Post Crunch Time Setback

Last week I was congratulating myself for exercising all through crunch time at work. This week--well, not so much.

Sunday was a scheduled day off, Monday I put in a 3K run, Tuesday I didn't make up my mind if I would alternate between 2K and 3K each day so on the second lap I thought I'd check my time and oops--forgot to start my watch, so 2K it was.

Tuesday started bad but ended worse. The DVD we made for the screening didn't work at the Jerusalem Cinematheque and we ended up working late into the night trying to make one that would work. As it turned out the DVD was fine but there was some sort of a technical problem at the Cinematheque that caused the right speaker to kick out about 20 minutes into the movie.

Anyway, Wednesday morning I was toast and even though nobody seemed to mind the right speaker going out for about 5 minutes during the screening, I of course stressed out. Thursday I had a back ache, sore ankles, wobbly knees, and other physical signs of stress so I took that day off from running. On Friday, which is a non-work day like Saturday is in the U.S., I spent most of the day laying on the couch hoping that would get my back back in shape--ugh!

That brings me up to today. I decided to run, though I started a little later than usual and the weather is starting to warm up a little earlier than it used to. My back, ankles, knees and head felt better so I decided to get back on track and put in 5K on the hilly neighborhood course. On the 2nd lap I was weighing my options, should I bail out at 3K and save the 5K for tomorrow? Without thinking about it I started to speed up but at the end of the 3rd lap I convinced myself that a 5K would be better than a 3K for today.

No crunch time next week, 3K workouts Monday through Friday and time to think about doing something longer than 5K for the Saturday LSD run.

                HR           Pace                Cadence

Sunday       -   Rest Day

Monday  3K   -   161    6:50 min/km  10:59 min/mi    87

Tuesday  2K  -   Forgot to start running watch

Wednesday    -   Zip

Thursday     -   Nada

Friday       -   Even less than yesterday

Saturday 5K  -   164    7:18 min/km  11:45 min/mi    83

Total for the week, 10K. That's a setback to my goal of slowly increasing weekly distance, last week I did 15K so it isn't really all that bad.

Finally, on today's chart I put the cursor on the 2K mark just to see how fast I was moving at that point--5:45 min/km 9:16 min/mi. Somehow everything must have fallen in place at that point because I didn't feel like I was going that fast and I had to force myself to slow down knowing that I wouldn't make it through 5K at that speed. Well, at least not on the hills in the heat, not yet--but maybe some day?

Crunch Time 5K

Looking over my previous posts, what has become a pattern is work getting in the way of my scheduled workouts. Somehow I managed to get in all my runs for the week while making it though crunch time at work. We've got a screening scheduled for next Wednesday and even though I did work long hours and through the weekend I'm quite proud of myself for putting in my runs.

Today was my long day and even though calling 5 kilometers a long run might seem laughable, I did increase my weekly distance for the past three weeks--10k, 13k and this week, 15k. It is a long way off from the 50k weeks I used to do last year racewalking, but I'm huffing and puffing over the hills of Jerusalem.

The foot pod once again measured slightly different than usual, but if this course really is a 1k loop then things look like this:

                  HR               Pace            Cadence

Saturday 5k   -  165    6:50 min/km  10:59 min/mi    88

Not bad for an easy run, it was even better than most of my daily runs!

Building up the Distance

Somehow I've managed to keep building up my distance despite being on a crunch time at work this week. My daily runs were only 2 k per day, but I was able to get all of them in.

Sunday    - Rest Day, yesterday was a 10K race

               HR           Pace               Cadence

Monday    -   163    7:03 min/km  11:20 min/mi    86

Tuesday   -   158    7:13 min/km  11:36 min/mi    85

Wednesday -   157    7:30 min/km  12:04 min/mi    85

Thursday  -   157    7:19 min/km  11:46 min/mi    85

Friday    -   157    6:53 min/km  11:04 min/mi    85

It looks like I wasn't quite recovered from the race on Monday. Tuesday I forgot to take my water bottle and my ankle was bothering me just a bit so I took it easy. Wednesday I took it even easier--the stress at work was getting to me, but by Friday I was starting to build up speed.

Tomorrow is my LSD day and since I promised myself to build up slowly I'll probably just do a 5 K around the neighborhood like I did a couple of weeks ago. Before I leave Jerusalem, just 7 weeks to go, I hope to be able to do 5 K daily runs on my hilly neighborhood course.

Of course I missed the Jerusalem half-marathon a few weeks ago, but that was partially due to work. Things were getting busy and the race was on a Thursday during regular working hours. It was also partially because my ankle was hurting. Yeah, I over did it and built up my distance too quickly but it seems that job stress is also causing some of my lower leg pain. I work sitting down all day on a computer. Some guys work standing up, but it seems that would be tiring too. Maybe I should just stop working if that's what causing my pains?

Another 10k Race

I was hoping to build up my distance for this week by alternating a 2k with a 1k daily run. However, work got in my way again as it so often seems to happen and I was only able to do a 2k on Monday, with a decent 6:30 min/km pace (10:27 min/mi) and a 1k on Tuesday, taking it much easier with my "normal" 7 min/km pace (11:15 min/mi).

However Sharon Peleg, my assistant at work, found a 10k race near his home in a suburb of Tel Aviv. He has only recently started running, he says that I inspired him, and his longest run so far has been 4 kilometers. I encouraged him to sign up for the race and we'd both do it. He hessitated and said that he'd try to do 5 kilometers next time he runs and then decide. The next morning we signed up for the race.

It was an out and back course that started and ended in a small neighborhood athletic park. The course was a bit hilly but I tried holding him at a steady 7 min/km pace through the first half, which turned out to be mostly downhill. Our 5k time was a little faster than our target at about 33 minutes. Going back up the hill was a bit tough, but since we took it easy at the beginning we made it to the top without taking any walking breaks. Once we saw the 8k marker at the top of the hill we knew we could finish it, in fact we had a pretty good sprint once we got on the track for the final 200 meters and hit a top speed of 4:28 min/km (7:11 min/mi).


I'll update this with the official finishing time but to this photo, we clocked in at 1:08:33. That would be my best 10k running time yet and the first time Sharon ran that distance. Of course we didn't win, but our goal was to do it at 1:10 and not be the last ones to finish!

The only glitch was that the Polar software recorded the distance as only 9.287 kilometers, way short of 10k so the average pace results are off. I'm now seriously thinking about getting a GPS unit. It would also help once I get home and start getting into bicycling.

In any case I increased my mileage (kilometerage?) from a total of 10 kilometers last week to 13 kilometers this week. Nothing to brag about, but I am trying increase the distance a little bit each week. Oh, and my ankle feels pretty good so hopefully I'm over that injury.

Barefoot Running Post on ChiRunning

I don't usually post on discussing boards these days but a very active thread on barefoot running on the ChiRunning site caught my attention and I responded. However, there seems to be a problem with their software and I can't submit my post--no use letting the effort go to waste:

Update--I was able to post this after several emails with the site manager.

Barefoot Running... Injuries?

I just got my ChiRunning/ChiWalking email newsletter and found this "Hot Bulletin Board Topic" listed. Although I don't consider myself a barefoot runner (yet) maybe some of my experiences can shed some light on this topic.

I was never much of an athlete but just before I turned 40 I got the urge to run a marathon--call it mid-life crises. I trained with a run-walk Jeff Galloway certified group and made it through all the pain and suffering of trying out several expensive running shoes guided by the "experts" at a local high-end running store until finding something that worked for me. Somehow I made it through a run-walk-run-walk-walk-walk-walk-OK, run that last 0.2 mile.

I didn't consider doing another marathon for 13 years then that familiar urge came back a couple of years ago. This time I started my training knowing what to expect--lots of pain until I got the right shoe combination again. Only this time I couldn't get rid of the knee pain. It eventually landed me inside an MRI machine with an orthopedic surgeon telling me to cut way back on my running or I'll be looking at knee replacement surgery within a year. My father and sister both had terrible knee problems so I blamed genetics for cutting short my dreams of ever running another marathon. However, I found out that the race that I was planning to do (Los Angeles Marathon) had racewalking and wheelchair divisions--I chose racewalking. For those of you that aren't familiar with racewalking, it is a very technical sport so I took classes. Whoa, what an awakening, I had terrible walking form. It took me months of training but eventually I got it right. Oh, I did have some knee problems that were "fixed" with some custom orthodics but as my form improved I was able to ween myself off of them.

So--what does all this have to do with barefoot running? Hang in there.

Once it sunk in that I needed to learn how to walk--I started researching how to run and discovered, among other things--ChiRunning. About that time I was needing less and less help from my shoes for racewalking until I was using the most minimal racing flats. If these were the best walking shoes, could they also be the best running shoes? The answer, at least for me, was a resounding yes. The less cushioning, motion control, support and especially springy heel on the shoe, the better.

Of course the next step would be to take off the shoes. After a lifetime of never going beyond two steps out of the shower barefooted, I gave it a shot. It was like learning how to run all over again, only this time my feet demanded proper running form from me.

Like I said, I'm not a barefooted runner, but I'm finding that mixing in some barefoot runs every now and then helps reinforce good form. It also helps strengthen the ankles and foot muscles.

There are lots of reasons to try barefoot running and one not to--the fear of cutting open your soles. A little prudence helps a lot when running barefoot. The worse I suffered were some blisters the first time I ran on asphalt. Then again I had much worse blisters when breaking in new shoes. Oh yeah--and my knees don't need replacements.

Transportation of the Future?

I've been thinking that a perfect combination for commuting in these days of high gas prices would be a recumbent bicycle with an electric assist. Poking around the Internet I found this electrified Cruzbike posted on Flickr.com by a fellow going by the screen name of echo_anomie. Nicely done!

Anyway, just dreaming right now but if I do get into this I might take it a step at a time. Like maybe converting my old 26 inch street bicycle using a kit from We R Electrified.

10k in 1-week

That's the total that I ran this week, but coming off an ankle injury--I'm pretty happy. So, assume the blogging position!



Last week I did a total of 1 kilometer the whole week and I made a promise to come back slowly. Doing 10 times the distance the following week might not seem prudent, but before the ankle injury I was doing 4k daily runs 4-times a week and an 18k long run. OK, that was too much but my goal is to eventually get back to doing at least a 5k daily workout like I was doing before starting this job in Jerusalem. Of course out here I'm running on hills at an altitude of about 820 meters (2,690 feet) while at home it was pretty much flat at nearly sea level and I was racewalking so it is going to be more of a challenge to build up my distance.

Here's how the week went:

Sunday    - No run but did strength training and wrapped ankle in hot towel for good measure

               HR      Pace          Cadence

Monday    -   156      6:31            83

Tuesday   -   150      6:31            83

Wednesday -   147      6:40            83

Thursday  -   152      6:40            83

Friday    -   159      6:49            82

Saturday  -   165      7:08 (avg.)     82 (5 kilometers in 35:54)

Some numbers might not match up exactly because the Polar SR800sd foot pod does vary from day to day. Sometimes it reads the course at exactly 1k and other days it is a little longer or shorter. I'm thinking about getting a GPS unit when I get back home, that might improve accuracy and it will help if I get into cycling.

I'm thinking quite a bit about what changes I'll do once I get home in about 9-weeks from now. With gas prices over $4 per gallon maybe cycling to work might not be as crazy as it once seemed. Besides, I'd do the daily workout and commute at the same time--think time management!