Moving Forward

As most have seen by my post early Tuesday morning, the events on Monday really affected me and hit close to home.  However, instead of letting it get the better of me, I have refocused on my running and training levels.  Personally, I feel the best way to honor all those that were intimately involved is to continue to do the thing that they were all there for, running.  So I have decided that not only am I going to run the Half Marathon on May 12th, but I am going to start training to try to run the Maine Marathon in Portland Me on October 6th 2013.  I have not signed up or paid for it yet, the deadline to do it is June 30th, so I have some time to see how my body reacts to increasing my long run mileage to 26.2 miles.

Some people are going to ask, is this an attempt to run the Boston Marathon?  Well, the Boston Marathon is NOT an open event.  You need to either qualify or run for charity (or be a Bandit runner).  I do not really know any charities that have put people in the Marathon before, if you know of one please let me know and I will happily volunteer my legs to run for them.  So, unless that happens, I will have to try to qualify.  Now the really hard part, for someone my age you need to run a qualifying marathon under 3:10:00.  That equals to about a 7:15 mile for 26.2 miles.  Good news, the Maine Marathon is a qualifying event!  Bad news, 7:15 is a little over my 5K time.  So I am not looking to qualify this year, but I want to get the marathon experience.

I have run three days in a row again this week.  Tuesday was a 5 am 8 miler, Wednesday was a 4.75 5 pm hill run, and today (Thursday) was another 5 am 8 miler.  Tuesday was an interesting run, I started out at an 80% run after my whole wheat bagel breakfast.  I found myself lost in my thoughts about the events that had taken place some 15 hours earlier.  Before I knew it, i was cruising at a pretty solid pace, probably closer to 90% effort, but it didn't feel like it.  Perhaps my endurance has started to change as I have been working hard to be ready for the half marathon.  All I know is I felt really good after a sub 8 minute mile, 8 mile run.

Wednesday was not so good.  Mainly because I took my dogs on the hill/speed run.  The dogs were HORRIBLE on this run.  They were pulling in opposite directions, stopping every 2 minutes.....The good thing was that I ran this after work and it was a beautiful day, in the low 60's.  It was great to get out in nicer weather to try to work with looser muscles.  Tuesday was ok, in the low 40's in the morning, but running in 60 degree weather is nice.  Quick turn around to Thursday morning and a breakfast of toaster waffles with peanut butter and a banana lead me to a great workout.  I mixed some really fast half miles in to an 8 mile run to exhaust my legs so I could work on tired leg form.  I feel really good about how that work out went and how it will contribute to my overall endurance and speed in the next few weeks.

So, my plan.  As of right now I will be out for a 5am ish 13 mile run on Saturday.  Then it will be packing and heading to Hartford to board a plane bound for Orlando Fl!  I will try to post how I am feeling after hopefully hitting this major milestone for me while in the airport.  However, if I do not get the chance you can always check out my workout page on Mapmyrun.com to see if I was able to make my goal.  My ID is tomrup815 and my maps are open to the public so you do not need a login to see how far I got.  You can also follow me on Twitter, @rupboysdad, and I will tweet my run results.

Enjoy your week and you will hopefully hear from my again when I am a little bit more tan!

Boston Marathon

As an aspiring runner, I spent a good part of my Patriot's day watching the strong people take the 26.2 mile journey from Hopkington to Boylston St. I had coverage up from boston.com and refreshed it well enough to see some of the pictures of people crossing the line. I hit F5 on my keyboard at 3 pm and I got an error page. I didn't think anything of it until I got an email from my friend saying "Did you see what happened at the Marathon?" I finally got to some national pages to read about explosions near the finish line. I took to twitter to see what some reporters I was following were saying. My friend, who went to college in Boston (at Emerson I believe), knew of the manhole "explosions" that happened in the city. I, not spending very much time there, immediately thought bomb.

I had planned a long post today about watching the runners, and the talks I had about seeing the men run a 5 minute mile for a great deal of the race. About how watching them and the 27,000 participants inspired me to push harder and to study their movements to be a better and more efficient runner. Later that evening it was learned that one of the 2 people killed in the explosions was an 8 year old boy, Martin Richard. I assume right now that most people know that I am a father of two boys myself. My wife and I have a highly energetic 3 year old and a compassionate, intelligent and talkative 7 year old. Hearing the news of how this boy, as well as his mother and sister, were seriously and gravely injured made everything else seem......trivial.

I am the type of person whose mind is always going. Sitting around, out for a run, driving, whatever it is. My brain starts coming up with different scenarios and I think about how I would react. Yesterday and this morning, all I could think about is: "What if I was out on the route or in the finishers area and it was someone I knew, or my family that was standing there?" I cannot fathom what anyone is going through at this point. These tragedies come up and I pretend to think that I would be this and I would be that in order to be strong for those around me, but would that really be the case?

The reason this comes up for me at this time is, beyond being a parent, that the people that were crossing the finish line were just like me as a runner. This happened at 2:50 pm, some 4:10 minutes into the Marathon. My initial reaction, as my wife can attest to, is that this was a senseless act of terror from some sect trying to make a statement on an international stage. My faith in humanity is so warped at this point with all the things we have seen from theater and school shootings, to crashing planes into building and now things like this. I would like to think that where we are as a society, we would stop the stupidity and try to work out our issues in a better way. The reality is violence is a part of humans, dating back as far as recorded, and will continue to be.

However, there was a "bright spot" in all the senselessness of the day. If anyone watched the news and the video of what happened, take heart in the way that the people there reacted. As soon as things unfolded, there was event staff, police, off-duty armed forces, and innocent bi-standards running to the aid of others. There was people that just completed running almost 26 miles that stopped their path to the finish and went to help before being diverted by safety personnel. That is the one thing, in my mind, that we as a society should take away from all this. The amazing response by the first aid people, the event staff, and the Boston police department that were already on the scene. Not a single person panicked, they got everyone they could safely evacuated and the scene secured almost immediately. Those people were true heroes on a level that no one watching on TV could possibly understand.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of those injured or killed in this horrifying act. My thoughts and support to anyone that saw something they hoped they never would and are having a difficult time dealing with it. My support and admiration to the people that were just trying to finish their "bucket list" in running an amazing event. And my admiration and gratitude to everyone that reacted selflessly to aid others.

I am about to start my run this morning, and will continue to in honor of everyone involved. I will continue to push myself and try to get to the point that the thousands of people were at 2:50 PM on April 15th. I am posting this on Twitter and Facebook, if you like me to continue to so you can follow, please let me know. Otherwise I will quietly go about my business and try to get to the point where I can proudly say I ran a Marathon, like the 27,000 that registered and the countless that ran the 2013 Boston Marathon.

Almost there

The Boston Marathon!  No, not what I am writing about.  But it is the Grand Father of modern marathons and it is tomorrow.  But what I am writing about it is my quest for a half marathon.  I ran 11.83 miles today, the longest I have ever run.  I am posting the map on my maps section.  That was not my only run this weekend.  It was a back to back in training, shorter and faster on Saturday, slower and longer on Sunday.

Saturday started with a 3 year old up at 3:30 again.....but this time my with got up with him.  I slept until almost 5 am.  I started with Oatmeal toast with Peanut butter and Jelly and my traditional cup of black coffee.  I hit the road at about 6 am listening to playlist 2.  I went 90+% for 6.5 miles, and it felt really good. That was until I get back and turned to pull a muscle in my back again.  It didn't stop me from doing anything, but it put me into buying a heating pad to help stretch it out better.  My legs felt great and my pace was really good as well, really pushing the end of the run.

So today, Sunday started out with me getting up at 3:30 with the 3 year old to play Minecraft with him.  Yes, my three year old likes Minecraft.  Knowing I was really pushing miles today and knowing that I went fast yesterday, I decided to have a breakfast of 2 toaster waffles with peanut butter and a banana.  I don't have any banana muffins left, and I don't want to make more only to have some left over while we go on our family vacation.  So I am going to be finding other things to eat for my running this week.  My energy felt really good with that breakfast, my legs were a little tired from the run the day before (and building a new fire pit), but it didn't feel sore.  My back was a little sore, so I stretched really well before heading out.    I went about 80%, just trying to keep good form and good strides.  I did have some strange issues with my left toes, that caused a small blister, it almost felt like my toes were giving out.

Getting to almost 12 miles was hard, harder than I thought.  But it wasn't so bad that I was out of energy for the rest of the day.  I think my plan and progression has been working well.  Getting through that run and still going and doing things (granted, not a lot) for the rest of the day was something I though I would never do.  It actually gets easier planning it out right when I make sure to get proper stretching, rest, and nutrition.  Interestingly, my wife made a point about running and how doing other things get easier, even if you get winded you recover much faster.  I realized that today when got back pretty winded, but was better with in 10 minutes.

I am going to run on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week, going 8 - 4 - 8 or something like that.  I am going to put another post tomorrow about my lower body form, including my foot strike and some other myths.  I will then post on Thursday with how I did with the three in a row.  Finally, I plan on going for hopefully over 13 miles early Saturday morning.  So if my wife's family sees me a little tired on Saturday on the plane, you know why!

Good Form

It's Thursday and that means it was another 8 mile run day.  I like the 8 milers in the morning, something about that distance and the quietness of early morning really helps me clear my mind.  This morning was no exception to that, but let me rewind to review the rest of the week first.

After the last post of a 90% 10 mile run on Monday, I went for a little recovery run on Tuesday morning, a straight and easy 4 mile job at about 50%.  It was about 50% because my legs couldn't handle much more than that after a 10 mile - 4 mile hills - 10 mile in consecutive days.  Also, I didn't eat breakfast before or really consume much of anything, just put on my Run 3 mix and headed out the door.  And I took the dogs which was interesting because the woodland creatures are starting to wake and run around.  Dogs like rabbits if you didn't know.  I made it through that and rested on Wednesday, which was well needed.

Back to Thursday.  This morning started with my 3 year old waking me up at 2:30 and my energy levels not allowing me to fall back to sleep.  My body was ready to go again, so I was able to eat a banana muffin 2 hours before my run, and actually some chocolate about an hour before.  So I had enough of both slow burning and fast burning carbs to get out a different run.  I headed out a little before 5 am in some 46 degree, cloudy weather.  I started at about 85% for the first mile, slowed a little in the effort to about 75-80% effort after that for the next 6 miles.  During that time I was really working on form, and I will get into that a little more in just a bit.  After around the 7 mile marker, I picked up the pace to about 90%.  Then, when I hit the access road to our neighborhood, I went all out for that small bit.  It was really a productive run, even with the early start.  2:30 am started to take it's toll as the day went along though, which might explain why I feel like I am rambling.

Alright, so I spoke of form earlier.  I have talked to some people who are true beginners recently about their running and they were talking about their frustration in how far they can get.  They feel like they are not progressing.  Well, there are a couple of factors to that, first in being what are they trying to progress.  Are they looking for farther distances, faster times?  My first suggestion to people is to try to build endurance (run farther) before you worry about times.  More than likely, unless you have been running your whole life, you are not going to be winning any major events.  One thing that is going to help build endurance is to have a good form when running.  Why?  Well, having a good form means you are not going to be wasting away an energy from unnecessary movements.

I did a lot of research on this when I first started, so hopefully what I am writing is going to help and make sense.  When you are first starting, and doing interval running (Jog X distance, walk Y Distance, repeat), this is the perfect time to pay attention to how you look when you run.  I will have to put a warning, if you are a, shall we say well endowed female, you may not have a good comfort level for posture as you might get a few honks from passerby;s.  I have talked to women that have told me that this does happen.  Having said that, the upper body is very instrumental when trying to gain distance.  First, keep your head up.  I know, you want to look down to make sure you are not going to trip and fall or hurt yourself.  Well, it is far better to scan ahead when running and not hunching over see where you foot is.  With your head up, keep your shoulder down and back.  This is important to pay attention to because when pushing yourself, as you start to tire you will start to notice your shoulder shrug.  This is your muscles unnecessarily contracting and spending energy, and we want to save energy for our legs.

If you can hold this posture, you will notice now that is looks like you are pushing your chest out some.  That is what some females struggle, and tend to roll in to avoid cat calls.  Again, this is contracting muscles and wasting valuable energy.  You will also start to notice that with good posture, you have increased lung capacity which will help fuel your muscles!  So with good posture you can increase your ability to run longer.  To finish the upper body, try to keep your arms at about a 90 degree elbow bend and DO NOT make a fist.  Keep your hands somewhat loose, again preserving energy.  Arms out as compared or to the side does not really matter much, but try to keep them somewhat quiet.  Not need for large arm movements, that is more for sprinting, the faster the speed the more your arms will naturally swing.

That's about it for the upper body, I will probably post again on Sunday after hopefully an 11 mile run.  In that post I will talk about breathing and good form for the lower body!  Please, ask questions and comment, it will help me move forward and stay motivated!

Weekend and Day Off

I had a lot going on this weekend, both in life and in running.  I didn't get a chance to post earlier because we spent a lot of time outside both at my parents house and at our house starting to do some things because it isn't freezing cold out.  I have also really picked up the training, maybe motivated by the Boston Marathon on the 15, or maybe knowing that the family vacation is coming up.  Either way there was two new routes over three runs in three days, plus a hike up Mt. Sugarloaf in South Deerfield Ma.  I would say I god plenty of exercise.

Before I get into the routes let me address two questions/comments.  First, I don't post on Facebook directly.  I do, however, tweet my blog updates and my twitter account is connected to my Facebook account.  So, if you have a comment to make on something that comes up on Facebook, please either comment here on this blog or get a twitter account.  Commenting on this blog is honestly better.

Second, so there has been some questions and good natured ribbing on my playlist selections.  As far as the ribbing is concerned, that's fine, at least I know people are reading!  But, as I have said before to each their own.  So I don't expect everyone to want to follow what I do, eat, listen to, etc.  The reason so my musical selection are more based on pace.  Alternative music is a slower pace, upped by Hard Rock and Electronic, and the fastest that I listed to is the dance or house music.  Which is shown in the routes and pace I ran this weekend.

Saturday and today (Monday) were 10 mile runs (same route) that sandwiched a steep 4 mile jog.  The Saturday run was an intentional 80% while listening to Alternative Endurance on Pandora.  Breakfast was......Banana muffin 1 hour before running.  The map can be found on my Maps section.  The run was nice, a little cold as it was around 30 degrees.  I felt good, my right leg was annoying but not hurting.  Sunday was a slow paced incline up the map for Drummer Hill.  It was a two dog run with no music, on again a 30 degree morning.  Breakfast was a wheat english muffin with peanut butter and come cottage cheese.  I probably ate about 45 minutes before heading out.  Today I returned to the 10 mile rung (same as Saturday) while eating the same breakfast 2 hours before running, while also taking 600 milligrams of Ibuprofen.  I went at 90% for this run listening to my iPod on Run1.  It was s fantastic run and everything feels great this morning.  If you want to know how my "splits" were between runs, I am on mapmyrun.com as tomrup815.  You can follow my workouts there with my pace.

I really think I have done well with taking care of my sore leg with out compromising my training.  I feel really good about how my body is responding right now and hope that it stays well through the next two weeks before the family vacation to Disney.  I am going to be ramping up my workouts and frequency to get where I want to be, probably trying to hit 11.5 miles this weekend.  I think if I can do all of that, I will be in a good spot as I decline into the half marathon.

What I am listening to

Someone asked me about how I can run, aren't I bored?  No, I am not....which is part of preferring running outside over inside.  That and I listen to music, it helps me not get too involved in thought.  Currently I will either listen to Pandora or my iPod, depending on what I want to take with me.  I have a huge mix of music that have.  If I on Pandora I go with one of:

Dance Cardio Radio
Alternative Endurance Radio
Hard Rock Strength Radio
Electronic Cardio Radio

My iPod you ask?  Ok, I will post a tab called Playlist.  It is a strange mix of....well take a look

Train Smarter

The Boston Marathon is coming up on April 15th. When the marathon comes, so doesn't a whole bunch of blogs and training tips from runners. I actually found one run very interesting, it is by Shalane Flanagan (actually it is an interview) and really shed some light on my training. You can read it on Boston.com at:

 http://www.boston.com/sports/marathon/blog/2013/04/shalane_flanagan_on_boston_mar.html

Shalane is rated the #1 American Female Marathoner and is expected to be in the lead group right to the end of the race.  It opened my eyes to know that she feels that "a little bit less can be a little bit more" when dealing with training.  Well, knowing that I am coming off a back injury and still dealing with getting my body in shape, I decided that I needed to scale back my workouts some.  Typically I would try to run race speed every time I go out, mainly because I only run 4 days a week right now.  That and I have always been under the "give 110%" mindset and that doesn't really work with running.

That brings us to today's run.  The dogs were begging (literally) to get out this morning.  Considering I usually run slower with them and have to take AnnaBelle pee breaks, it was the perfect morning to start varying the intensity of my training.  So today I ran "The Loop" at about 75-80%.  "The Loop" is posted in the maps section, it is a route that works really well for me.  The hard thing about it is there are spots that are not lit, thankfully my wonderful wife found my headlamp to go out with.  BTW, if you are driving at a point with morning or night where you have your lights on, you see a runner and decide to put your high beams on in order to "give better light".....don't.  It literally blinds the oncoming runner, which happened three times this morning.  Which stinks because not only do you have to wait for the car to go by, you then need to wait for your eyes to readjust to low light levels so you don't twist an ankle.

Today's workout started differently.  I decided to have a different breakfast of toasted Country Kitchen oatmeal bread with peanut butter and 1 cup of cottage cheese, which my 12 oz cup of black coffee.  I then had 8 oz of cranberry juice about 1/2 hour before running.  Knowing that I wanted to do a slower run and less miles I felt this was a decent breakfast.  I did not have an issue with energy or strength, however I am starting to notice some issues with my lower right leg.  It was pretty sore, but not in the normal shin splint area, a little more in the inside and back.  I think I am going to look into a compression sleeve for it to see if that helps a little more with my stretching and massages.

Saturday I am planning out a route for a little over 10 miles.  I will post that map at some point.  I plan on getting out pretty early and then head to my home town not long after.  So I probably won't get a post up until that night.

Enjoy your day!

The tired run

We have a sick 3 year old at home.  Running a fever and overall just lethargic and cranky.  Because of this he didn't sleep well, and when he doesn't sleep well, we don't sleep well.  I had done a lot of research on running last year as I was working up my mileage and pace.  I never really wanted to put too much effort into it, just enough to feel good.  But one thing that I read from a lot of places was that getting in good sleep habits really makes a difference.  I can tell you that I believe this to be true!

Three year old MsSickypants was up at about 12:30 to climb into bed.  He is an active sleeper anyways and we really prefer not to get him in the habit of climbing into bed with us.  But we figured he was sick so we would make an exception.  Well, that wasn't the best of moves when trying to get out a decent run.  Was up often trying to get comfortable, and finally at about 3:30 he decided he wanted to watch a movie and not stay in our bed.  At that point I was going to be up in the next half hour anyways so might as well have breakfast and stretch out.  It was a cool 28 degrees when I left the house, which doesn't help in motivation either.  My legs didn't feel good through most of the run, mostly just very sluggish.  I did the 8 mile route in the maps section.  After about 7 miles I really needed to push myself to get moving.

My breakfast was the same.  I am going to change that up on Thursday when I head out.  I will probably try for 7 miles on Thursday, depending if I can find my headlamp.  The 7 mile route has some spots with out light.  My oldest son was pretending he was Tony Stark with it over the weekend and it seems to be missing.  Such is life with kids.

My plan is to get to up my long run by 1 mile every week leading up to our Florida vacation.  That should put me at 12 miles at that point.  I still plan on running while at Disney, there is a 1 mile track that goes around the three All Star resorts where we will be staying.  I would like to be able to get out on those at least 4 of the days we will be there, depending on what time we can get into the parks.  I guess we will see how it goes.

Mother's Day Half Marathon

Thanks to my fantastic wife I am now officially registered for the Mother's Day Half Marathon to benefit Cancer Connection in Northampton Ma.  I added an events section to this blog so you can see what I am doing and when.  If you have an event you think I might like or there is something out there that you would like to see me run, please suggest it in the comments or send me an email.  Please keep in mind that I typically like to run events that benefit a good cause.  The other race listed, the Rugged Manic, benefits the Wounded Warrior project.

I am officially 41 days from trying to complete a 13.1 mile half marathon.