Country Music Half Marathon

This weekend Melissa and I ran the Country Music Half Marathon in Nashville, TN (there is also a full marathon, but so far I'm only half crazy). The race was 13.1 miles of hills. I thought KC was hilly, but Nashville is crazy hilly. As soon as you finish climbing one hill, another one starts going up. There are some downhills, but I'm convinved we did more climbing than descending. I haven't looked at the race's elevation chart, so I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it sure seemed that way.

Overall, the race went well. It was supposed to be really rainy, and I was very worried we'd have s repeat of my first tri last August, which was cancelled due to lightning. It did rain overnight, but when we got up and out of the hotel it was dry, and it stayed that way.

The downside to overnight rain was the humidity. Being from KC I'm no stranger to humidity, but I haven't had much chance to train in it, and it made for a sweaty, sticky run. It's been a long time (since last August, at least) that I've been in this kind of humidity. When we got off the shuttle back at the hotel, I quite enjoyed the high heat and humidity (I love the heat), but it made racing much more difficult.

I started the race keeping up with the 2:30 pace group, which, in retrospect, was quite ambitious for me. I haven't been able to train much recently because of long work hours and general laziness on my part, and I could tell at the race. I kept up with the pace group for 1.25 miles, then had to stop and walk.

For the next mile and a half or so, I had random run/walk intervals, but finally found something comfortable in mile 3. At 2.9 miles, I started running, intending to run 1/10 of a mile and walk 1/10 at mile three. When I hit mile 3 though I was feeling pretty good and told myself "Just go to 3.1 before you walk, then you'll only have 10 miles left." Yeah. "Only" 10 miles left. 

I did manage to run to 3.1, then I walked to 3.25, then ran to 3.5, walked to 3.6, ran to 3.8, walked to 3.9, then ran to 4.1. I kept up with those intervals until mile 8. They helped the miles go by faster and easier, which was the goal.

At mile 8, my walk breaks started extending and my runs started becoming shorter. The longest I ever ran in training was 6 miles, so after the extra 2 miles my body was like "Dude! You are the stupidest stupid person ever to grace the planet with their stupidity! What are you doing?" Unfortunately, I listened to my body and let the walk breaks extend.

At mile 11.5, I finally decided I was done running for the day until the finish line. I started running a bit at 11.5, but couldn't keep it up for more than 0.02 miles. I had a small blister on a toe on my left foot, both feet generally just hurt, and my right knee ached something fierce (not an uncommon problem for me - my knees have always given me problems), so I decided I was going to walk until I got near to the finish line and then run across it.

This actually ended up being a great decision. At around mile 11.75, another member of Team RWB pulled up mext to me and we started talking. We were both in our Team RWB shirts, making it easier to identify each other. She was from LA, and did 10 half marathons last year. She was super excited that this was my first half marathon, and we had a good conversation over the last mile in. I told her that if she wanted to run on ahead, she didn't have to wait for me, but she said she wanted to cross the line with me since it was my first one.

I really enjoyed talking to Deedra (might not be the right spelling) for the last mile. It was kind of unusual for me - I'm not a people person and usually find conversations with strangers very uncomfortable, but this was relaxed and easy, likely because we're both half marathoners and belong to Team RWB.

For anyone that doesn't know, Team RWB (Red White Blue) is an orgainization dedicated to helping American veterans. I've always been pretty patriotic (I tried to serve in the Navy but was declined due to my asthma), and my cousin, who was also the best man in my wedding, had been deployed to Iraq twice, so when I found out about Team RWB it was almost a guarantee I would join. If you're interested, check out www.teamrwb.org

Almost right at mile 13, Melissa caught up with Deedra and I. Her joining us there worked out wonderfully. Once she got there, all three of us started running because the finish line was right around the corner, and we all crossed the finish line holding hands. It was a great feeling crossing with both of them.

Overall, the race was a great experience. I would have liked a faster time, but given the lack of training I'm not disappointed. I had a really good time doing it, and it's given me a baseline for the half ironman in October. This race, more than anything, has me charged up to start training again. While the running is my least favorite part of triathlon, I still enjoyed the race today. I'm very much looking forward to my next race on May 17th.

       

                                             Myself, Melissa & Deedra after the finish  

     

                                                           Myself and Deedra  

                                   

                                                             Myself and Melissa

Workouts - April 5th-11th

I didn't do much for the first three days this week. Life just kind of interfered on Monday and Wednesday, and Tuesday is typically a rest day as that's typically my day with my little brother.

I did get to the pool on Thursday. I swam 2,150 yards in 51:11. I started with 5 sets of 100 yards on a 2:15 interval, rested for a little over a minute, then did another set of 5 100s on a 2:15. After another short rest, I started a set of 2 250 yard swims on a 5:30 interval, then followed that by a 500 yard swim. 

I had intended to do 200 yards of cool-down, but after about 80 or 85 yards my right calf cramped up bad. The cramp happened in the deep end of the pool, so I was not able to just immediately stand up and put some weight on it. After treading water for 30 seconds or so, I finished out the rest of the 20 or 25 yards of the first 100 of my cool down and promptly stood up to work the cramp out. I was contemplating finishing out the last 100 yards, but my left calf started cramping up while I was standing in the shallow end and at that point I decided I was just done for the night.

Overall the swim went well. Even with the cramp at the end, I got over a mile in. I was happy with the way I responded, epsecially since it'd been awhile since I swam.

On Saturday morning I headed down to the downtown airport for a biking workout (less traffic to deal with there as opposed to the streets around my house). I did two laps of the airport, which worked out to 7.4 miles in 29 minutes and 39 seconds.

This was my first bike ride outside this year. Overall, I feel it went well. I was a bit disappointed that my overall speed was only at 15 MPH, as I was hoping for something around 16 or 17 MPH, but since this is my first ride outside I can't complain. I am faster than last year. Last year my max average speed was 13 MPH, and it typically hovered around 12.5 MPH.

There were a few things that I was actually fairly nervous about before this ride. The first thing that had me worried was how I was going to get started riding. I recently had my bike fit to me, and one of the things that changed was the height of my seat. I'm happy with the new seat position as it gives me more power, but those of you that know me know that I'm not exactly tall. Last year, I was able to straddle my seat and have my left foot on the ground. This year, with the seat raised, that's not possible, and I was worried about how I was going to get clipped into my pedals and actually start riding. I took some advice from a biking friend and instead of straddling the seat, I straddled the center post and clipped my right shoe into the pedal. I then pushed off and started going, standing on the pedal to raise myself up enough to get seated, then just started pedaling without clipping my left shoe in. I managed to clip myself into the left pedal while riding. It worked well. I took a short break between the two laps and was thus able to practice this twice, and it worked well both times.

The pedals I have on the bike now are nice. Over the winter I upgraded from Shimanos to Crank Brothers Eggbeaters. The Eggbeaters are technically mountain bike pedals, but they work very well on my road bike. They are super easy to clip into and out of. Today was my first time I used them on the actual road, and I was very impressed with them. I'll be using these for awhile.

The other thing I was nervous about was using the new aero bars. I knew from reading I'd done that controlling the bike was more difficult while on the aero bars, and I was worried about falling, especially while I was getting into and out of the aero position. This ended up not being an issue. The bike was certainly a bit harder to control from the aero position, but that makes sense since you're essentialy controlling the bike with your elbows instead of your hands. But it wasn't too bad. There was some weaving, but I think that was expected, and I never even came close to laying the bike down, even when I was switching positions.

I really liked being in the aero position, and I attribute that position to the increase in MPH from last year. I think I'm going to be spending alot of time in this position as it was pretty comfortable and allowed me to get some really good power from the pedals. 

One other point of interest to talk about regarding this ride: my new tires. I upgraded my tire to Vitorria Rubino IIIs recently and had not ridden them yet. I really liked them. They rode well, and I could tell a bit of difference from my old stock tires. 

Overall my week wasn't terribly productive workout-wise, but I was happy with the work I did get in. This week has me reenergized in terms of wanting to work out, so hopefully this next week will be a little bit better.

Getting Back at It

I know it's been awhile since I've posted here. I've been on a pretty steady diet of 50 hour weeks at work since last October, so when I was working out, by the time I got home from work and finished my work out, it was time for dinner, and by the time I finished dinner I would forget to write up a post about my workout.

Thankfully the overtime has cooled some - we're now on an alternating 40 hour week/50 hour week schedule, which is actually quite nice. I get off "early" one week, but get the extra money from ten hours of time-and-a-half pay the next week, so it's a medium I'm currently happy with.

That being said, I doubt I'm going to try to update here daily anymore. Part of my problem with updating earlier this year was that I didn't want to make a 25-word post that basically said "I worked out for 45 minutes on the trainer tonight, and it went well." I always found writing those posts an annoying waste of time, and assumed anyone reading them felt the same. So, I think I'm going to try to post on Sundays with one big post that sums up the week's efforts.

Of course, if I do have something to say outside of my workouts, like race write-ups or equipment reviews, I'll write those when I can and throw them up here outside of the once-a-week format. Now that it's finally getting warmer outside, I can start biking outside again, something I'm very much looking forward to. Not only do I have new pedals on my bike since the last time I rode it outside, I've got new tires and a set of clip-on aerobars that have yet to be tested on the road. Expect posts about all these things (except maybe the tires; we'll see if I can tell any difference and go from there).

As far as this past week goes, I was very lax with my training. I biked on the trainer for 45 minutes on Monday and got a very good workout in there, had Tuesday as a rest day (Tuesday are typically rest days for me), then ran six miles on Wednesday. I did nothing beyond that. I'd planned on swimming on Thursday, but decided mowing the lawn was more important (and it turns out, I was glad I mowed it Thursday; it rained on Friday, my back-up mow day). Friday is also typically a rest day for me, and Saturday I'd planned to bike 11 miles and run 7 1/2 miles, but the fairly cold temps coupled with the need to be done fairly early to run some errands and meet up for a friend's birthday celebration eventually convinced me to be lazy and play baseball on the Playstation instead. Sunday is usually a swimming day, but with Easter family plans I didn't even attempt to get to the pool. I don't even know if the Community Center was open on Easter or not; I knew I wasn't going to try so I didn't even bother to find out.

It was a bad week for training, but those are going to happen. Life has a way of interfering with our plans, so all I can do is accept it and do better next week.