Running Commentary

Saturday was a long run for the Oakland Running Festival training group--a 16-plus miler along an old train corridor known as the Iron Horse Trail . I have a special affection for the Iron Horse, having been an RTC member for more years than I care to or dare to count. It was the longest run we've done to date. Its relatively flat topography was for me a mixed blessing--no quad-killing hills, but also no variation in the landing angle of my repetitive footfalls (repetitive to the tune of some 90 per minute--for about 180 minutes). My hips and knees complained, but they lived. I paced the 11:30-12:00-minute milers training for the half marathon, which was inspirational and fun. I love to see new runners making and honoring a difficult training commitment. However, they were scheduled to run 8 miles total, so they turned around at the 4.5-mile mark--leaving me with only 11.5 more to run to make my 16. Because we were the caboose of the running groups, I was suddenly alone on the tr...

The above title refers to my recent rediscovery of the secret of life: SLEEP. I say rediscovery because periodically I accidentally sleep enough and realize how happy it makes me--good natured, even. My current appreciation of slumber started week before last, when I did only one mid-week run and a little swimming and devoted the remaining early-morning hours to sleeping. To my surprise, suddenly my appetite was sharper, my job less onerous, my spouse even handsomer than usual! All this happiness made me greedy for more happiness, so I've continued the practice of getting enough sleep right up through this week. Wow. All this is not to say I've been a total slug. I met at my overpriced gym with a trainer for a free assessment and then again for a 50-minute customized workout. Whew--hard. Who knew I could do a plank (with leg lifts!) on an instability ball for a whole minute (that may not be the exact name for the ball, but I call 'em as I experience 'em). I have also sw...

Short update: Saturday's training run was steep but--for me anyway--less debilitating than the run last week. (I know, we hope for a higher recommendation than "less debilitating than a killer run," but sometimes "not awful" has to suffice). The run, which fell a little more than a mile short of the 10 miles it was billed at, followed part of the actual Oakland Marathon course. We went from College Avenue up, up, up. If you've ever been in the Oakland flatlands on a moonless night and seen the illuminated Mormon temple hanging high up in the hills, well, that tells you just how up, up, up we went. Here's the temple, unilluminated but still up, up, up there. Then we went down, down, down, and I finished with only a bruised toenail or two and a gimpy quad muscle to show for it. Today, I actually felt pretty human, especially after sleeping ten hours last night. I wanted to move a little but not a lot. The answer? Going to the tennis court with a racquet a...

...so I did. This was this morning, at 7:09. The sun was finally coming up, after I'd been running for more than an hour. I skipped the track workout last night because I was still sore from Saturday's hilly fun (see previous post), so I felt I had to get out this morning. I did my version of a tempo run--a 1.5-mile warm-up, a 20-minute steady run at a pace between my 10-K and marathon paces, followed by a 1.5-mile cool-down (also known as getting home again). Gee. That description makes it sound like the run was scientific, cut-and-dried, efficient, productive. I suppose it could have been, might have been one of those things. The loose-cannon factor in that "tempo" formula is what's called "perceived effort." Some days my ostensible 10-K pace feels like the speed of a Nascar contender, while other days it feels like the speed of the loser in a turtle race. I check my Garmin periodically to make sure I'm on-pace, and I can only call my consistency ...

Yesterday the marathon training group did a long run along the Carquinez Strait , on the east side of Martinez--along the bluffs above the invisible water (fog, y'know). Whew. In the past when I've trained for a marathon on my own, I've never done long runs two weeks in a row. But now I'm trying to be flexible and to believe that makers of this training schedule have designed a workable program, one in which doing 15 miles on the heels of doing 12 is fine. Crunch time--where the rubber soles met the road. It was a hard run (did I already say that?). The fog never lifted, and a cold wind was blowing by the time I turned around at 7.5-plus miles on this out-and-back course. The "plus" was a little extra I had to tack on in order to find a secluded spot to, uh, heed the call of nature. Now I'm sure you've never done that. Might have been hallucinating on the return portion of the run. My left hip was sore, as was my left knee--this left-side vulnerability...

I have wanted to post--no disenchantment with blogging here--but somehow I just haven't made it to this space in a while. Since CIM I have done many runs, even a 5-mile fun run / race on New Year's Day. I've remained healthy enough, although it's about that new twinge I've been getting on the inside of my right knee -- Anyway. The most shocking thing to me is that I just haven't been taking many phone photos on my runs. I'm sure that's mostly because I've done so much running with my fellow club members and team members, and when these people are running they tend to keep on running, not stopping the way I often do to take some quirky picture. Between track most Tuesday nights and the LMJS training group Saturday mornings, for the time being I'm running in a lot of company. (The training group is in preparation for the Oakland Marathon, at the end of March.) Consistently running with other people is a new experience for me, and I'm finding th...