This is Livin’

Ah, the decadence of Sunday mornings.  Sleeping in until 5:45; a 16 mile trail run over hilly terrain; earning that plate of two fried eggs over sweet potato hash browns.  What more could a guy ask for?

When I left the house for my run, the temperature was 37 degrees, near the lower limit of shorts weather for me.  The temperature would climb to about 50 degrees before the end of my run a little over two hours later.  Along the way I spied a cute family - buck, doe and fawn - who were observing me from a draw near the path in the Backcountry Wilderness Area. 

I am a late adopter when it comes to gadgets, preferring to wait until the technology has proven itself and the second or third revision is on sale.  But there are a few pieces of technology I enjoy.  One is my Garmin Forerunner 205. 

I have owned a Forerunner 205 for about seven years.  I am on my second 205, having exchanged my original one for a refurbished unit when it stopped working.  I do not use all of the features on it, which is why I have not upgrade to fancier units. 

Garmin offers computer based software that allows the hyper anally-retentive athlete to micro-analyze their workouts.  I don’t have time for that.  I have an account with Strava, which offers many of the same features with a nicer interface.  Here is the map and elevation of this morning’s run.  You see that I haven’t figured out how to change the units to miles. 

I love listening to music while I workout and I have two devices that allow me to do so.  When I swim, I listen to tunes on a SwiMP3, which is a waterproof MP3 player.  The sound waves travel through bone conduction.  Because water is about 1,000 times denser than air, it almost feels like you are “swimming in the music”.

When I run, I listen to music on my iPod Shuffle.  It is so small; a good sized dog could swallow it whole.  Fortunately my cats are only capable of licking the unit, but Charlie has chewed through a pair of ear buds.  I can’t help but wonder if Apple embeds subliminal messages that play through their devices, because I have found myself shopping for black mock turtlenecks. 

The Forerunner and the Shuffle are nice gadgets, but they don’t move my legs.  I have to provide the locomotion.  An honest sweat in the cool air is its own reward.  While my body is fast yielding to the wasting hands of time, I can still enjoy a long run on a perfect fall morning.

A tale of two runs

On a recent road trip to California to visit my oldest daughter at college and explore some colleges for my younger daughter, we spent time in Las Vegas, Anaheim, Pasadena and Cedar City, UT.  En route to California we spent the night in Primm, Nevada.  I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad run, but the eight miles I logged in Primm come close. 

Primm straddles Interstate 15 where it crosses the state border between California and Nevada.  It is named after the original developer of the town, the casino owner Ernest Jay Primm.  We stayed at Whisky Pete’s, so named for the bootlegger Pete MacIntyre.  Three and a half laps around the town gave me eight miles total.  The route was completely flat.  The remarkable thing about the run was the illumination of the neon lights made my early morning run seen like it was mid-day. 

And on we went to Anaheim.  2.5 miles east of the intersection of Harbor and Katella in Anaheim, CA lies a ¼ mile swath of waste land that cuts north and east through LA.  About thirty feet below street level flows the Santa Ana River.  Adjacent to the river is a soft, wide dirt path that parallels the river.  There is an on-ramp to the path located just past the entrance to the Honda Center, where the Mighty Ducks play.  That arena and Angels Stadium which sits a about a half mile away, across Katella, are built upon land reclaimed from that ditch.  I ran seven miles on that path before returning to get ready for a day with the family in The Magic Kingdom. 

This was an unexpected gem of a run, not what you would expect to find in the highly developed satellite of Los Angeles.  Every 20 yards birdhouses perch atop the barbed wire fence posts and the chirps of birds could be heard over the drone of traffic, ever-present, even at 6:00 on a Sunday morning. 

The murmur and splash of the river could be heard as it flowed over rocks.  I have swum in those waters at the mouth of the Santa Ana River, several miles downriver, where it empties into the Pacific Ocean between Newport Beach and Huntington Beach. 

While in the Greater LA area I swam with my old friends of the Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team at the Janet Evans Pool.  I met some new friends at SOCAL Aquatics in Tustin.  I also got a chance to see the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. 

During today’s long run in Cherry Creek State Park, which doubled as a tempo run for me, the topic of the difficulty of running a sub three hour marathon came up.  I have been fortunate to have run three marathons in under three hours and still feel like an interloper in that crowd.  Modesty and decorum necessitate the trite expression “I had a good day.”  While that is a fact, the full truth is a good performance comes after months of focused, dedicated preparation.  A good day, or a questionable course, gives you a few minutes.  A bad day could cost you 20 minutes. 

Do a couple of minutes on either side of the three hour mark change the way you perceive your abilities?  Do you let it dictate your worth as an athlete?  What do the prairie dogs think about as we run past?

Answers to these rhetorical questions tumbled around my mind as I labored through 14 miles at 7:45 / mile pace.  Based on the way I felt, it seemed inconceivable that I was able to run 26.2 miles at any pace, and certainly not at 6:44 / mile which I did at this year’s Colfax Marathon.

In other news, congratulations to the University of Colorado Men’s Team for winning the PAC 12 Cross Country Championships, which were held yesterday in Louisville. 

I registered for next year’s Platte River ½ marathon, so now I have five months to get ready to defend my masters title.

Kermit Rode a Fixie

Call me a sap, but one of my favorite movies is the 1979 classic “The Muppet Movie”.  There is a scene early in the film where Kermit is shown riding a bicycle.  Two things caught my eye when I watched Kermit cruising on his bike.  The chain is on the wrong side of the bottom bracket and the bicycle is a fixed gear. 

A fixed-gear bicycle (or fixed-wheel bicycle, commonly known as a fixie) is a bicycle that has a drivetrain with no freewheel mechanism.  You cannot coast while riding a fixie.  The fixed-gear bicycle is the standard track racing design.  More recently the fixie has become a popular alternative among mainly urban cyclists, offering the advantages of simplicity compared with the standard multi-geared bicycle.

You can also call me a throwback, but I used to ride a fixie built on a steel Basso frame.  My cycling coach in Boston, John Allis, was a proponent of training on a fixie.  John was a top American cyclist in the late 1960’s and 1970s, finishing 63^rd in the 1972 Olympic Road Race in Munich.  I recall a Sunday training race in 1987 where he rode away from the field.  He was 45 at the time.  He was inducted into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1993.

There is something to be said for how a fixed gear forces you to develop a smoother pedaling style since you simply cannot stop pedaling.  Due to this, they are popular for off season training by serious road cyclists.  I was a bicycle courier during the time Allis was coaching me and he advised me to ride a fixed gear for work.  It was a brutal workout.  I figured I rode about 100 miles a day, including my commute from Newton into downtown Boston. 

I used to ride my fixed gear when I wasn’t running.  I believe it helped me run with a faster turnover.  I fear falling or getting hit by a car, so my fixie gathers dust and cobwebs in the basement. 

The other cross training I’ve done has been on rollerskis.  Roller skiing is a non-snow equivalent to cross-country skiing.  Emulating skis, elongated inline skates, with wheels at the ends are used on tarmac.  The skating / skiing action is very similar to actual cross-country skiing on snow.  I own two pairs of rollerskis.  The last time I used them, I fell and tore my rotator cuff.

I had a tooth extracted on Friday and the dentist advised me not to run.  So, I mostly sat around all weekend, but I walked six miles on Saturday and seven miles on Sunday, in addition to mowing the lawn.  I spent some time reading the latest edition of Colorado Runner magazine, which published its list of Colorado’s fastest runners, and there I am on page 15.  My 1:21:45 at the Platte River ½ put me 4^th in the 45 – 49 age group.

Other people I train with were listed.  Kudos to:  Lonnie Cruz, Jay Survil, Bridget Tschappat and Steve Parker.

R.Y.B.O. – A.T.S.

Winter comes early, and lasts long, in Syracuse, NY.  Usually, by the last week in October the first flakes of snow have fallen.  Those harbingers of winter don’t disappear until sometime in April.  In between are over five months of cold, grey bleakness.  

I bring this up because I witnessed the first frost of the year this Saturday.  The Farmer’s Almanac is forecasting a harsh winter.  In anticipation, I fished my winter running clothes out from the depths of my closet. 

In the fall of my freshman year, after the crew team retreated from the boathouse on Onondaga to the tanks and weights in Archbold Gymnasium, we began the first of four winter training cycles I experienced at SU.  The freshman crew team had (thankfully) shorter workouts than the varsity team, but we were aware of their workouts because they were posted, each day, on the wall outside of Head Coach Sanford’s office.

At the bottom of each workout, after the weights to be lifted, minutes in the tanks to be rowed and stairs or miles to be run, were the letters ATS.  I assumed those were coach’s initials until I realized his name was William E. Sanford.  It wasn’t until I became a varsity oarsman the next year that I discovered those letters stood for And Then Some.

ATS was Coach Sanford’s shorthand for some additional calisthenics.  ATS was always the same:  100 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 200 back arches and 200 sit-ups.  It was the athlete’s option to determine what order, or how many sets, it took to reach those numbers, but we held each other accountable to complete those exercises.

As I talk to other runners I am hearing common themes.  “My racing season is over.”  “I am taking some time off.”  “I’m running fewer miles.”  “I’m trying to figure out my next race and what I want to do to prepare for it.” 

This all fits the concept of periodization which is the systematic planning of athletic or physical training.  It involves progressive cycling of various aspects of a training program during a specific period.  It is a way of alternating training to peak for racing season. 

I am in the recovery phase of my training.  My training volume is still pretty high, but the intensity is not.  In addition, I am doing some calisthenics to help build core strength and general fitness.  I have my own daily ATS ritual:  10 pull-ups, 120 lunges, 20 push-ups and 1 minute planks.  This won’t lead to a Schwarzenegger-esque body, but even after one week, I feel a fullness in my muscles. 

Thinking of the spring will help me through the winter months.  There is a cheer Syracuse crews gave as we pushed off from the dock on our way to race - R.Y.B.O.  I’ll let your imagination come up with what those initials stand for, but it is PG rated. 

You can adopt a variation as you head out for your next race - R.Y.B.O.

Sometimes

Two and half miles, as the crow flies, from the house I grew up in Montclair, NJ, on the crest of the third Watchung ridge, sits the Eagle Rock Reservation.  It is notable for the Essex County September 11th Memorial.  It was from this vantage point that citizens gathered to watch the events unfold 17 miles away on that fateful day twelve years ago.

Last Sunday I was in New Jersey and ran one final lap around my hometown.  I ran up Crest Dr. (aka Snake Hill Road) arriving at the ridge about 30 minutes past dawn.  It was a stunning sunrise and a photographer was there capturing the skyline.  The temperature was about 47 degrees with a still, cloudless sky.  

It was a run down memory lane for me.  I ran past landmarks that held importance to me including the Montclair Art Museum where I once worked checking coats.  I ran past houses I had painted and lawns I had mowed.  As I passed houses of old friends I wondered if the families still lived there. 

I ran past my old high school, stopping at the amphitheatre where my graduation was held.  I paused at the George Innes Annex, where freshman had their classes, with its segregated boys and girls gyms.  I ran past my old elementary and middle schools as well.

My spirits were sinking as I moved on.  Montclair is a beautiful town and I’m proud to have grown up there.  I’ve run along these streets many times, but this time the scene was tinged with sorrow.  I didn’t know when, or if, I would run this way again. 

It was at that low point when I spotted a figure running about 200 yards ahead of me.  There is no joy quite like gaining on, and passing, another runner.  I overtook that runner quickly and saw another runner, which I passed as well.  I was soon passing small groups of runners when I hear a voice call out “Hey, I know the Boulder Running Company!”  The shirt I was wearing had that store’s logo printed on my back.  The runner who spotted the logo had been to the location near South West Plaza Mall. 

I had stumbled into the tail end of the Fleet Feet Fall Marathon Training Run which was a supported 20 mile group run that crisscrossed Montclair.  The runners in this little pack were training for the New York City Marathon.  Entry into that race is about as hard to come by as a Rockies victory.  Meeting the runners broke my preoccupation and put me in a great mood.  

Friday night I cashed in the gift certificate to the Buckhorn Exchange that I won at this spring’s Platte River ½ Marathon.  Mary and I had dinner guests and I brought home three Dutch Lunches and three Dutch Apple Pie slices.  We savored the spoils of my victory.

An Active Insider email I received this week issued a 30-Day Lunge Challenge, so I printed out the 30-Day Lunge Tracker calendar started the program.  Today I was able to do 100 lunges (30 front, 20 right side, 20 left side, 30 reverse plus 10 scissor lunges) at one time, though I had to rest between sets.  This will give me something new to obsess about.