Last review for a while! (Which is good, it’s more of my impressions than a real review… )
I’ll admit it. I like to run with music or podcasts. Given that many of my runs are solo, it’s almost a requirement.
I’ve been searching for the perfect earphones to run in for quite a while. Honestly, I’ll probably be searching forever.
This should have been a quick post, but oh well. I wanted to write it, as I specifically looked for a post like this before I bought the G5 GPS.
Synopsis: Yes, It works with the RS800CX. Yes, if you have an RS800CX you want to buy it. If you don’t own the RS800CX, don’t bother reading more.
The Walt Disney Family Fun 5k. An excellent reason to get up at 3am and freeze while waiting to run 3.1 miles on a Friday morning!
We went down for the Marathon. But, there is the 5k, thus an opportunity.
Don’t click to read more if you are on a slow connection. I have a camera and I wasn’t afraid to use it!
Heading into the Disney world Marathon, I ran into a quandary. One of the major attractions to the marathon are the characters on the course. And of course, if you are going to stop for a picture with the characters, it’s helpful to have a camera with you.
Alrighty. This one is tough.
I knew going into it that I wasn’t trained as well as I’d like. But I also knew that I can be pretty competitive, and the numbers had been coming up closer as I neared taper. I wasn’t as good as I was a year ago, but I wasn’t far off, either.
Last year, we debated about on twitter and in real life about what to wear – the forecasts were bouncing around all over the place until the morning of the race. Turned out to be close to perfect.
This year, there wasn’t any debates over what the weather was going to do, that I saw. It was cold.
Well, I don’t. (Run for the Party, that is.) I run for the race.
This was the 3rd running of the Half Marathon, and the best.
(Btw, this race was in November. This post has been in limbo for a while, waiting on me to actually take pictures of the medals. Shiny reflective surfaces take a bit of care to get right. Laminated cards even more & and frankly, I didn’t want to take the time to do it. Sorry for the delay. )
Ouch.
And DUH!
My lovely wife had a Library conference at Montgomery Bell State Park this weekend. In an effort to get away from the kids for a little bit, I came along, figuring I would take advantage of the park while she did her thing.
I’ll gloss over the wild parties that ensued – I mean, it was a LIBRARIAN Conference. I’m sure that the word Legendary isn’t quite appropriate.
I did want to take a chance on the trails surrounding the Inn. Little did I realize it was actually a chance.
Does anyone remember this post: What’s happening to my shoes?
My Bikila’s at that point had 711 miles then.
It’s the end of the year. Tradition DEMANDS that the numbers be counted and presented. I don’t feel too bad about mine, but I’m going to put them into context of the previous years.
Because, I’m a numbers junkie too. It’s not often (ever) that I run without my Polar HRM, GPS and foot pods. The GPS on my iPhone comes along with Runkeeper as well, unless it’s looking wet. Btw, Runkeeper is offering their Pro version for free during the month of January. If you have an iPhone or Droid, you need to get it. It’s not as good as a dedicated device for accuracy (with my phone at least), but it is close, and has other advantages. I pulled some numbers from it to help out in my PRE-Polar days.
Following the numbers HAS caused me to get out of the house in the early morning, simply to BEAT the number. It’s really not healthy. Oh wait, it seems like it IS!
| 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | |
| Total Miles | 0 | 247 | 1377 |
| Avg Pace | Only in a car | 10:22 | 8:56 |
| Weight (end of year) | 202 | 172 | 153 (mid Dec) |
| Longest run | 50 feet | 13.1 miles | 26.2 miles |
| Calories burnt | HA! | 34,660 | 186,957 |
2008 had me +200 pounds (I’m being nice about the 202 number. Mid 2008 was much worse). I ran when chased, but frankly, IF anyone tried to run after me, they would have caught me quickly.
2009, I was loosing the weight. I started running mid year. 247 miles isn’t that much, but I’m proud of it. It was a struggle to do. I wasn’t very fast. That 10:22 average belies a lot of slower times.
2010. I’ve added 1000+ miles to my previous year, and I’ve done the Marathon distance, successfully, under 4 hours. I’m VERY proud of that. 2010 is an upward graph of mileage and speed for me. The second half of the year is more impressive than the first. The 8:56 average pace isn’t bad, but it would be interesting to break it up first half/second half. (Ok, so I did. Second half is a few hundred miles more, and a half minute faster on average.)
All that running is great for fitness, but you also have the races to prove it. So, let’s look at race numbers as well – Best per year.
| Best Times | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 |
| 5k | Did Not Start | 26:09 | 23:07 |
| 10k | Did Not Start | 1:01:04 | 46:59 |
| 13.1 | Kidding, right? | 2:07:02 | 1:41:30 |
| 26.2 | Insanity! | - | 3:51:58 |
Could I have done better? Yes. 2010 was a year that started poorly for me. I trained for running the Country Music Marathon, but January was a very low mileage month. After the failure at Country Music, I didn’t run very much in May. It took me a while to recover. I’ve changed shoes to Vibram Five Fingers and had to spend a significant period of time adapting to them and keeping mileage low.
So what to do about 2011? Frankly, 2009 was such an improvement over 2008, that I had to repeat it. 2010 was a great year for me running. Much better than 2009. I expect the same from 2011. I want to be able to look at these numbers again next year, and every SINGLE one needs to be better.
1377 miles? I WILL do better.
8:56 average pace? I can do better, but I have to remember to slow down for my long runs.
Weight? This to could be better, but I’m not going to commit to going up or down. Frankly, 151 doesn’t leave much on me. I’d rather have a balanced weight, I just don’t know exactly what that is yet.
26.2 miles? I don’t know. I know I’ll run that distance again. I don’t know if I want to run further than that yet. Running my age sounds like a great idea, but I’m not sure it will sound as good come May. 
I might run my age in Kilometers instead.
Calories burnt? Geez, if I hit ANY of the above, this is a given. I don’t follow this stat often, but it is fun to sum up at the end of the year.
All of my PR’s are from this year.
My 5k PR is from mid year 2010. That 23:07 can definitely be improved on.
10k PR is the Franklin Classic. After running the 5k close to my PR. I’m sure I could improve that as well, in a straight 10k.
1:41:30 half marathon. That’s not from too long ago, and it was much faster than I thought I was going to do. I think I can improve it, but it’s going to take training and work.
3:51:58 Full Marathon. I’m still enjoying this. But when I run the marathon again, there will be a bullseye on this number as well.
I expect to be setting new PR’s this year. I don’t think they’ll be as huge of jumps as they were in the past, but I still think I can improve every one of them. But at the same time, I’ve really enjoyed just running for the sake of running. It’s going to be an interesting time, mixing hard VO2Max runs against social running (which I’ve come to enjoy immensely).
I’m looking forward to it.
So, I’ve done it.
Cloud 9. When I started running a year and a half ago, I never thought that I’d actually run a marathon. I wouldn’t even say it was a dream. It simply wasn’t a possibility. Then I ran that first 10k race, instead of the 5k. And it felt good. Feeling the energy of the crowd and the spectators was incredible. That’s when it became a dream, a goal.
In retrospect, it was rather funny. There was no middle ground of doubt. I went from “There is no way” to “I can run a Half” to “I can run the Full”. Also funny was the amount of training that I did for the CMM. It was the beginner plan, and it gave me the bare minimum of preparation. There would have been NO way that I could have finished the CMM with the goals I set out with. There was quite a bit of ignorance of what I was in for at the CMM.
I was MUCH better prepared for this.
It’s been a week and some since the Marathon. I’ve waited to write this to allow things to solidify in my mind. Some of the things that stand out:
After an AWESOME Saturday, I was in for a surprise. A great weekend, got better. My wife had told me about a photographer trying to get a picture of my daughter holding her sign. She, uncharacteristically, refused. ”No Problem, I’ve got a long lens”, and he went off.
Based on what they told me, I figured he did what I would have done… Backed off a bit, take pictures of other more opportune targets, and then see if the situation was better. He did. But apparently, he really wanted that picture. He caught them at the 2 mile mark, where my Daughter was completely unaware.
This is from The Huntsville Times. Now the thing about this picture that was so awesome?
FRONT PAGE! I thought IF he got a picture, it might show up in the Sports section. No. We get the paper, and there, right below the crease, is my family, cheering for me. To say that I was thrilled…. well, that’s just not good enough.
The Incredible volunteers after the run. From making HUGE PB&J sandwiches to the volunteers making sure everyone was ok after the run, to the complimentary massages, it was all a whirlwind but appreciated. Victoria worked over my legs, to the point of knotting them back up. I ran a marathon. Those massagers did the same with their hands. Incredible.
I already mentioned the HUGE PB&J’s. I’ll do so again. :) I think most anything you could have used to recover after the run was there. I tried my best to sample some of it all.
After race dinner – This was interesting for us. It was a much smaller event than I expected. I was disappointed that the timing of the event wasn’t clear. Literature states that the dinner was at 5pm. That was the social (cash bar) event beforehand. The Dinner doesn’t start until 6pm. Because of this, we weren’t able to stay as long as we would have liked because of our kids and what we communicated to them. This is a simple fix, but apparently it was this way last year as well, but no one updated anything.
What a mix of forecasts we had. I was really sweating this, as most of the forecasts earlier in the week were pointing to freezing rain/sleet and very cold temperatures. It wasn’t until a day or so beforehand that it settled down, but even that was kinda iffy. I was pretty ready for just about everything, but since I was running in Vibram Five Fingers, I was particularly scared of/dreading a long cold rain. I will continue to dread those conditions, but I had already made up my mind that I WAS running, so, what did it matter?
I burned a fair amount of nervous energy worrying about it. That’s not good. But, I also found running friends on twitter and the blogs as a direct result of that nervous energy.
And the weather turned out to be perfect. Perhaps if I hadn’t worried, it would not have been…
I was VERY worried after the Country Music Marathon because I couldn’t keep my gels down. I had no problems at the Rocket City Marathon. In fact, judging by my last 6 miles, I probably should have taken another one. The problem in CMM was not the Gel’s fault. It was mine. I pushed way to hard to allow my body to absorb the nutrition. Yes, I CAN run flat out for 20 miles. And NO, I can NOT eat and do so.
I went faster in Huntsville, and further. And I had no problems with my nutrition. The only thing that changed was that I was better prepared for the race, and my fitness had increased so I was running 8:20 miles at ~150 BPM instead of 9:00 miles at 170 BPM. I know this is a huge shock to the experienced runners.
I wrote earlier, and on twitter about probably not running the next marathon in Vibrams. I’m turning away from that standpoint after reflecting. Would I have enjoyed more cushioning? YES. Would it have made a difference? I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t have the problems that typically are associated with Marathoner’s feet. My toenails are fine. I had a SINGLE blister that I didn’t even notice until the day after. I had sore calf muscles for 2 days afterwards. That’s it.
My Vibrams that fit, REALLY FIT. I know most of the problems typically associated are due to poor fitting shoes. Mine DO fit well, and it’s something I’m very reluctant to change. My Mizuno Inspires fit well, but I was beginning to have issues there, and you know, my feet hurt there too.
I don’t know about this. I am REALLY happy in my Vibrams. It’s possible that I’d do better on long distances in a cushioned shoe, but it’s also possible that I’d just screw something up that wasn’t broke.
My guess is that my feet were going to hurt after 26.2 miles, regardless of the shoe.
Oh my. I still don’t know. I enjoyed this event so very much. I’ve been REALLY happy to run without a plan. But I’ve also really enjoyed working on speed, and I’ve made some great progress there. I’m partial to hitting the training again, get the fitness REALLY up there, and push hard for the Boston Qualifying time. For me, that’s 3 hours, 15 minutes or 7:25 per mile for 26.2 miles. Dropping more than 30 minutes from my time is going to be TOUGH. But you know, not very long ago, I didn’t believe running a marathon was possible.
Life changes.