One Day at a Time...

This achilles tendon issue is getting frustrating. It's now been two weeks since I've run and I'm beginning to feel a bit irratible (probably due to a lack of endorphins). I managed to get out on my bike twice this week, for a total of about 27 miles, but my rear end is not nearly as tough as it once was and I simply couldn't sit on that seat a third day this week.

Generally the tendon has felt pretty good, although every now and then it would start throbbing (but not badly) for no apparent reason. When I've worn a sock it's felt pretty good in the morning, but last night I didn't wear one and it was pretty stiff when the alarm went off this morning.

So this week the plan is to ride my bike as much as I can then do a 4-6 mile test run this weekend. I'm also willing to put it off another week if I don't feel ready. To do the 50K I'll probably need to get my long run over 20 miles by the end of April - but I'm getting nervous, my longest run since February 29 (when I last ran 20) was only the 13.1 mile half-marathon. So the prospects of simply doing 20 miles again after having 3 weeks completely off don't look great. I've read, though that running a certain distance will "immunize" yourself to that distance for up to 2 months, but we'll see.

Sweet Gadgetry

Generally speaking, I'm not a gadget guy. I never had the internet until I went to college and didn't have a cell phone until 2003. I still have never sent a text message. But this gadget is something different.
My running watch has been on its last legs for some time. Ever since I had the battery replaced last summer it's been a little glitchy; it sometimes resets itself for no apparent reason, one of the buttons has completely stopped working and the heart rate monitor feature gives sketchy data at best. So I decided it was time for a replacement.

Initially I had planned to replace it with the same watch, however Timex no longer makes a comparable model that is not already packaged with it's peripherals (heart rate monitor and GPS device). And to buy one with the peripherals (which I already have) would be around $250. So I decided to look elsewhere and give myself a bit of an upgrade. After checking out some reviews from Runner's World I settled on the Garmin Forerunner 305, and Amazon had it for about 40% off of the suggested retail.

It came on Friday and it killed me that I was resting my legs (my achilles more specifically) and wouldn't be able to take it out on the trails for a couple weeks. The instructions were a bit overwhelming - there's features on this watch that I will probably never use, but would be useful should I want to change my training regimine.

So yesterday I took it out on my bike. And it's a good thing I did, because about 3 miles in I had a freak accident. I was on Marble Street in downtown Mechanicsburg and had just crossed Market Street. As usual I stood up in my pedals and accelerated hard up the hill - there's no shoulder there and if a car has to wait for me I should at least be moving fast - and suddenly I was doing a reverse wheelie with my rear wheel no longer attached to the frame, only hanging by the chain. I managed to land back on the rear wheel safely (how, I will never know) and pulled off the the side. It looked like I simply didn't tighten the quick-release skewer properly when I rotated my tires and cleaned my chain last week. So all was well and good, but my cyclocomputer decided to start freaking out during the process. So the Forerunner became the odometer of record.

The Forerunner performed well through the ride, but the really great part was when I got home and plugged it into my computer. I saw a map of my ride, a graph showing speed, pace, heart rate, elevation, and grade. It was awesome! It told me things I never knew - like the highest point of my ride was 547 feet above sea level (today it was 611) and my maximum heart rate on that ride was 173 beats per minute. There are also ways to look at this data that I haven't used yet - on websites like motionbased.com and mapmyrun.com. I can't wait to get this out on the trails! I'm pretty sure I'll have it with me for the Finger Lakes Fifties!

Rest Up!

-that is the new Lorow family mantra. Beth is coming down with a cold, and absolutely can't miss work (until April 14) so she's doing her best to rest, consume vitamin C and take it easy (when she's not working like a madwoman at Messiah College).

And I'm growing increasingly concerned about my Achilles Tendon. (If you continue reading, I'll assume you haven't heard enough about this yet.) It's been nagging for about a month now and I managed to nurse it through the half marathon, however I paid for that in the days following. I haven't run a step since Saturday and today it's beginning to feel better - which is good, but I don't want to rush things - look what happened to this poor soul.

Yes, those stories are scary - but I take solace in that my injury is not nearly the severity of what is described in that post. I have had stiffness in the morning, sometimes a little soreness during the day especially near the end of a medium to long run (6 miles or more). But no swelling.

I did some research about this injury and based on information from Scott Jurek's blog and the contributers to Kevin Sayer's site (see Ultra Runner's Resource to your right) I think I can be back to full speed in about a month's time. First of all, I've quit icing and started wearing a sock at night. Since there is no swelling, ice only will decrease the blood flow to the injured area. I need more blood flow to delivery protein and other healing nutrients to the affected site, and I can do that by keeping the area warm. Also, I'll stick to my supplementation routine using L-lysine vitamins C & E and glucosamine. I'm also considering some other amino acid/protein options that I'm still considering. Regardless, I'll be drinking lots of milk. Chocolate, please.

This week I'm off. I'll do some core work but that's it. Starting next week I'll try to be on my bike regularly. From then on I will play it by ear. While this might affect my plans for the Finger Lakes Fifties 50K in July, I figure if I can get in another 20-mile run by April 19, and won't need to take any additional time off, I should be fine. I think worst-case scenario for me at this point will be to have to run the 25K instead of the 50K.

Finally, you'll see to your left that I've removed the JFK 50 from my "possible future races" list. Registration for that race opens July 1 and it fills up in just a few days, and I won't be ready to make my decision on that race so early. So it looks like my first 50-miler will probably have to wait until 2009.

Chambersburg Half Marathon Race Report

When I see the phrase "rolling" to describe a race course I get a little nervous. Because one runner's idea of "rolling" is another's idea of "mountainous." For example, on the Saturday before New Year's Day I ran "The Last Mile" in Duncannon. It was a described as a "rolling" five-mile course. And it was rolling. Once you got to the top of the mountain the course was rolling. So when I saw the course of the Chambersburg Half Marathon described as "rolling" I was ready for the worst.

I did get a good omen, however when I picked up my race packet because I got number 131 - a half marthon is 13.1 miles. The weather was nearly perfect for distance running. It was in the mid-forties with light winds. I was dressed almost exactly the same as I was for the Harrisburg Marathon last year - red shorts, long sleeve North Face zip-up performance tee, black worn out gloves and my Brooks Glycerin 4 running shoes - for whom this would probably be their last race (I've already begun breaking in my sparkling new Glycerin 5's).

One major difference was that I was wearing a pair of the very unique Injinji Tetrasock. And if you just clicked on that link you noticed that these are "toe socks". The idea is that separating toes will prevent the toes from rubbing against each other and reduce blisters. I have to say, they worked great! Very rarely do I run more than 10-12 miles without developing a new blister-often between my first and second toe or on the bottom of my left pinky." But after this race I was pretty much blister-free (except for a few that I had developed two weeks ago on the Appalachian Trail).

As promised, the race course was rolling. The hills were moderate; no mountains like "The Last Mile" although some were pretty steep, there weren't any that made me want to walk back to the start and quit running forever.

My goal for this race was 2 hours. This would require a pace slightly slower than a nine-minute mile, so that's the pace I chose to give myself a couple minutes of "wiggle room". The first mile was done in 8:20 - a little fast but not so fast that I risked blowing up early. So my pace remained pretty steady for the first 7-8 miles. I was consistently getting to each mile marker between 30 and 60 seconds early.

After mile eight Beth was waiting at her chosen spectator's spot next to an aid station. So I slowed to a walk to get in as much water as I could to wave and report to her that I was still on pace. When I started running again I ran alongside a Tim Twietmeyer look-a-like in an orange jacket. I didn't catch his name, but he mentioned he was from Lancaster and shuddered a little when I mentioned I'd be running a 50K in July, so he couldn't have been Twietmeyer (besides, why would a 27-time finisher of The Western States 100-mile Endurance Run-every time under 24 hours-and California native travel all the way to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania for a half marathon?). So I chatted with him for all of the ninth mile and when I took my walk break at the mile marker I realized that I had lost over a minute on that relatively flat mile and it was going to take some work to recover my pace.

It might be debatable weather my conversation with the Twietmeyer's twin actually slowed me down at all in the long run. We ran at a pretty relaxing pace that mile after I had run those first eight miles pretty hard so that extra recovery might have been just what I needed to pick it up a little in the last couple miles. Or perhaps that bit of a slow down actually cost me the time I lost slowing it down a bit and it wasn't ever really recovered.

Regardless, I shortened my walk breaks at markers nine and ten to 30 seconds and skipped them all together at miles 11 and 12 (althoug I probably would have skipped 12 regardless). After 12 miles my watch read 1:50:24, so I had 9:36 to run 1.1 miles. So I picked it up a bit-I was helped a bit by drafting the woman in front of me the last half mile or so-and no, I didn't act like a jerk and speed by her to cross the line first - I let her finish ahead of me and I crossed the line in 1:59:14 - just 46 seconds to spare.

At first glance 1:59 should make me a little nervous about making a 4 hour marathon in September - I couldn't imagine running that 13.1 mile course maintaining that same 9 minute mile pace I did for that race. However, Erie will be a vastly different course. Presque Isle is a pancake-flat state park with a 13.1 mile loop. There's nothing "rolling" about it. I will also hopefully have the advantage of being healthier (my achilles tendon was flaring up a bit at the end of the race and that evening) and being better trained. (It will be hard to truly "race" at the Finger Lakes 50K - so it will serve as an excellent training run.)

So this week I won't probably won't be running at all. I need to get my achilles tendon healthy enough to tolerate at least a few 40-50 mile weeks. I've managed to keep it under control in order to run Chambersburg, but now I have enough time to really rest it up and get it to 100%

A Re-Discovery

On Wednesday I quit listening to talk radio at the office in the morning and started listening to some of my CDs that I had brought in from home. Some of them were ten or more years old. Brilliant! They provided just the right level of mental activity to balance with my work that I got so much done! It worked so well that yesterday I grabbed a bunch more.


This morning I rediscovered this little beauty:

The now-defunct Havalina Rail Company's Russian Lullabies. What a great album! Released in 1997 under lead-singer's Matt Wignall's now-defunct Jackson-Rubio Recordings label, it was Havalina' attempt to create Eastern European folk music without ever having listened to Eastern European folk music. The album is long out of production, however you can download it from Havalina's website for free ("because we record music that should be listened to").


Havalina has long been among my favorite bands (up there with P.O.D. [see below] and the now-defunct Five Iron Frenzy), so I was sad to see their demise. I hope Wignall's new project, "Matt Death and the New Intellectuals" lives up to the legacy of Havalina, "the last true punk band in America." (I would love to ask Wignall what his definition of 'true punk' is!)

Question: Have you ever read a blog entry that used the phrase "now-defunct" more than this one? I didn't think so.

Also, I discovered today that P.O.D. will be releasing a new album, When Angels & Serpents Dance on April 8. (When you think to yourself, "it's been a while since _____ has released a new album," it pays to check their website.) Also, if you pre-order from payableondeath.com by March 16 you will receive a special edition booklet (whatever that means) and your name will be placed on the Warrior Wall (um, hooray?).

Finally, today I said a sad, er... okay not so sad goodbye to the Delta Dental offices at Ritter Road. While I'll miss my friends who are still in the Quality Assurance department, I am looking forward to working in my new (larger) cubicle in New Cumberland with a window in view and a regular glance at something that is not colored gray. So come Monday morning I'll have a longer commute, but much better scenery!

Jury Duty...

Monday afternoon I got an interesting piece of mail. My parents had forwarded me a summons from the Moss Justice Center in York County, South Carolina to report for jury duty on March 31. Just one problem: I haven't lived in South Carolina for five years!

How can this be? Either York County does a poor job of updating it's voter rolls (might I be able to vote twice this year? - not that there's a candidate worth voting twice for...) or the courthouse has done an awful job of maintaining it's pool of potential jurors. I remember turning in my South Carolina driver's license to Penn DOT when I moved to Harrisburg - isn't there some kind of communication between the states when this sort of thing happens? I remember the State of New York acting quickly to confirm that my family had moved to South Carolina in order to remove them from voter rolls and recover their New York license plates.

I just find it a little Bizarre, that's all.

Soaked!

They say March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, but this year it seems it's coming in like a fish. It's only the 8th and we've already had nearly five inches of rain. Which should be no surprise, since we had over three times the normal precipitation for the month of February. I still hold some solace, though knowing that winter will be over in about two weeks and warmer temperatures are on the way - a warm rain is far better than a cold one.

After taking most of this week off from running to let my sore legs heal I decided to take a risk and instead of using the treadmill at Messiah's Fitness Center, I went out for a little over an hour during what I perceived to be a break in the rain. And the first five miles were misty, even a littly drizzly, but generally weren't bad. But then it started raining more heavily and I got soaked. I logged 6.9 miles today, enough for me to top 10 miles for the week - half of what I normally consider "minimal." Hopefully by April the rain will subside, the temperatures will warm up and my legs will heal so I can get back to running a normal training schedule.

1100 miles and two bags of cinnamon licorice

This weekend Beth and I went on our (practically) impromptu vacation to see her parents in Myrtle Beach. Dave and Linda had rented a two-bath two-bedroom condo in Surfside Beach for the week and invited us to come down for a few days. So Saturday morning we left behind a carpet of freshly fallen snow in Mechanicsburg and 9 1/2 hours later we were basking in the 52-degree sunshine of South Carolina.

We enjoyed two and a half days of beach combing, shopping, and mini golf (Beth won the first round (Mt. Atlanticus) and I won the second (Jungle Lagoon) --with a 37, including THREE holes-in-one!). Not to mention some delicious dinners at the Sea Captain, The House of Blues and Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville (and no, the hardest drink I had was coca-cola). If you really want to see the highlight of the meals check Beth's Blog in the next few days to see a photo of her enjoying her meal at Margaritaville.

I managed to fit in two short runs on Sunday and Tuesday mornings (3 and 3.6 miles respectively) that I took pretty slow. I can tell my run on Friday did a little damaged to my achilles tendon, but I'm still confident that by taking it easy the next two weeks and with a little ice and appropriate nutritional supplementation (glucosamine, l-lysine and a high-protein diet) I should have no trouble running in Chambersburg on the 15th. My Achilles might not be 100%, but it hasn't affecting my running that much, I just notice it's pretty tender when I'm not running (especially if I do something that really stresses my calves - like the virtual jumprope in the arcade at the NASCAR Speedpark).

Dave and Linda both wanted us to stay a few more days (or at least that's what they said) but unfortunately, we have responsibilities here we have to take care of - Beth has mountains of work to do at Messiah and I'll be in charge of youth group tomorrow night. So while we would have loved to enjoy the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle a while longer, the real world demands a bit more of us.