When 13.1 Counts

Before

I ran the Rock 'n' Roll Chicago Half Marathon on July 22nd.

Chicago's summer has been scorching, and thank god it wasn't 100 degrees out - but in the upper 70s and mid-80s at start, it wasn't exactly chilly.

I'd messed up my training regimen but good, peaking a month before.
I hadn't run in over two weeks, thanks to painful sunburns.
And I had an inguinal hernia, which I was scheduled to have surgery on, four days after the race. I had pledged to stop immediately if that started bothering me.

So clearly, I took it easier than I would have otherwise, and my performance, overall, sucked: 2:53:06, with a pace of 13:13/mile.
I tried to run with good form, and had moderate success there, I guess, but when finishing minutes from the three-hour mark didn't feel too great.

During the race, I felt like crap, and wanted to stop near-constantly, questioning why the hell I was doing it in the first place.
And I really did not push myself, and that's depressing.

Good thing I really didn't care much. I ran and walked the damn thing, and was glad it was over. For the first time, I tested out the new Garmin Forerunner Mary had bought me as a belated birthday gift.

But at least by not giving a damn, I got some cool pictures:

Columbus Drive, over the river

State and Wacker

State Street

Everybody walking because, you know, screw it.
And heat exhaustion.

Heading back east again.
Right after the SCREW THIS, NEVER RUNNING AGAIN moment.

I guess we're running again?

LaSalle street - AKA where The Dark Knight filmed half the movie.

Turning south. Sure, torture us some more.

Approaching McCormick Place

Back to Lake Shore Drive and the Lakefront Path

Heading south on the lake

Overheating, thank you sponge.

Nobody felt like rocking out.

On Lake Shore Drive, nearly done

Achievement, Setback

On July 10th, I decided to go on a bike ride with Mary.
Mary used to ride extensively in Merced, probably more than a hundred miles a week.
I hadn't ridden a bike in over two years, but the weather was incredibly nice, and we wanted to spend the day outside and be on the Lakefront path for a bit.

We rented a pair of bicycles from the center at Millennium Park, and just went.

When we started, the plan had been to head south on the Lakefront Path and head back. We got to the south side, though, along 63rd Street Beach, and we could see Indiana a bit off in the distance. I was feeling really strong, and Mary was barely exerting herself.
I suddenly thought - could be bike THERE?

So we did.

Border monument

We'd ridden down the Lakefront Path to the end, then took (terrifying) side streets through the less-nice parts of South Shore (where the roads were beat to hell and we could hear gunshots nearby) to Calumet Park, then the service road to the State Line. There was the monument and a shuttered power plant, and not much else.

Southern portion of the ride, at the start of the Lakefront Path

Then we rode back to the start of the Lakefront Path, and another crazy idea struck - now could we rode the entire path?

So we did, with a struggle.

I'd eaten a good amount of pasta before the ride, but Mary had barely eaten anything - and since we'd started the ride with the anticipation of just riding enough to get our day pass money's worth (about four hours), I suddenly got hit with hunger pangs. Despite my having four 8oz bottles, I was low on water, too. Problem was, all of the beach snack shops were closed on the South Side, being a Tuesday and not super hot outside, so by 63rd Street, I was peddling quite slowly compared to an hour before, and resorting to sucking on lozenges to create some more saliva.

Thankfully, 31st street beach had their shop open, and I had the best tasting hot dog and slushie, and so did Mary. I was surprised, since she hadn't complained at all and seemed to be going strong, but apparently she was feeling it more than I'd known. I guess two gels wasn't enough for a 1500-calorie burn.

Well worth the hundreds of calories

We rode past downtown, past Navy Pier, and continued north.

We got to the end of the Path...

...when again, a brilliant idea hit - Evanston was just three miles further: could we ride the ENTIRE length of Chicago?

So we did.

Like a boss

 By this time, we were getting tired. We'd been riding or out and about since about 8:45AM, it was nearing 4PM, and lunch was starting to sound better and better.
This time, when the idea hit - could we ride back downtown? - NO was the answer.

Really, the exhaustion wasn't the problem - rather, the sun.

Guess which arm is whose.

Mary had just gotten back from California and could deal with the sun, more or less.
Me, on the other hand - I work overnight, and am, for all intents and purposes, nocturnal. I rarely see the sun midday, for as long as I did... and we had not brought sunscreen. It wasn't as if I totally blanked - I realized we'd forgotten it nearly immediately, walking down the street to the el, but decided it wasn't that big of a deal.

Turns out it was. Sitting on the beach at 4PM, we realized that it hurt to sit in the sunlight.
Actually, when the sun hit, our skin felt like it had burst into flames.

Oops

My first second-degree sunburn.
By 9PM, Mary and I had to leave trivia night at a bar, because I was so tired and my arms hurt. I woke up the next day and couldn't walk. The searing went down the length of my leg - when the muscles contracted at all, they exploded. Standing up was excruciating, and so my other day off was wasted sitting miserably at home.
The next day, I nearly called off work - they thought I was nuts and making it up.
Until they saw my hands, blistering over. They stopped laughing then.

The next two weeks were torture. I couldn't rest normally, since my legs and arms were burned precisely where I rested on them, so I couldn't get the sleep I so desperately needed. Just putting on my suit uniform was painful, and typing hurt badly. I continually sprayed myself with aloe, which would help with the pain momentarily, and then the pain would blow up again.

I didn't even get the worst of it - at least my back was covered. Mary had ridden with her back uncovered, and by the third day, she was covered with painful welts... I'll spare the details, but it was horrible.

Worst of all, since walking was a struggle, I couldn't run at all - and the Half Marathon approached, not two weeks ahead.

Riding the length of Chicago, on the lake, was a tremendous achievement.
We didn't know anyone else who'd done it....
But I'm not sure it was worth the pain and legitimate suffering it caused us.

It also was the first event in a chain of several that resulted in me eventually not caring about fitness and diet for a short time.

It's now more than a month and a half later, and I STILL have the remnants of the burn on my arms. 
Nocturnal folks: wear sunscreen.

State of Being Since Early July

Collins World English Dictionary

impasse 

- n

 a situation in which progress is blocked; an insurmountable difficulty; stalemate; deadlock

When 13.1 Doesn't Count

I ran 13.1 miles - a half marathon - for the first time the other day.
I wanted to prove that I'd be physically capable of running the full distance of the  Chicago Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon in about two weeks.

But I ran it on a treadmill - and in my mind, that doesn't count.
Running it indoors was nothing like running a half marathon outside. 

Even if the distance is the same... it's not.
Despite trying to replicate normal conditions as best as possible - running with the exact same clothes and hydration belt - it felt too different.

After: "Meh"

Inside, it was 70 degrees. Fans going above. I had a TV on. I put unused headphones in holders, instead of carrying them. I drenched myself with water twice in the bathroom. I didn't have to worry about twisting ankles jumping off of curbs. My knees weren't a problem.The only way I could tell I'd run the full distance was watching the LED ticker on the screen. I had a foam roller ready for immediate use afterward.

Outside, it was 105 degrees and sunny, a blast furnace.

Running 13.1 for the first time should produce jubilation.
Barely feels like an accomplishment.

I have no clue if I'm going to be able to even finish this upcoming half - even with low impact, I stopped completely about eight or nine times.
Hell, at this point, if this weather keeps up the way it's been lately, it might get canceled.

I'd never run more than five minutes on the treadmill before. After the dissatisfaction of that run, I don't plan on making it a regular habit, if I can avoid it.


Also learned:
Gatorade powder mixed full strength with water is delicious and effective against burnout. 
Gatorade powder at 1/4 the proscribed strength against water is disgusting.

Shrinkage

This might be my favorite picture of myself in years, for a very simple reason:

I'm wearing a men's size medium shirt. It fits.
At least in workout clothes from Target, and t-shirts from Old Navy, I'm there.
Down three sizes from xxl. 
Considering I'm about an inch and a half under six feet tall, I can't imagine I'll ever fit into a men's small - so this is likely the last smaller shirt size I achieve.

As for pants:

Not as good a picture.

Down to a size 32 waist, down from 42.

I donated almost all of my oversize clothes yesterday. I had way more than I had expected:

12 full bags, with a conservative estimate of about 30 pieces in each bag... over 350 articles of clothing out the door.

Now I'm wondering if I'll need to get rid of all my large shirts, too.

Weighing and Tracking

Some people find it counterproductive to weigh-in daily... I take to the other extreme: I weigh myself twice daily. On two different scales each time.
Immediately before sleeping in the morning, and right after waking up at night, I jump on the scales, see where I'm at, and record the results.

Using two scales might seem like overkill, but it's a habit now. The first I've had for months, whereas the second is also a bodyfat scale. Since I've had scales that have gotten out of whack without warning in the past, I can compare the results and ensure they're still more or less precise. 
Weighing twice daily shows how my actions, such as how I ate, drank, and either lased about or beat the hell out of myself, impacted body weight since the last weigh-in, though I'm aware (and the results have confirmed) sometimes it takes several days for those results to be shown.

I've found that weighing twice a day keeps me accountable to my plan - and as the saying goes, "What's measured is managed." I don't think I'd fly off the rails completely without weighing constantly, but it's a fear.
Strangely, weighing-in has become one of my favorite moments of my day. I actively look forward to it when I think I'm going to hit a milestone, and hope I didn't do as badly as anticipated when I screw up. I'm disappointed when I'm not home to weigh-in, and I've even lugged the older scale along with me when I've slept elsewhere for a night or two.

But probably my favorite part is my monthly analysis of my results, comparing and contrasting progress.
I'm a very visual person, so seeing trends drawn out helps, and so I created a series of very simple graphs from the data I've recorded so far, from February to June, 2012.
Hopefully it's not just interesting to me alone.

First, the monthly daily data:

 

When combined:

Obviously, there are daily fluctuations which seem to throw things off - so I enjoy taking the time to break it down a bit more into trends.

If I only weighed weekly, my results would look like this:

Saturday chosen because I weighed-in most consistently on that day

But I DON'T do that, because if before weighing-in I had, for example, a particularly rough day or an intense run, it could throw off the results of a full week and short-change me. 

Eventually, I probably will get to the point where I'm comfortable only jumping on the scale - but I'm not there yet.

And I've found not thinking of weight in terms of daily numbers, but in terms of weekly average, can be very helpful to void out outlier results:

And finally, figuring out how well I did each week:

Maybe my favorite part: 16 weeks of straight loss; five consecutive of at least a pound a week. 

Apparently I'm doing something right.

Running on the Hottest Night of the Year: Summer Successes and Challenges

Summer continues to beat me down, and it seems like every time I have a successful moment, I have a disappointment to match.

I ran 11.7 miles tonight in 2:16:59:

Only the best paint-drawn graphics for this blog

I ran from my area, Logan Square, down Milwaukee to Wicker Park, east on Division (through a somewhat actively dangerous area formerly known as Cabrini Green) until Lake Shore drive. I ran past my aunt's old condo, down Michigan Avenue, past my favorite radio station, over the river, and continued past Grant Park to Roosevelt. I then took Roosevelt west to Halsted on the UIC campus, and headed north on Halsted to Milwaukee. I finally stopped at Division, and took the CTA home.

11.7 miles - that's a new personal best, in terms of length. The previous limit was 11 miles.
Considering I hadn't done a long run in a few weeks (I kind of stopped for a while there), I'm happy with that.
 
I attempted to maintain decent form, particularly keeping with 160 steps per minute. I did okay with that, and tried to keep my back straight, which worked well, until the end. It seemed that having better form improved my balance, and I didn't have any issues with tripping or ankles, which was nice! Landing midfoot still felt damn-near impossible, but when my knees started hurting more, I tried harder, with mixed results.

I also ran because I WANTED to, ran to improve my form, and ran to experience more of the city. I didn't just do it because I thought it'd help me lose some weight, or something like that.

One of the things I stopped to see: Hubbard's Cave, where a tunnel carrying 90/94 (Dan Ryan) inexplicably has a gap in the ceiling, which is actually a few semi-trailer parking lots.
Note: it is awesome.

And having a fairly crap pace, 11:42/mile, didn't bother me much this time.


So, several successes.


But there are a ton of things about this run that I'm completely unhappy with - and they seriously concern me.

Least concerning, I apparently didn't eat enough, again. Eating a cup and a half of wheat pasta two hours before the run held me over, but at the 1.5 hour mark, I started getting fairly hungry, and the gel didn't offset it. I didn't hit the wall with exhaustion due to hunger, but it certainly annoyed me.

The issue I've been struggling with forever came up again: stopping - for water, to avoid knee pain, and for exhaustion.
During the run, I stopped about eight times, for about 45 minutes total. Sometimes just to look at something, once to try to see what was going on at WGN radio (I'm a nerd), and a few times to take it easy.
Because it was a practice run, the stops didn't bother me that much, and it made the run much less painful, though it got pretty damn so by the end.
But I know that, in those conditions, there is no way I could have run that distance without stopping at least three or four times.
My half is in three weeks... it won't feel great if I need to stop eight times. Hell, I might not even finish within the proscribed time limit and before they break down the course. That'd be a huge embarrassment. I don't even know if I'd want to finish - just DNF me.

Much more worrying, the heat affects me like crazy.
When I started the run, it was in the mid-80s with very high humidity. I'd considered running topless for the first time but ultimately didn't - I realized that if I got desperate and had to take a cab or train home, or had to jump into a store to buy something, I might not get served; plus, the belt made me look like total crap without a shirt, and the drunken Wicker Park denizens I was sure to encounter wouldn't appreciate the view. I also forgot any sort of hat, so sweat started pouring down my face from the start. I did learn a nice trick to keeping your face cool: put your hands in the hair in the back of your head, which almost assuredly is drenched, then rub the sweat all over your face. Not the most pleasant, but it seemed to work.
At almost exactly 3 miles into the run, I overheated to the point of potential danger. Though I'd not really been pushing myself too hard, my body temperature had exploded and the air felt like it was in the mid-100s. I was having issues breathing, and I couldn't take another step. I had to walk into a convenience store (along with several cops discussing a robbery with the store clerk I'd apparently just missed - what luck!) and grab a drink, or give up completely.

Then, hilariously, I was freezing after I'd stopped a few times downtown. The temperature there had dropped to the mid-70s, and my body temperature had regulated. While I wasn't shivering, I was extremely uncomfortable, and for the first time understood why ultrarunners wrap themselves up after a race.

Maybe worst of all: I'm experiencing serious hydration issues.

Amphipod RunLite Airstretch 4 Hydration Belt

Tired of lugging around a water bottle which made pumping my arms awkward, I bought a hydration belt today. It's pretty sick.


I chose the option with the most water - 32 ounces. Supposedly this model is designed for those training for a marathon, and should be enough to satiate one's thirst during a run.
Unfortunately, almost immediately, it became clear 32 ounces would be NOWHERE near enough water for that run. Knowing the conditions I'd face, I had taken care ahead of time, and made sure to drink plenty of fluids the day before and all night beforehand. We're talking two to three full nalgene bottles tonight and four yesterday. Not nearly enough.
 During the run, I killed a 20 ounce gatorade, and 16 more ounces of extra water  - the liquids I obtained and drank along the way were 6 OUNCES MORE THAN WHAT I WAS CARRYING, and hey, I drank those bottles, too.
Instead of being okay with 32 ounces, I drank 68. After hydrating yesterday and the hours before running. Plus I almost asked the guys spraying plants on Michigan Avenue to hose me down.
I don't, really do not, understand how people run without feeling parched continually, without feeling like they're going to pass out from thirst, when out in this heat. I know in a race setting, it'll be easier, having aid stations, but it feels ridiculous to have to drink so much more than the average runner.

And this is kind of gross, but I'm fairly certain a toenail is about to fall off. Cool, man.


So... I will tough it out, and hope that summer ends quickly. Good thing this isn't the hottest Illinois summer in 24 years!

I might be the only runner I know who's hoping winter comes around sooner rather than later.

Bad Form Running

The pictures from three recent races prove it:

I have awful, terrible running form.

I've been working on trying to improve my running form for a while, but attending a Good Form Running clinic at Fleet Feet on Sunday made me realize I have quite a long way to go.

As the first two pictures demonstrate, I heel-strike like crazy. Now, these pictures were taken at the end of the races, when I was sprinting, so it's probably exaggerated (I hope). Landing on my midfoot is something I need to work on and be much more mindful of. My shoes (Brooks Adrenaline GTS 12s) have a good deal of support (I tend to overpronate and have terribly weak ankles), so it may be tough for me to make the change successfully. 

As the third plainly shows, I have a fairly long stride, and seem to float in the air between steps. The seminar taught that the number of steps per minute should be 180. I knew I wasn't near that, but I had no clue how slow I was running - I tested myself with a natural stride earlier, and found I normally ran around 130 steps per minute. Frankly, I have no idea how I'm going to increase by pace by 50 BPM, especially since I don't run with music, which could keep me paced equally throughout.

Since I often run at night, or run on sidewalks and streets strewn with potholes and gaps that I fear tripping on, I look down immediately in front of my feet and lean forward, so my posture is terrible and I don't lean the right way.


Perhaps worst of all are my knee problems. When I get going on a longer run (or hell, even a shorter one), my knees lock and my legs straighten out, which sends shock up through the rest of my body. But since my knees are screwed up, bending them almost always seriously hurts, starting after around mile six or seven. I asked the seminar instructor how I should deal with this problem, and she answered exactly how I feared: that is NOT normal. Talk to a doctor. You might need physical therapy. [or surgery]
And so I'm afraid that despite whatever else I do, my knees will keep me from running success.

Essentially I look like this:

In any case, the most crucial thing I realized from attending the seminar is that it's necessary to practice running, like with any sport. Form has been something I figured I could change as I did my planned routines... but now, I'm going to try to run for the purpose of improving my form. In small doses, a mile or two, I'll go out and just focus on nailing as many positive aspects of form as possible.

In terms of learning how to practice, and improve my form, my timing *might* be perfect:
I already anticipate that my pace for the Half in less than a month will be terrible, and I'm just worried about finishing, so I'm not pushing myself that hard in the weeks leading up to it; and immediately after the Half, four days later, I will be out of commission, unable to run for at least a month.
In essence, I'll need to relearn how to train efficiently again altogether... I might as well learn correctly, this time.

Hopefully, I can eventually look like this:

We'll see what happens.