Run the Valley 5k Race Report and Week 6 in Reverse

This weekend, I ran in my first race of the year—the Run the Valley 5k in Golden Valley.  Katie had planned on doing this too, but her shin and ankle area (henceforth known as her "shankle") has been acting up.  Since her first triathlon of the season is next weekend, she decided it was best not to test her shankle so close to the race.  But, Katie came to the race with me and was a great spectator.

When deciding which race to do this weekend, I noted that this race was a bit pricey at $25.  I decided to do it nonetheless.  All this would have worked fine had I pre-registered, but, since I was pre-occupied with some news on Wednesday night, I missed the online registration window.  Thus, my cost was $35 on race day.

My hope for this race was to beat my time in the Monster Dash last October (23:16).  I felt it was pretty doable.

It was a cool, overcast morning—perfect for a run.  I warmed-up, stretched, and got ready to run.  It wasn't going to be huge race, but there was a sizeable amount of people doing the 5k (there was also a 10k and 5k walk starting after my race).  I lined up about 25 people back from the starting line.  The I never heard them start the race because everybody was talking quite a bit, but off we went.

Mile 1: 7:12  Just past the start, I hadn't started scanning the spectators yet, but then all of a sudden I hear Phil and Katie cheering.  Katie managed to snap this picture of my backside heading up the hill.

I'm in the blue shirt and red shorts

I was feeling good, but this mile was mostly uphill, so I may have pushed a bit too hard.

Mile 2: 7:36  I got a bit of a side cramp at the start of this mile, so I worked it out with my breathing, and got back going.  There weren't many spectators on the course, so it was fairly quiet until…

Mile 3: 7:29  Just at the start of this mile, we were running down the bike lane of a busier street (by busy, I mean I saw 10 cars go by instead of 2).  All of a sudden, I hear "GO MATT" being shouted at me from the window of a car right next to me.  It was Phil and Jamie, with Jamie shouting.  It startled me, but it was really good to hear because there was zero crowd support out here (well, there was zero crowd).  So thanks guys!  I started heading toward the finish, and at the last intersection, Katie was there.  She managed to get a flip-book of pictures.  Here's one of them:

Mile 3.1: 0:40  This last bit involved me getting passed.  Then we rounded the corner with about 50 meters to go.  I saw that I was still under 23 minutes on the clock.  So I gave the kick everything I had left, passed the guy back, and crossed the line.

Total Time: 22:59

So, I beat my monster dash time by 17 seconds, which makes this my fastest 5k since high school.  So I'll call this a PHS (post high school) PR.  My all-time PR for a 5k is 20:03, which I plan on beating some day.

All in all, a good race.

Week in Reverse

Highlights from week 6 (I'm halfway done with this training program!)

Thursday, April 8: Rest day.  I took Thursday off in preparation for my race.  It was a day where I could have really used a run, but I rested anyway.

Wednesday, April 7: 5 x hill.  My last set of hill repeats!  I don't mind hills, but I'm excited to switch my Wednesday workouts from hills to intervals.  I'll be at the track every Wednesday starting this week.

Monday, April 5:  Treadmill and Strength Exercises.  The treadmill still sucks, but I decided to try something new: a foam roller.  This painful little foam cylinder is magic.  It hurts like the dickens when using it to knead out the tight spots in my muscles, but I felt great afterwards.  I'm planning on getting my own, but The Running Room is out of them now.  I'll give a more detailed post on this once I can get my hands on one.

My Toenail is Purple (and Week 5 in Reverse)

Look, it's my foot!  Sorry my foot is so gross, but a picture is better than me trying to describe what my foot looks like (it's, well, foot-y…).  On Thursday, I noticed that the 2nd toe on my right foot was a little sore, so I whipped off my shoes and socks to look at it.  Oh, and I was in my office at the time, so my officemate came in and saw me holding my foot up to my face.  There was a small (about 10% of the toenail area) section that was faintly purple.  As you can see, it's a lot more purple.  My guess is that I did this while doing my hill repeats on Wednesday.

The most likely outcome of this is that I'm going to lose the toenail.  Sounds gross (and it is, a little), but apparently it is a common thing among runners.  When the toe impacts the inside of your shoe too much, you damage it and then the toenail dies.  This will progress over the next few weeks, and then the nail will fall off.  I feel like a real runner now.

As for the Week in Reverse, I'm going to tone it down a bit from now on to spare you the boring details. I'll just make mention of some highlights and other interesting things that happen.  I've started keeping an online training log at Runner's World, so you can get the nitty gritty details there.  (I'm going to post a review of their training log in the next few days, so stay tuned.)

Sunday, April 4:  8 miles, 1:07:49.  It had been a long Triduum, with many late nights, and the Vigil was especially tiring, so this run should have been slow, and painful.  I went for the run in the afternoon, so it was much warmer than I was used to.  It started fast, and I wondered if I could keep the pace going.  I did.  Then I turned around and faced the wind, and wondered if I could keep the pace going.  I did.  When I got back, I calculated my pace to by 8:30/mile.  Let me say that again: 8:30/mile for an 8 mile run!  Holy moly!  It was comfortable pace for me, so all I can say is that this speed work is really working.  I'm becoming much more confident that I can get a sub-4 hour marathon this year.

Wednesday, March 31: 5 x Hill.  An increase of 1 repeat this time.  This workout was so tough, it killed a toenail (see above).

Tuesday, March 30: 5 miles at 9:00/mile pace.  Another "easy" run at a surprisingly fast pace.  I'm becoming fast again!

So there are the highlights.  Stay tuned for more pictures of my toe!

More Charts! (and Week 4 in Reverse)

If you remember, previously I went all geeky and provided a chart of my mile times for the marathon.  Well, in doing so, I noticed something.  Here is the elevation chart for the marathon course:

Taking my pace chart, and using my Excel photo editing skills, we get this:

Here, I've overlaid the elevation chart onto the pace chart, and then adjusted the scale a bit.  What you'll notice is that my pace follows the elevation changes pretty closely.  Places where the elevation is constant, my pace is constant; when the elevation drops, my pace drops.  Nothing too unexpected, but it's cool to examine.

As for what I did this week, placing the shifter in 'R', here we go:

Sunday, March 28: 7 miles LSD, 1:03:22.  This was a fantastic run.  I came up with a route that included both the river and Summit, and the river portion was a large chunk of the marathon course.  In fact, it was the part of the course where the wheels came off.  This run, though, was much better.  Here's the route:

Saturday, March 27: 35 min Fartlek.  I felt myself dragging a bit on this run, but nothing special happened.

Friday, March 26: Rest.

Thursday, March 25:  Cycling, strength training, and 4x400 intervals.  Here was a pretty eventful day. I went into the Rec bright and early, and decided to do a bit of cross-training.  I cycled for about 25 minutes.  I thought I was putting some good effort in, but when I got off the bike, it felt like I hadn't done anything.  Disappointed, I did my strength training and called it a day.  A little later in the day, I found out that some local runners were going to do some intervals at the St. Thomas track.  I've been trying to find a reliable track, and apparently St. Thomas is just the place.  I did 4x400 at a pretty moderate pace, and it felt good.  You can read more about it on Steve's blog, here.

Wednesday, March 24: 4 x Hill.  Another tough hill workout.  Managed to improve my repeat times on each go.

Tuesday, March 23: 3 miles, 27 min.

Monday, March 22: 3 treadmill miles + strength training.  I had a great pace going on this one, and it made the treadmill workout not so bad.

The Week in Reverse: Week 3

3 weeks done already?  You betcha.  Highlight from week 3: a karate kicking/jumping/punching dude.

Sunday, March 21: 6 miles, 55 min.  My first run in the median!  I've missed the Summit median so much.  It was cold enough so that it wasn't muddy.  I also managed to run perfectly even splits: 27:30 out, 27:30 back.  Crazy!

Saturday, March 20: 35 minute Tempo Run.  The good news is that I still have the ability to push myself on runs, and boy, did I ever.  This was one tough run.  I enjoyed it though—well, except that I forgot to check the wind, and ended up running into it on the way back.  I also got to see how high the Mississippi River water level was.

Friday, March 19: Rest.

Thursday, March 18: 3 miles + strength training.  I discovered that the treadmills on the outside of the cardio center do not need to be signed out, so the time is unlimited.  Therefore I can do a proper warm up and cool down and still get the full 3 miles in.

Wednesday, March 17: 4 x Hill.  I switched hills.  Instead of the Marshall Ave. hill, I did the featured hill from the marathon course, which goes along the river parkway up to Summit.  It's not quite as steep as Marshall, but still plenty challenging.  There was a woman who was also doing hill repeats on the same hill, but she wasn't very friendly.

Tuesday, March 16: 4 miles.  Uneventful 4 mile run.

Monday, March 15: 3 miles + strength training.  I had two conference papers due this day.  I emailed them off to my advisor, and got ready to head to the Rec.  Then my advisor called.  We had to fix something.  I fixed it, sent him the paper again, and got ready to head to the Rec.  Then my advisor called.  Repeat this process 3 more times.  Finally, around 3pm, I made it to the Rec.  It was a little busy (but not too bad because it was Spring Break).  After I finished up, I turned around to get a rag to wipe the machine off, and right in front of me was karate kicking/jumping/punching man!  It is almost impossible to describe what he was doing, but try and combine karate with tae bo and Sweatin' to the Oldies in your mind, and you won't be too far off.  He was completely serious about what he was doing, and I had to follow him all the way down the hallway, because if I tried to go around, I would certainly have been punched in the face by one of his flailing appendages.

The Week in Reverse: Week 2

My Road ID is here!  Check it out:

Remember, you can get a discount on your own Road ID by checking out my coupon code here.

This update is delayed a bit, but here's how week 2 went:

Sunday, March 14: 5ish miles.  This was supposed to be a long run of 7 miles, but I had very little time on Sunday, so it ended up being just shy of 5 miles.  Nonetheless, it was a beautiful day out, and I enjoyed this run.

Saturday, March 13: 30 min fartlek.  I really enjoyed this run.  Katie and I been in Iowa Friday and Saturday, so when we got back around 7pm on Saturday night, it was already dark.  I still wanted to get my run in, so I went.  It was my first time running outside at that time of day, and there was no one out.  I ran up and down the river road, and it was a warm and foggy evening.  Real eerie, but real cool.  The run itself was fun, and I enjoyed picking out streetlights or trees to sprint to.  By the way fartlek is a running technique with lots of speed variations (it literally means speed play).  You jog along, then pick out some object in the distance and sprint towards it.  Then jog for recovery.  Repeat.  We did things like this in high school, but it was much more rigid along the lines of "run fast when stopwatch beeps, jog when it beeps again, repeat".

Friday, March 12: rest

Thursday, March 11:  40 min run.  This was a tremendously busy day.  I had 2 presentations to give, so I was looking forward to the run.  Once again, David joined me at the dome, and it was the last night of Dome Running for the season.  This is exciting because it means the weather is getting better, but I'll miss running in the Dome for a few months.

Wednesday, March 10: 3 x Hill.  Now this was a tough workout.  I did the Marshall Ave. hill again.  I managed 2 repeats before the air got to me.  Yes, it was a pollution alert day, and I could really feel it in my lungs.  So, for the 3rd repeat, I did the slightly less steep hill on Marshall between Cleveland and Fairview.  Still a workout, but at least I could breathe.

Tuesday, March 9: 3 mile run.  Nothing too remarkable here.  I still long for when the median of Summit is solid enough on which to run.  Soon, soon…

Monday, March 8: 3 miles + strength training.  Another workout on the deathmill.  I hate treadmills soooo much.  When I get about 5 minutes into the run, it feels like I've been doing it for hours, and it is just sooooo boring.  After that, I did strength exercises, and discovered that if I use 2 dumbbells, I can simulate a bench-press without the need of a spotter.  Yay!

A New Training Plan and Week 1 in Reverse

I guess that one of the benefits of early marathon registration is that it has given me motivation to start training.  Yes, it's early to start training for October, but I'm not doing marathon training right now.  I've started following Hal Higdon's Intermediate Spring Training Plan.  Last year, Hal Higdon said that if I followed his plan, I would finish a marathon.  He was right, so I have no problem going back to him for all my training needs.

The focus of this plan is building strength and speed.  No looong runs, but a lot of hill workouts, intervals, tempo runs, and other such things.  I'm using this build speed so that the sub-4 hour marathon becomes a reality.

As for what I did in week 1, here it is, in reverse.

Sunday, March 7: 6 miles, ~56 min.  This was fantastic.  The weather was spectacular (shorts and shortsleeves weather).  There were gaggles of people out.  I did a Summit/River Rd. route, and managed to nail a puddle as I turned around.  I worried about my feet, but my Nike socks did a great job.

Saturday, March 6: 30 min Tempo Run.  A Tempo Run is a very specific workout with a 10 minute easy warm-up, 10-15 minutes of building speed gradually, and a 10 min cooldown.  The building part is tough, and I pushed myself pretty hard.  The hardest part, though, was choosing a route that avoids red lights.  When I hit a light, I turned so that I could keep going, but it didn't always work out.  In the future, I may drive and park at the river, or maybe the lakes.

Friday, March 5: Rest

Thursday, March 4: 3ish miles, 40ish min.  This is the one spot where I deviated from the plan.  It called for 3 miles and strength training.  I wanted to take advantage of the Dome while it was still open, so I ran there.

Wednesday, March 3: 3 Hill Repeats.  These were tough.  I picked the Marshall Ave. hill, and it is steep.  Definitely one of the tougher workouts of the week.

Tuesday, March 2: 3 miles.  Nothing special here, just a good, early morning run.

Monday, March 1: 3 miles + Strength Training.  I suffered for 30 minutes on the deathmill, did a bit of strength training.  I ran into the problem of needing to do bench presses, but without a spotter.  I'm not lifting much weight, but I know you shouldn't bench without a spotter.  I think I solved that problem this week, though.

That was my week.  Below you'll find my personal training calendar, I haven't filled it out completely, but it will always be up to date.