Salem Wild Turkey 5 miler

We had decent weather for the Salem Wild Turkey Run. A little cold but no rain (or snow!). This is a big race, about 2,000 participants, so we arrived an hour before the race to get a good parking spot right off Salem Common.

Here is the gang on the Common before the race:

Aaron, Ellen, Ethan on Salem Common

I planned on running with both Aaron and Ellen, but Aaron and I lost Ellen right at the start in the big crowd. I spent part of the first mile running backwards looking for her, which turned out to be a mistake as she started faster than us and was well ahead by the end of the first mile. So Aaron and I just got into a comfortable groove. Our first mile was over 10 minutes, and we negative split it from there, ending with an 8:44 mile and a time of 47:17. Ethan happened upon his old physics teacher, Mr. Black, and they ended up dueling each other with Ethan finishing on top with a time of 38:33. Marianne continues to crush it and banged out 7 minute miles, finishing in 35:01. And, along the way, implicitly beat my 5k PR. Looks like I'll have to crack down at the Danvers 5K and run a new PR!

Here is Ethan at the finish. Aaron, Ellen and I didn't manage to get any finish line pictures as we finished in too much of a crowd.

Ethan at the finish

That's it for formal racing until Disney. I'll still run the weekly D5K, hopefully taking it easy so I don't risk injury in the runup to Disney, but I haven't yet managed such discipline. Here's hoping I get lucky.

The Weight Battle and Wild Turkey Run

Thanksgiving is going to start out fun with all 3 kids running with me in a 5 mile "Turkey Trot" in Salem. Marianne and our friend Jeff will be running it as well so it should be a good time. I'll be treating it as a training run as I'm still nervous about my calf injury (although it has felt perfectly fine for a few days now), and I will have run 8 miles about 12 hours earlier. Plus I'd like to run it with Aaron, Ellen or both. (I assume Ethan will be ahead of me in any event).

I'm pursuing my "white whale" weight loss goal, which is to weigh 175 lbs. Given that I was 163 lbs when I graduated Marine Corps OCS when I was 23, and was so lean that my mother was shocked on seeing me, 175 lbs is probably pretty close to the limit for me these days while still staying healthy. I'd love to be 175 when we head off to Disney World in January.

I started keeping track of my weight again back in July when it had started to creep back up. Here's the history since then:

I ran the Clarence DeMar marathon in September about 187 lbs. For some reason, I had a lot of nervous energy in the runup to the Harborside Half last week, which both burned calories in itself and suppressed my appetite, leading to a big drop in the space of a week. Since then I've managed to break through the 180 barrier to 179 but it's definitely hard going from here. Hopefully the return to faster training paces after the injury recovery will knock off those final few pounds.

Injury Recovery and Training Update

I was pretty sure I didn't actually pull my calf muscle at the Harborside Half Marathon, and instead just strained it. I've had this injury before on that same calf and it felt the same way. A slow tightening with some increasing pain, but something I could run through if necessary (like in a race!) In the past my recovery from it has been pretty quick, a matter of days.

I tried a couple very slow miles Tuesday evening and it felt OK- a hint of tightening that convinced me not to try anything more. Wednesday I did another very slow 3 miles with Marianne and it felt pretty good, and again on Thursday with a 5 mile run. Saturday I went 10 on a flat 5 mile loop starting from my house and had no pain, averaging a little over 9:30 per mile.

So I went ahead with a scheduled 20 mile run this morning with Marianne. We stayed with my flat 5 mile loop, with me determining the pace. Everything felt fine and we gradually worked our way into a bit over a 9:00 mile pace, which is what we had targeted for this run pre-injury. So it looks like the training program is back on track where it should be.

20 mile run in 3:05:45 for a 9:17 pace.

1. 10:08
2.   9:24
3.   9:15
4.   9:28
5.   9:32
6.   9:18
7.   9:08
8.   9:11
9.   9:13
10. 9:17
11. 9:00
12. 9:08
13. 9:14
14. 9:08
15. 9:19
16. 9:12
17. 9:02
18. 9:11
19. 9:10
20. 9:23

Shiny New 5k PR

I found out one thing last night - the increased training pace I've been running with Marianne isn't hurting my shorter races. I PR'd the 5k by 9 seconds at the weekly Danvers D5K fun run, dropping my PR to 21:39.

Five of us from the D5K will be running the Harborside Half on the 15th. This should be a lot of fun as we are all in the same ballpark time-wise for the half, and there is some friendly competition growing. Hopefully my new-found speed will at least allow me to put a scare in some people!

Training Update

A big change in my training the last few months is I've been running the longer runs and some of the pace runs with Marianne, with whom I'll be running the Disney Marathon. We are well-matched for pace (she has been a bit faster than me on race day) and complement each other well - I tend to start slow and finish fast, and her tendency is to start fast and finish a little slower. So she speeds me up at the start and I speed her up at the end, and overall, we run faster together than alone.

Today, for example, we ran 16 on the course looping around Iron Rail Park in Wenham, a run a few months ago I would have done at slower than 9 minute miles. Today we did it at an 8:39 pace without pushing it too hard (it was not a pace run, after all):

1. 9:01
2. 8:33
3. 8:29
4. 8:39
5. 8:40
6. 8:44
7. 8:37
8. 8:42
9. 8:40
10. 8:37
11. 8:24
12. 8:35
13. 8:39
14. 8:47
15. 8:36
16. 8:42

The team training has definitely made me stronger - we'll see if there is a payoff in two weeks at the Harborside Half Marathon.

Not Quite 15 miler today

After yesterday's hard 10k, I intended an easy 15 mile run today on a new 5 mile loop route I made in Beverly. By "easy" I intended 9+ minute per mile pace. The route I planned loops around Endicott College, a beautiful area with nice views of the ocean as well as of the campus. Endicott College looks like it was made as a movie set for the ideal small New England College. My dream job would be philosophy professor at Endicott.

Dawn over the beach near Endicott College

Things were going fine till mile 14 when I felt a small tweak in my right quad. I noted it, slowed down a bit, and continued. A quarter mile later I felt it again so I shut it down and walked the rest of the way in. I have no pain in that quad walking or climbing stairs. Tomorrow is a rest day, so hopefully I won't feel any more of it on my next run on Tuesday.

1.  10:38
2.    9:31
3.    9:38
4.    9:05
5.    9:08
6.    9:02
7.    9:08
8.    9:27
9.    9:30
10.  9:30
11.  9:30
12.  9:40
13.  9:51
14.  9:47

Another Look at the DeMar Marathon

 Post-race one naturally wonders whether you ran properly in a strategic sense and maybe, if you did something differently, you could have run faster. One thing that sticks in my mind is that during the first half I fell in with a group of runners all attempting to run 3:40 marathons (my goal time). We started to drift apart between miles 8 and 11, with some moving ahead of me, and some falling back. One guy moved ahead of the group, I ended up passing him at mile 25 when he stopped on the side of the road to throw up, and he later sprinted past me at the finish, finishing 2 seconds ahead of me. Another guy noted around mile 9 that we were running too fast for a 3:40 and he backed off. He gradually caught up to me and slowly passed me about mile 21. He finished in 3:39:42, so he ran a very disciplined race, holding that 3:40 pace throughout. When he noted that we were running too fast for a 3:40, that was in the first half when we were running sub 8:20 miles. I knew we were fast, but I also knew we were running downhill and I felt very comfortable at the pace; I was worried that if I slowed down I would be actively braking myself, which you shouldn't do on downhills and is just as tiring as trying to run faster. In retrospect I don't think I would have changed that.

Another interesting exercise is comparing my split times at DeMar with the times in my first marathon at Disney. I put them in a chart with Disney in blue and DeMar in green:

Marathon splits - DeMar Marathon in green, Disney 2015 in blue

Disney is very flat course and DeMar is more rolling, with significant downhills in the first half. The spike at mile 10 in Disney was stopping to visit a port-a-potty, and the spike at mile 20 was exiting the ESPN Sports Center with some congestion. The spikes at DeMar in miles 11, 20 and 23 were all hill sections. It's interesting that I ran a faster pace on miles 11 and 12 at Disney than at DeMar. Also interesting is that the second halfs for both races have a very similar shape. Steady up to mile 20, a slowdown there, recovery, then a significant slowdown in the last 5k, the slowdown at Disney being more severe than at DeMar. Perhaps what I should strive for in my next marathon is to work on smoothing out that last 5k. If I could have maintained an 8:30 pace the last 5k I would have shaved something like 50 seconds off my time.

In retrospect, I ran the race about as well as I could have and I don't think I would have changed much. I went out in 1:49:07 in the first half on a downhill course, and came back in 1:52:28 on a second half that was more challenging than the first half. The last 10k I was in a position to put up a very good time if I could hold it together, and I had not spent so much energy that I fell apart in the last 5k. After the hills in mile 23, I recovered a little and I had some hope to hold that pace to the finish, but the pain was bad enough that I was worried I might cramp up or collapse like at Disney. I slowed down, but did not collapse like at Disney. Hopefully with some more miles in the training bank and experience, I'll be able to maintain pace over the last 5k.