The year in review Part 4

Yesterday was a measure of progress in my running during the current year.  Remember, I started my return to running in May after a two-year layoff due to an achilles strain and then more seriously, retina degeneration in my right eye requiring four eye surgeries, two of them emergency operations ("We need to operate today.  Who can you call right now to come pick you up afterwards?").

Fortunately I saved the sight in that eye, although it's diminished.  Once my eye healed from the last procedure in April, I started running again on a drastically reduced schedule, three times a week, starting off with a half mile at a time.  Because I am (or was) a certified running coach, I know that practically all novice (or returning) running plans falter due to running too far and too fast at the outset, thus crashing and burning, so I carefully adhered to a ridiculously low mileage and slow pace blueprint the first few months, even though I couldn't even run two blocks the first day, having to stop and walk it in heaving and gasping, a pathetic performance.

Four months later, on August 27th, I felt the need to gauge my progress by running a measured mile in my neighborhood as fast as I was able to.  I was disappointed to break a ten-minute mile the wrong way with a time of 10:13, but it was an honest effort and indicated some sort of progress.

Yesterday, four months after the last timed-mile run, I repeated the test over the same course.  I was pleased to be under ten minutes this time with a 9:26, an improvement in 120 days of 37 seconds, or about 9 seconds faster per 440 yards (141.5 or 2:22 quarters--slow!),  even though I do no speed work and I have cut back my mileage considerably each week as a gesture to my age being closer to seventy than sixty now, but I was incredibly fagged at the end of the mile.  Still, it is a sign of progress, with room for continuing improvement.

The magic mile.

I haven't timed myself in a mile in a long time.  Last decade, when I was in my fifties, I used to run my neighborhood mile and try to keep it under 7 minutes, usually finishing it in the 6:40s or 6:50s.  But that was before my injury in 2009, which laid me up for two years.

It took a long time, and a lot of weight coming off, to get back under nine minute miles.  Then when I got the weight off, I could do a sub-eight again, but I can't approach 7 minutes in the mile anymore.  I know that in my 3-mile race last spring, I did a 7:30 first mile before I tired and struggled to finish in 24:29 (8:10).

Recently I ran a timed mile in my neighborhood, without looking at my watch during it, to see where I was at in non-competitive conditions.  As usual, I started in front of my house, and ran up the block, slightly uphill, for the first quarter mile.  Then I gained level ground and ran down the side street to Railroad Avenue, which parallels the flat W&OD Trail, thinking the whole time, now that the incline was behind me, about turnover.

I burned down Railroad Avenue and back, traversed the side street again, and turned down my block, which was now a slight, but welcome, downhill.  I was tempted to look at my watch but I eschewed it, not wanting to be demoralized as I feared, now that I was approaching the end stretch, that it would show that I would be mired in the eights somewhere at the finish.  I kicked as much as I could, reached the dumpster marking the finish line in the strip mall parking lot one house past my house, and clicked my watch . . .  at 7:4668, which I rounded down to 7:46.

I was delighted.  It's a start.

Hill Running Around Town

I love running the hills around my little home town.  Although the 40-mile rail-to-trail bike path gem cuts right through town (across my back-yard line) and there are quiet residential streets to run on, there are plenty of hills too.

I have a 2.5 mile route to a distant schoolyard that takes me up a half-mile hill on its front leg, which means it's downhill coming back as I'm tiring.  I try to do each leg in under ten minutes to keep up a sub-8 pace, or at least I did before I got injured.

But  the best hill in the region is half a mile from my front door, Highland Avenue, a half-mile long steady climb in one direction and a tenth of a mile precipitous climb on its other side.  It has a steep side spur that, coupled with the steep climb on Highland, makes for a quarter mile "track" that enables you to run what I call boomerangs--a heavy unrelenting hill workout that absolutely saps you if you do twenty of them.

Next to Highland is the next-best hill in town, Oak Street, a fabulous incline that leads up into a dead-end where an elementary school is that also offers two sets of stairs to run on, and its end point--the furthest distance out from my front door before you have to turn back, is exactly one mile.  It's also my alma mater, I went there as a kindergartner in the fifties.

My Mile

I'm about to embark upon two weeks of travel with only one night's return to home so I'm kind of busy preparing for that. No time today for my customary Monday noontime run on the Mall.

So I ran a mile this morning in my neighborhood, to save time, get a run in and see where I'm at. In August I ran my neighborhood mile in 8:01 and I was satisfied with that then.

Today it was hard, as I think my ninety minutes of Bikram (hot) Yoga yesterday still has me wiped out. I brought my run home in 7:55, which I'm happy with since I wanted to do it in under eight.

That's not much progress since August as I return from my year's layoff due to injury and it's almost a minute off my old standard (break seven) but it's where I'm at. As I close in fast on 60, at least I'm out there, sucking the cool morning air into my aching lungs, legs burning, chest heaving, body alive and pushing, watching the canopy of autumn leaves with their brilliant fall colors pass by overhead.

Speed Work?

I been running this summer, combating the other-worldly heat this summer ("feels like 117"), trying to build my base back up after a year and a half off due to injury. With my co-worker L, I have been running three times a week at noon on the Mall five miles each run, with a "long" run on Saturday morning with John on the W&OD Trail.

My bum left ankle feels tweaked from the twenty-mile weeks I have been putting on it, despite the cortisone shot it received awhile ago. But I dutifully pull on my ankle brace each run and make sure I get out four times a week. I used to run five times a week at 9:00 miles 35-40 miles each week, but times have changed. (L keeps me honest on our runs. Her husband is a hero who returned recently from deployment in Afghanistan.)

Now I trundle about at 17-21 miles each week at 10:00 miles and love its effect upon my out-of-shape conditioning, having dropped to 205 pounds in the last half-year, halfway yo the return to my former "ideal" weight. My running buddy L is coming back from C-section surgery while I am rebounding from hernia surgery. I keep my mouth shut, as this woman who used to be considerably slower than me now pulls me along. I satisfy myself with the thought that I have made her faster.

So this morning, I resisted running "long" as I lay in my bed, content that L was on vacation so I didn't have to look forward to five miles with her on the Mall. I decided to do a "speed"workout.

Without pulling on my brace, I went to the curb to run my neighborhood mile to see what my speed had become (or dropped to). I used to be able to pull these runs off in 6:50s. (Mein John.)

Off I went, running on feel. Although I set my watch, I determined not to look at it, even once, during the mile. I didn't want to hurry up my run to meet a goal or slow it down due to despair if I was fading badly midway.

I felt good running uphill the first part, feeling like I was moving with alacrity. My labored breathing didn't hinder me as I was able to manage my discomfort of being out of breath during my exertion. Half a year ago this would have been crippling.

Coming back on the out-and-back, I resisted several times checking my progress on my stop-watch and came into the zone of a placed radar-zone display for approaching traffic to dampen speeding in residential areas. I ran full on directly into its sweet zone and couldn't generate a reading for my speed. Huh!

At my driveway, the ending point, I hit my stopwatch and saw 8:01. If I had been monitoring my time I would have busted the eight minute mark. I am very happy with my current speed.

I'm not there yet...

I ran four times last week as I try to come back from injury, short runs that totaled slightly over ten miles. Although all the runs were slow and rendered me shockingly out of breath, it was a start.

I kicked off the week on Sunday with my familiar mile-run around my neighborhood in 8:52. I don't think I could have gone any faster than that.

I ran twice during the week at work with co-workers, each time running to the Washington Monument from near Union Station and back again at a twelve-minute pace. During one of those runs, tourists hurrying to be on time for their scheduled entrance into the monument jogged by us and outdistanced us as we dawdled along.

My best run was two and a half miles around my home town on Friday, a slow, meandering journey up the hill to the school and around some of the cul-de-sacs I used to traverse on my early-morning runs back when I ran five times a week. On Saturday I got a workout of a different sort when I took a pickup truck load of furniture from Not Born to Run's old place in Maryland to her cool new digs directly across the street from the National Cathedral.

Back on the trail again.

Yesterday I started the week out with a 5K run on the W&OD Trail in 28:51. I wore my "boot" brace and my brand new orthotics and it seemed to go well, although my sore ankle never bothers me when I run, only afterwards. Although both my ankle and my legs are sore now, I plan to run twice more this week, short distances slowly, and see how it goes.

It was good to be out running on the trail again, although after a mere 7 minutes, still far short of a mile, I was sucking wind. Still, that was better than last week when I thought I was going to die on a run after only 5 minutes.

The trail is clear now. Here's what it looked like a month ago, the last time I was on it.

How snowy has it been this winter? Here's one of the four snow piles I created around the head of my driveway from snow shoveling last month.

A mile and a half down the trail I saw Trevor at his usual spot on the corner and went over to talk with him. It gave me a welcome break midway through my run.

I've spoken about Trevor before. He is homeless and our priest commanded us one Sunday to go out and speak with a homeless person and let him or her influence our life in some little way. I settled on Trevor.

Trevor was suspicious of me at first but now he calls out a greeting whenever I approach, as he knows me, and my car, by sight now. He actually knows a lot of motorists who drive by his corner. He claims he loved my Christmas card, which I delivered to him personally with an address of Trevor, I-66 at Route 29, Falls Church VA.

Trevor is a veteran who was with the 82nd Airborne with an MOS of tank inspector. He saw combat in Afghanistan, if I have heard him correctly. We talk military stuff. Yesterday we talked about the HBO Special Miniseries which started last night, The Pacific War. He was going to watch it at the shelter and I told him it would feature horrific fighting in 1944 on Peleliu, and that that was where my Dad fought.

Pickings were slim for him today as no one stopped to give him any money while I was there, except for one lady. For a dollar, she could have gotten a lot of people hurt. Some people have no sense.

Trevor is obviously hobbled, as he uses a cane. This lady was driving by on the far side of the raised median on the highway (Lee Highway) that cuts across the terminus of the exit ramp from I-66 which is where Trevor stands. She stopped in traffic, backed up, and called out to him to cross four lanes of exit-ramp traffic and two more highway lanes to accept a handout from her.

Trevor muttered, "This is a first, stopping way over there. She's going to get me killed."

Instead I warily jogged through the traffic (there's a light there, which helps) to fetch her offering for Trevor, a single dollar bill. Much as it was appreciated by him, there was great potential for lethality present in her gesture. Some people just don't think.

My good deed done, I jogged home. On the return I marked a mile on the trail in 9:20, which left me breathless. Yikes! I've got a lot of work to do.

Running again?

My mysterious ankle injury started hurting worse and worse each run last fall, until I stopped running shortly before the race I was training for, the Army Ten-Miler, and saved myself to run in the race. I was the leader for the 9:00/mile (1:30:00) pace group, and I brought it home in 1:29:46 (8:58).

I couldn't walk the next day and basically I haven't run since, for five months. My left ankle still hurts.

Blah blah blah. It sucks, just like life does sometimes. (Happier times last October. Post-race with a friend who ran with my pace group during the ATM.)

But I have a set of orthotics waiting for me to pick up at the podiatrist's, I "ran" (ran/walked) a mile this week in 15:24, I plan to run twice next week, three times the week after that and so on. We'll see.

Needs work.

I felt good. Breathing easily, I cruised into my driveway at 5 this morning and hit my stopwatch. Walking into my house, I checked my time.

"Aw, sh*t!"

9:23 for the mile.

I had run the mile strictly by feel, resisting the urge to check my watch along the way. Loping along in the dark, I had felt on track to nail a nine-minute mile, but it turned out to be way too slow.

I have a new challenge. I am three weeks into being a coach (actually a site director) for my club's Ten-Miler Training Program. This year we are the exclusive training partner for the Army Ten-Miler, the second largest ten-mile road race in North America. The race sold out its 30,000 slots in less than a week. We have 170 trainees whom we have to prepare to run the race less than ten weeks from now. We ran five miles for our long run over the weekend.

In addition to coaching, I'm going to be the nine-minutes-per-mile pacer in the race. You know, one of those runners who holds up a sign that says "9:00" for the entire race and chatters away happily to whoever is around (will he ever shut up!?). I've got to nail a 1:30:00 for the ten miles, give or take 30 seconds. But it'd better be 1:29:45 instead of 1:30:15.

In January I ran a ten mile race in 1:24:00 (8:24). In April at Boston, before I crashed and burned in the twelfth mile due to my utter lack of training, I ran every single one of the first ten miles in under nine minutes, including one in sub-eight. So I should easily be able to be a nine-minute pacer.

But I have to practice because my natural pace seems to be around eight minutes per mile. Sunday in the daylight, checking my watch frequently, I practiced a nine-minute mile for the first time by running my meandering neighborhood mile, which has no markers nor marked halfway point. 8:04. Hmmm. Way too fast.

Now way too slow.

I might have to move my efforts to the W&OD Trail behind my house, which has markers every half-mile. Although I'm bracketing a 9:00 mile with my 8:04 and 9:23, my "running by feel" definitely needs to get more on target before I can fire for effect all ten miles.

I might even have to buy a Garmin (and learn how to use it) for this one. But I'm loving this upcoming challenge.

Been Running?

In case you're wondering if I have been running since I got back from my summer vacation a month ago, you're not the only one. I have been wondering too.

Clearly there was no running in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But what's my excuse since I got back?

I been running some, but not much. In all of July I ran 52.7 miles, and only one race (my monthly noontime 3K dash around the Tidal Basin). That's it. My one long run was ten miles of sightseeing I did along the Mall with a visiting RBFer.

When I'm not running much I cheat and get in my five times running per week by running solitary miles. I can always fit those in. Six of my "runs" in July were of the solitary mile variety. Although they were all under eight minutes, only one was under seven minutes, my desired goal.

Why the slackard month? Life is complicated. That's the sum total of my wisdom after 56 years.

I came back from my "trip of a lifetime" down the Grand Canyon and running suddenly seemed less important. I took greater pleasure in writing about the trip than in running on the roadways. All of my running buddies have moved away or gotten hurt. The ten-mile training program I direct for my club has started up and that keeps me busy, basically running with novices. I realize that people see me as a Johnny-One-Note, a running nut, so I have been working on being more variegated.

Yeah, my running currently sucks. I think life is intruding. It's either that or advancing age.

What is the longest word in the English language?

Smiles. It has a mile between the S's.

An old injury reared its head recently--my left ankle swelled up and started hurting, the one I sprained last summer when I stepped in a hole while training for the Chicago Fun Run. I think its recurrence is from overuse, as I put in a 40 mile week followed by (for the first time ever for me) a 50 mile week.

Over the course of several consecutive weekends, I had put together long runs of 13.1, 20, 15 and 16.2 miles. Suddenly I woke up and couldn't walk without pain, much less run a marathon on the suddenly bum-again ankle. So I have been laying off of it.

I started wearing a heavy ankle brace and running miles. As in solitary miles. As in speed work.

I have also been attending yoga classes, at the community center, Which is exactly a mile from my house. How handy.

Tuesday I ran to yoga class at a comfortable lope, in what I hoped was an eight-minutes-per-mile pace. In fact it was 7:45. I ran home afterwards, all relaxed from the savasana, in 7:24.

Wednesday my ankle was a little swollen but it also felt a little bit better. So I attended my club's weekly track workout. The schedule called for four one-mile repeats, with a brief recovery run between each mile, on the nearby hilly Custis Trail (there was a lacrosse game in progress at the high school so the track was closed). I cut down the warmup, recovery and cooldown runs to save mileage. My splits were 7:26, 7:40, 7:49 and 7:51. No negative splits there!

Today I ran the mile to yoga in 7:17. Returning home all warmed up from an hour of stretching, I pushed it and turned the mile in 6:54.

I don't feel bad about causing my malady's onset, because how do you prepare for a marathon without running long, often? Lots of people run 50 miles per week while getting ready for marathons.

My injury is getting better. I couldn't run a marathon right now but I hope to be able to soon. I'm taking it one day at a time, one mile at a time.

Those pesky miles

I'm getting slower. It's a fact.

2001 and 2006 were my good years. I guess good years come every half-decade or so.

In 2001 I set my 5K and 10K PRs, 21:58 and 46:01. I wasn't much good at longer distances then (my marathon PR was 5:05:20) because I didn't train "long." Most mornings I would just sprint helter-skelter for 2.1 miles and that would be it. Done for the day in 16 to 18 minutes. 12 miles was a big week for me. It kept my weight down and my speed up.

Then I turned 50 and started focusing on longer distances. I ran more miles. I threw 4-mile runs into the mix as my concession to going long, and in 2003 my marathon PR dropped to 4:16. My "speed" suffered though as my 5Ks crept into the 25 minute range. But then all of my times stagnated.

In 2006 I got serious. My long runs started having a base of at least 10 miles. No longer did a scheduled ten mile training run seem like a date that I had to circle on my calendar and watch with dread as it approached. I started track work. I did hills. I brought my marathon time down to 3:52:34. Even my 5Ks and 10Ks revved up as I came within 24 seconds and 48 seconds respectively of my old PRs. But after 10 months of hard training, I crashed and burned. I haven't been the same conscientious runner since returning from setting my then-marathon PR at the NYCM in November, 2006.

My 10-milers tell the story. From my 1:14:34 PR at Army in 2006, I slipped to a 1:16:05 GW Parkway Classic last year. This year I fell to a 1:22:44 at the Al Lewis club 10-miler.

I will tell you this, I don't think administering club training programs, which I have been doing for a year now, helps your own running much. But that's my choice, my notion of helping the community and "giving back."

I still run 5 times a week. That has always been my one constant, my interjection of discipline into my running routine. Some days it's only a mile, but at my age each mile counts. I feel each run the next day now, especially as I descend the stairs on those mornings after.

Solitary miles seem labored nowadays, even beyond the burning lungs. You know, leaden legs, feeling like I'm running underwater, the dreamlike flow of the landscape passing slowly by.

I keep at it. Yesterday I did a new mile-route around my neighborhood that involved a hill. I labored to bring it home in 8:58. Huh! My standard of a "good" solitary mile used to be a sub-seven.

Today I went back to a more familiar mile-route in the 'hood. I arrived huffing and puffing at my driveway in 7:22. Better, but I still have work to do.

My Neighborhood Mile

I love my neighborhood mile. It's been very good to me.

I'm intimate with it. I know it like a lover. I know its moods.

It starts right outside my door. It's always there. I can glance out my window and know what kind of a day I'm in for.

Is it rain glistened? That's no trouble and it won't bother me unless it's pelting.

Is it hoary with frost? Then I'm in for a hard time and I have to approach it just right, both in dress and in footing.

Is it covered in snow? I'll appreciate it the more for its silent beauty but I'll have to be careful around it, unless its frigid and icy, in which case I'll stay away from it altogether for awhile.

It's always waiting for me. But sometimes I neglect it. Sometimes I don't visit with it for weeks. I wonder if it misses me, or resents my absence.

It always helps me. When I was suffering, and trying to hold on in the last mile of the WDWM and break 4 hours for the first time, it gave me succor. It reached out from 1,000 miles away and was with me that last mile at Disney. Suddenly I wasn't running towards Epcot with aching lungs and leaden feet at 3:45:45 anymore. No. I was standing at the head of my driveway at 0:00:00.

Punch the watch and go up the street a quarter mile. Hill at the top. Turn right at the stop sign.

Go down the level straightaway two blocks. Watch out for the divot in the middle of the road midway down.

Turn right just before the W&OD Trail and run downhill on Railroad Avenue. Circle the telephone pole at the end of that dead-end road and return. Not quite halfway yet. (Right: Looking up RR Avenue from the dead end. The W&OD Trail is off to the right.)

Come back up RR Avenue, always thinking about pace here. Faster turnover, work it, work it! Watch for the other divot in the roadway to the left near the turn back onto the two-block straightaway.

Pound down the straightaway towards the stop sign with lungs bursting. I'm always gasping audibly here from oxygen depletion. Make the last turn onto the street where I live.

Try to use the hill I labored up three minutes ago. Cut the slight curves in the road to fashion the straightest line down the roadway, going from curb to curb. Traffic behind me? That's not a problem because it's infrequent and slow. Besides, they all know this grey-haired old fool goes sprinting by here often enough.

There's my house. Dash past it towards the "mile marker" at the end, the dumpster in the strip mall parking lot a block beyond.

I allow myself a glance at my watch. It's already past 6:30. Come on, come on! My standard for a good one-mile run is anything under seven minutes. Push it, push it! Yesterday was 7:29! (Left: The final stretch. Heading past my house on the left towards the dumpster a block further on.)

The dumpster, the dumpster! Slap it and I'm done. I push the watch stop button. 6:51. Alright!

These are the solitary mile runs I do that helped me at the end of Disney last year, when desperate weariness forced me out of my head into some ethereal place. I transported myself back home to the top of my driveway, and in my mind I ran my neighborhood mile for the last mile. The comfort of being with an old friend that last mile helped me bring Disney home in under four hours. (Below: My number at the WDWM in 2006 was 4790. Only I wasn't in Orlando crossing the finish mats at the moment captured in the photo, I was at home finishing a comfortable old run.)

[Only someone cynical would say that by substituting the "speed work" of my neighborhood mile this morning for the LSD I told myself I'd do when I went to bed last night, I was merely being lazy.]