careful of traffic. A truck that was approaching slowed, but didn't seem to move over much - he was about to run off to my right. As my attention was fixed on the truck, I didn't notice that I'd wandered a little too much to the shoulder of the road and my left foot came down on the edge of the asphalt badly - there was an inch and a half drop there to the red clay. As my left foot twisted, so did my body - my right foot came down the same way and threw me off balance and I went tumbling. I tried to hit the ground shoulder-first and roll and it seemed to work. I got back up and though various bits hurt and I got some minor road rash, nothing seemed broken, so I continued my run, being more careful of the road edge.

I turned around about a mile and a half from my sister's house, up near the entrance of their local sanitation facility, which actually had a pretty good view of the area around. Though the route had looked almost flat, I'd gained quite a bit of elevation. I took advantage of this on the way back down; after a minute stretching, I headed off with Canon Rock beginning in my earbuds. When the song hit its stride, so did I. This is something I rarely do, as the cadence of Canon Rock is one notch from being an all-out sprint for me - that invites injury and is very tiring. I kept up the pace for 60 to 90 seconds - maybe 400 meters - and then slowed back down to recover. I was winded, but not nearly as bad as I'd been expecting. My body was finally warming up and my running form was good.

I had a few walk breaks in the run, owing (I hope) to the increased elevation (800 ft there). Or maybe the air is just too clean! Anyway, the walk breaks were short and I didn't mind taking them.

I finished the run strong, calling up my power song on the nano (which you can see in the graph) and slammed the last 400 meters at 5K race pace. You'll note that my final pace was exactly 10 minutes per mile (6.11 minutes per kilometer). It's true that the run was probably 250 meters short of 5K - I haven't yet recalibrated the nano - but I also didn't stop the clock while I was walking around after my fall trying to figure out if I wanted to continue the run. So I did at least a 10 mile/minute pace if not better.

So. OK run; not great; just interesting.

Training for St Louis half officially begins Monday.

I am not ready for two-in-a-row

Not the best of runs this Saturday. Two days in a row is something my body wasn't prepared for.  Of course, it didn't help that I'd spent most of the time in between at the computer, trying to get some work done (i.e. not stretching properly) and failed to take Tylenol before the run.  I don't know...it wasn't all the the lack of Tylenol - I was tired.  I'm going to have to work on this two-in-a-row thing.  But I had to at least try, because I knew it would be raining Sunday.  And it is!  Coming down cats and dogs right now and freakishly warm, too - 55°.

I'll try running tomorrow, but I'm not holding out much hope for that - the weather may not change.  Still, I'm loading some new music up on my iPod and hoping for a better run next time.

I am a runner again

First things first: kindly note the new Nike+ widget in the upper right of this page. This widget contains graphs of my last five runs, automatically. It is, however, no substitute for screenshots of the Nike+ website graphs.



My Monday run, shown above, was a tad truncated, due to weather. It was sunny and all, but cold and with strong winds. I headed up hill toward Prospect Park, meaning to get in a fulll 3.4 miles, but the winds were just too much. I was tiring quickly and walking more than I'd like. Despite feeling much better than a few weeks ago, I'm still low on the cardiovascular fitness scale; the winds made it that much harder. Factor in a return of mild shin splints and it didn't take me long to shorten this run. Once I'd made it to Prospect Pkwy & 8th ave, I decided to run back down hill to the bank and end my run there. You can see my per-mile pace was slow - that means walking - no matter how smooth the graph looks. The big dip is where I stopped to deposit a check.



Wednesday's run was much improved. More calf stretching and some Tylenol 8-hr and the shin splints were down to a dull pain. Again, the graph belies the reality: this run was much smoother, with the first 3/4 mile run continuously and the walk breaks kept very short. This was an out-and-back along 2nd ave, one of my favorite routes for just getting steady miles in. The weather was cloudier, but no wind, and that really helped. This run tired me out tremendously; I had to walk up the last half of the short hill between 3rd and 4th aves near 40th street. Who'd have thought Sunset Park actually had some real elevation?

I wonder how the Nike+ gadget keeps track of pace - what the sampling times are and what, exactly, the graph is showing. It's not an average pace, but it doesn't seem to be accurate in terms of actual pace at actual distance - it's been smoothed and exaggerated somehow. But there's no denying the actual time spent running, and for now, the distance reading is close enough. I'll have to calibrate it again soon though. Perhaps a workout around the Central Park Reservoir, where there are markers.



Today's run went VERY well. I didn't go uphill, though, which means I'll have to tomorrow, when I put in the "long run" for the weekend. (It will be raining Sunday, so I have to get this done tomorrow). Instead, I did the 2nd Avenue out-and-back again; well, ok, it's more of a loop, since I run from 4th to 2nd, then across on second for about a mile and a half, then back up to 4th and then home. I intentionally extended today's run past the 5K mark. Though most of me wanted to turn around right at the halfway point, as noted by the iPod in my ear, I didn't - I tacked on an extra quarter mile. I wanted to see if I could run to the point of being fully warmed up. It has always taken three miles before the magic kicks in for me. And sure enough, passing the actual three mile mark today (actually, about 2.75 mile mark), my legs got into it and I was moving WELL. There's a difference between moving and moving well. My legs didn't feel like stumps that *I* was moving; they felt like a smooth machine I was merely controlling. My lungs were working well. I was in no pain, and some energy had returned. In short, I was finally RUNNING AGAIN, as opposed to jogging. To confirm this, my per-mile pace tended to be quicker than 10 minutes per mile the whole run. The overall pace was just over that at 10:13 - which allows for the two short walk breaks and the three moments of waiting for traffic. God it feels good to get back to the sub-10 area, even if only for a couple of miles.



After uploading the run from my iPod, this little banner popped up on the Nike+ website as I was looking at my graphs. Wow. 1 more kilometer to hit 250! (The website resets its units based on your last run's units - I've been setting my run distance to 5K.) Wait, let me look closer. I've run 249.94. What? I need a lousy .06 kilometers to finish my 250?? That's 196.8 feet! A mere 2,362 inches! For crying out loud, I did three times that on my cooldown walk to my house! This is like being in the middle of saying "I do" and the preacher interrupts to say, "I'm sorry; it's five-o'clock; can we pick this up tomorrow?" Aargh!

Tomorrow: 4 miles minimum - goal is the water fountain at Prospect Park and 9th street.