Climate change, anyone?

June was the hottest month on record.  July is on pace to be the hottest month yet again.

This week it has, with the heat index, seemed like 110 degrees outside.  My bedroom has become my living cocoon in the house because it has a window air-conditioning unit..  Using the rest of the house, I sit at the dining room table as much as possible, next to a cooling fan.

To go outside is to instantly break out in a sweat.  I took a 3-mile walk the other day on the Mt. Vernon Trail instead of running that afternoon.

I go out with friends for lunch in restaurants which, obviously, have air-conditioning.  Pastrami sandwiches, chili, mussels, it's all good.

WTR, Week 7

Cycle Two of the MCC Walk-To-Run (WTR, or Couch to 5K) program is going well.  I am running Saturdays with John now so I only show up occasionally, like last Saturday when John was unavailable to run.

Five people total showed up, but that's five people enjoying exercise in the great outdoors that otherwise would just be zee-ing in their beds at that time.  As usual we went four miles, the northern route on the Mount Vernon Trail from the Mariners' statue to Roosevelt Island and back.

The rest of the group did a 1/4 run/walk ratio while I took star pupil S, a walker getting accustomed to running, out on a half on/half off ratio.  It was pleasant as it went fast enough (54 minutes) and S is interesting to talk with, a lawyer, liberal (I think--she's from Massachusetts) and an accountant. 

Whenever we were jogging I did all the talking but she hung in there and said she had felt challenged at the end.  And then as usual, at 9 am on Saturday the entire weekend stretched pleasurably out before me, my having already done my exercise for the day.

Six Miles

A new person joined our Walk-To-Run (WTR) training group last weekend, a runner intending to run in her first half marathon in June. The group itself was doing four miles, as usual, at a three-minute walking two-minute running pace. It is a sedentary pace and takes about 65 minutes to complete the distance.

Allie (not her real name), however, has a three mile base currently and although she's got a long way to go to get ready for a 13-mile race, she is more advanced than the other runners in the group. The head coach assigned her the task of going six miles that day at the 3/2 ratio as her long distance.

Allie had been training, however, at a 2/3 ratio (two minutes walking/three minutes running) and furthermore, she didn't know where to go to gain an extra two miles (we were going two miles out along the trail before our turnaround, not three miles). So I offered to take her out the six miles at the 2/3 pace, since the larger group had two other coaches for five students.

It was a pleasant outing. Allie is originally from North Africa and very interesting. Her father was a diplomat and they lived in Mexico for many years and although her English is excellent, she laughingly explained that some people think she's Mexican, not African, when they encounter her foreign name, view her dusky features and hear her slight accent.

We toiled northwards up the Mount Vernon Trail from the Lady Bird Johnson Park to the Roosevelt Island footbridge, exactly two miles. There we traversed around Roosevelt Island on its dirt footpaths and wooden walkways through its long marshland to pick up the extra two miles Allie needed for her training. Although there were some people perambulating about on Roosevelt Island, that part of our run was as usual on the island quiet, remote and pastoral.

Once we had circled the island and crossed the footbridge, we headed south back to our origination point. I was secretly disappointed that we didn't catch up with the main group despite doing two extra miles because we were running for a longer time than them each five minute segment plus we were going faster, as Allie has a pace that is closer to my swifter pace than anyone else in the WTR group. We arrived back at the park at about 68 minutes, a few minutes behind the other runners.

It was a beautiful morning and a delightful run. And as always when I finish a good run early on Saturday morning, the weekend stretched out ahead of me.

The Canadian Woman

She seemed so unapproachable. A beautiful woman wearing headphones passing by us on the Mount Vernon Trail as John and I ran our weekend 10K, she ignored our salutary comments and slightly outdistanced us.

She was run/walking so we passed her back on the wicked uphill switchback leading to the hilly Custis Trail near where the Key Bridge connects Arlington to Georgetown. John urged her on as we went by, and she broke out of her desultory walk to join our trotting run up the steep incline.

Noticing my Garmin, she asked how fast we were running to which I answered, "9:40s." She seemed stunned and, one earbud out, evinced that she had been hoping that she had been running at a 5:30 pace.

It turned out that she was Canadian and had taken my pace retort to mean minutes per kilometer instead of minutes per mile. Apparently 9:40s would be just-shoot-me slow north of the border.

The Lost Runner

"Hey Ellen, have you seen Joyce?"

"No," Ellen called out, looking up at me. "Isn't she with you?"

I was leaning on the railing of a trail overpass by National Airport on the Mount Vernon Trail, where a secondary footpath winds around underneath it heading back under the GW Parkway into Crystal City. Ellen was directly below me.

She was leading the main body of the leisurely runners in the half-marathon training program I direct. I had been vainly scrutinizing the tops of the heads of the runners passing by below me to see if Joyce was with them. She had vanished.

This was my responsibility. We were on an eighty minute run this Saturday morning, while the rest of the runners in the Program were doing nine or ten miles elsewhere with the rest of the coaches.

I had actually started out with the runners who were doing nine miles, happily leading that group while clipping along at a nine-minute-per-mile pace, talking with the two lead runners in it while two more coaches accompanied the rest of the strung out group. Half an hour later, Ellen had run past us going the other direction, having taken a different route with the slowest group of runners. I counted them as they went by. There were ten in her group, and she was the only coach.

I told the two runners with me where the turnaround point for them was and turned to pursue Ellen's group, telling the other two coaches that I was leaving them as I ran by. I soon overtook "Joyce," who was the caboose in Ellen's group. I ran with her for awhile and then ran up ahead to where H and N were running together doing twelve-minute miles. Soon Ellen came back down the trail towards us with the main group, having already reached their turnaround point.

The three of us turned and fell in with the main group. I ran with Ellen for awhile. We passed by Joyce, who was still outbound, and I called out to her and signalled for her to turn around and fall in with the main group right behind us. I thought I saw her turning. I ran on, chatting with Ellen.

After half a mile, I could see that the group was getting strung out again behind us so I trotted back looking for the end runner. I passed by the compact main group but didn't particularly scrutinize them. I passed by H and N, and said I'd catch up with them. I kept going back, looking for Joyce, whom I presumed would be in the back.

I reached the turnaround point. No Joyce. There were no runners anywhere. I could see pretty far down the trail, maybe a quarter mile. Where was she? I was stumped.

So my logic went like this. Maybe when she turned, she fell in with the main group and unexpectedly kept up with them. Then when I went back looking for the most far back runner, expecting it to be her, I didn't notice her within the main group when I went by it.

Yeah, that had to be it, I thought. I couldn't keep on running outbound on the notion that not only hadn't she turned when I signalled her to, but she had also run past the turnaround point. There were other possibilities, of course, but the Mount Vernon Trail is a well-used, patrolled recreational pathway, very open in this part, and I didn't think Joyce had stashed a car down here for a secret getaway.

So I ran back to catch up with the group. It was a long hard run because I had fallen very far behind it. It was many long minutes before I saw H and N again, far ahead.

But now from atop my vantage point on the overpass, I could see that Joyce had indeed gotten away. I was both annoyed and anxious. I emphasize repeatedly to trainees that it is protocol for slower runners in a group to turn around when the main body comes by them on the return, and not to continue on to the turnaround point. That way the coach doesn't have to hang around for a long time after the run, waiting for the slowest runner to return. Sometimes I think no one is listening.

There was nothing to do but return to the finish and wait for Joyce to show up. Or not to show up. In my experience, they always come back eventually. But I was majorly annoyed with myself for not continuing to look back to carefully observe her actions when I told her to turn around when we last went by her. I had made an assumption. My bad. My very bad.

Joyce wasn't magically back when we returned. We waited. Her boyfriend, who had run with another group, confirmed that she didn't have her cell phone with her. It was a little early to start driving around looking for her but I could tell that Ellen was uncomfortable with the situation.

Twenty five minutes later, here she came. She had proceeded on when the main group came back upon her, and then proceeded to go even further out when she missed the turnaround. She got lost.

But she got back eventually, as I thought she would. A coach's nightmare in the meantime.

Another Saturday, another run

The Saturday morning run with my half-marathon training group was an eight mile-out-and back, from Gotta Run down in Pentagon Row in Arlington up Washington Boulevard by the Pentagon to Memorial Bridge, over the Potomac and into the District down the Mall in a straight shot past the Lincoln and the Washington to the Capitol and back. Matt took his fast group on a further excursion up Capitol Hill and around the Capitol to add a ninth mile.

Meanwhile, at the secondary meeting place at Fleet Feet in Adams Morgan, Sasha led a dozen runners eight miles down into Rock Creek Park a ways and then back again. They vanquished a formidable hill, the Calvert Climb, in the last mile coming back. This is the brutal hill where my BQ dreams died last year when I ran the National Marathon (an 11:04 twentieth mile in a race where my average pace was 8:48).

It was a perfect morning for running because although it was cold, it was still and clear with no wind. Although the brutally frigid temperature with an icy wind didn't arrive until the next day, it was still plenty cold if you weren't moving.

I know because as a favor to a race director, I then went to Belle Haven Park south of Alexandria on the Mount Vernon Trail to perform finish line duties at a club race down there that kept me occupied until early afternoon. This duty made me plenty chilly since I was sweaty and damp from my seventy-three minute run. Over 200 racers enjoyed this free (for club members, $5 for non-club members) half-marathon race, thanks to nineteen frozen volunteers who stood around like blocks of ice. These cheerful and willing volunteers are the backbone of club racing. I wonder though, what kind of thinking went into scheduling this 13.1 mile race in December?

A twenty-miler.

A week ago I ran a 20-mile race. After not running much all summer, I was happy to see that I still have that as a base, apparently. I made it the whole way, albeit in my slowest time ever for a 20-miler, 3:19:43 (9:59).

A friend of mine is going through typical 1st-marathonistis as she gets ready for the MCM, bemoaning that she isn't ready, can't do it, etc. She determined to do this 20-mile race as a test of her conditioning, because she had never run past 16 miles before.

As a surprise to her, I showed up at the race too. We ran together. I ran at her pace the first ten miles, 10:30s. She can run faster than that but she was afraid of crashing and burning.

Then when she was confident she could finish the race, she dialed down the times. Soon miles were flashing under our feet at 9:15s. We passed by MP 19 stride in stride. But I don't care that we did the first ten miles at a relative snail's pace, and that I had saved some gas in my tank the first half of race. It had no effect in that last mile. Nineteen miles at my age is nineteen miles.

Youth was served. (She's 20 years younger.) She found a new gear, one which I didn't have anymore at this late stage of the race. I wished her well and told her to pick off all those runners ahead of us as she moved out. She was two blocks ahead of me as we went into the final turn leading to a concluding lap around a school track. I fell behind a minute or two more when I stopped at my car in the parking lot before I finished and rummaged around in it for my camera.

It was a good training run. I was pleased that I was able to run the whole way without having to walk. I worry that I couldn't respond in that last mile but that's the way it is. My friend is ready though!