(All About) The Writing on the Wall

It’s not uncommon for inhabitants of a city or town to have little more than a dim awareness of various cultural and historical resources in their midst, even as they pass them by on a daily basis. The blasé attitude is sometimes brought home when a visitor’s enthusiasm about the attraction that drew them to a particular place receives blank stares from the locals.

Similarly, most visitors to Second Sole Rocky River probably give the poem on the wall by the back entrance nothing but an occasional, fleeting glance. Perhaps not wanting to interfere with the traffic pattern of customers entering the store, that’s about all I did until preparing this entry; the main thing that impressed me was the painstaking care that someone had devoted to applying each and every one of its 1,621 characters. Besides, if a poem should “begin with delight, and end in wisdom,” as Robert Frost believed, then it’s best to sit down and take some time to give the work some deeper contemplation.

So the depths of winter’s discontent seem like a good time to present it here, with formatting and spacing carefully preserved.

The “someone” behind those lines of verse, by the way, is third-generation Berean and children’s authoress Hannah Purdy Budic. Oh, yes, she’s something of a runner as well, with a win (and course record) to her credit in the 2005 Cleveland Half-Marathon, among other accomplishments.

Budic recalls: “I was thrilled that Bill wanted it in the store. Permanently! I think I wrote it in 1999, but I can’t actually remember. It took me two trips and several hours of tedious letter painting to get the job done. I used an old overhead projector and a ladder.”

“I wrote it about my husband Tim, as a nameless/faceless everyday runner, but we are all part of a larger pack, so I hope people can relate!”

…and enjoy.

End-of-Season Housecleaning

“And early though the laurel grows, it withers quicker than the rose.”
—A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, Lyric XIX

Year’s end is time to cast off some of the accumulations of a season of running – awards that may now seem meaningless, and shoes with 500+ miles that are still wearable. Here are several ways to do it.

Medals from marathon events only can be donated to



while there are numerous ways to dispose of gently-worn but still-serviceable shoes:

Give Your Sole
2091 Raymer Avenue, Unit C
Fullerton, CA 92833

Shoe4Africa
P.O. Box 6943
Eldoret
Kenya

Soles4Souls

The Shoe Bank
205 Becky Lane
Rockwall, TX 75087

Shoes too worn for further use can be sent to the Nike Reuse-a-Shoe Program, which grinds up each shoe component for re-use as athletic surfaces. Send to

Nike Grind Processing
3552 Avenue of Commerce
Memphis, TN 38125

Happy New Year!

New running year, that is, which (at least for me) runs more or less from one Thanksgiving to the next. As is customary at the turn of the Gregorian calendar, it’s time to take stock of the season just concluded, and look forward to the next.

Here are annual volume totals for the past season, as well as 2007-08:

2009 – 139.5 hours (126 land/13.5 pool); 10 races (eight 5K, two 5M); 90 injury days

2008 – 163 hours; 12 races (ten 5K, two 5M); 0 injury days, 19 sick days

2007 – 93.8 hours; 6 races (five 5K, one 5M); 104 injury days

Given the two injury periods, I can’t be too unhappy with results from 2009, since I nearly made my 5K goal of 20:40, and surely would have come very close to the 5M goal (34:10) had there been an event of that length available in late October/early November. Thus, it would seem that with uninterrupted training, perhaps another 20 seconds of improvement in 5K time can be realized, so for 2010, the goal-predictions are:

5K – 20:30
5M – 33:50
13.1 miles – 1:35-1:37

For the immediate future, I hope to train consistently as possible through whatever good weather remains in 2009, and then during the snows of January and February. That’s really where the foundation for any consistent success is laid.

With respect to training objectives, I hope to consistently hit 6 hours per week when the weather is better, and perhaps 180+ hours for the season.

Little ‘Flat and Fast,’ Plenty of Challenge

Race Report: OhioOutside.com Trail Race Series #2 of 3
Saturday, November 14

This race was eventful enough to merit a write-up, even at risk of turning things here into what I vowed they wouldn’t become – a long race account saturated with excessive details and microdramas of personal experience. I’ll try to limit that and provide some observations which may be useful to anyone who tries the final race in the series on December 12.

I entered at the last minute, and with some misgivings, since the race location is (after years of excessive discretionary travel to bike races) farther than I like to drive – ~85 miles round-trip. One of the nice things about running is that events are plentiful enough that you don’t have to go anything like as far to compete, so the impact on budget, schedule, and the environment is much less.

Perhaps what drew me to this race in particular is the fact that it took place at Munroe Falls Metro Park, whose parkway serves as the course for a spring bicycle race series I officiated a total of 20 times from 1998-2002. It’s an outstanding venue that has nonetheless seen quite a few serious crashes over the years, certainly more than you’d expect. I’d often wondered what lies in the woods outside the course, and with the trails likely to be in good shape from the recent dry spell, plus perfect weather on race day, the time seemed right for an excursion beyond the usual travel radius.

Right off the bat after arriving, whom should I see but Mark Gorman, a Cat. 3 road cyclist who once suffered a memorable mishap when he and, as I recall, several others were taken down by a rider with some sketchy (to put it mildly) bike handling “skills.” The crash perpetrator just rode on – I think he eventually won the race – oblivious to the carnage (not to mention anger) in his wake.

Now, there’s no way a single referee can be everywhere on a 1.2-mile course, and I did in fact miss all the excitement, arriving shortly afterward to find Mark, um, rather out-of-sorts. In a case like this, you give the crash victim clipboard, pen, and paper, then have him sit down to describe the incident; if there are multiple victims, you give writing materials to each of them (that’s why I still have 6 mini-clipboards) and send them off in opposite directions. It calms things down by 1) separating everyone; 2) making them concentrate; and 3) allowing them a chance to vent. While you can’t make a decision (e.g., disqualification) based on the resulting statement(s), it all goes in an active file for possible future action. In this case, several other similar reports lead to a brief “counseling session” with the alleged menace to bike race society, after which there were no further problems.

So I just had to remind Mark of this episode: “Hey, I think Lee Runyon [not his real name] is here!”

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Mark, since he runs the web site that is the primary race sponsor (I’d forgotten that), but it didn’t stop there: the whole race staff was made up of bike race people who seemed glad to see me, one of whom I (embarrasingly) didn’t quite recognize at first. “Agh, I thought I'd escaped my misbegotten past!” “Having a flashback?,” someone asked. Well, not quite, but...

[Sigh.]

It’s happened. I’ve degenerated to the level of purely personal reflection. Back to the race.

After packet pick-up, there was enough time for a preview lap, and it’s a good thing, because the course turned out to be anything but “fast and flat,” as claimed at the race website. A series of 30 photographs is also posted there, and they give a good impression of the trail features present, but not the extent of the gradient changes.

After a run-up of ~210 yards across a grass field, the parkway, and a paved parking lot, the course transitioned to a ~2.2 mile trail, which started off mellow enough with a mild rise on a gravel-sand patch, followed by a short dirt/grassy section.

At Beaver Pond, however, came the first of several short-but-fairly-steep pitches, with tree roots (not just a single one here and there, but little networks of them), frequent 6-inch wide/deep gulleys, and an occasional protruding rock. Of course, all these features were present on the corresponding downhill sections too, along with many twists and turns. Finishing off the circuit was a set of old stone stairs, where you turned back toward the start area for the finishing straight after completing a second lap. Add it all up, and I think the descriptor “challenging” would be more appropriate.

I reported this to Paul Heyse, a good, consistent 19:30 5K runner and a newspaper reporter whose coverage of local high school track and cross-country (among other sports) is much appreciated. “Keep an eye on the trail in front of you so you don’t fall, and let the runner immediately ahead keep a decent gap in case he falls,” I said. As it turned out, one eye was about all that Paul had – one of his contacts had slipped out.

On the starting line, more biker trash people: Brian Batke and Tris Hopkins, two very solid Cat. 2s. Brian is a national-class masters competitor, particularly gifted as a climber and time trialist, and Tris isn’t far behind. I dialed back any thoughts of an age-group placing by a spot. The race organizer (Mark) made a few comments about the course, pointed toward the finish, and said something like “It should be clear.” Not really; it was different than the official course map. Here’s a detail map of how the start/finish area is actually set up:



Off we went, and I felt like I did a good job of staying relaxed and letting the fast starters get away (Coach Roy Benson recently wrote a nice article about this). Passing the little hourglass symbol on the map above, I hit the split button on my watch to start the lap timer. There were no mile markers on the course, and they would have been of limited value in any case due to the variation in terrain, so lap times were about the only way to gauge how well energy output was regulated.

Per my instructions to Paul, I made certain to let a small gap remain in front of me once we reached the first gnarly trail section, and sure enough, the guy directly in front of me tumbled hard, but rolled perfectly and popped right back up. If you’re going to fall, that’s how to do it.

No fewer than four runners burst past rather impressively once we reached the hilly parts of that first lap. My reaction was the same as always: ‘If they can keep or increase the gap, there’s nothing I can do about it, if not, I’ll see them again before the finish,’ or to quote Jack Daniels (yet again): “Remember that the finish line is at the end of the race.” And indeed, I caught all of them, plus a few others, on the second lap, when they were looking much less impressive.

At the completion of the first lap, I hit the split button, and thought I saw 17:31. I resolved to be even more careful on second lap, as fatigue began to accumulate, but also since familiarity tends to breed complacency – if you stay vigilant and get through one circuit, it’s only natural to relax a bit as you figure there will be no problem the second time around.

After his tumble, the ‘Fall Guy’ and I more or less stayed together all the way to Heron Pond late in the second lap, where I started to ease away from him. Shortly after that, another guy came up on my shoulder, breathing very heavily. Usually this means a superhuman has just been made, and you expect the person to fade, but given how late in the race it was, I wasn’t so sure. I did start to pull away near the end of the lap, but lost the advantage on the staircase, where any technique I had on the first lap vanished due to fatigue – I must have looked like an old lady as I came down ever-so-carefully, one step at a time, with ‘Heavy Breather’ right on my heels. I was able to open up a gap on the run-in, but misjudged the finish, not realizing that you had to go past it and around a set of cones, then head back – a total distance of ¼ mile. Still, I had a little extra ‘gear’ in the final meters, which was enough to hold off the Fall Guy, but Heavy Breather came past in the last 10 meters or so. My time at the clock timer, which apparently was the finish line, was 37:10.7 (the official results incorrectly give 36:47) – good enough for only 7th of 17 in my age group, which was the biggest overall (as well as highest in quality after 19-24 & 25-29), and 31st of 82 men overall. The total turnout doubled, from 76 to 143, as compared to the first race in the series, when my time would have been good enough for 3rd in age group.

After finishing, I gave my goody bag, with a nicely customized commemorative beer glass and a push-top sports bottle, to the Fall Guy – out of sympathy, gratitude (for his skill), and admiration (for his tenaciousness).

The second lap was turned in 17:27, so at first I though I’d ‘split negative’ (sped up as the race went on), which surprised me somewhat, but once at home, I found the first lap time was actually 17:13, so the first/second lap split ratio was 49.7%/50.3%, or slight positive. Not bad, at least according to this analysis.

Overall, I was really glad just to stay upright throughout the whole race. I’ve done plenty of training on trails just as hilly/gnarly, with shadows/broken sunlight, darkness, snow, and leaves obscuring trail hazards, but there is considerable difference between racing all-out on an unfamiliar trail and training on one you’ve repeated dozens of times.

A Perfect Race?

Race Report: Inland Trail 5K
Sunday, November 1

Elyria

I almost didn’t do this race, which has a course as close to optimal as possible: fast, flat, smooth, and lovely. I figured, from past experience, that I would probably more or less duplicate last week’s time from the Skeleton Run, which was just slightly better than last year’s.

But I guess that’s why you show up: to see what you can do. It might turn out to be the perfect race, as this one did.

It sure didn’t start off that way. Maybe 75 meters after the start I see this guy dropping out and making a sharp beeline back to the school that serves as the start/registration venue. Now that is some kind of nature call, I thought. Soon, however, it began to filter through the pack: the 5K was to start after the marathon. Now I had to extricate myself from a pack of 150+ runners. All I could think was that the 5K would start a minute afterward, and I’d be too late.

All was well, as it the start turned out to be 10 minutes later, which gave me a little more time to warm up. After a while, I happened upon the race promoter and reminded him that the race web site said “8 AM start.”

“You must be one the four people who didn’t hear me announce the start time in the school,” he answered. Um, isn’t the starting line the place to announce such information, to make sure everyone gets the word?

No matter, soon we were off, and I settled in at 20th or so in a field of 51. The first mile went by in 6:39, by which time I’d passed maybe 5 runners. I figured I’d probably fade to 7:00 for the second mile, then come home in 6:50 – a common pattern for me.

Not this time. The second mile was 6:47 and I felt good, so I knew I was on a good day; at that point it became my goal to simply keep from getting excited and ‘blowing it by blowing up,’ i.e., staying smooth instead of surging. Mission accomplished, as the last mile was 6:46, and I probably lost a couple seconds when I crossed the road (to run against traffic) in the last half mile, whereas most others probably did the opposite. I passed another 10 runners, including the first woman, who has a much better PR than I, to end up 5th overall, and closing on 3rd and 4th. Official time was 20:47, my first time under 21:00 and another PR by 22 seconds on a certified course. I suppose it doesn’t get much better than that: hitting an all-time peak in the race where you planned to do it. Not that I have any illusions; the race winner was 5+ minutes ahead, and the turnout was the smallest of any run I’ve entered thus far (28 in the last 3 years).

Oh, and some credit where credit is due, namely to the aptly-named Adizero PRs:

Just 283.5 grams, but surprisingly comfortable. This was the first time they’ve been raced (maybe unconsciously I sensed I was on a good day), and it will be the last until the form is good enough once again to merit their use.

When is a PR not a PR?

When the course is inaccurate, of course, and in the last several weeks, this has happened at three local 5K runs (values in parenthesis are projected 5K times, based on actual course length):

9/27 – Madzy Short Run* (Berea), 3.00 mi. – 20:57 (21:41)
10/11 – Run for the Son (Brookpark), 3.06 mi. – 21:20 (21:42)
10/18 – Great Pumpkin Run (Lakewood), 3.05 mi. – 20:42 (21:05)

Corrected distances, as linked to above, were obtained using gmap-pedometer.com; by turning up the zoom to maximum, an accurate tracing of the route can be made, provided the start, finish, and any turnaround are correctly located. (The “Run for the Son” was out-and-back, and I failed to note the turnaround location, so a fellow competitor’s GPS reading was used.)

Thus, I tentatively accept the Great Pumpkin 5K as (barely) a PR, which is confirmed by today’s time of 21:09 at the Skeleton Run 5K in Amherst. I don’t know if the distance today was accurate, since the section through the park is obscured on satellite photos (due to being heavily wooded) and could not be traced with gmap-pedometer, but the route was unchanged from last year, when I did 21:18 – my previous 5K PR.

*Last year, it was 3.27 miles, and afterward a plea was made to relocate the start at the driveway of Bonds Hall (making the course almost exactly 5K). Instead, it was moved too far down the road – to the north Fairgrounds entrance. Oh well, at least this time it lived up to its name of a “Short Run.”

Anaerobic capacity training: progress vs. last year

Wrapping up anaerobic capacity training, it’s time to compare this year’s two-week block with 2008:

2009 (9/22 – 10/4): 5 workouts, 48 repetitions totaling 51:23 + 1 5K run on 9/28
2008 (9/16 – 9/25): 3½ workouts, 34 repetitions totaling 32:51 + 1 5K run on 9/27

Thus, a significant increase (56.4%) was achieved in the total volume of anaerobic training; these workouts are the most difficult I do, and last year, I quit halfway through the fourth one, so the recent “results” are encouraging.

A couple of changes from last year seemed to help: 1) I allowed myself a 5 minute break halfway through each workout (recovery intervals were otherwise 3 minutes), and 2) I used lane 8, which added ~6.5 seconds to each rep.

Oh, I suppose I should make some mention of the workout structure, though if I seem rather nonchalant, it’s because I think the late Arthur Lydiard was right to maintain that it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference in this instance: you just run nearly as hard as possible for an interval of 30-120 seconds, recover adequately, and repeat as many times as you can. Pace is of no consequence, as both speed should actually deteriorate slightly as each interval progresses, but try to stay as smooth and relaxed as possible, especially towards the end.

The recovery interval is adequate if you can complete the planned number of reps without a big (say, +10% from the third rep) time drop-off. The underlying physiological rationale is to build up both anaerobic capacity and a tolerance (buffering capacity) for its byproduct, namely lactic acid, which inhibits aerobic energy production. The former is of increasing importance in events under 30 minutes, so if I were preparing for a 10K, 10 mile, or half-marathon, there would be less need for such training, if it were included at all. The latter effect helps you recover from surges during a race, but since I always end up racing pretty much alone and hold an even pace throughout each race, this is of lesser importance.

In this case, I planned on (and did) 10 reps on 2 straightaways and 1 curve in lane 8 (essentially a big “U”), or 323.5 meters each rep. This distance was chosen since it comes as close as possible to 1 minute, which is the duration I used as a cyclist; the range of times was 62-66 seconds, with an average time per rep of 64.2. These data cannot be directly compared to respective values of 56-60 and 58.0 from last year’s workouts, when a distance of 300 meters (lane 1) was used, but they are certainly no worse, and perhaps a bit faster.

Finally, to place things the context of overall training structure as laid out in the Lydiard method, anaerobic capacity training should take place in a concentrated fashion (3X/week for 3 weeks, with 48 hours in between each workout), and only after aerobic development has proceeded as far as possible. One long, easy run is included each week to maintain aerobic fitness, and several weeks of transitional hill resistance training precede the anaerobic period.