Pesky PRs

Personal Records, or "PR" as they are called in the running world, are pretty important to a lot of people.  How else would you rank your progress (against other runners)?  

I just tried to think of my own record for the whopping two marathons that I've run in, and it took me a while to remember the times, although I am pretty sure that these are arbitrary numbers.  My first marathon was my best time, reaching the finish line in about 4 hours and just under 30 minutes.  4:24, maybe?  Already I am trying to inch down to more respectable numbers.  My second marathon in Raleigh took me almost five hours.  I crossed the line with the five hour pace guy, forgetting that I had been in the porta-john for about 15 minutes after the starting pistol went off.

And yet, I don't feel like a failure for running more slowly.  They were two totally different races – Raleigh was FULL of hills, hills that I ignored in my workouts.  I was in good shape, but probably not as good a shape as I was in after just four months into my first deployment.  So I took that time gratefully, and without regret.

Still, any running magazine I read talks about the PR, and how to improve it.  I just read a Facebook post for a group dedicated to "making you faster, and reducing your times!"  Now, I am all for people to improve their fitness levels and even go faster if they want.  But that is not what I want.  I am very happy finding that sweet spot in my stride where I can run on and on.  Which, coincidentally, is exactly what I am going for.

I feel bad for runners who, in pressing their bodies to the limit, have injured themselves and can't run anymore without surgery or intensive therapy.  I can relate, having to reduce my weightlifting ever since injuring (and re-injuring) my supraspinatus tendon.  Never again will I be able to lift the magic weight of 315.  Man, I felt like a monster benching that much after years of just enjoying lower weights to maintain a good pushup number.  I've had injuries to my knees and ankles as well, but luckily I have been able to continue running after a short rest and some ICE.  I don't want this run, or the training leading up to it, to keep me from continuing to run more, later.

Treadmill Troubles

We don't have the best equipment out here when it comes to cardio.  Out of the three treadmills in our gym, one is out of commission and a second one has a belt that is continually slipping.  

On the other hand, by 9 AM, the outside temperature is already in the high 90s - 100s.  The sun is blazing and I hate sunscreen dripping into my eyes.  So if I schedule a short run later in the day, I'm usually hopping on the treadmill.  

Two problems that I have found using the treadmill, even for an hour or so of running:

1.  I am a forward leaning runner.  While there are a lot of ways to define this, basically it just means that I try to keep my center of gravity slightly forward.  This running style has saved my knees.  I have noticed, however, that working out on the treadmill causes the balls of my feet to heat up to the point it gets uncomfortably hot.  I'm not sure if it is my running style or my running shoes, but I have limited my running on the treadmill to an hour.

2.  I actually prefer to run outside, and when I am running outside I don't watch the clock.  I have general distances I want to run, and whenever I'm done, I'm done.  On the treadmill though I find myself getting away from that natural stride in order to cover more mileage in a shorter amount of time.  There are times I have run on the treadmill, and end up with minor knee soreness for a little while that day.  I generally don't get knee pain when I run on the street, regardless of the time I spend there.  I wonder if this is a factor of changing my stride or running speed artificially.

Looks like I'll have to continue getting up early to run as dawn breaks, to avoid the heat as best I can, and limit treadmill runs to less than one or one and a half hours.

Poor blogging form this week, only one post.  I apologize, it has been a very busy week.  I respect someone who can blog three or more times a week, every week.

Moleskin + Nipples = Happiness

I have made a tremendous discovery in the last few months that I would like to share with the world...

...but first, a public service announcement.  If you are queasy about nipples, this post is not for you.  That's right, we're talking nipples today, as if you didn't read the post title and get all excited.

No, I am not posting pictures of my nipples.  I will take requests, though.  This is not meant to be a titillating post (pun intended) either, but if this is how you get your jollies on the interwebs, who am I to judge?

Here's the problem that I know is shared by many other runners: when I run for a length of time, my shirts start to rub up against my nipples.  If this goes on too long, those poor guys get chaffed.  If I run long enough, chaffing turns to outright open sores, which leads immediately to...

...BLOODY NIPPLES. 

I can handle blood.   What I can't handle is the excruciating pain of my sore nipples getting hit with whatever shirt I happen to be wearing, each agonizing step bringing my pain-nips in touch with an object, making them cry out again with agony.  At this point, there is no joy in Mammilla-ville.  Even if I remove my shirt, the very air against my teats creates more pain.  Complete and udder agony.  Get it?  

Thanks to Thesaurus.com for helping me with the last paragraph, by the way. 

In the past I have used anti-friction creams, powders, and even put band-aids on the trouble spots to avoid this.  But I am a hairy brute, and the band-aids usually fall off after a period of time.  I was seriously wondering what I would do for extended runs, until today.

I was looking in the drawers one morning and found some moleskin that a previous tenant had left behind.  Being an inventive chap I decided to give it a try and cut out two small squares.  My after run analysis?  If I had to condense this post to just five words, those words would be:

MOLESKIN IS BLISS FOR NIPPLES.

I have tried this on long runs of 24 Km, and up to about three and a half hours of running (that distance), so I hope I have this bloody nipple thing licked.  Get your mind out of the gutter, you sicko.

The Color Brown

When I was deployed to Iraq, I tried my hand at writing to pass the time.  I came across these haikus, and thought they were still pretty funny - and valid, here in Afghanistan:

The Color Brown (#1)

Brownish sand and dirt

as far as the eye can see.

At least Mars has hills.

The Color Brown (#2)

It's been two months now.

The same color as doo-doo.

This is getting old.

The Color Green (#1)

Little green bushes,

Why are you growing here, small?

Rain won't come, yet hope.  

The Color Brown (#3)

Here's a brown puddle,

in the middle of the sand.

Defiant, proud, wet.

Namaste!

As promised, I said I would discuss some of the other exercises that I am doing to help prepare myself and most importantly, prevent injury.  In my opinion, the best "other" exercise that I have been practicing daily - or almost daily - is yoga.

In 2009, I was lucky enough to be deployed to Al Asad Airbase.  I had a room of my own, and inherited an old television that showed three or four Armed Forces Network channels.  Lo and behold at 0630 every morning, I discovered a program called Namaste Yoga.  I have always been fairly unflexible, and decided to give it a try in the privacy of my room, where noone else could see me practicing yoga.  It turned out I liked the program, and it definitely helped with my flexibility.  I ended up working the show into my daily schedule.  We also had an XO who WASN'T afraid of yoga, and would got the entire Group outdoors to practice once or twice.  He would get us into a pose and then pronounce, "Yep, you're doing YOGA."

For those not familiar with the series - it was on Fitness TV in the States, and you can get the DVDs from Namaste.tv - it was developed and narrated by a woman named Kate Potter.  Ms. Potter is a Canadian yoga instructor and she has the best narrating voice.  I would love to sit in on one of her classes.  Add to that a great production value, and you have a really good yoga class at your fingertips.  The production for the series was in British Columbia - Vancouver, I think - and the people in charge of picking locations found some of the most beautiful areas to film.  

I have seasons one and two here with me now.  I purchased them for the deployment, and have been using them almost daily ever since my computer arrived.  There is something about yoga first thing in the morning that helps my body get ready for the day.  And I definitely feel that daily yoga practice increases my flexibility and has had a direct impact on the fact that I am pain and injury free, even after the longest runs.  

The trick will be to continue the practice when I get home.  Like so much other exercise and good health sense, after I came home from the last deployment, I stopped practicing yoga.  I tried to follow the yoga classes on Fitness TV, but the timing was off - and we hadn't bought our first DVR yet to record the shows.  I should have bought the DVD set right away, but I blew it off.  No excuses now - and even more incentive to get the latest DVD.  If I continue yoga, there is no reason why I can't continue to train with distance running without injury.

Namaste!

Giving More Than 10%

Technically, I am posting this on Wednesday morning, but it is still Tuesday back home :)...

Confession time: After I ran the Raleigh marathon in 2010, I stopped working out for a solid three months.  In the back of my head I knew that I was still in great shape, and that my fortieth birthday was four years away.  I had only planned on one marathon a year until 2014 to keep me "limber".  Not surprisingly, that plan did not work out as I had hoped.  

By the time I got to Afghanistan, I hadn't run more than twice in four months.  I hadn't run more than three or four times a month in the six months prior to that, and I certainly hadn't been a consistent runner since 2011.  I had joined the nefarious "3 mile club" – for Navy Physical Readiness Tests, a participant only has to run 1.5 miles.  The PRT is a twice a year event, which means that every sailor must run a minimum of 3 miles a year – if they are running.  I won't go into the politics of stationary bikes or elliptical machines, and I have been at the very bottom of fitness categories, so I won't judge.

The bottom line is, I was concerned that trying to do to much, too fast would end up with me being injured.  Experts say that a person shouldn't try to increase their distance by more than 10% a week.  I was certainly on my way towards following that advice for the first month here.  I started off with a gentle 1.5 mile run, something I knew even a fatbody like me could handle. And that was only after a couple of weeks of walking to and from work and chow – at the time, a not inconsiderate 4 miles or so daily.  

I got a cold about a month in, and that set me back a week, but then I ran a circuit and felt very good.  I had done that route a few times without injury or soreness when I decided to pull out a map and find out how much I had been doing.  I was surprised to find out that I went from roughly 2 miles to over 5.  However, my legs, knees and ankles felt great so I continued to experiment with different runs, taking breathers in between the longer ones.  Within two months I've gotten to 9 miles without serious strain on my body, not even soreness the next day.  After I got up to a half marathon in May (four months in) My left patellar tendon has started to complain a bit, so I made sure to include a short run day (around 10K) and I will definitely make sure to include a rest day.  I'm also looking at knee strengthening exercises, besides just hitting more pavement.  There is one more thing that I've been doing which I'll write more about on Thursday, yoga.

Running in Hell

I've had the running schedule planned for two weeks now.  I was running every other day, right up until Saturday...until today.

I got an opportunity to travel to Qatar today.  My goal was to log a long run in, but the moment I got off the aircraft my lungs were on fire.  Literally, when I breathed in liquid fire came in instead of air.  The streets are cleverly concealed pits of black lava, which makes me wonder if their tires here aren't made of a rubbery asbestos material.  I tried to walk down a paved jogging trail, but the material my boots were made of could only take so much before sublimating into charred husks.  

Needless to say, I will probably have to wait until nightfall.  Of course, the last time I was near this place was June of 2009, getting off of a plane to refuel at close to midnight.  I remember a similar feeling of being blasted by heat as I walked off that plane as well - when the sun wasn't even shining.  It really worried me that we were in for a rough time of it during my Iraq deployment, if the staging area was radiating heat in the black of night.  

It turns out that the Arab Emirates are just hot as hell.  I am told that summer months in Phoenix or San Antonio become similar pits of Hades, which means that I will never, never visit those places from March - October.  I would rather get a pitchfork to the backside, which may actually happen if i were to find myself in these magma chambers.  I'm not entirely sure that the Devil herself appears with a tiny pitchfork in these places in the summer months.

I am a man of the North.  A Yankee, if you will.  Winner of the War of Northern Aggression.  What I didn't realize is that we also won the war of comfortable climate.  It pains me that my daughters have acclimated to the burning jungles of Florida and North Carolina, while my northern bones require temperatures slightly below freezing in order to operate properly.  My neighbors still wonder why I walk around in shorts and a wifebeater in late January, whereas I am just happy to not be walking on the surface of the sun.

Better go grab a reflective belt and some water bottles.