Franklin Chen's grain of sand

My Rachel Carson Trail hike for the year (13.4 miles): and how this is about love and gratitude

2013-05-12T22:24:40-04:00

Today I did my first hike of the year (normally I would have done hiking already in the spring, but the combination of Abby's broken foot and my Pittsburgh Marathon training this year resulted in no space for hiking until after the marathon, which I did seven days ago).

My first hike of the year just happened to turn out to be a grueling Rachel Carson Trail hike.

Last year, I reported on the two Rachel Carson Trail Challenge goal training hikes I did in late April and early June. This year, I did the fourth of eight of the year's goal training hikes offered.

Sunday, May 12
Leader: Donna Stolz 412-303-6102, Eileen Lessman 412-760-8863
13.4 miles
Elevation change: 5055 ft

“This hike begins in North Park and heads over to Emmerling Park, then up and over Rich Hill and Lefever Hill. We end at the Log Cabin Road checkpoint location. Meet at Log Cabin Road parking area. Take Route 28 to Exit #12. Turn right at the end of the ramp, then right at the stop sign onto Little Deer Creek Road (aka Russellton Road). Travel about 1.5 miles and turn right on Log Cabin Road. Park about 100 yards ahead on the right.”

As of this year, I've decided to do only one Rachel Carson Trail hike a year, so this was it.

Here is my report on the hike, as well as my long-awaited explanation of why this trail means so much to me.

Weather

The conditions were good. It was kind of chilly and windy, probably 45-50 degrees throughout the hike. The sun came and went. There were only short periods of light drizzling rain, thankfully.

Footwear

The Vibram FiveFingers KSO Trek shoes I wore last year on the Rachel Carson Trail developed holes, as a result of which I stocked up on some new ones. The pair that I opened, I've worn only a couple of times, and I wore this pair today.

Comparison with last year's hike

Last year on the 18.1 mile hike, I was stupid about my smartphone, and this year I was smarter. Today's hike was a shorter 13.4, so I was sure the battery would last long enough, if I didn't take photos with flash. And of course, I always have a phone charge in my car now.

Last year's hike went east to west and ended in North Park. This year's hike went west to east and started in North Park. But being shorter, it did not end in Springdale. It is really a different hike when you go on the same trail but in a different direction.

You might enjoy comparing the photos in different directions.

Meeting up at Log Cabin Road

John and I arrived on time but not early, which meant that when we arrived, we saw a whole contingent of people already carpooling to head to North Park. We never saw those people again. Oops.

Furthermore, although we were ready to go with the hike leader, Donna, latecomers kept on showing up, and we were lenient and waited for them, before all the rest of us remaining headed to North Park.

Waiting for latecomers:

Because of Route 910 closures, some detours were necessary as Donna's husband drove us to North Park.

Hike

In North Park about to begin:

By the time we started, there were only a handful of us together as a group.

I was momentarily confused because I saw someone running in the wrong direction on the trail and thought she might be one of us, and was worried. I tried to follow her to call out to her, but she disappeared quickly:

Meanwhile, Donna called out to me, and I rejoined the group.

In North Park, a few sections of the trail are on the road, but then we go into the woods for real:

There's a whole bunch of stream crossings while in North Park. Some of them are easier than others. I should note that one of the harder ones had some fast water and basically ensured that your feet would get wet, because the logs were floating and not completely safe to step on. Some people jumped, but that's not safe. Wearing KSO Trek shoes, since the temperature was around 50, I was fine just getting my feet wet by walking through the water.

Out of the woods onto the railroad tracks (note that hiking in the reverse direction is tricky because it's not well-marked where to get off the railroad tracks into the woods; John and I got lost the last time we did the reverse hike and had to backtrack!).

There's a good amount of road walking on this section of the Rachel Carson Trail.

Crossing Route 8:

Finally, the power lines:

I am a bit sentimental about this section of trail in Hampton Park because Abby and I have done some cross country skiing here in winter, when she used to live up here before we got married and she moved to Pittsburgh.

Abby and I have also hung out here in the past watching birds.

Here is where John and I got lost. I was distracted by this sight and made a turn toward it (the trail turned in the opposite direction) to check it out:

OK, “acidic condensate collection tank”.

Hmm, this didn't look familiar.

John and I turned back. We lost about ten minutes.

No animals out and about today!

Funny how this happens to me once or twice each hike:

What the heck is this going on?

Uphill.

Finally at Emmerling Park, about 3 hours and 45 minutes into the hike.

I hung out at Emmerling Park for about ten or fifteen minutes, using the restroom and then playing on the swing relieving my aching feet while waiting for John and the others to catch up and also use the restroom. The truth is, I was ready to stop hiking already, feeling tired. I was also sore because of two falls I had sustained earlier in the hike. One of the falls involved my tripping on my right foot, causing me to land hard on my left, reinjuring my left knee that I had hurt before the marathon in a fall down the stairs. My left knee was causing me serious pain again now in the hike. I also fell on a steep downhill earlier, landing directly on my butt and on the palm of my left hand, which reinjured my left elbow. Finally, my right Achilles was killing me, because I had not adjusted the strap of my shoe properly; I had readjusted it during the hike, but the damage was already done. I was quite ready to stop hiking, but there were still two hours to go! Oops.

Red flower:

And now we got to sections of the trail that are abused by ATVs and rutted and muddy. (We ended up encountering someone on an ATV, in fact.)

Standing water:

No fun at all hiking through these muddy ruts:

Finally back into open space:

Looking back down the big hill:

There's John and the rest down at the bottom:

We keep on going up:

Finally at the top, looking back:

What's going on here?

Finally back to the parking lot!

After

We hiked something like 5 hours and 45 minutes. It felt really long to us, as our first hike of the year. My feet were killing me. I was happy to take my shoes off and drive us back home barefoot!

By the way, my phone still barely had battery power left when we finished. I'm not sure it would have lasted another hour. This is useful to know. Of course, I immediately plugged it into my car charger! I should get an extra battery.

Why hike this trail at all?

Abby is confused why I like occasionally (once or twice a year) hiking on the Rachel Carson Trail, even though much of the time I find it tiring and weird. I've never fully explained this in words, so here, finally, is my explanation.

I have many sentimental reasons to hike this trail. One is that eight years ago, in late May of 2005, when a local running friend said he was doing the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge, I had taken an entire half year off from running was feeling sad and lonely. I looked up the Challenge online, and happened to find that training hikes led by Barb Peterson were being offered in just a few days, and although I had no intention whatsoever to do the Challenge, I thought the training hikes would be a fun way to do and see something different. After doing the third of four, I was so excited by the novelty that I ended up signing up for the Challenge!! With only three weeks left, there was not much training I could do for it, but I figured that if I just took it slowly, I should be able to finish.

The 2005 Challenge was an ordeal for me to finish, but I did, and the side effect was that I fell in love with hiking in general. I met people through doing the Challenge, and in 2006 I roped John into joining me on some longer training hikes, where we met more people, and some of them I began hiking with outside the context of the Challenge, in places like the Laurel Highlands. This was before the Pittsburgh Hiking Meetup was formed in May 2007 and made it much easier to find people to hike with. So the 2005 Challenge had the side effect of getting me into making hiking a regular part of my life.

Finally, as I was training for the 2007 Challenge, that was the time when I had just met Abby and was dancing with her, but we were not dating yet. When we were chatting at a salsa dance, I learned that she liked to hike and was intrigued. I invited her to join me and John for an April 29 Rachel Carson Trail Challenge training hike that happened to be passing through Hampton (as today's hike did), and she said she would join us for part of it. A comic series of events then took place, in which John and I arrived at Hampton earlier than she had expected, so she had not yet made it to Hampton to meet up with us. When I paused to call her, and she said she would meet us in the trail, John and I got confused and lost because of miscommunication. I kept having to call her again and again until we finally found her, and she set us straight back onto the trail and hiked with us for a bit before turning back. That was my first interaction with Abby outside of dancing; I got to see how she gracefully handled my clumsy mistakes during this outing and how helpful she was. It was a month after that when we finally started dating. Eventually, I proposed right after a hike led by one of the guys I originally first met through a Rachel Carson Trail Challenge training hike.

So I associate the Rachel Carson Trail not only with falling in love with hiking, and with meeting lots of interesting people I still hike with all these years later, but also I am reminded of how I fell in love with Abby and how hiking is a big part of what we have done and do. It is slightly ironic, of course, that she does not enjoy doing most sections of the Rachel Carson Trail, so in recent years I have been hiking it either alone or with John. And that is why I try to limit how often I hike on the trail; I've decided now to do it only once a year, so that I spend less time on hiking that Abby doesn't do with me, in order to share more hiking with her. But I would like to spend good time on the trail once a year from now on to remember what it means to me.

Finally, despite the strange hybrid nature of the trail, I believe in its existence and maintenance. It is a reminder that even in urban/suburban environments, there is still an underlying primitive nature that we can enjoy. The volunteers of the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy work hard to keep this unusual resource open to the public.

Conclusion

The Rachel Carson Trail will always have a special place in my heart.

Thanks to Donna for keeping us company for most of the hike as trail sweep, and her husband for driving us to the start!

Back to what running is really about for me

2013-05-09T08:32:41-04:00

So, four days after my disappointing Pittsburgh Marathon, I've recovered enough to first walk, and now do some light running as well. I did a very slow, short 3-mile run in Frick Park.

I'm guessing it will take me another two or three weeks to be completely recovered physically, but I'm ecstatic to be out and about again. I'm also happy that I'm emotionally recovered already; I was pretty unbalanced leading up to and after the ordeal. The big lesson I've learned yet again is that losing sight of what is important and focusing on narrow ideas of achievement backfired on me, self-destructively, just as it did when I played bizarrely poorly in a chess tournament last fall before relaxing and then winning the 2013 Pittsburgh Chess Club Championship.

What running is really about

Running for me is really about enjoying the outdoors, feeling alive and expressive through rhythmic movement, and getting to know my body better and accept it while working with what nature has given me, to improve how I move and feel. Now that this whole marathon thing is over, I'm back to running on the trails instead of the hard roads, and I'm back to not timing myself. I'm back to being out there alone, not measuring myself against anyone or anything.

So what about races?

That said, I do enjoy some element of competition, both against myself and against others, in the spirit of play and excellence. So, although I'll take it easy for a couple of weeks just enjoying maintaining and rebuilding fitness (not just for running, but also getting back to some neglected strength training), I'm looking forward to doing some races this summer, with an intent to run them fast.

The first one coming up for me is the Man Up Father's Day 10K in June benefiting the Obediah Cole Foundation for Prostate Cancer. I haven't done any 10K other than the idiosyncratic Great Race 10K in 5 years, so I look forward to getting back to doing other 10K races. Also, I have done this Father's Day 10k before, in 2004 and 2006. It would be nice if I could beat my 2006 time, getting back to my fitness level of 7 years ago, but ha, very unlikely.

Conclusion

I'm ready to have a pleasant summer of outdoors activities. Abby and I already have hiking and kayaking plans. Meanwhile, I'll continue running. The pain of the marathon season is already a dim memory.

Happy birthday, Johannes Brahms! 3 takes on a musical favorite

2013-05-07T20:41:13-04:00

It turns out today is the 180th birthday of Johannes Brahms, born May 7, 1833, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite music by this great composer.

Piano

I discovered Brahms while a freshman in college and a total newcomer to classical music, upon taking a course called “Piano Music of the 19th Century” because it sounded like it was an easy way to get required “core curriculum” credit (no musical background was required for this appreciation course). Instead of being just a throwaway survey course I took just to get credit, the course changed my life. Sometimes that actually happens, when the instructor is passionate and communicative!

We listened to and discussed various of Brahms' miniature piano pieces he called “intermezzi”, op. 116, 117, 118, and 119. Part of what we were supposed to do was tell stories about how the pieces made us feel and why (in terms of some kind of story that involved identifying musical ideas and development).

Although I went on to listen to other music by Brahms, for myself, I still have considerable nostalgia for the piano intermezzi Brahms wrote late in life, and this is so appropriate, I guess, given that they have a decidedly nostalgic, melancholic flavor.

I have many favorites among these sets of piano pieces, but decided to share just one of them today, op. 119 no. 1 in B minor. The melancholic arpeggiated descending thirds and ambiguous harmonies, with a longing melodic line above the inner voices, make this a perfect example of Brahmsian beauty.

Imagery

When I listen to this, I imagine sitting by a window, alone, as raindrops slowly and repeatedly drip down, and the clouds come and go, while occasionally a ray of sun peeks through and smiles, and occasionally there is a burst of thunder. Meanwhile, the wind is blowing and sometimes stops a raindrop from continuing to fall, or blows it back upward. I look through the window, and the world is gray and blurry, and the raindrops tell the story of what is going on outside.

Three interpretations

Here are three interpretations I found on YouTube. I personally like the raindrops to linger and accelerate and decelerate with rubato, and this guy “Ferien7” plays that up, taking a leisurely 3:44 for the whole piece:

I link to this video by an unknown because I like how YouTube can be a source of what I find to be good performances by people who are passionate about a particular piece but are not necessarily famous professionals or well-established recording artists. I have no idea who “Ferien7” is, but I like this performance.

Another interpretation along similar veins, but by someone much more famous, and tighter (3:38), is by one of my all-time favorite historic pianists, Sviatoslav Richter:

Finally, here is a very different, fascinating interpretation by Heinrich Neuhaus, actually Richter's teacher, which is very fast (2:52), and emphasizes the unbroken melodic line and the drama, over the individual notes:

If you liked this piece, check out the other intermezzi by Brahms.

Why I feel sad when people congratulate me for finishing the Pittsburgh Marathon

2013-05-07T11:07:36-04:00

I'm on the second day of recovery after my debacle of a Pittsburgh Marathon two days ago. The recovery has been going very well; I think I'll probably be walking “normally” (to a point) tomorrow. But meanwhile, I've been dealing with a lot of anger and sadness.

I feel the most angry and sad when people congratulate me for finishing the marathon.

A warning up front: in this post I'm going to talk about some things that might give the wrong impression and make you angry, but I assure you that I am just speaking from the heart, and that my own reaction to finishing my marathon has no bearing on how I feel about your finishing your marathon, or anyone else's. I simply have certain goals for myself when doing things like marathons, and I don't believe that everyone has or should have the same kinds of goals as I do, and I respect your own goals.

I'm also writing this because I think I'm speaking not only for myself, but for other runners who might also feel the same way but tiptoe around expressing their feelings, precisely because of the fear of offending those who might take the self-criticism the wrong way.

Not my first marathon

I think the first thing you have to realize is that this is not my first marathon. It is my second Pittsburgh Marathon. And it is probably the sixth time I at least mostly run (versus walked) a consecutive 26.2 miles or more.

I was fairly thrilled to finish my first marathon, which was the 2003 Pittsburgh Marathon, even though it was also basically an embarrassing disaster, because it was my first. There is nothing like the first, because before going in, no matter what, you just wonder whether you will finish at all. It is so unknown.

Marathon-long training run

I did one or two marathon-long training runs just by myself in Frick Park and Homewood Cemetery in 2006, while trying to toughen myself up for the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge. I did those slowly, so that I experienced none of the suffering from going too fast in my first Pittsburgh Marathon. This was a very important experience for me because I needed to prove to myself that simply going very slowly, I could cover a marathon distance any day of my life by just hopping out of bed without any special training. I wanted to defuse the mystique of the marathon.

I ended up abandoning doing my own marathon-distance runs, however, because even if I didn't suffer horribly, it still took a long time to fully recover. In fact, I made the mistake of playing in a chess tournament two days after one of these runs and had one of the worst tournaments in my life, in which my brain was deprived of fuel and I could not think. Ben Finegold, I never explained to you why I self-destructed while easily winning a game against your (then) wife in the Columbus Open, but now you know!

Sammy's Birthday Run

In 2006, I ran/walked (after completing the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge) Sammy's Birthday Run, covering 27.5 miles before I quit. I was going pretty slow. I was not doing it for time. I was doing it just to finish at least a marathon distance, although I was kind of hoping to get to 30 miles (I stopped because I felt my body had enough and I didn't need more punishment). I didn't time myself, but I know I finished in about 5 hours and 15 minutes (there is a 6 hour time limit for the run, and I arrived about half an hour late for the official start). This was with no carb-loading, any of that stuff. Just showing up an running really slowly, walking some of the uphill sections. I drank some sports drink that I brought, and ate boiled potatoes and pretzels.

No cramping up, no suffering (other than increasing fatigue and leg heaviness). Here is what I looked like finishing:

In 2008, I did Sammy's Birthday Run again, with even less training and fitness. This time I timed myself. I finished my 27.5 miles in 5:55:22. Hardly a great time, but it was a finish, and without any real suffering except at one moment. At around mile 22, I made the mistake of eating some cookies that someone had brought, and was in instant agony with stomach cramps. I slowed way down for a couple of minutes. Then I sat down for 9 minutes, used the Port-a-pottie, was OK again, and continued. But other than that incident, I had no leg or foot problems. So, basically what I'm saying is that for me, finishing a marathon distance by simply going slow is trivial, and therefore does not give me a sense of accomplishment. For you, finishing might be nontrivial, in which case you definitely deserve to be proud upon finishing your marathon!

Training

So another thing that some people have said is, “You should be proud of myself for all the training I put in to finish the marathon!”

But I'm not proud. I'm embarrassed and angry.

One reason: it is possible that with no training whatsoever, I could have finished Sunday's marathon in 4:38, with far less suffering. I did an average 10:37 pace for that marathon (including the minutes I spent at the side of the road resting). What if I had just gone into the marathon healthy, without messed up legs and feet and body, fully rested, and simply jogged slowly (for me) at 10:37 pace the whole way?

An even better reason: look at my training record that I've documented since February. My cramping and slowing down before mile 11 was a total joke. It wasn't training that enabled me to get past that. It was overtraining that disabled my fitness.

Two months ago, in March, I was barely starting marathon training. I did a 12-mile run crossing Pittsburgh bridges 11 times that was tough for me. I averaged just a bit faster than 10-minute pace. Just a month later, I had already gotten much stronger: I did my hardest run, a 16-mile run, in 2:27, for an average of 9:11 pace. And I did that in Luna Sandals, with no blisters, no leg cramping, no problems. And without breakfast and without any Gatorade or gel or food during the entire run! And that was just a training run, not a race where I gave it my all.

Unfortunately, that 16-mile run was the last time I felt really strong. I screwed things up after that. I could have run the Pittsburgh Marathon that day, probably, and finished in 4:00.

Shoes

I get the impression that some people are questioning my shoe choice, wondering whether wearing Luna Sandals messed up my marathon.

This also upsets me, because the last thing I want is for Luna Sandals to get a bad reputation just because I happened to be wearing them when I ran a bad marathon. Fact is, as I explained, I believe the Luna Sandals saved me from much worse. I had toe cramping wearing non-sandals in all my previous half marathons and marathons. And I have to refer again back to the 16-mile long run that I did in Luna Sandals. I didn't wear these shoes untested in the marathon.

Finishing versus excelling

The problem with the marathon is that it is such a public event, and there is so much focus on “finishing” one. I don't feel good about merely “finishing” a marathon. Here are some analogies I make to myself.

I'm an amateur flutist, and still a beginner, with only two years of serious self-study so far. Suppose I had the opportunity to somehow get put into a professional orchestra, and got assigned to perform a flute concerto. Suppose we did the performance, and after messing everything up and playing quite poorly, we got to the end. Would I feel proud of “finishing” the performance? This is exactly how I personally feel about what I did in the marathon.

Here are some possible modifications to the music program that would make me proud of “finishing”:

Suppose that we took the flute concerto slowly enough that I could get most of the notes and expressiveness in. Then at least it would preserve some integrity that I could be proud of.
Suppose that we chose a much easier and shorter piece that I could actually master, and we played that.

The analogues in the running world:

I could have done the marathon very slowly, like with Sammy's Birthday Run, and run an even pace, with no suffering other than extreme fatigue, and been proud of that.
I could have abandoned the idea of finishing a marathon at all and choose to run half marathon or 5K races that I can run fast and well.

Personally, I am far more proud of my fastest 5K, 10K, and half marathon races than of any marathon I have done or ever will do again, because they stand as gems of perfect execution. I would rather do a smaller thing well and completely than a bigger thing badly and sloppily.

Nobody ever cheered for me as I performed my greatest feats in the 5K, 10K, and half marathon where I thought I was going to puke or fall apart, but those are the moments I treasure.

So in fact, I am abandoning the marathon and returning to trying to improve my performances at shorter distances. You will not be congratulating me as I shave off minutes or seconds from my times, but that's OK.

Conclusion

I'm very emotional right now, and I felt now was as good a time as any to say something about my personal values and goals when it comes to running races, and by extension, to other aspects of my life.

I actually do feel good about finishing the marathon in one respect: I proved that even if I totally screwed everything up, and deserved all the pain I experienced, and it was all my own fault that I could have avoided, I went on anyway and got the job done. When I realize that this is what people are trying to communicate to me by congratulate me, I am very appreciative.

(Update of 2013-05-09)

The following day, the third day after the marathon, I was able to walk normally and was emotionally recovering as well and was embarrassed by this rant.

The fourth day, I went out for a short run and reflected on what running is really about for me.

2013 Pittsburgh Marathon: my 135th race was the worst I finished, but I did!

2013-05-06T20:23:08-04:00

Yesterday, for my birthday, I ran the Pittsburgh Marathon for the second time. The first time was ten years ago, in 2003. That was an ordeal in which I had aimed at finishing in 3:30 and in fact run the first half in 1:45, but then faltered badly to struggle to finish in a chip time of 3:53:25.

My second Pittsburgh Marathon went even worse. I had wanted to finish in 4:00, but instead finished in 4:38:21.

This was my 135th race in my life, and the worst of them all that I actually finished (I failed to finish one 30K race because of severe illness that should have kept me from going to the start line at all).

Here's my report on what happened, why, my thankfulness for all the good that came from the experience, and my running plans for the future.

Coming back from injury and burnout

I think it's important to understand that my poor performance did not come from nowhere. I had battled injury and burnout for some time. Logically, I should not have gone to the start line at all.

Night before

I got zero sleep the night before the race. Terrible, but my body was probably confused by the carb-loaded diet as well as my insistence on spending the whole day napping because I was so tired. I had felt that I had to do that napping because I was not going to be able to sleep well at night anyway.

Early morning on race day

Super early, Abby drove us to the North Shore to park. Then we napped for a bit before heading to the nearest light rail (aka “T”) station to wait for a ride downtown:

We got downtown finally, I dropped off a bag of post-race flip-flops at Gear Check, time was starting to run out, and I got in line for a Port-a-pottie:

It was 15 minutes before I did what I needed to do. Then I had to quickly head to my corral.

Clothing

What I wore:

the same blue singlet I wore in the 2003 Pittsburgh Marathon ten years ago (my favorite running shirt that I have actually worn for probably at least 70 of my races in over a decade, as well as most of my warm-weather casual runs also!!)
Brooks Infiniti Short III that I bought at Elite Runners and Walkers before the Just A Short Run half marathon in March
Luna Sandals (Venado) that I've been wearing for almost all of my runs in the past month, maximum distance of 16 miles
CEP compression calf sleeves, which I had worn just one other time
my phone, in a SPIbelt.
on my back, I pinned a “We are all Boston Marathoners at heart” bib
a long-sleeve T-shirt on top of my singlet, since it was cold (under 50 degrees F?) before the race; the plan was to discard this T-shirt before the race (and hope that people collect it and find a good home for it!)

Entering the corral

This is the second race in my life in which I have carried a phone. I planned to use it only in case of emergency, and in order to meet up with Abby afterwards, but as you can see, while I had a chance, I took some photos also.

I was assigned to corral C because of my estimated finish time of 4:00 that I had written down when signing up for the marathon months ago.

This was my first mistake. Given my comeback from injury and inactivity, the truly logical thing for me to have done was to set a very conservative goal of simply finishing the marathon without terrible suffering. Given that I ended up finishing in 4:38, I might as well have moved back into another corral and planned to finish in the 4:20-4:30 range, in which case I bet I would have done that with minimal pain and suffering.

In the future, I resolve to face the facts on the ground in any event as strenuous as a marathon. It doesn't make any sense what I did, especially given that I was perfectly smart when in March I did my first half marathon in nine years and ran it conservatively and had a great experience! I am capable of logical reasoning and have actually executed it in the past. But apparently the marathon puts me into a hyper-emotional frame of mind.

Pace?

Also, I had chosen not to sign up to follow an official pacer, because on all my long training runs, I had found my own pace by feel, and done well ignoring pacers. My plan was simply to go slow and then get faster. I did look around for pace signs. I only saw one from where I was standing: a sign near the front of the corral for finishing in 3:50. I looked back and saw no other signs.

This was my second mistake. Given that I had not done any serious running for ten days, with my longest run being only two miles, and my last “long” run was an eleven-mile run fifteen days ago, I should have realized that whatever “feel” I had for pace was gone, and I should have moved back in the corral till I found a 4:00-finishing pacer, at least (but as mentioned earlier, what I should have done was move into a slower corral altogether and then found a suitable pacer there).

Race start

There was a moment of silence for Boston.

Star-Spangled Banner, then the waves began. A photo as mine was approaching the start line, around 7:05 AM:

Then we went.

Wrong pace

I honestly thought I was going slow. I was hardly breathing at all. I was going so “slow” that I pulled out my phone to take some photos. But then I got very confused, because the 3:50 pacer was still in my sight after many minutes:

I could not process this information. Part of me wanted to slow down, but I felt like I was barely running. Part of me believed that the pacer must be slow, but come on, these pacers are supposed to be reliable.

So I made the mistake of not trusting the pacer. It sounds crazy, but I really felt like I was going too slow.

Slowing down?

At some point, I lost sight of the pacer, so I felt reassured that I must have slowed down properly. Here's another problem: I did not keep track of my mile splits because the mass of people made it hard for me to actually reliably spot any mile markers on the course; I don't even know how many actually existed.

I even took a photo of myself 40 minutes into the marathon feeling fine.

There were spectators on bridges, some of them positioned seemingly precariously.

At some point I realized that I could see the 3:50 pacer up ahead. I got worried. It was unlikely that I was magically super-fit now. But I didn't feel like slowing down.

At some point I must have started slowing down, because eventually I saw a 3:55 pacer pass me.

Still, it appears from the alert system that I signed up for (to notify my parents by email, and Abby by text message, and my Facebook friends and Twitter followers), that I did the first 10K (6.2 miles) in 55:29, meaning an average pace of 8:56 and estimated finish time of 3:54:04. That's much faster than the 9:08 pace I had intended for a 4:00 finish.

Really slowing down

I started really slowing down before even reaching the Birmingham Bridge. I knew I was getting into serious trouble. It was crazy, but my left knee was bothering me, and my left quads had started to twitch. So I had gone only about 11 miles and I was already struggling.

You have to understand how nonsensical it is for me to be having muscle cramping after running only 11 miles at a pace that is actually slow for an 11-mile run.

Even if we assumed, falsely, that I got to mile 11 at the same pace as during my first 6.2 miles (8:56), note that I ran an entire half marathon (13.1 miles) in late March, only in the beginning of marathon training, at an average of 8:28 pace, and was totally fine with no cramping during the race. And after a couple of weeks of further training, I had felt much stronger during a 16-mile run.

So basically, it was a cruel joke I played on myself that I was in such poor condition that I was cramping up after 11 miles at a slow pace. I was very angry at myself that I had made a complete travesty of my marathon, just like in 2003.

Halfway, and change of plan

I slowed down more in Oakland to keep the left quad twitching under control.

According to the alert system, I got halfway in 1:59:46, average pace of 9:09, and estimated finish time of 3:59:31. But of course, by then, I knew that I was done for. I was just going to continue slowing down and suffering, for over two more hours, if I finished at all.

When I finally saw the 4:00 pace group pass me, somehow that was a real blow to me.

At 9:27 AM, not too long after the halfway point, I texted Abby: “Severe pain. Very slow, just aim finish. Maybe 4:30.”

Now my main thought was to focus on making it to Annie (of the Pittsburgh Recorder Society), who was going to watch for me in Highland Park, just before mile 20. I had told her to expect me around 10 AM, and Annie had even posted to the Pittsburgh Recorder Society Facebook page telling everyone I was running.

I was so not going to make it for 10 AM. But I wanted to go slowly enough that I could hold off the quad cramping.

Despair

At around 9:49 AM, Chris passed me and said hello. I told him I was doing very badly. He wasn't doing as well as he had hoped, but was moving along, unlike me. Here's a photo I had the presence of mind to take only as he had already gone way ahead (in the blue shirt):

At 9:54 AM, I made a video statement on my phone, just for myself: “I'm after mile 17 or something, in Homewood. I'm doing really badly, but I'm still running, and that's all I can say about that.”

Annie

At 10:11 AM, not yet at Annie's, I was contemplating quitting, because the pains I was experiencing (right quads twitching also, and even my arms and hands, mysteriously, in spots where I had old injuries years ago, plus a really bad blister on my right foot where I had all those skin problems earlier, and less bad but very annoying constant chafing of the Luna Sandals straps) were so terrible. I decided to just take a break at a fluid station and squat and stretch. I texted Abby: “Very bad shape. Rested some.” I also finally posted to Facebook, “In very bad shape. Trying to finish anyway.” I was not actively reading Facebook during the marathon at all, but did notice a lot of notifications, and assumed they were words of encouragement from my friends; I didn't want to read them until I was done, because I felt I might let them down. Abby replied, “What is your plan?”

At 10:19, I said, “Don't know. Walking, blister and cramping.”

A note on the blistering and chafing: it got really warm and I got sweaty, so that was part of the problem. I had not run in these sandals in such conditions before: I had mostly run in dry, cold conditions of 35-50 degrees F. Also, I had forgotten about road hazards: there were cups of water and Gatorade all over around the aid stations and my feet were sticky and wet for much of the marathon. It was a rather unpleasant feeling.

I kept running/walking. I saw Annie. I decided there and then, seeing her, that I was going to finish, rather than just bail out and crash on her couch or something pathetic like that. I shouted that I was in severe pain but planned to continue on! She took a photo of me, which I knew was going to be on Facebook before too long, so I'd better make good on my promise to her!

At 10:29, I texted Abby: “Got to Annie. Running again.”

I then focused on just continuing to move, slowing to a walk if I needed to in order to deal with cramping.

Mile 22

At 10:51, I reached S Aiken, just before mile 22. This is an important point in the course for me, not only because it begins a downhill, but also because it is where my friend Nathaniel cheered me on ten years ago when I was also suffering.

Strip District

At some point, I was getting discouraged again and started walking, when I accidentally spotted Deb and Mark watching. Seeing familiar faces among the spectators is definitely helpful! Upon seeing them, I felt ashamed of my walking and my negative thoughts. I went up to them, and they were going to take a picture of me, and I got all determined, and screamed, “I'm going to finish this thing!!”

I kept on running, and did not stop, even though I saw many people walking, and also saw many relay runners zooming by. I decided that I was not only going to finish (it was now clear that I could), but that I was going to finish as strong as I could, even though it would count for nothing. I was going to run at the edge of quad twitching, all the way to the end. It was going to hurt far more than if I just ran very slowly to finish, but I didn't come this far just to walk if I could run. I was determined to push.

As I got closer and closer, I periodically texted Abby the street I had just crossed, so that she would know roughly when I was going to finish.

Finish line

And so I finished. I finished in a state of my quads twitching like firecrackers. I got my medal. I kept on walking. I grabbed a bag of chips and water. I forgot to look for other stuff, like Smiley Cookies (that Abby later said she saw were being handed out). I just wanted to stop the twitching, get my bag from Gear Check, get out of my Luna Sandals into some comfortable, cushioned flip-flops, use a Port-a-potty, and finally find Abby and the “CMU tent”, which I assumed was just a section of the Pittsburgh Corporate Challenge Tent. (I had bought a bracelet for Abby earlier so that she could have access to the tent.)

I could barely walk after I started cooling down, because I got stiffer and stiffer. It took me forever to make it to the Finish Line Festival area, and I was so mentally drained that I had to call Abby to have her tell me where the tent was.

The tent and the Pittsburgh Campus Challenge

When I signed up for the Pittsburgh Campus Challenge through Carnegie Mellon University, there was advertised to be “gourmet food, private massages, and more” in the tent. The reality was actually quite different.

Abby said it was a good thing she made it to the tent before too late (she had gone back to nap in the car after seeing me off), because by 10 AM, half marathoners had eaten much of the food already, and she had remembered to save some for me for later! There was still food left, but much of the good stuff was gone. And it wasn't really “gourmet”. There was dry fried chicken, rolls, pasta left, as far as I could tell, other than the pancakes Abby had saved from earlier, and a Panera Bread sandwiches she also saved for me.

There was a signup sheet for massage by Massage Envy, however, and a very long wait, as I got my massage after one hour and twenty minutes, which was actually OK because I was so sore I simply needed to be left alone for a while to just eat and eat and rest.

CMU won!

When I came into the tent, there was confusion because I didn't have a sticker on my bib indicating that I had access to the tent. Apparently I was supposed to have gotten a sticker at some point, but I don't remember getting instructions about that.

When they learned I was with CMU, however, they gave me the prize for CMU winning the Pittsburgh Campus Challenge, to hand over to Pattye at CMU. We beat Pitt!

Feet

My feet were terribly sore. I got one blood-filled blister:

But otherwise, the damage was not as bad as I had thought. During the marathon, I had wondered sometimes about all the stickiness I felt on my feet, but it was not blood after all; it was a mixture of energy gel, Gatorade, orange juice, and whatever else was left on the road that got onto my feet:

I had two chafing spots from the straps, but they were not serious. All in all, my feet were in much condition after wearing the Luna Sandals than they were ten years ago after wearing standard socks and running shoes. The drawback is that my feet were horribly sore, although after one night of rest, the foot soreness is actually all gone.

One day later

However, I do have a different problem: one day later, numbness in my left foot remains, because I had adjusted my strap for my left foot too tightly, out of fear of it coming off. Overly tight strap was a big mistake. I did make an adjustment at some point during the race, but I could at least have loosened the strap earlier when I felt discomfort.

In all my previous runs, my left foot has never fallen out. I hope the numbness goes away in another day.

Legs

My legs were utterly trashed, as might be expected given how I had tortured them for so long. At first, I thought it was just my quads and hamstrings, but once I pulled off the calf sleeves, I realized that my calves were trashed too, but had completely avoided cramping because of the compression. I count this as a total success for the calf sleeves, because in the marathon ten years ago, my calves were seizing up in the second half, not just my quads. I will always wear calf sleeves in the future in long runs or hikes.

Em of Massage Envy was very helpful in getting me able to sort of walk, so that I could go with Abby back over to the North Shore to our car (I had to walk across the bridge, then waited as she brought the car over).

Overall, I think wearing the Luna Sandals was the correct decision, despite the drawbacks. I did not have toe jamming, toe blistering, toe cramping that I believe I would have had in other footwear. I did not have ankle soreness of any kind. Or shin splints. I did not have any right knee pain at all, just left (and almost certainly because of my fall on Thursday). I could have used more cushioning though. But my order of the thicker Luna Sandals (the new Mono model) has not yet shipped.

Thanks!

I have a lot to be thankful for even though in some sense this marathon was truly a debacle for me.

I am thankful that this race returned to Pittsburgh after suspension in 2004-2008, as Dick's Sporting Goods rose up to be the title sponsor. I am amazed by how large and popular the Pittsburgh Marathon has become since I last ran it ten years ago. I think it's great that the city has this annual celebration of its neighborhoods and of the running community. The Pittsburgh Marathon is not just about the marathon, but about just regular fitness running, free workshops on health and exercise, and celebrating a sport that brings everyone together.

I am thankful to Pattye Stragar for spreading word of the Pittsburgh Campus Challenge through the CMU fitness mailing list.

I am thankful to Steel City Road Runners for their well-organized Saturday long runs that got me out during the cold months when I otherwise might have chosen to just sleep in.

I am thankful to my friends who encouraged me as I progressed through my training and in my discouraging days before the marathon.

I am thankful to Annie and Deb and Mark for being spectators I saw and knew who gave me additional motivation to keep going.

I am thankful to all the spectators and volunteers I don't know who offered cheers, water, orange slices, music, and everything else that reminded me that humanity is caring and helpful.

And of course, I am particularly thankful to my wife Abby, who has been so patient these months as I have pursued this marathon thing that she thinks is crazy (OK, I know it is crazy), and helped me every single day. Abby, this whole experience has truly deepened my appreciation of you, and I will never forget what we went through together to make this birthday present happen.

Did I achieve my goals?

Let's go back to my blog post from three months ago where I stated my goals for the marathon. What did I actually achieve?

maintain a smart pace: failed (totally)
finish strong: succeeded (insofar as I pushed as hard as I could for the last three miles approximately)
avoid leg muscle cramping: failed miserably with the quads, succeeded with the calves
avoid foot blistering: failed (got one bad blister)
conquer the hills: neutral (didn't feel particularly bad at hills as such)

So it would seem that I basically failed, as far as the marathon itself.

But I think I succeeded, in a larger context:

I didn't expect to be wearing huaraches for a marathon, but I did wear Luna Sandals! I proved to myself it could be done.
As a side effect of marathon training, I got myself into much better shape than I have been in for the past half decade, and did my first half marathon in nine years, and set up exercise habits I hope to make permanent independent of any future marathoning.
Abby's help as I took on the task of training made a profound impression on me.
The outpouring of support from friends was a welcome surprise to me, because in my last Pittsburgh Marathon, I mostly went about it alone, telling only a few people about it.

Why did I fail so miserably?

I believe I failed mostly because I didn't have the proper training. I started too late, I didn't have enough time to more gradually absorb increased training volume, I could have used an extra month or two of more long runs.

I also did not adapt properly to setbacks that should have led me to change my goals drastically. There was a downward spiral in terms of injury, fatigue, and loss of calm reason.

What next?

Done with the marathon

I told Abby that this is it: no more racing marathons again, ever. I mean it. I'm facing the reality that this is not the right event for me. I believe I could do a good marathon, but what it would take is not worth the effort. The sacrifices that I made, and Abby made, were considerable. There are other things we could be doing.

So I look forward to our returning to “normal” life as I recover.

Running

That said, I totally enjoyed getting back into year-round running. I will never go into winter hibernation again. I still have to figure out ideal footwear for the coldest and snow/ice/water-ridden conditions for next winter, of course.

Half marathons

Doing Just A Short Run again gave me confidence that I can “master” the half marathon distance. I would like to continue doing half marathons. I have decided to do the Montour Trail Half Marathon in September. This means I will have to skip the CMU Pretty Good Race, which is always held the Friday before this Saturday race, but it's time for me to get back into doing half marathon and 10K and 5K (and even mile) races, distances that I can actually work on being able to run well without wrecking myself.

Heck, I might even run the Pittsburgh Half Marathon a year from now! (Although I don't actually want to think about that for a while.)

Conclusion

In isolation, the 2013 Pittsburgh Marathon may be considered to be a total debacle for me, the worst race I've finished out of the 135 races I've showed up for in my life. But I'm glad I went through the process of training for it, and I'm grateful for it as a vehicle of self-discovery: I faced some unpleasant truths about various poor decisions I made. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my journey with friends and family.

As Emil Zatopek said:

If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon.

(Update of 2013-05-09)

The second day after the marathon, I was still in physical and emotional pain, and wrote a little rant expressing my disappointment.

The third day, I was able to walk normally and was emotionally recovering as well and was embarrassed by my rant.

The fourth day, I went out for a short run and reflected on what running is really about for me.

I spent the past week not knowing whether I could run in the 2013 Pittsburgh Marathon tomorrow

2013-05-04T20:22:17-04:00

Tomorrow is my birthday, and I will be running the Pittsburgh Marathon.

I have no idea how it will turn out, because I spent the past week not knowing whether I would even make it to the start line!

Here's what's been happening.

Last Saturday: recovering from injury

A week ago I was in despair as I skipped a planned Steel City Road Runners final taper run because of injury and burnout.

Sunday

I continued to rest and apply cream to my foot skin cracks. My right shin is OK again.

Monday

After three days off from running, I was worried about losing fitness. My feet were healing slowly. I did just a mile on the treadmill, wearing Vibram FiveFingers Bikila LS, not Luna Sandals, in order to keep my feet from drying out. I felt very sluggish and weak. I wanted to verify that I could at least run at all though.

Tuesday

My right foot was hurting again, healing not complete. Also, I was feeling simply physically exhausted, like I was getting sick or something: I had a headache waking up. I took a day off work to do a lot of napping.

Wednesday

I thought my friends who have been following my marathon training progress for the past two months should know what was up, so I posted on Facebook, “If the marathon were tomorrow, I would not go to the start line. I hope another three days of healing will get me there.”

Later I did feel better and get in a short 1-mile run, in Luna Sandals.

I started carb-loading.

Thursday

I felt better, my feet were mostly healed, and I got in a 2-mile run. I publicly declared on Facebook, “I'm on for the marathon on Sunday!”

Later in the day, in a freak accident, unfortunately, I fell down the stairs at work. Basically, I missed one step when taking a step with my left foot. I ended up landing really hard and awkwardly on my left foot on the second step down instead of the first step down, with considerable pressure on my left knee, which buckled to the side a bit, and then I landed on my right foot, with less pressure on my right knee, then I fell to the right and banged up my right ankle also. I was surprised that I didn't actually break anything, but I was shaken. I tried to joke about this on Facebook, but the incident did not help me.

Friday

Tired. No running.

Saturday (today)

Woke up exhausted, spent the whole day napping. Finished carb-loading. I gained about three pounds in the past three days.

Conclusion

I've done what I could in order to make it to the start line of the Pittsburgh Marathon tomorrow. Everything is out of whack, but I didn't want to cancel doing it, or switch to doing the half marathon. I haven't had a real run in nine days. I regret completely messing up my preparation for the marathon, but as long as I think I can finish it, I am doing it.

This may not be quite logical, but emotionally, in the past week, I have felt that I need to do the marathon, not so much because I have done so much for it (OK, that's the sunk cost fallacy, I know), but because I signed up for it with an agreement with Abby that this was going to be my last marathon for 15-20 years, and lately, in light of my suffering (and her collateral suffering), I amended that to tell her that I was never going to do a marathon again, ever!

Celebrating the victory of the CMU Tartans in the 2012-13 Pittsburgh Chess League season

2013-04-29T23:36:01-04:00

The CMU Tartans won the 2012-13 Pittsburgh Chess League (division I)!

Out of 6 matches (there were 7 rounds with a bye round for each team), we won the first 5 matches, losing only the final match.

We celebrated by having dinner at Curry on Murray in Squirrel Hill, organized by our team captain, Jeff. Our team had 8 members, 6 of whom were able to make it to the dinner (Ruan and Ed were unable to attend).

Meet the CMU Tartans team

I should note that Carnegie Mellon University actually has more than one team. In addition to the CMU Tartans, there is also Carnegie Mellon University I, a lower-rated team in division I, and Carnegie Mellon University II, a team in division II. I assume that these teams are composed primarily of Carnegie Mellon undergrad students.

On paper, the CMU Tartans was a very strong team, with the highest rating in division I, and therefore a favorite to win (which we did):

Not all 8 of our team members played in every round. Since it is very important to have at least 4 members show up for each match, because the team match score is based on 4 official games for each team during a round, I would like to recognize, in order of number of games played:

Daniel Malkiel: all 6 games!
Jeffrey Quirke, Edward Dean: 5 games
Ruan Lufei, Franklin Chen, Avi Schreiber: 2 games
Iryna Zenyuk, Luka Glinsky: 1 game

Here are the team members, in board order:

Ruan Lufei, current rating 2569 (played 2 games)

Ruan scored 2-0.

Ruan is actually world famous, being one of the top woman chess players in the world. She has the Woman Grand Master (WGM) title and was the runner-up in the 2010 Women's World Championship, in which she faced Hou Yifan but lost. She is hard at work in the CMU PhD program in accounting, so she has these years been focused on completing her studies rather than on chess. She is far, far stronger than the rest of the CMU Tartans team!

Iryna Zenyuk, current rating 2327 (played 1 game)

Iryna scored 0.5-0.5.

Iryna has the Woman International Master (WIM) title and is one of the top ten woman chess players in the United States. She has been in the CMU PhD program in mechanical engineering, but has managed to find time to play in the US Chess Championships. Here is a recent interview of her leading up to the 2013 US Chess Championships.

Daniel Malkiel, current rating 2182 (played 6 games)

Dan scored 4.0-2.0.

Dan has an MS from CMU in Logic and Computation. He was the 2012 PA State Champion.

Jeffrey Quirke, current rating 2179 (played 5 games)

Jeff scored 3-2.

Jeff is also a CMU alumnus, with an MSEE in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Franklin Chen, current rating 2164 (played 2 games)

I scored 2-0.

I only played in the first two of the six team matches, my first games upon returning to chess after a long absence: round 2 and round 3. After that, I became very busy, unfortunately, and did not play for the team in the final four rounds. I took a complete break from chess early this year after winning the 2013 Pittsburgh Chess Club Championship.

Edward Dean, current rating 2136 (played 5 games)

Ed scored 3.5-1.5.

Ed is currently in the CMU PhD program in Pure and Applied Logic. He was Pittsburgh Chess Club champion in both 2011 and 2012. I have covered two of my games against him on my blog, neither of which I won: a draw and a loss.

Luka Glinsky, current rating 2032 (played 1 game)

Luka played in the final round, scoring 0-1.

Luka is a CMU undergrad in drama (acting), graduating with a BFA in a couple of weeks! I first met him on the chess scene when he was about 14 years old, a strong junior player. He has had very little time for chess in the past 4 years as a student at CMU, ha! We will miss him as he leaves Pittsburgh to pursue his acting career.

Avi Schreiber, current rating 1926 (played 2 games)

Avi scored 2-0.

I first met Avi years ago when he was an undergrad at Pitt playing for one of the Pitt teams, but since he joined the staff at CMU, he joined the CMU Tartans.

Some interesting discussions

During dinner we had fun just socializing for a while, but then of course Jeff pulled out a chess set, and we enjoyed solving chess puzzles together and analyzing some games.

I thought it was interesting that people had different opinions about the weight of “talent” versus hard work in getting good at chess, and how good an “average” person could get at chess. Some of us seemed very optimistic about how far one could get in chess simply through hard work, using deliberate practice; others of us acknowledged the importance of work, but felt that there was a lower ceiling of possibility because of talent.

We went through one of Dan's games that was particularly interesting that I plan to write a separate blog post about, and also one of Jeff's games that illustrated subtleties in apparently simplified positions.

Conclusion

The CMU Tartans rule again! It was a fun time. Thank you, Jeff, for organizing this dinner! I hope to be able to play more than two rounds for the team next year.

Missing the final Steel City Road Runners taper run because of injury and burnout

2013-04-27T14:01:46-04:00

Two days ago, I reported on coming back from injury and doing a Steel City Road Runners evening training run.

It turned out that the unexpected fast pace that I stupidly went along with took its toll on me. I am now in serious trouble with just one more week to go before the Pittsburgh Marathon. This morning I did not at all feel like running, and so I skipped attending the final (and 6 mile) Steel City Road Runners Saturday morning run that I had so looked forward to all these months!! I take these Saturday training runs seriously and have really enjoyed them, writing about each one that I participate in.

I do not know whether I will be able to even go to the start line of the marathon in a week.

Injury and burnout

As of yesterday, I simply felt tired and sore. I've been battling burnout on marathon training for some time now, basically since my 16-mile long run of two weeks ago, which was the last time I felt really strong and stable. The last two weeks have been very worrisome to me, as I've reported on overtraining and injury multiple times.

My legs are hurting. My left knee is a little weird, my right shin is hurting (I have not had shin splints all year so far!), I've been waking up with tightness and pain under my left foot (plantar fascia?). These are serious problems, not run-of-the-mill training soreness. It feels like I've run my body into the ground. It's such a shame, because I was feeling so great two weeks ago.

The worst physical problem is my skin! My dry cracking skin on my right foot has gotten worse. The crack at the big toe has reopened. A new crack has formed near the ball of my foot. I cannot put pressure on this foot without extreme pain. I also have a crack near the heel of my left foot that had been healing earlier but now is bothering me as well.

What now?

All I can do is rest and hope to get back my energy, and also fix my skin problems. I am soaking my feet and rubbing off dry skin and rubbing on foot cream in order to try to heal the cracks.

Conclusion

It was really stupid of me to have deviated from my tapering plans two days ago and run much faster than I should have, given that I was just coming back from injury. It wasn't on my schedule to do such a thing. Now I'm in trouble.

Back from injury: an unexpected fast finish Steel City Road Runners training run

2013-04-25T21:55:57-04:00

Five days ago, I reported on feeling overtrained and injured.

Today, I report on my progress with recovery and continued training for the Pittsburgh Marathon during the first week of my taper period.

Recovery

The good news is that I'm bouncing back. I still have a way to go before I feel completely healthy and strong, but I'm not doing too badly, considering.

Knee

Earlier this week, I did take Sunday off from running (and from wearing Luna Sandals). My left knee was still shaky on Monday, plus I simply felt tired, so I took Monday off as well. Tuesday, my knee was feeling better, so I did an easy 3.5 mile run and called it a day. That really improved my mood, because I was really upset about whether I could run the marathon at all. Wednesday, my knee seemed completely OK, so I ran an easy 4.5 miles.

Feet

My left foot skin injuries are healing; two days ago there was still some rawness:

But today, everything is completely scabbed over.

My right foot is still problematic with a crack in the dry skin at the big toe.

Still, I have been back to wearing Luna Sandals since two days ago.

New shorts

All my runs this week have been in a new pair of running shorts that I will probably use for the marathon. I bought this at Elite Runners and Walkers a month ago when picking up my race packet for the Just A Short Run half marathon there, but hadn't gotten around to wearing them yet!

I am liking this Brooks Infiniti Short III a lot. It seems extremely well-designed. I have not sensed chafing problems, and the pockets for a key and gel seem sturdy. Believe me, I have had all kinds of problems with many running shorts in the past decade, mostly involving chafing, deterioration of materials, and pockets becoming non-functional because of how they are sewn, so I can spot design and quality problems.

The run

Today, I wanted to do a marathon pace (9-minute pace) run of no more than 6 miles. It turned out that Steel City Road Runners along with True Runner had organized a Thursday evening 6-mile training run. I almost never run in the evening, but just this once, I decided to check it out, and John joined me also, for our first run together since the 12-miler that put him out of commission almost two months ago and led him to cancel his Pittsburgh Marathon registration.

It was pretty cold, relatively speaking. The temperature was around 50 and getting colder, windier, and it was cloudy and it looked like it might rain (it turned out that near the end of the run, it did drizzle a bit).

Pace

We followed a guy who was supposed to lead a roughly 9-minute pace for 6 miles, doing two 3-mile loops.

My impression was that we shot out noticeably faster, and I fell off the pack and just tried to stay in contact.

A note on dense urban evening running

Running in the Shadyside area at this time of day is stressful, it turns out, because of all the road traffic, the narrow sidewalks, and stop lights. We had to stop more often than I prefer:

Well, this was a learning experience, reminding me of why I prefer to run in the morning, and in less congested areas such as Beechwood Boulevard or Homewood Cemetery in Squirrel Hill, or Frick or Schenley Park!

First loop

Despite going slower than everyone else in the supposedly 9-minute pace group, I was feeling pretty good, probably finally completely recovered from last week's overtraining. My stride rate was fast and I felt relatively relaxed and efficient, except that I knew we were going faster than I feel I will be able to sustain in the marathon.

I saw a guy in front of me wearing calf sleeves. I had forgotten to wear mine. I should wear them more before the marathon in order to make sure to be completely used to them.

We finished the first loop in around 26:18. Um, that's 8:47 pace. I was right, we were going faster than 9:00 pace. I had in fact wondered why our pacer had slowed down some blocks before we got back to True Runner, and meanwhile most of the rest of us just followed whoever was in front of the pack!

Second loop

Some people stopped to drink Gatorade or water, but I didn't take any. Then we headed off again. This time, the pace was slower, possibly even a bit slower than 9:00 pace. That was fine with me. But after about a mile, we started going faster and faster. I almost had to laugh. We were going considerably faster than in the first loop even.

The pacer eventually fell back and we all just passed him. Later I reflected on this bizarre group mentality we engaged in. We must have simply ended up following whoever wanted to go fastest. I decided I might as well treat this run as a super fast finish run rather than the steady run I had originally intended. We were clearly going at 8:30 pace and then even faster, down to 8:00 pace and even possibly 7:45 by the end. It was crazy. I felt like I was running in a race. For some reason, everyone decided to push it.

We finished the second loop in something like 24:59 (we'd done the first loop in 26:18).

Conclusion

That I was able to maintain alert turnover and also speed things up as I felt like it gave me some confidence that I am bouncing back OK from the past two really hard weeks of training. I have one more week of tapering to go before the marathon!

On overtraining and feeling injured two weeks before the Pittsburgh Marathon

2013-04-20T22:25:40-04:00

Last week's 16-mile run with the Steel City Road Runners was my longest run during the past two months of training for the Pittsburgh Marathon. I knew that it was about time to start tapering, but I felt that because of my relatively low mileage (mostly under 30 miles a week), I should put in one last hard week of training, and then have two weeks of tapering before the marathon.

Unfortunately, this week I overdid things and today's 11-mile run was very revealing. I ended that run with a whole slew of real problems that I need to immediately fix, or else I will not be able to even make it to the start line of the marathon in two weeks!!

This week's workouts

Monday

After walking 2 miles to work, I did a tough high-intensity Billat workout on the CMU track, thinking that having taken Sunday off from running, I was ready to get back into action. After doing about 12 minutes of this workout (after warming up first, of course), I was beat. I was feeling pressure on my knees and shins.

Basically, I was not sufficiently recovered from my 16-miler on Saturday, and I made a mistake.

Also, I walked 2 miles back home from work, with sore legs and feet, and still wearing Luna Sandals all day.

Tuesday

I did an easy 6-mile run, which included 1 mile of running to work, 4 miles of running in Schenley Park on the Pretty Good Race course, and 1 mile on the CMU track. Despite taking this run slowly, I felt rather sore afterwards.

Wednesday

I decided to take a day completely off from running, and off from Luna Sandals, to give my legs and feet a rest.

Thursday

I ran 5 miles in Frick Park.

Friday

I did the annual Random Distance Run. By this time, I was quite looking forward to getting Saturday's run over with and then resting on Sunday.

11-mile run

I decided to make the Saturday run a kind of dress rehearsal for the marathon. I would wake up at approximately the same time, and dress and eat as though running the marathon, and run at marathon pace, and the only difference would be that I would do 11 miles, not 26.2.

So I ate some salted, boiled potatoes for breakfast, and took a gel pack to eat right before the run, and planned to take a gel during the run also.

It was really cold yet again (temperature below 40F, and I saw some stray snowflakes), even colder than last week, so I substituted a short-sleeve T-shirt and shell and long pants in place of the long-sleeve T-shirt and shorts I wore last Saturday. I still had the glove liners and hat, of course.

I wore, for the first time, my calf sleeves that had just arrived, and that I plan to wear during the marathon:

Moment of silence for Boston

The whole week has been very weird for me because the Boston Marathon bombing on Monday has been on my mind; I did what I could to avoid media coverage of the hunt for the bombers. It turned out that just last night, they caught the remaining official suspect, so that brought a little closure to the whole thing.

The training run was preceded by a moment of silence for Boston as well as updates on changes to the Pittsburgh Marathon setup for increased security.

For this run, I wore blue as well as a “We are all Boston Marathoners at heart” bib

The run

I intended to try to follow a 9-minute pace group.

It turned out that the group went out pretty fast. I could not tell whether it felt fast because it really was faster than 9-minute pace, or because I was so fatigued from my week of training.

At some point, I did speed up (as I usually seem to do in my runs, starting out slowly before I'm all warmed up and ready to go faster). Then the problem was that I didn't know what the route was exactly, once I started passing people! Yes, I got the printed map right before the run, but that's never a great time for me to study and memorize the map, and I hate pulling out the map while running.

Getting “lost”

At one point when we reached downtown again in Pittsburgh, and we were supposed to eventually cross over north, I asked some runners around me what the route was, and unfortunately, one guy made some assumption and we followed him. Later I learned he made the wrong assumption. In fact, since I ran past him and was following some other people ahead of me, I got myself into more trouble. At one point, I saw someone behind me go right, while the guy ahead of me by a block kept going straight. I immediately smelled that the guy was not part of our group (lots of people were out running, I could tell), and sure enough, I looked back and everyone was taking a shortcut through someone's back yard to get back to Liberty Avenue and cross the 16th Street Bridge, and so I backtracked and followed.

By that time, I was tired and demoralized by all the weird twists and turns the route had become after having reached downtown earlier, and now that I knew where I was, I just slowed down and didn't bother to catch up to any pack again, and took some photos:

I don't really know how far I ran or how fast. It just seemed really intense to me.

After the run

After the run, I ate two bananas and some cookies and went inside to stretch and inspect the damage.

Feet

My Luna Sandals:

Tops of feet

My right foot felt OK, despite some indentations from tight laces:

But my left foot took a lot of damage, with skin scraped and some blood; the problem was that the strap had been loose, but I had neglected to stop and tighten and readjust it, and as a result, it shifted around and therefore chafed me:

It was good to learn this lesson once and for all: I will be more careful in the future to make sure the laces are tight enough, and also not ignore sensations of chafing, and take the time to stop and readjust if I really have to. I could not have run a full marathon with my left foot being chafed in this fashion for the whole distance.

Soles of feet

My soles revealed some developing problems from the entire week.

My left sole was basically OK, despite some dry skin that I should really deal with, but my right sole had more serious dry and cracking skin problems. In particular, near my big toe, there was a noticeable crack that caused me discomfort with every step:

Calves

I believe the calf sleeves did help me, even in just an 11-miler. They were not obtrusive at all as I wore them.

Knee

Later in the afternoon at home, I noticed that I had developed a debilitating left knee problem. I have no idea what exactly caused it, but the general overtraining had clearly caught up to me. When I put weight on my left leg at certain angles, the pain is excruciating. This particular happens when I go down the stairs. On the other hand, I can control whether I feel pain, by stepping very carefully. Something is loose and out of alignment, clearly. This has happened to me before, so I'm not as worried as I could be, but just two weeks away from the marathon, it is not good news.

Recovery plans?

My left knee is my highest priority right now. I am immediately taking a break from running. I will take tomorrow off, and possibly Monday as well. I will do whatever it takes to get the knee all good again, because there is no way I would even go to the start line of the marathon with the knee being as it is today!

I really need to fix my feet, and especially the right one. I really dried out my feet by wearing the Luna Sandals exclusively for running (and almost exclusively for walking) in the past week. So I'm putting lotion on my feet and deciding to wear socks and cushioned shoes for a while. There's more I'm going to have to do for my feet also. I've never in my life had this dry skin problem before on my feet, because in the past when it's been cold and dry, I've always worn socks and closed toe shoes, whether of the usual monotoed variety or Vibram FiveFingers. I've never had my feet so exposed before. Especially, running in temperatures of the 30s with huaraches seemed to cause some of my problems.

Finally, the next two weeks really are supposed to be tapering for me. I will be running easy and short and slow for the most part, just to maintain some fitness, but do not plan on doing any super hard workouts any more. We all know that the body takes about two weeks to adapt to any training, and so no hard training I do now will have an effect on my performance in the marathon.

Conclusion

I yet again pushed myself to the edge and overtrained, and have some real knee and feet problems to solve as quickly as possible. I am so ready to dial down the training and get the marathon over with. I don't want to sound pessimistic or depressed, but that's the reality of how I'm feeling at this moment. I hope that within the next couple of days, I'll have recovered from this low point.

Going out too fast yet again in my third Random Distance Run

2013-04-19T22:38:23-04:00

For the third time, I ran in the annual Random Distance Run held on the 400m outdoor track at Carnegie Mellon University. It was a cold, rainy Friday afternoon.

This was also my first race ever while wearing my Luna Sandals (the 7mm Venado).

History

The Random Distance Run first came to CMU in 2003.

The concept is very geeky. What happens is that a giant pair of six-sided dice are rolled, and the sum of the rolls is how many laps you have to run around the track: so the minimum number of total laps is 2 (800m) and the maximum is 12 (4.8K).

The catch is that only one die is rolled before the race begins, and then the second die is rolled only when the fastest runner is about to finish the number of laps from the first die. The second die indicates how many more laps to run.

Therefore, there is an element of luck to who the winner of the race is: someone who went out very fast and then got lucky with a roll of a 1 for the second die could conceivably beat someone who was a fitter runner but went out conservatively for the first die and then found it too late to sprint for an additional lap.

Since I am not a very fast runner, these gambles don't really apply to me: my most rational strategy (to avoid a lot of suffering while avoiding going much too slow) would seem to be to run at a pace that is correct for the number of laps for the first die plus 3, or something like that.

My first Random Distance Run (2003)

However, in my first Random Distance Run, ten years ago, I accidentally went out too fast even given my intent. Not normally running on a track, I have always found it hard to gauge my pace accurately.

The rolls were 4 and 2, for a total of 6 laps (2.4K).

For the first die, I went out too fast in the first lap, then tried to slow down to a sustainable pace:

1:22.34
1:38.67
1:43.68
1:42.63

Since the second die was low, I sped back up to complete the final two laps:

1:37.22
1:33.07

The winner of the 2003 Random Distance Run did in fact gamble for the win, shooting out really fast for the first 4 laps, and the gamble paid off, as you can see in the results!

My second Random Distance Run (2006)

In 2006, the rolls were 6 and 5, for a total of 11 laps (4.4K). I still went out too fast in the first lap, but did slow down enough to not completely die.

First die:

1:32.08
1:42.27
1:43.90
1:45.82
1:44.93
1:50.55

Second die:

1:50.41
1:53.89
1:54.57
1:51.49
1:42.85

The winner in this year, Arjun, scored partially because he was a fast-improving runner who was not known among the favorites who were in the race. They didn't know who he was and let him go ahead thinking he would die, but he was strong and they couldn't catch up in the second half! I still remember them at the end of the race basically asking, “Who is this guy?”

My third Random Distance Run (2013)

Again, this year, 2013, I had no real track training. Furthermore, I am nowhere as fit as I was seven or ten years ago, and in addition, ran the race as part of a very tough final training week for the Pittsburgh Marathon, so this race was just for fun.

Worst of all, I had eaten a rather large, heavy lunch, thanks to the annual CMU Carnival BBQ:

Not the kind of food I eat every day, and certain not just before a serious race!

It was 3 and 3 for a total of 6 laps (2.4K).

I went out too fast, then deliberately slowed down. Actually, I ended up slowing down too much, because in the final lap I sped up and had more left than I gave. I did put in a silly ferocious finishing sprint that resulted in beating two runners ahead of me by almost four seconds.

First die:

1:36
1:48
1:51

Second die:

1:55
1:54
1:44

Amusingly, the runner I beat at the end was the same one I ended up beating near the end of the Pretty Good Race last year. I hadn't actually realized during the race that it was her again that was my target.

My legs felt banged up after the race, from not only the cumulative fatigue of my marathon training for the week, but also because of that sprint I did. It was probably unwise of me to have thrown that in there, given that tomorrow morning I am scheduled to do a tough training run.

Cool T-shirt

Conclusion

I enjoyed returning to doing the annual CMU Random Distance Run. Unfortunately, I've run it poorly each year that I've done it, going out too fast. I plan to run this race again next year but actually do some preparation ahead of time in order to figure out how to run consistently on the track amidst the mayhem of slow and fast and lapped runners. I guess I'll need to watch what I eat on the day of the race, as well.

Commuting on foot during CMU Carnival week as cross-training for the Pittsburgh Marathon

2013-04-19T22:10:14-04:00

Last year, I reported on deciding to walk to work and back home during CMU Carnival week in order to avoid the hassles of parking on campus. This year, I decided to do this again, but with a twist.

I considered my commute to be a deliberate part of cross-training for the Pittsburgh Marathon.

Why walk instead of run?

You might think that I would just run to work and back home, but the logistics were too complicated because of clothing, laptop, and other issues. I ran in to work this week just one time; otherwise, I walked.

More important, I feel that walking is greatly underrated as a fitness activity. Here is one of many recent articles, for example, reporting that walking has many underrated health benefits. Unfortunately, I think the tone of this article is part of the problem: the title is “Study: walking can be as good as running”, which is just sensationalist drivel. I don't see walking and running as competitors at all. They are just two different activities, with different benefits, really. High-intensity running, for example, does a lot that walking does not do. But walking is less stressful, is slower, takes more time to cover a particular distance, is more meditative and in many cases more sociable (since running paces differ more than walking paces). Both are great.

Total mileage

I ended up walking about 12 miles total more than I normally walk during the week. Note that this is less than the total of the distances between home and office because when I drive in to work, I have to walk the distance between the parking lot and the office.

Footwear: concerns over the Luna Sandals

I took the opportunity to put more mileage onto my Luna Sandals, which I've been wearing for all my running in recent weeks. I figured that the more time I spend on these minimalist sandals, the more prepared I will be for the sustained impact of running the whole Pittsburgh Marathon in them. Also, I needed more time to get used to the lacing system.

It turned out that the extra 12 miles on my feet really made a difference in how much more stress on my feet I felt during this training week: not just soreness in my soles, but also some issues with drying, cracking skin.

Cushioned shoes

After yesterday, I decided I needed a break from all the walking, and so on Friday, I drove to work, parking on Circuit Road, and walking less than half a mile to my office from there, and in my Rockport Westshire casual shoes rather than any minimalist shoes! I did this especially because of the Random Distance Run I did in my Luna Sandals.

The Mono

I also finally decided to order a pair of thicker Luna Sandals, the new Mono, which are 12 mm thick rather than the 7 mm of the Venado I'm currently wearing:

There's a review of these huaraches on Birthday Shoes. I will almost certainly not be receiving these huaraches in time to break in and use in the Pittsburgh Marathon, but I expect to use them this summer for walking around in and longer runs.

Conclusion

It was unexpected to me how much more fat burning and soreness for my feet the extra 12 miles of walking this week gave me. I had to eat more just to maintain my weight, and I was so ready to take a break from minimalist shoes. I did decide to order a thicker running sandal for future running and walking.

Boston Marathon tragedy: please avoid the news porn

2013-04-15T19:49:22-04:00

Since I am a runner (and happening to be in the last stages of training for my second Pittsburgh Marathon, which is coming in less than three weeks), I woke up this morning knowing that it was Boston Marathon day. Also, by sheer coincidence, a fellow Pittsburgher I have never met but follow on Twitter happened to tweet a photo of his running gear while ready to run in Boston, and happened to mention some sock sleeves that he wears that I had never seen before, and I tweeted him for the first time in my life, and I got a reply from him after he finished, and I went and ordered a pair of these sock sleeves online, since I have a tendency toward calf cramping in long distance races.

So it was particularly eerie and somewhat personal to me when in the afternoon I heard from my office mate at work that the Boston Marathon had been bombed and people were dead and horribly injured.

My first thought was, this is fucking insane.

My second thought was extreme anger that criminals would do such a thing, and sadness for the runners and spectators who were so victimized.

My third thought was, “Uh oh, here we go again: time for news porn”.

9/11 and news

Because I remember 9/11.

Here are some excerpts from my journal on September 11, 2001 (at this time in my life I was jotting down journal entries regularly during the waking day):

11:12: “Oh G-d!!!!!!!!!!! The World Trade Center has been destroyed.”
11:36: “Things will never be the same again in this country.”
12:11: “Can't let terrorists disrupt my life.”
18:28: “Wait, are we attacking Afghanistan??????”
22:14: “Watched some TV footage for the first time. Disturbing. Especially people jumping out of the buildings.”
23:31: “Other people on zephyr [an internal chat system at Carnegie Mellon University] are saying they watched more TV today than all year. Same with me.”

Also, during this whole time, I did immediately try to call my sister who lived and worked in New York City, and of course failed. She reached me eventually and said she was OK.

But I realized something that day. I realized that I could not let relentless news porn rule my life. There was no benefit to my seeing again and again footage about the tragic terrorist attacks and all the speculations, the anger, the crying. I did not quit watching TV that evening, but did realize that I was being manipulated in a way that did not help me or help the world, really.

Much later, I learned that a high school classmate of mine had died on 9/11. And a college classmate was across the street when it happened.

News

At some point, years later, I did completely quit following news. By this, I mean that I stopped watching news on TV, I stopped reading printed newspapers, and I stopped reading online news sites as well. Seriously. It has improved my life. Periodically I try to spread the message of news avoidance, having seen the damage that following news has done to some family members and friends, without noticeable benefit in return.

In fact, just yesterday on Twitter I retweeted yet another article on news avoidance.

If you haven't done the experiment of avoiding news, your first thought might be, “Franklin must be an ignoramus who doesn't care about the world or know what goes on in it”. But actually, I am not completely ignorant of news: I simply have some filters. I do actively follow blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, and so I implicitly get a curated summary of whatever news is forwarded around through those channels. I see links and check the headlines, and I can choose to ignore or follow up on the news. And I selectively retweet what I find interesting and useful.

That said, the social media has for the past couple of hours become overwhelmingly dominated by a lot of emotions over the Boston Marathon terrorist attack, so as I write this, I am imposing a complete blackout on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Local

The local and federal authorities are, I presume, doing what they can to aid the victims and seek out the criminals, and following their every move would not help me be useful. If this tragedy had happened in Pittsburgh, then I would be monitoring the situation much more closely, in case I can actually be of direct aid.

Couldn't avoid TV today

Unfortunately, by coincidence, I could not avoid TV today. This evening, I was in the barber shop getting a haircut, and not only could people not refrain from commenting on the tragedy, but he also had the radio on and turned on his TV as well. I refused to look at the TV screen, but could not help repeatedly hearing about body parts being blown off, eardrums being perforated, panic, the audio clips of explosions and screaming, again and again. I remained silent and maintained my composure until my haircut was done.

A media blackout

I am taking a break from the Web overall for the rest of the evening. Last I checked my social media feeds, they are now all about the Boston Marathon attacks. I cannot help anyone by sitting in front of my computer getting all emotional and confused following all these feeds. I humbly recommend that you consider doing this also.

Conclusion

I have not found news porn to be useful in helping me cope with tragedy or in enabling me be of aid to those who need help. Given that, I am opting out of the news frenzy.

RIP Robert Byrne, American chess grandmaster and columnist who gave my childhood meaning

2013-04-15T08:50:22-04:00

I learned today that the American chess grandmaster and columnist Robert Byrne died last Friday, April 12, 2013.

Upon hearing this news, my mind was flooded immediately with childhood memories.

The scene

I am eight years old, walking alone on a Sunday morning through the woods. I carry some pocket change given to me by my father. My task: go to a local convenience store in town to buy a copy of the New York Times to bring back home.

I like the shortcut through the woods. When school is in session, I take that shortcut when I'm walking alone, whether stomping through crunchy autumn leaves, shivering through slushy snow, or getting shade as the school year is ending and the sun is bright.

I don't always take the shortcut, because sometimes I walk to school with a friend or two who live in another direction, and in that case we walk over frozen ponds or run up and down the grassy hill instead (where I once fell going too fast and was lifted up by some older kids and brought back home; still have the scar on my right knee today). But the shortcut is my secret. I don't tell my parents about the shortcut, because they might be worried. But it's my private time to myself.

At home

I buy the newspaper, and keep it rolled up as I return home. My father likes to read about world news. But I like to read about chess. Magically, in this huge bundle of paper there is a chess column every week, by someone named Robert Byrne. In this column, he lists the moves to some recent chess game that is interesting, with his annotations and explanations of important moves in the game, places where someone made a bad move or found a great one. There are some diagrams to help out in case one does not have a chess board at hand to play out.

My job is to clip out and save the chess column so that my father can staple it into his notebook. He likes collecting these chess columns. Where else could we hear about chess news from around the country and the world?

One of those days, my father gets particularly excited, because a Chinese player beat a Westerner (a Dutchman)!

And so I keep on following the New York Times chess column, until we move to Michigan a year later, and I lost my ritual of getting the Sunday Times for the family. No longer living in the New York City area, my father buys a subscription to a local newspaper instead; there is no chess column in this paper.

Conclusion

Thank you, Robert Byrne, for enriching the life of a young chess fan.

My final 16-mile long run before Pittsburgh Marathon featured two radical experiments

2013-04-13T21:26:37-04:00

The Pittsburgh Marathon is just three weeks away. According to some training schedules, today's long run should be the last really long one, followed by two shorter taper runs in the next two weeks. However, because I had a late start in training, and my mileage is not all that high (I reached a lifetime peak weekly mileage of “only” 36 last week, before coming back down for this week), I have not yet decided whether to do another really long run next week.

But one thing was sure: today's 16-mile run with the Steel City Road Runners was going to be important.

I used this run as an opportunity to perform two radical experiments, which succeeded beyond expectation!

The route

Today's run started at Dick's Sporting Goods in the Waterfront and was an out-and-back on the Steel Valley Trail along the Monongahela River, crossing it to McKeesport before turning back.

Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyRun

Experiment one: footwear

It was on the cold, cloudy side (temperature started off below 40F and probably never reached 50F), and rather windy, but I was dressed just enough for the conditions: a long-sleeve T-shirt, shorts, glove liners, and a hat. I felt it was particularly important to wear shorts on this long run, because I expect to be wearing (these) shorts in the Pittsburgh Marathon.

I've been running exclusively in Luna Sandals since last week's long run. I am still breaking them in, but the chafing has decreased (although the scabs are old evidence of it), and the shoes are forming to my feet. I still have a problem with heel slippage on my right foot, but hope to figure that out eventually without lacing too tight.

My hope has always been that I will be able to wear the Luna Sandals in the marathon itself. I have rather enjoyed running in them instead of Vibram FiveFingers, but the Luna Sandals have their own drawbacks I'm working out.

Experiment two: fuel

I planned to do this run as a “long, steady run” rather than a “fast finish long run” as I did last week, but with a twist: deliberate depletion.

I ate no breakfast before the run. And I planned to drink no Gatorade and eat no GU gel during the run, if possible. I wanted to only drink water, and see if I experience glycogen depletion, and if so, try to run through it. The marathon is a hard event. To be ready, I want to at least partially simulate what it might feel like in the second half of a marathon.

The run

I had never run on the Steel Valley Trail before, so it was a new, interesting experience. Some of it is on dirt, but most of it is asphalt. I have to confess to not being a fan of smelling fumes from plants in operation, and seeing and hearing a lot of trains up close, but it was otherwise a peaceful, continuous path, and I do like running along a river.

According to plan, I started out slowly, paying no attention to the pace groups. (I am not going to follow any pace groups in the Pittsburgh Marathon either; all these group runs as well as the Just A Short Run half marathon have taught me that I should just follow my body's own rhythm).

Footwear

I was wearing Luna Sandals for the longest run ever in them; the longest run I had done up till now in them was 7.5 miles, less than half of 16! Embarrassingly, for the first mile or so, I kept on stopping to readjust the laces, because of heel slippage. I finally realized that because it was under 40F, and I had just hopped out of bed, my feet were smaller than in other runs I'd done (it's been crazy warm recently until today).

After a couple of miles, I was fine in the sandals for the rest of the run!

Fuel

There were two fluid stations, hence three stops (one of them being at the turnaround point). As planned, I took only water, no Gatorade. And although I carried one gel with me during the entire run, I ended up never using it.

Observations

My first observation was how “clean” I felt, mentally and physically, running without breakfast and with no fuel in my stomach. Of course, I believe that in the actual marathon I will need fuel, and I will need it regularly, in order to prepare for the final miles, but this was the first time in my entire life that I had run as far as 16 miles without any prior breakfast or fuel during the run! It was confidence-boosting to me that for at least 16 miles, I could run without external aid, and just rely mainly on fat-burning rather than pumping in carbs. I did start feeling hungry in the second half of the run, and when I finished the run realized I was quite hungry, of course.

Furthermore, my feet were just fine in the Luna Sandals. Apart from starting off pretty cold, and encountering surprisingly annoying particles that got between my feet and the soles during the dirt sections of the trail, I got no blisters, chafing was minimal, and my knees and toes and hips felt, after the run, better than they had ever felt after a run of this distance. I felt a bit tight, but not crampy yet. That was a pleasant surprise.

So I will keep on refining my use of the Luna Sandals, but I fully expect, after this experience, that I will run the Pittsburgh Marathon in these sandals!

The lack of cushioning is a virtue of these minimalist sandals, I believe: being less cushioned than the Bikila LS, I can better feel if my form is poor, because then I feel jarring impact. And I can also feel when I make subtle form adjustments, which the minimal sole enable me to make at all (in the Bikila LS shoes, I feel they induce too much lateral motion sometimes). The feedback cycle enables me to refine my form constantly.

Speed

I timed myself on this run, but without calculating any pace during the run itself: I only made note of the start time, turnaround time, and end time.

In the first half, when I started really slow (and had to stop to adjust my laces), but then picked it up naturally, I ran 8 miles in 1:15, or 9:23 pace. That's actually faster than I thought I was going. I did not want to go too fast, since this was not supposed to be a fast run.

In the second half, I did pick it up, because I was feeling good, and decided to try to find a “natural” faster pace in order to see what I might comfortably do as actual marathon pace. I finished the last 8 miles in 1:12, which is exactly 9:00 pace.

That translates to a marathon finish time of 3:56, which I'd be completely happy with. So I think it may be realistic after all, despite my abbreviated training season (I really wish I had an additional month, actually, to doing a couple more 16 mile runs), to aim to go under 4:00. I will decide during my final tapering week what my actual plan is for marathon day.

Recovery

I went home and immediately slurped down a planned snack, before eating more food. My first snack was potatoes I had boiled earlier, along with some garlic salt:

Boiled potatoes go down really well for me. That gives me an idea: on marathon day I will carb-load with potatoes for breakfast, and maybe even bring a potato to the start line to eat before the gun goes off. Despite my fuel-less experiment succeeding for 16 miles, I have every intention of somehow packing in the fuel before marathon day. I need to figure out a plan to top off the fuel without upsetting my stomach.

This week I had lower total mileage than last week; I'm down from 36 to 31. I hope to ramp it back up for the coming training week.

Conclusion

My two experiments during the 16-mile run gave me increased confidence in my footwear and fueling plans and robustness. I will continue to do some fasting, fuel-less runs as well as wear the Luna Sandals.

Singing and playing tango and jazz at an unexpected music party

2013-04-12T23:20:59-04:00

I suddenly got email from Henry on a Friday afternoon while I was at work. He invited me to join him at some guy's party in the evening to play some tangos, since the party was going to have an “Argentina” theme. My first thought was that Abby was not going to be able to go, and I myself had made plans to rest up before my very important training run Saturday morning for the Pittsburgh Marathon, but the opportunity to meet some new musicians and other people, and express my love for passionate tango music, made me decide, after consulting with Abby, to attend the party.

The good news was that I had done some tango music earlier, so there was some reuse possible. Last year, I had finally worked up the courage to do some singing, and rather enjoyed singing classic traditional tango in particular, such as “Por una Cabeza”. And this year, I had finally given a shot at playing tango on flute, playing both “El Choclo” as well as “Por una Cabeza” (as a flute-violin duet).

The bad news was that someone else was already going to play “Por una Cabeza” on violin, so that left me with only one other tango I had played with Henry before, “El Choclo”, whose contrasts of staccato/legato and minor/major, with a lot of room for rubato and ornamental bravado quite appeal to me.. I wanted a tango to sing, and by sheer coincidence, I knew exactly which tango I always wanted to sing, but had only half-sung it to myself in private: this was “Uno”, by Mariano Mores from 1943.

Uno

By coincidence, only a couple of days ago, the Spanish actress/singer Sara Montiel died, and in her memory I rewatched and reposted a video clip of her singing “Uno” in a film:

I believe that I first came across “Uno” by accident when some years ago I found Montiel's performance while searching for other tangos. In any case, it was love at first hearing, and made it to my list of tangos I wanted to sing some day. I'd put off this project for some good reasons, but today I decided I wanted to give it a shot!

So I hastily found a score, printed out the lyrics, and after eating dinner at home after work, and just an hour or so before the party, I worked on being able to sing the Spanish lyrics without completely stumbling over myself. Most songs in Spanish I can sing with no problem, but “Uno” features a huge number of words in the lyrics, which means there are considerable challenges:

pronouncing Spanish at basically spoken speed (I'm not that fluent yet)
breaking up the words into logical and emotional groupings at speed
singing Spanish in the face of many, many instances of word pairs with vowels in between

I knew I wasn't going to get everything perfect in time in less than half an hour of determining where to break things up and where to link things, and actually doing this fluently, so I was nervous, but I've learned that when it comes to music, perfect technique is not the most important thing; I felt I could reasonably well convey the emotional content of this song despite imperfections.

The party

It was a great party, with food, music, and conversation, and I was excited to meet a whole bunch of new people of all ages. I hope the next time Bob and his wife host another music party, Abby will be able to attend too!

Before the musical part of the party began, Henry and I spent about five minutes in the basement, with him on the upright piano down there, and me singing, trying to read through “Uno” together so that it would be at least halfway presentable.

We performed “El Choclo” and “Uno” near the end of the program (since we were last minute additions that didn't make it onto the printed program). I was physically shaking while doing both of them, because I was in front of a completely new crowd of people and just wasn't as prepared as I would have preferred. But it was a friendly crowd, and the audience seemed to enjoy our music-making. I was happy to have contributed something to the “Argentina” theme with some authentic Golden Age tango music.

What was really enjoyable about this music party was that so many of the guests participated in performing something: young and old, amateur and professional. This welcoming atmosphere was wonderful.

Jazz, improvisation

After the official music program ended, some people continued to jam. This guy I met, Keith, was particularly interesting to me, as he is a wind player, and played both soprano saxophone and flute on the program, and then after the program, was doing jazz standards on alto saxophone. I was so inspired by this that I decided I wanted to do some jazz also. I bring a little binder of music nowadays when I go to musical parties, just in case, and happened to have on me “Sweet Lorraine”, which I had never played before other than to myself with a CD track. So I got Henry to the piano so that we could just go for it and improvise to the chord changes. We totally got into it and I really enjoyed the jamming. I really enjoy nothing more than improvisation, and appreciate that Henry is game for doing this with me, as when we were doing it with Latin jazz (bolero and cha cha) last month.

Conclusion

I had tremendous fun attending Bob's party, seeing so many people sing or play an instrument, all of us sharing our love of music together. I was very inspired by everyone who contributed something of their unique soul there, and I feel like this is what life is all about.

My Pittsburgh Scala Meetup talk on property-based testing using ScalaCheck

2013-04-11T22:49:30-04:00

Tonight was the third meeting of the Pittsburgh Scala Meetup. Our last meeting was in late February, and we didn't have a meeting in March.

Attendance

This time there were only six of us in attendance, but that had its advantages, as it resulted in everyone really participating fully in discussion.

Presentation

I gave a presentation “Beyond xUnit example-based testing: property-based testing with ScalaCheck” as an introduction to property-based testing, with examples using ScalaCheck.

I prepared the presentation with the goal of spreading the word on property-based testing as a complement to much more widely used methods of testing in the TDD/BDD software development communities. My impression has been that outside of the functional programming communities such as those in Haskell (the pioneer of QuickCheck), ML, and Haskell, there has not been as much use of property-based methods of design and testing. Fortunately, this has been changing.

In any case, I personally can no longer imagine not starting out design exploration without using ScalaCheck on Scala or Java based projects. It's a useful additional tool for the developer's toolkit.

Slides and code

My slides are available on slideshare, and a full SBT project of the code is on GitHub.

Note that the slides are not in any way a substitute for the actual talk and the questions and answers and discussion during and after it! They are most useful as memory joggers for those who actually attended the presentation. A set of slides is nothing resembling a technical article or a blog post.

After

Out of some questions during the talk, we came up with an idea for improving ScalaCheck that might be an interesting group project to work on.

There was also more general discussion of using Scala, upcoming and ongoing local Pittsburgh general tech gatherings, Josh filling us in on developments in the Scala world, and ideas for future presentations.

Conclusion

It was a small gathering, but I enjoyed presenting on property-based testing, and we had some really good discussions. Another meeting for the Pittsburgh Scala Meetup has already been scheduled for May.

My first interval workout before the Pittsburgh Marathon

2013-04-09T20:41:57-04:00

There's less than one month less before the Pittsburgh Marathon, yet I have done no interval training for it until today. In ordinary circumstances, I would have been doing weekly interval training for some time now, but I had a late start with training in the winter, and so I simply have not felt ready for hard interval training until this week! Up till now, I have simply been scrambling to increase mileage and survive the long runs without injury and burnout, and this has been challenging enough: last week, I was fortunate to bounce back from clear overtraining. But now I'm actually starting to feel strong, so it's time to sharpen up with interval training.

Why interval training?

Interval training is well-known from research to be extremely beneficial for improving performance at distance running. It builds the body as well as the mind.

My workout

A decade ago, I used to do interval training on the CMU track of Gesling Stadium, but I never really liked running around a synthetic track. There are other options, of course. I have good memories of running around the 1K dirt track (not the synthetic 400m track) at the oval in Schenley Park.

But nowadays, I find that the most convenient place for interval training is a trail loop near home in Frick Park that just happens to be very close to 800m in length. The drawback, of course, is that the length of this loop means I can only do intervals of multiples of 800m. Unfortunately, I prefer doing 1200m long intervals, while I find 1600m to be on the brutal side for an interval workout. But 800m will do for my first interval workout of the year!

I ended up doing 6x800. Oh, and it turned out to be a heat training workout too, because it suddenly got very warm, like summer already. I really hope that it cools down quickly and stays cool for the Pittsburgh Marathon! I don't want summer conditions to come until after the marathon.

After 15 minutes of easy running, I launched into the intervals.

Purely by subjective feel, I ended up running these intervals in an average of about 3:37 each, with 1:50 timed recovery:

3:38, 1:54
3:40, 1:51
3:37, 1:47
3:34, 1:50
3:35, 1:53
3:39

The numbers don't mean much to me right now, except as a checkpoint for the future. The workout was pretty tough. I felt semi-pukey and exhausted by the end!

Footwear

I am now running only in Luna Sandals. I still have chafing issues, but we'll see if they clear up with time.

What about high-intensity interval training?

High-intensity interval training has become very popular in recent years, and for good reason. I was doing some on the treadmill in the winter in order to kickstart my running, but then put it aside when I left the treadmill.

I expect to start incorporating serious HIIT into my training to get even sharper.

Conclusion

It's good to finally be back to interval training, after basically some years of not being serious and strong and disciplined enough to do it systematically.

A comeback from Pittsburgh Marathon overtraining

2013-04-06T15:59:23-04:00

Last week I reported on running Just A Short Run, my first half marathon in nine years. One very real concern I had when I put this race on my calendar a month ago was that recovery from it might interfere with my marathon training. Although I did not race Just A Short Run all out, I did put in a hard effort, and sure enough I did end up having a really tough training week afterwards.

But the overtraining this week was partly my doing. Here I explain how I ended up feeling like I was falling apart, and how I recovered and felt pretty good during today's long run.

After the half marathon

As I mentioned in my report, I had some issues after the race: my right lower calf/Achilles area seized up for a bit, and also my right second and third toes did as well.

Sure enough, a day later, I was feeling very sore in my right lower calf and second toe. I should mention that I have Morton's toe on both feet, although my left second toe is only barely longer than the big toe, while it is my right second toe that is noticeably longer than the big toe and therefore has a real tendency to cause me some problems:

So I did take a day off running after the half marathon.

Monday: trying to be careful

But even on Monday, I was still feeling sore. I decided that I should do some light running anyway, to avoid two days off completely from running.

Also, I very much wanted to finally start running in my new Luna Sandals, which I had received last week but put aside because of the half marathon. These are the Venado with ATS laces and MGT footbed:

I ended up running just an easy 2 miles on the treadmill in the morning in my Vibram FiveFingers Bikila LS shoes, and then after work, running 1.5 miles in the Luna Sandals.

Tuesday: new shoes

Tuesday, I was still not yet completely recovered either from the half marathon, but I felt I was ready to go for a normal run. I decided to do a real run in the Luna Sandals and did 5 miles.

I encountered various problems while trying out the Luna Sandals, beginning to break them in. I got chafed in various places from the straps and buckle:

And it was tricky keeping the sandals on at all. I fidgeted a lot with the laces to try to keep my heels from slipping. I kept on having problems with my right heel slipping.

Meanwhile, although my calf was healing up, I was more worried about my right second toe, which seemed sore and sensitive. I noticed that my tendency to impact the second toe (after all, it is my longest toe) was causing trouble. I had not really encountered any problems until after the half marathon, but the intensity of that effort, and the fact that my Bikila LS shoes were getting worn down at the toes, must have exposed this biomechanical weakness finally.

Wednesday: overexcited

Wednesday, I was excited about running, and used the Luna Sandals again. I still had slippage and chafing issues, but figured that there was a break-in process. The soles were starting to shape to my feet, for example.

Unfortunately, I accidentally (because of taking impromptu routes in Homewood Cemetery) ran 9 miles when I had originally intended to run more like 7.

My second toe was startling to tingle and really complain: even normal walking triggered pain.

Thursday: admission of overtraining

Thursday was one of those days when I truly had to ask myself three questions. I was simply feeling exhausted.

I forced myself to completely take Thursday off from running (or strength training, for that matter), while evaluating my situation. This was no longer just about my toe, but about my overall fatigue.

Meanwhile, I had to fix this toe problem somehow, and soon, because I had a long run planned for Saturday. So I observed myself closely while walking. I noticed that I had a tendency to do a weird retracting motion on the toe when walking, a motion I do not use on my left foot. I questioned the purpose of this reflex. I found that I could choose not to perform the retracting motion. It was difficult to make this choice, but if I really focused, I could control how I used my foot. I remembered lessons from Alexander technique about observing and unlearning habits.

Furthermore, I discovered the reason my right hip has sometimes felt sore: my right hip has sagged in my posture. I also found that correcting this shifted the balance of weight on my right foot, and alleviated the pressure on my second toe, shifting more weight where it should be, more toward the big toe under the ball of the foot. These were very interesting discoveries.

In any case, I felt so tired that I decided to go ahead and cancel my Sunday plan to play in the final round of the Pittsburgh Chess League season; I had really wanted to put in one final appearance for our team, after not having actually played for us since last November, because something kept on coming up every month since then, but I had little confidence that I would be mentally alert on Sunday.

Friday: still playing it safe

Friday, I was feeling energetic enough to run, but I forced myself to take another day off for the sake of my right toe. It was not easy, but I reminded myself that not being able to do my long run was not worth one more missed day of training.

Instead of running, I did one rep of the Cathedral of Learning stair climb, just to get some activity in.

Saturday: my 14-mile long run

Saturday morning, I felt my right toe had recovered sufficiently that I was going to be OK doing my planned long run.

The Steel City Road Runners had a 10-mile run lined up starting in Shadyside after a program of dynamics warmups by Dr. Vonda Wright, “Warmup on Walnut”, outside of sponsor True Runner. My plan was to skip that program, but create a 14-mile run by running 2 miles from home to the Shadyside point and then joining the group run and then running 2 miles back home afterwards.

Here is the 10-mile loop:

Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyRun

My goal

My goal for this long run was to make it a “fast finish long run”. In particular, in planning my run, I had noted that the last 5 miles of the course involved a steady uphill as well as a steeper uphill through Oakland on Forbes Avenue. In the 2003 Pittsburgh Marathon ten years ago, this uphill had proved a bit discouraging to me (because I had, frankly, gone out too fast). In any case, for psychological and physiological reasons, I wanted to do this whole uphill fast and strong in this particular workout. In the actual marathon in a month, of course, I don't plan to run it as fast, but I did want to remember the landmarks and mental state of doing something difficult but in a relaxed way. I wanted to focus on applying my newly discovered knowledge about my posture and stride asymmetry and “run tall” up the hill, with balanced hips, while monitoring my right second toe to make sure it did not get battered.

I was still not comfortable with the Luna Sandals, so I fell back to the shoes I've been wearing for almost all of my runs in the past three months, the Bikila LS shoes.

Showed up late

Unfortunately, I strangely miscalculated my departure from home to run 2 miles to Aiken Avenue and Walnut Street, and showed up 4 minutes late, just as runners were already heading off. I grabbed a printed map and picked up the pace so that I could try to catch up to the 10:00 pace group. I did, realizing of course that I was making my task in the final miles of my run more difficult as a result.

Conquering the Oakland hill

I managed the Oakland hill pretty well, being very focused. I continued going hard all the way back to True Runner in Shadyside. Near the end, I felt my calves getting tight, just as in the half marathon last week when my right calf seized up after I was walking after the finish line. I thought it was very useful to have triggered this exact sensation and knowing where it was, because it meant that maybe I would be able to train my body to accept that state of fatigue (after running 12 miles) and continue. Also, the feeling cleared up fairly quickly after I stopped to walk, so I think last week the real trigger was my pointless little sprint near the end. If I avoid any sprinting during the marathon, I might well be able to avoid cramping. At least, that is the plan.

A decision about Gatorade

I drank some more Gatorade back at Walnut Street, then ran home. I was really quite tired by this point and my stomach wasn't feeling so great. I ate some actual food and eventually recovered.

During this run, no gels were provided, so I drank Gatorade as my only fuel.

Here is my final conclusion, solidifying a thought I had last week in the half marathon: Gatorade is bad for me, and I should completely avoid it in future runs and in the Pittsburgh Marathon! It was good to learn this for sure now. In fact, it is quite possible that some of the issues I had in the 2003 Pittsburgh Marathon were a result of Gatorade.

GU gel works OK for me, but according to the official Pittsburgh Marathon fluid station table, GU is provided only starting at mile 9.7. Therefore, I am going to pack some gels to ingest during the first 10 miles of the marathon! I will not drink any Gatorade!

Conclusion

After some ill-advised overtraining and injury this week after my half marathon, I forced myself to take two days off to recover, and used the time to diagnose possible causes of my biomechanical problems. I found some good hypotheses and possible solutions, and managed a high quality “fast finish long run” and am optimistic about my continuing training for the Pittsburgh Marathon.

Report on Just A Short Run: my first half marathon in nine years!

2013-03-30T15:06:18-04:00

(Updated 2013-05-09 with official race videos!)

Until today, I had not run a half marathon in nine years. This distance had given me a lot of trouble the five times I did it in 2001-2004. So I was very anxious about running Just A Short Run this morning.

Here's why I feared it, and how I ended up unexpectedly pleased with the experience, including finishing over four minutes faster than my goal time.

Past participation in Just A Short Run

This was the fifth time I participated in Just A Short Run. This race began in 2001, when Kevin Smith of Elite Runners and Walkers created in in memory of his younger brother who died of leukemia, to support the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society:

Until today I have done the Just A Short Run four times:

5K in 2001
half marathon in 2002
30K in 2003 (my only DNF in my life, because I went into it sick)
5K in 2004

Past half marathons

I have only once ever partly successfully executed a half marathon race, and even then, some things went rather wrong. Here's a summary of what went wrong in each of my half marathons up till today:

Ikea Montour Trail half marathon, 2001

This was my very first half marathon, after having run some good 5K races earlier in the year.

I went out too fast (because of an initial downhill that got me too excited), and paid the price. I finished in 1:47:23. My splits for the 13.1 miles:

6:31.94
7:59.53
8:09.44
8:16.53
8:16.99
8:19.28
8:19.64
7:44.85
8:01.41
8:23.29
8:28.72
8:42.36
9:17.34
0:49.85

I was just struggling in the last miles, and very demoralized. I almost collapsed on my buddy Jude's shoulder after I finished. Also, I had major blisters during the race.

Just A Short Run half marathon, 2002

I did this race without any real training at all, just because it was there.

I got blisters in the race, and also had to deal with weird existential thoughts like “Why am I running this?”

I finished in 1:49:34, but actually, the course was found to be long by about a tenth of a mile, so that number does not mean much.

Ikea Montour Trail half marathon, 2002

I got my revenge in this race, actually training hard specifically for the distance, doing long intervals and a lot of tempo and race-pace runs. Overall I did very well, finishing in 1:38:48, but the experience was marred by some serious problems.

I ran mile 4 too fast, but since I was carefully monitoring on my watch, I slowed down for mile 5. Still, one pays the price eventually for going too fast.

Also, I still was not fueling consistently. I erred by taking both water and energy drink, resulting in dilution.

In mile 12, my calves started cramping up and I had to stop at one point. I lost about half a minute because of this. In mile 13, I had to run conservatively to avoid cramps. It was very frustrating.

Finally, after I finished, while getting on the shuttle bus, I cramped up quite severely.

Ikea Montour Trail half marathon, 2003

A total disaster. I finished in 1:45:32, which is 7:44 slower than the previous year. This was while having a 5K fitness similar to the previous year's. Something just went wrong. I felt sluggish throughout, and I cramped up in mile 10. And I had digestive problems.

Chamber Classic half marathon, 2004

1:46:12. No real training for it, just did it because it was there and I had not been able to do the Montour Trail one. A fiasco, in which I struggled with my usual problems (slowing down in the final miles, cramping).

Preparation

I did not go into this race truly prepared to race the half marathon. I know what it takes to race a half marathon for time: long tempo and race-pace runs, long intervals. I have done little of that so far this year.

My hardest training run so far has been 16 miles with the Steel City Road Runners, two weeks ago, on an 18 mile course. I did not truly taper for the half marathon race, although this week including the race I have a reduced mileage of 25 (easy 6, easy 3, speed ladder 3, and then the race).

Rather, what I am really training for is the Pittsburgh Marathon, but I felt that I should do a half marathon race in order to get a taste of what it is like to run in a long race. I have been doing long runs every week for a while now, so running the half marathon distance is not a problem: the challenge for me was to figure out if I could partially race it, to find my limits.

And I wanted to fix the problems I had in my previous half marathons:

blistering
going out too fast
slowing way down
cramping
digestive problems

Blistering

Solving the problem of blistering has been trivial for me since I switched to wearing Vibram FiveFingers shoes. I just don't get serious blisters any more; my feet have adapted completely.

By the way, I just got my Luna Sandals two days ago, but have not run in them yet. Friends helpfully convinced me that it would be crazy to wear them in the race without any actual test of them (I knew that, but just needed validation).

This is the first half marathon I'm running in Vibram FiveFingers. Up till now, the longest distance I've raced in FiveFingers has been 10K, when I was still getting blistered by the Bikila LS.

Going out too fast

By not treating this as an all-out race whose goal is to minimize time, I could afford to run more conservatively and plan on negative-splitting. I decide to target a time of 1:55:00 (reasonable given my recent 5K time of 25:11), with the idea of speeding up if it felt right.

Slowing way down

I consciously carb-loaded for this half marathon and had a race fueling plan.

Cramping

I have no idea how to really solve this problem. I think I must be genetically predisposed to cramping. People like to claim electrolyte deficiency is the cause, but I don't believe this at all, because I have tried loading up on electrolytes.

Digestive problems

I have concluded that it is safest to avoid Gatorade and the like on the course because people mix it in funny proportions. Sticking with predictable gels and water is my new plan. One gel before starting the race, and then one gel every 45 minutes after that (which in the case of a half marathon means two gels on the course).

Also, I used to drink too much water, resulting in sloshing in the stomach. So I drink less now during a race, and drink more well before it starts.

The route

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Note the big hill at the beginning. Control of effort going up and down hills is critical, to avoid bad spikes in energy usage.

The race

Here are the official race results.

Start

I started out with the 1:55:00 finish pacer (8:47 pace):

Going up the big hill, however, he totally lost me, as I slowed down to avoid prematurely feeling the burn. In fact, a slower pacer even passed me. No problem.

On the downhill, I quickly started regaining ground. I think after around three miles, I had caught up to the original 8:47 pacer, and then that was feeling too slow for me, so I passed him for good, and never saw a pacer again in the race.

Gatorade error

I made an error at one of the aid stations when I mistaken grabbed Gatorade and threw it in my face. I got stickiness all over my face and the front of my jacket and fingers. It was really disgusting, actually. I will be more careful in the future to ask what stuff is before taking a cup.

Otherwise, I stuck well to my plan of taking water and two gels during the entire half marathon. Note that the race provided e-Gel, which I had not had before. If I were seriously racing this half marathon, obviously I would have bought and tried this stuff on long runs ahead of time.

Passing people

The thing about Just A Short Run is that people are running different races and therefore are at different paces, and also in such a huge race, there are always those who are inexperienced and go out too fast and slow down. What this means, in practice, is that if you are running evenly (or for a negative split, like I was doing), you will be needing to pass people constantly. It is very important to be a good judge of your own pace, because otherwise you might think you are doing OK, while the reality is you're following someone who is slowing down.

I like to target someone who looks faster than me and then try to keep up with him or her. I did this repeatedly in the race.

At one point I asked a guy what his pace was, and he said 8:30. I was feeling good, so eventually I passed him. I realized at that moment that I was going to be able to run considerably faster than 1:55:00, despite my very slow start.

Last five miles

I maintained speed in the last 5 miles of the race; I might even have gone faster, but without the data, I cannot tell, since when fatigue sets in, effort does not equal actual pace. I was definitely getting tired, but I kept pushing, trying to pretend I was running a 10K race or something. I thought that I just might have a shot at finishing under 1:50:00. I didn't, but that's OK. I finished in 1:50:52.

The official split data shows that I did the last 5 miles in 42:03, which is about 8:25 pace. Since I averaged 8:28 pace for the whole race, I clearly ran faster in the last 5 miles than in the first 8.1 miles.

If I had known what I was capable of, I could have run faster and more evenly from the start, and finished faster, but that was quite explicitly not the goal today. The goal was to finish strong, which I did.

SPIbelt

This was my first time running a race wearing a SPIbelt. It did not cause me any trouble at all; I barely noticed it. I will wear it during the Pittsburgh Marathon, in order to have my phone on me in case of emergency. I did not use my phone during the race, only before and after it, but it's always nice to know that I can directly contact Abby if something goes wrong.

Cramping

I did a little bit of a final sprint across the finish line. The moment I crossed was the moment when I felt both of my calves start to twitch. I realized that I almost crossed the line to full-on cramping, and decided to keep moving. I grabbed a banana and ate it while jogging slowly, and planning to jog off the heaviness in my calves.

Then disaster struck: I stubbed my right toes on the ground and instantly two of my toes cramped up and my lower right calf also cramped up. I ripped off my shoe and luckily, after about twenty seconds, I was OK again. I decided it was unsafe to keep moving, and I went upstairs in the North Park Boat House to just keep warm and stretch in a safe environment. I did not cramp up again.

So I have not entirely solved the cramping problem. Apparently sprinting was enough to push me over the edge. Also, closed-toe shoes are a problem because my toes inevitably get at least somewhat jammed in the course of running in closed-toe shoes. This is why I want to test out the Luna Sandals, which may completely prevent toe jamming and cramping. As for my calves, I don't know, maybe I just need to do more hard longer runs in order to get them accustomed to the lactic acid buildup or something.

Post-race eating

My stomach was entirely OK during the race. No water sloshing, no indigestion, no gnawing hunger. I was hungry after finishing, of course.

I made some mistakes after finishing, however. I ate not only a banana, but also a bagel, a Smiley Cookie, a little bag of chips, and a little bag of cookies. I believe I should have excluded the bag of cookies and the chips, and saved the Smiley Cookie for later. I had some digestive discomfort (nothing serious though) for a while after everything I ate. I will remember next time. After a 5K or 10K, I can eat anything, but apparently, after a half marathon, digestion is trickier.

But it is hard not to gobble up a Smiley Cookie:

At home, I ended up deciding to eat familiar leftovers rather than going out to a buffet as I had originally thought of doing with Abby.

Feet

My feet were sore, but actually, less sore than after each of my long runs in the past month. I think I've become more efficient. No knee pain either. After the race, just general inflammation. I think I'll be OK tomorrow.

I did get one small blister, on my right pinkie toe, but I didn't actually notice it until I was home and took a shower.

What does all this mean for the marathon?

This race time predictor suggests that given that I ran a half marathon in 1:50:52, I can do a full marathon in 3:51:08. I am, frankly, skeptical that I can go under 4:00:00 at all a month from now. I know I want to be conservative in the marathon, and I rather doubt I will be able to negative-split it, and I still have concerns about late-stage cramping or other physical deterioration. We shall see how my training progresses. I am going to start adding “quality” work in the form of interval training in order to toughen up.

Thanks

Many thanks to my wife Abby, who dropped me off at the race and picked me up after visiting her parents in the vicinity, saving me driving and parking hassles! And thanks to all my friends who have been supportive while I've been so nervous for weeks about this race!

I like to thank Elite Runners and Walkers for putting on a really well-organized race. The instructions were very clear, volunteers giving out water, Gatorade, and gels were everywhere, there was plenty of post-race food, bag check was convenient, and everything seemed to go smoothly. I would like to take this opportunity to say that without Elite Runners and Walkers, I do not know where I would be as a runner. Back over a decade ago, when I started running, the Internet was not what it is now. I got information about running from books and magazines and word of mouth more than anything else. I was told about the new store Elite Runners and Walkers and I got some of my first running shoes and clothing there. I even bought my very first pair of Vibram FiveFingers KSO shoes there, in 2009, before minimalist shoes suddenly became more mainstream and available in other stores, and last year when I got some rips in those first Vibram FiveFingers shoes, I got a new pair of KSO shoes through them also. And the races they put on in the winter and spring are great: I used to run their Spring Thaw as well as Just A Short Run. And when picking up my race packet at the store this week, Abby and I bought some more shirts and shorts in preparation for summer!

Conclusion

This was my slowest half marathon ever, but one of the most satisfying, and one of the best-executed, given my actual fitness level, which is substantially lower than that of a decade ago. I may consider really racing a half marathon in the fall. Meanwhile, I definitely found the successful completion of this half marathon to be a confidence booster for the upcoming Pittsburgh Marathon. Yes, there is no real comparison between the two distances, but it's just the fact that this is a long race at all, compared to, say, a 5K or 10K.

Race videos are out! (Update of 2013-05-09)

From start to 1:30:00

Start

I couldn't find myself in the half marathon start, because it's too congested.

Addtional loop 1

I found myself arriving under “Additional loops” at 27:09 on the clock to begin the first of two 5-mile loops.

(To jump immediately to the spot, click here.)

Since I crossed the start line after 21 seconds, I really ran 26:48 for the first 3.1 miles (average 8:39 pace).

Additional loop 2

Also, watch me cross “Additional loops” at around 1:09:09 on the clock, which means I did 5 miles in 42:00 (average 8:24 pace).

(To jump immediately to the spot, click here.)

From 1:31:00 to 3:21:00

Sprint finish

Watch my sprint finish from clock time around 1:51:03 to finish at 1:51:12 (my chip time was 1:50:51, meaning I crossed the start line after 21 seconds), which means I did the last 5 miles in 42:03, almost exactly the same time as I did the first 5-mile loop.

(To jump immediately to the spot, click here.)

From 3:23:00 to 4:07:00

I was already done, so I am not in this video.