When your Memorial day run decides that it wants a blood sacrifice

Sigh.

Yesterday I tripped on a tiny clump of asphalt on an otherwise pristine stretch of road. Skinned my right knee and elbow, and bruised the pad of my left hand. Ran another 6+ miles with no pain except stinging from the scratches. I'm taking a precautionary day off, but I'm grateful that all I got was some road rash. 

As to why I tripped? I suspect that I either looked away courtesy of road hypnosis, or I was distracted thinking about the next stop to switch music. 

Another blood sacrifice run

I am sure some may have noticed that every few months I'll title one of my runs with "Blood Sacrifice Run." What that actually means is that I tripped/slipped and fell on my face/ass/whatever. I am part of a group of superstitious runners that believe that the gods demand blood to be spilled as a sacrifice, that these periodic accidents are what keep us "safe" on the long haul. Or something.And yea, that's EXACTLY what I look like whenever I trip and fall. It isn't pretty.

Today I had one of these falls where I actually rolled properly, so my hands/arms did not take the brunt of the impact. No blood was spilled but the bruised ego qualifies as a blood sacrifice. 

AND... I discovered something cool that I had forgotten.

My current GPS watch is the Garmin Forerunner 645, the non-music version. The damn thing detected that I fell down, and immediately sent Ivette Vera an email telling her that I had an "incident," and the time and location. It even sent her a map pin to locate me. All of this was achieved in a split-second, and it even asked me if I wanted to cancel it and report I was OK. I need reading glasses, so I missed that prompt. By the time I was able to fish out my travel reading glasses (I keep a pair of ThinOptics in a keychain case) it showed me a new prompt to allow me to report that I was OK.

It's a handy feature, which is offered at no charge, it just uses your phone to forward the emergency notification. You can even use it as a panic button, there's a way to trigger it by holding the light button for at least three seconds.

Good night, sweet prince

I noticed that my Garmin Forerunner 235 had been out of extended warranty/drops and spills coverage for over 6 months. This of course made me paranoid enough that I went ahead and replaced it with a Garmin Forerunner 645, the non-music version. There is no chance in hell I'll step out of the door without my phone, so there's no need to pay another $50 for the "M" version of the 645.

My 235 was a complete rock star. It kept me safe and measured my performance through more than 9,000 miles. It never had a charge failure, never lost a tracked activity, and whatever dings it took were all absorbed by the glass shield, which I removed before I took this picture. The back looks like shit, it's obvious that 2.5 years of extended wear were more than what the paint in the back of the case could stand, but the optical reader was still pristine, and the watch itself was 100% functional. I did change the strap when the locking loop fell off the old one (later I found that the strap was starting to dry rot, so it was going to need replacement anyway) and I had to replace its charge/sync cable since one of the spring-loaded contact pins wasn't doing its job. Except for those two, and maybe sync delays from Strava every six months, it was absolutely trouble-free.

Pairing my current Garmin foot pod, and my new Wahoo speed/cadence sensors for the indoor bike was painless. I probably spent more time trying to figure out how to update its firmware than what it took to set up everything else. Even if this is not the model with on-board music it still has a phone media widget*, something I couldn't get to work on my old 235. I even got to try Garmin Pay today, it worked perfectly.

I also appreciate how little was changed in how the devices operate. Sure, there are new menus, and a at least one new button command, but everything just "works" the same.

I *was* going to post a link to the eBay auction to the old 235, but the damn thing sold as I was typing this post.

* The music control widget is broken as of firmware 6.4, it stops your run whenever you try to skip a song. Sigh.

3,625 miles for 2019

This puts me at 29 miles short of my 2018 total. Not too terrible when taking into account that I spent most of 2019 running 6 days per week.

Also, if you are a Garmin athlete, don't forget that we get badges for recording activities on December 31st and on January 1st.



 

A failed blood sacrifice run

Some tips on running long distances

Since this gets asked often enough, I decided to post this quick list:

Pace 

Slow down, if you can't speak in short sentences you are going too fast. If you are getting side stitches, you are definitely going too fast. As you rack up the slow miles, you'll notice that your "slow" pace is going to increase by itself. I have surprised myself many times when my Garmin gives me a lap reading a minute faster than what I was feeling, and even in hilly terrain.

Distance 

Avoid increasing your weekly mileage by more than 10% per week until you understand how your body handles the added abuse. I used this rule to go from 5 miles/run to my first half-marathon in about 4 months. And I took me less than a year to go past the 20-mile mark. At 21.5 miles I was fine, energy was fine, but my feet hurt too much even with maximalist shoes (this is on a fresh pair of shoes, I rotate between 3-4 pairs). I can run 70 miles per week (I have experimented up to 90/week) without hurting myself, that's 6 running days, one rest day. If I keep that schedule I can run hit half-marathon distances about once per week without much drama. Going past 14 miles in one run is just painful.

Fuel 

You'll eventually hit glycogen depletion, everyone is different. Your lungs will be fine, you won't feel any pain, but you will feel like a dry sponge, like you have zero energy left to move. This happened to me somewhere between miles 10 and 13, I started experimenting with energy gels (100-120 calories per portion) and that got me to 21.5 miles. I currently take an energy gel every 45 minutes whenever the run is longer than 10 miles.

Mental game

It's great if you like music but having to maintain situational awareness means not being able to listen to it as loud as I'd want. And an annoying side effect of running long is that Bluetooth headphone battery life varies wildly with temperature conditions, so you end up carrying a second pair just in case. I also use my runs to think about work problems (I'm a software developer) and life problems in general. Another thing that helps is that I avoid straight line routes like the plague, if you look at my routes you'll notice that apart from the Washington & Old Dominion park trail, I almost never hit true straight routes. I also try to add randomness to the routes just to confuse my muscle memory.

The 10-minute rule

If I am not sick, and I am not hurt, and don't want to go on a run, I still go out and commit myself to a 10-minute run. The worst case scenario here is that I'll quit after 10 minutes, which means I have to turn back and end up having a 20-minute run on a day I was going to skip. If after 10 minutes I am not sure, I run another 10 and reassess. Many times I have been able to salvage the run just by taking it 10 minutes at a time.

2018 running totals

2018 #yearinsport summary. Not 100% accurate, for example, the 3,775 miles include walking, and it short-changed me on the running miles by about 4 or so miles.

Correct numbers for 2018:

Total running miles: 3,654 miles
Total runs for 2018: 336 runs
Average per run: 10.88 miles/run
Average per day: 10 miles/day
Shortest run: 1.68 miles
Longest: 16.4 miles.

Guess who just has two thumbs and just broke 12 miles in under 2 hours ???

I am starting to break my "Strava Badge Day" tradition whenever the first of the month falls on a Saturday. This month I tried to take it easy and only scored the 10K badge, which left me a nice, warmer, Sunday to shoot for the half-marathon badge.

I also tampered with my shoe rotation and decided that the Hoka One One Bondi 6s with just 31 miles should sit out Saturday's easy 10K and instead use them for today's half-marathon.

The combination of (trying to) take it easy a couple of runs prior, and wearing fresh shoes, and picking a fast route, sort of paid out.

The numbers between Garmin and Strava are a hair different. Strava sees me as hitting 20 segment achievements and 10 best efforts. Garmin's version of my best half-marathon is 2:07:52, while Strava claims 2:11:51. I shouldn't complain, since my very first half-marathon back on March 13, 2017, was 2:43:13. I really can't complain, especially since I'm just a recreational runner.

Strava sees my fastest 5K at 25:18, while Garmin claims 23:27. I am NOT going to bitch about either of these since even that 25:23 is almost 4 minutes faster than my last race.

As for the "fast route" it is only fast because of the very few "safety" stops on the Washington & Old Dominion trail between Wielhe Avenue and downtown Vienna combined with the fantastic paving characteristics of that part of the trail. It's just glorious. 

The slushy feet run

This was actually the second snow run of the 2018 winter fall (yup, still fall, suck it) season.

Yesterday's run started with icy rain, then right at the one-hour mark it started to snow. Traction was excellent, the powder blanket was actually very nice and the run was uneventful.

The exact opposite of today's run.

I don't think we took two inches of snow, but the mess that it left was about as bad as what usually happens when we get a foot or worst. The trails and sidewalks were caked over with frozen snow, they were unusable. And the two bridges over the Dulles Toll Road are set up so it's impossible to run on the roadway, you are forced to use the designated walkway... which was under at least an inch of slush. The first one happened right before the 2-mile mark (this is the Wielhe avenue bridge), which meant I was facing another 9 miles of running with wet shoes in 35°F or so.

And then, right around mile 7-ish, my headphones disconnected and refused to reconnect. That usually means that their battery is too low, so I tried to keep going. And crossed the second bridge at the Fairfax County Parkway and got my feet soaked again. That's when the fuck its won for the run, I rounded up the run to 9 miles and called Uber.

So yeah, the run ended with an Uber ride of shame. And it was worth it, oh hell yes.

Update (11/17/2018: all that excitement yesterday got me some mild DOMS. It didn't stop me from running today, but now I feel like I got my ass kicked.

The four day break

Courtesy of some kind of stomach bug.

The child decided to bring a bug from school, and of course, he only got sick for half a day. Next up was Ivette, my turn came 12 hours later right as I was getting ready to take off for my early Saturday morning run. That run lasted maybe 20 yards and I already knew that I was in trouble.

Turned around and went back home and to bed. I spent the next 2 and a half days in bed, and it wasn't until today that I actually was able to run. What's funny is that I did not lose any of the pace gains of the past two weeks, what I DID lose was the weather conditioning and our averages dropped at least 10°F.

Looking at my weeklies, I was expecting that this was my worst week over the last two years, but this is the third time this year that I drop into mid-50 miles in a week, compared with four mid-50s weeks for all of 2017.

Burned out?

According to my training log I have only taken 8 real "rest" days for the year. That means that out of 257 days so far this year, I have either run or walked (or both) for 249 days. And according to Strava, I have run 237 times. This also includes one streak of 60 days straight running, and the second streak of 40 days that I stopped this morning. So yeah, I think I am a bit burned out.

Here's what this looks like, those of you familiar with Strava can tell that days marked as XT means I logged some other kind of non-running activity, in my case some kind of walking.



What's weird is that I am not in pain, I guess there's a mental component too.

So far this year I have figured out that I can't run nonstop for the year, and that running 6 on, walking one day is boring as hell. I am guessing that my next step is going to be to try to run 12-14 and take a day off.