There are 53 days left until the Boston Marathon, and despite a few bumps in road since training started, I’m in a better spot this winter than I was limping into the Hyannis Marathon in February of 2009; in part because I’ve still got eight weeks left to get ready. Between winter injuries, inexperience and a schedule that put Hyannis too close to the marathon I’d run before it, I was a wreck. (Which begs the question, why do it, and more germane to this year, why do it again?! Maybe I can get at the answer a bit at the end of this post.) This year, after running a Boston Marathon qualifying time at the Baystate Marathon in Lowell, in October, I had more time to ease back on mileage, and then in mid-December pick back up on the training schedule I’d used for Baystate. That extra time, and the overall training base, have helped a lot. But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. I suppose if it was, this wouldn’t have the appeal it does.
Coping with injury
The first third of the training, through some of the harshest parts of the winter, went incredibly well. I ran a PR for a 10K on New Year’s Day at Salisbury Beach (39:58, 6:26 pace), and felt like I was crushing my tempo runs. That lactate threshold/half marathon pace was beginning to feel, well, almost comfortable. My legs felt great. None of the usual tweaks and strains and aches. Despite high mileage and faster-than-ever training runs, my legs felt loose and easy and fine; remarkably so. Then, during the first five miles of an easy-paced evening, mid-week 12 miler, my right calf got tighter and tighter and then locked up entirely. The muscle spasms worked their way all the way around my leg in a ring of stinging ache, and finally settled deep in the muscle. I had to stop running, stretch, and then limp through another five miles at a slow jog to get back home. I didn’t want to miss a single day of marathon training, so I took the first week following that slowly, and reduced my mileage. But the first time I tried to return to a more intense workout pace, it happened all over again. So I took three full days off from running, worked out on the elliptical machine instead, and then came back at it again, with a few slow, low mileage runs. After more than two and a half weeks I still wasn’t sure I’d gotten it healed.
The Thursday three days before the Half at the Hamptons I tested it during and 11 mile run with my friend and training partner Curt. The calf was still stiff – it didn’t hurt, just felt different than the rest of my muscles – but, it didn’t seize up on me. I decided to run the Half and see what would happen. After all, if I didn’t push it there, I’d end up having to push the pace during a tempo workout that coming week; I was already 2.5 weeks off my training schedule for Boston, and needed to find out whether I could get back on it.
Half at the Hamptons
Curt and Ernesto after the Half at the Hamptons
The morning of Feb. 22, 2010 was cold and windy. When Curt and I got out to Hampton Beach, the flags were out straight in the air and the street signs were rattling in the gale. Part of me was worried the wind would bode ill for hitting the time I was looking for (6:53 pace should have been possible, and a good predictor of a 3:10 marathon time), but mostly I was worried about the calf knotting up on me out on the course – the way it had in the last two training runs in which I’d tried to push a tempo pace. We ran a gentle mile and a half warmup and the calf felt fine – the same as it had the other day, stiff but not painful. We lined up at the start and while the wind continued to blow, the sun came out and warmed things up. I was still glad of the gloves, tights and second top layer.
Curt went blasting out at the start, and held his pace for the whole race. We trained together for Baystate and ran only one second different marathon times. This time around he upped his mileage from the 50+ mile a week program we did last time (and I’m still doing) to a 70+ mile week. This hard work has brought him to a whole new level. He ran the Half, despite the wind, in 1:26:19, a blazing 6:36 pace.
Meanwhile, I found myself struggling for wind from the first mile. It may have been a chest cold and hacking cough I’d been dealing with for a few weeks, or it may have been the 2.5 weeks with no speedwork, or a combination of both, but I never got into a groove with my breathing. I held my goal pace, more or less, for the first 8 miles, but it was a struggle. Then a critical mistake finished off my hopes of completing the race at any kind of sub 7:00 mile pace. I didn’t take any fuel. Typically, I’d take a Gu or eat a cookie or something at about 45 minutes into a race this long. My body burns fuel quickly, and I consume a lot of calories on the run, both during races and on training runs. But perhaps because one does so many half marathon distance training runs during marathon training weeks, I underestimated the need. Or maybe I was just distracted by the worry about my calf. I paid for the mistake at mile 8.5. Coming out onto the coastline to turn south and make the run up Boar’s Head and then back to Hampton Beach, the strength simply ran out of my legs, the way it did at mile 21 of my first marathon. I was out of fuel. I kept running, but in that instant I’d gone from being able to hold that sub-7 pace to struggling for 7:15, then 7:24. There is no worse feeling than being completely out of fuel; it’s mentally dark, physically grim and makes you want to just give up and walk. I managed to get back under 7 for the last part of the last mile, but there was no salvaging the time.
I finished the race at 1:33:16, a 7:07 pace, 14 seconds per mile off my goal pace. I’d run close to this speed and distance on training runs prior to hurting my calf, and this would have been a disappointment, except for the fact that I also finished the race without ever having my calf injury return. And the relief over that, after such a long time working on rehabbing it, overwhelmed any consideration of my time. I’d be able to get back to the serious work of training for Boston before it was too late, with some good lessons learned in the process.
Lessons learned this during marathon training this winter
1. Eat and stay hydrated! You burn a lot of calories and water during winter training and during races. Don’t underestimate races. Just because you run half marathon distance training runs all the time as part of a marathon training program, racing that distance still demands serious respect. And plenty of fuel!
2. There’s no need to be totally uncomfortable in the cold weather. The first season I trained all winter I tried to dress so I’d be a comfortable after I was warmed up and miles into the run. That made starting the run difficult psychologically. This winter I’m dressing in layers that I can remove as a run proceeds. I’m comfortable at the start, and comfortable at the end. Maybe it’s not the most efficient method, but for me it sure beats shivering through the first two or three miles. I don’t apply the same philosophy to races, however.
3. When injured, take a few days off. You can get an great workout on the elliptical machine, and the days off from running will get you back to running good hard workouts faster than limping through a week’s worth of poor workouts.
4. Marathon training is multi-year process. It’s amazing the sorts of the efforts you can achieve in training with a year or two base mileage under your sneakers (well, under subsequent pairs of sneakers). And the harder you train, the longer you can run faster in a race.
5. And speaking of sneakers, replace them when they are worn out. I don’t buy the most expensive running shoes by a long shot, but I do replace them every 300-400 miles. And every time I try and stretch a pair past that, I pay for it with a tweak in my foot or leg.
And there’s a final, overarching lesson that comes out of this for me as well. It really underscores the whole reason I do this. I’m never going to be an elite runner. I’m not going to win these races, or break any records. But as I find myself a few months from 40, I realize that although life continues daily to get sweeter and richer, it sure doesn’t get any easier. And training to run marathons is a good analogy for all the other things life calls on us grownups to handle, reinforcing lessons we all should have learned as kids: work hard, strategize wisely, persevere through setbacks and disappointments, learn from mistakes, push past your limits, engage in your community and revel in the accomplishments of others.
Onward to Boston!
Tags: Boston Marathon, Half at the Hamptons, half marathon, injuries, marathon, Running, winter training
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Kristen caught our almost-three-year-old perusing the latest issue of Runners World earlier today.
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It’s amazing how hard it can be to talk someone through a simple process on a Web page or computer application by phone. And it’s amazing how often a professional Web geek ends up end up doing that, both professionally and in your personal life (family and friends get discounted consulting, yes)? It’s an order of magnitude easier if you can show someone what you mean, or if you can watch over his shoulder while he follows your instructions. Many organizations purchase subscriptions to WebEx or GoToMeeting or a similar paid service to allow this sort of virtual desktop sharing for sales presentations, software demos, development collaboration, etc., but if your company, or if you personally, can’t justify the expense there are a couple of totally free applications that not only meet the “good enough” criteria, but in the case of at least one I’ve tried, exceed it.
Here are three free desktop sharing/web meeting tools I turned up during some research recently. The first one, dimdim.com, I’ve used in day to day situations – it was easy to figure out, fast performing, and didn’t require any software download for the people with whom I was sharing my desktop. The other two also get good comments. Like any “freemium” type service, they place some limits on what the free account gets you, mostly around number of users that you can share your desktop or have in the meeting at any one time, but for a personal user or even a small company, these services provide a great tool for no cost.
Tags: desktop sharing, free, meetings, tools, web 2.0
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Last year was a good one to remember; a year filled with challenges and disappointments, serious milestone moments for family, for the kids, Kris and me, my siblings, my friends, my colleagues, the world. But I wonder, as 2010 already pours itself over me like torrent (have ten days of the new year passed already?), as memorable as it was, how much will I really remember? Should I have written more of it down? And so, chagrined, I open the journal again, stab at the lines with the pen, and pledge to myself, I’ll write every day. I doubt I’ll make it. But maybe I can come closer than I have before. Despite – or perhaps because – we are living in an age of blogs, social media, online micro-confessionals in 140 characters or less, quizzes, and literal and symbolic profile pictures and avatars, we no longer do much of a job keeping a diary. Maybe we’re not sure what a diary ought to entail. In my case, I’ve always over-thought a journal, assumed it had to be something greater, more elaborate or eloquent than it was; a sure recipe for a short lifespan in something I need to do daily.
A couple of recent experiences underscored for me the importance of a journal in recovering memories you wouldn’t otherwise even realize had been lost, and one gave me a clue as to how I might actually keep up with the a journal going forward.
A few weeks ago I was in the basement rummaging through an old filing cabinet, looking for a decades-old document. What I found instead was a journal I’d kept during a few years in my 20s. I stood there before the open drawer reading, and was struck by a couple of things. One was how embarrassingly sincerely I was trying back then to imitate Ernest Hemingway in my writing. The other was how sharply I suddenly remembered the days I was reading about, despite the fact I would not have even remembered them well enough to remember them at all (if that makes any sense) without this trigger. Not too many days later I was rummaging again, this time in the archives of this blog (there were years, now long past, when I wrote here more than once a month). I found an entry from April 28, 2004. ”David Says His First Sentence.” Our seven-year-old was just a baby, still being toted in a backpack around Concord by me. And he said, “Run, Dada.” A command. I’d noted it, with a few scraps of detail, and it brought back a flood of memories from that year, as well as a bit of remorse; I haven’t documented the other kids’ milestones like this, or even David’s later ones, though it would have been simple enough to capture many of them, if only I could keep the standards low.
Part of the problem with keeping up with a journal for me has always been the vain writerly assumption that each line is some sort of gem for posterity, an exercise in literary art that demands good writing and the presence of some sort of muse, and that the days I describe need to be as rich and fleshed out in the writing as they were in the living (ridiculous). So during the rare months in this whole life when I’ve had time to sit and write and the muse has been particularly forceful, and I haven’t felt like writing fiction instead, I’ve got journals. For the rest of the time, the real time, the normal, crazy, life a million miles a minute, life like an X-wing fighter down the trench of the Death Star, life with all the obligations, responsibilities and distractions that require writing to be 90 parts discipline, 10 parts airy muse-ical, I’ve got no journals (unless you count the bits and scraps that wash up in social media streams, and the odd scribbled poem in the back of a notebook).
Earlier this summer I came across a news story that gave me a clue as to where my primary mistake was in my efforts to maintain a journal. It has to do with John Quincy Adams and Twitter. On August 5, 2009, the Massachusetts Historical Society began tweeting on behalf of Adams, using his short journal entries (they average 110 to 120 characters) as material. Adams began the journal August 5, 1809 as he set out from to St, Petersburg, Russia. The posts are simple, and reference the weather, what he was reading that day, etc. But they also serve as pointers to longer pieces of writing he did in other formats.
I was immediately struck by this, and realized that while I may not have time or discipline (nor perhaps the skill) to sit and craft a meticulously beautiful and in-depth journal entry each day, I can write a sentence or two. And among those sentences, I could note topics that I’d like to expand into longer essays (such as this one). And, reacting as swiftly as a striking trout, some five months and five days later, I can finally cross this line off my essays-ideas list: “John Quincy Adams diary entries resemble tweets; group to post them. Reminds me, meant to start journal again.” I did indeed resume keeping a short-entry, handwritten journal at that time, though not faithfully. So given that it’s close enough to New Year’s so a resolution is not entirely anachronistic, here it is. Each night, I resolve to add a line or two in my own ugly handwriting to that little book. Too late to jot down Sofia or ‘Bela’s first sentences, perhaps, but there’ll be plenty of things yet to come. What day in a life, especially in a life filled with busy children, doesn’t bring a milestone with it?
I’ll share here are the rules I’ve given myself for this endeavor. If you find them useful, let me know.
- Don’t write it for posterity or for the public. This includes avoiding feeling as though everything you describe needs to be put into context so that a reader unfamiliar with all of the intricacies of your life would be able to understand it. You’re not writing your autobiography in real time, you’re taking notes.
- Don’t insist on writing well. Nothing wrong with good writing, beautiful prose, or even great handwriting. But if it’s not coming, forget it. Just put down the facts that seem most important to you right now. They’ll be enough to trigger your memory (and the poetry) later.
- Don’t insist on writing long. See above.
- Write one thing. If others occur, write them too; if not, let it go.
- Just as social media users often have to decide what should be a Facebook status update, what a blog post, what a Tweet, whether a photo should be on Flickr or Facebook or Twitpic, whether that video should… anyway, you get the point … your journal should not have to compete with all of these in terms of priority. Because it’s private, and therefore likely to be the bluntest, most honest, assessments of your life, give it primacy. This initial expression of high emotion in a personal journal may also help prevent unseemly, ill considered outbursts in social media.
Happy New Year.
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A piece by David Ellis, who works in a technique he calls “motion painting” in which he captures his painting process with digital time lapse photography.
Tags: animation, art, David Ellis, painting
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A Visit With Santa
Kris and I took the kids to see Santa and Mrs. Claus on the most decorated street in Bedford (just over the line from Manchester) Friday evening. An amazing night, all the more so due to its entirely non-commercial, neighborly, word of mouth nature; no charge to visit with Santa (even if you want to take pictures), no donation bucket even. Just good people who go to huge effort to create this very elaborate attraction year after and simply ask “Do something nice for someone, just because.” Kids had an awesome time. Helps all of us believe. Here’s a link to a couple of short video snippets of the kids meeting Santa and Mrs. Claus, and a most incredible Christmas light display on that same street.
Tags: Christmas, David, Isobel, Sofia
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Swedish media company the Bonnier Group has created this video showing a conceptual prototype for displaying a visually rich, digitally interactive magazine presentation on a tablet device. The video really captures the imagination (watch it full screen!) and conceptualizes something well beyond a simple graft of old media formats onto new technology (such as a straight digital replication of pages and layouts already designed for print, like simply filming a play directed for the stage instead of taking advantage of the possibilities of the new format). According to Bonnier, “The concept uses the power of digital media to create a rich and meaningful experience, while maintaining the relaxed and curated features of printed magazines. It has been designed for a world in which interactivity, abundant information and unlimited options could be perceived as intrusive and overwhelming.”
[Here's a link to the blog post on this at mediamemo.com that first caught my eye].
Tags: magazines, screen readers, tablet
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Oh, man. I can’t wait. The other night, Kris mentioned she was was going to make a couple of pies for Thanksgiving. She asked if I had any preference. I think she was surprised when I said blackberry. It seemed random, perhaps, and I don’t think I’ve ever requested blackberry pie. (Then again, we don’t make a lot of pie around here.) But on reflection I realized I have some incredibly fond childhood memories of blackberry pie. With vanilla ice cream. Mom made ‘em with berries she’d picked herself – mom loved picking berries, still does; she used to get enough to freeze and make pies for the holidays. She also loved to take us berry picking up in those Vermont hills, though I liked picking them considerably less than I liked eating them or just rambling around the hills. So I felt like a kid again coming home and seeing that blackberry pie on the counter. And I felt thankful to Kris for indulging me, thankful for blackberry pie, and thankful for mom and family and fond childhood memories. And the thing about gratitude is, once you start feeling it there’s a dam-bursting effect – you want to thank everybody, the whole gamut of persons you might be beholden to in some way starting with God and ending with that stranger who was moderately courteous in the grocery store the other day. But this not being the Oscars, I won’t run through the whole list; I’ll just say thank you, and you know who you are.
Tags: blackberry pie, family, kristen, Thanksgiving
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Sometimes nothing soothes the spirit like a day spent in the outdoors – away from the computer monitor and keyboard, the desk and lamp, the debilitating radiation of the television. But this doesn’t always require a journey into the wilderness. This afternoon, after Isobel got up from her nap, Kris and I took the kids walking down paths that run along the west side of the Piscataquog River, and picked up a few vines and other dried autumn fauna to with which to make Christmas ornaments. And simple as the task was, it was the happiest and most companionable the kids were all weekend. 
They love scouring the trail for nuts and pretty stones, and when we got back, they spent hours weaving vines into wreathes and gluing acorn caps back on acorns (go figure) with the hot glue gun. I was moved enough by the spirit of the day that I even broke out the Christmas music, which typically I reserve until after Thanksgiving. (This is sort of akin to giving in to the temptation of eating your lunch sandwich at your desk at 10:45 a.m.) After they went to bed I headed out for a frosty 14-mile long run – which I’d been put off all day rather than miss the forest treasure hunt. On a dark, deserted walking path that runs through a wooded greenway right through the middle of the city, my headlamp startled two whitetail deer that bounded along in front of me. They soon outpaced me and vanished in the darkness – no speed workouts for me tonight. Not that I could have caught them even if I were sprinting. Not long after that, two eyes glared at me out of the darkness on the trail ahead. They held perfectly still as I ran toward them. I never did get a good sense for what they belonged to, or how big the animal was; could have been a squirrel or an opossum, cat or dog, rhino or yeti, chupacabra or wolfen. But whatever it was, it ducked away from the trail and dashed into the brush before I came up to it, and we parted on friendly enough terms – two runners nodding a greeting in the dark, in the wildest wilderness of downtown Manchester.
Tags: crafts, David, deer, Isobel, long run, Sofia, winter running
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