Running

No turning back now

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday afternoon, I signed up for the Denver Marathon, taking place on Sunday, October 18, 2009. My goals are as follows: do it barefoot, and finish under 3:30. I hope to do this with 110+ miles a week on my fixed gear (just through daily commuting), one fast run, and then one long run each week. The long runs will be on weekends starting June 13 or 14 (since next week is the Elephant Rock century ride). I hope to do Niketown runs each week on the order of ~5 miles for my speed runs.

I have the photos from Saturday’s BikeDenver metric century ride mostly sorted, but Garmin’s software has me unable to get the track for the course loaded, hopefully that will be fixed tomorrow.

Race Photos

~ Mike ~ 1 Comment

This post will be far less visually appalling than the previous one (at least, I hope so).

Race photos are up for the Colfax Marathon, and for some reason they only took photos for the Half at the end of the race, where apparently everyone looks like crap. Out of 30 or so there are a couple where I think I look ok, but still worse than I think I should look.


What a fun race. I’m thinking now of the Boulder half, and the Denver full.

I had a long weekend

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

It was a blast but I’m also glad it’s over with. As some of you may know, this Sunday was the Colfax Marathon. I signed up for the half with Nate a few months ago when it was BOGO, and have been half-assedly getting ready for it. That, along with the ill-fated Rainier trip, kept me from getting to the mountains much for a while. I decided to go climb and ski Quandary the day before the race.

Friday night I got to sleep around 10:30, which was a little late given the 3am wakeup call Saturday had in store. Got up, loaded the car, met up with Hans, Mel, Owen, and Aaron at the Morrison Park ‘n’ Ride about 4:15 and we were off. It was raining in Denver, and we were hoping for better conditions in the mountains. We got them.

It was horrendously foggy on the mountain though, and as we approached this CMC group (who absolutely trashed the snowpack by glissading and postholing everywhere), we were getting drenched with sweat. High humidity in the Colorado mountains, especially on spring snow climbs, is exceptionally rare. It was fairly miserable, although it was surreal not being able to see very far around you.
The snow was extremely dusty, and got worse as the day went on due to accelerated melt. Total melt-off is going to be quick this year.

Once we were above the fog, the views were very cool. There was little to no breeze early, so it just sat in the valleys.
Even once we were largely out of the fog, occasional light breezes would push it above us.
Where are we, British Columbia?
A couple hours after starting, we topped out to a beautiful morning. While waiting for the snow to soften up, I took a nice nap. Very refreshing, and necessary for the ski that was about to come.
It turns out we waited too long. When the snow was nice on the summit, it was a horrible slushfest down low. I failed to lock the toe on my Dynafits, and a stationary jump turn resulted in one ski popping off and careening down the mountain a couple hundred feet. I’m told photos of that will be following. I didn’t get any ski photos because I was too busy either enjoying the snow, or being miserable and fighting through it. Having to cross multiple glissade tracks and countless trashed areas didn’t help (thanks a lot, CMC).

We finally made it back down to the car and headed in to Breckenridge for lunch. I had a massive calzone at Eric’s, and was still back to hungry by the time I got home. I cooked up a big plate of pasta and hit the sack at 6:30.

After an amazing evening’s sleep, the alarms went off, again, at 3am. I downed some extra strong coffee, cooked a solid breakfast, got my bag together, and biked down to City Park for the 6am start to the race. I had a strong start to the race, down under a 7:30 pace. I figured it was just excitement and I’d settle down to my 8:00 target, which would get me done just under 1:45. To my surprise, I kept it up through miles 3, 4, 5…soon I was 8.5 miles in with a 7:24 average pace. I kept it up and not much later I was finished, an hour and 38 minutes after starting. 13.1 miles is now my personal record distance, and to do it with 7:27 miles felt great.

After grabbing food and my bag, I went back to the finish to shout at Nate for his finish. He met his goal of sub-two hours, and it was off to the beer garden for some seemingly alcohol-free Michelob Ultra. Shortly thereafter, Amy picked me up for breakfast, and brought me a mini-cake with a great little flag. Thanks hon:


The results:
Overall: 85/2294
Age group: 18/167
Sex: 72/846
Chip time: 1:38:35
Gun time: 1:38:38

ForeRunner Review

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

I’m past 50 miles on my Garmin ForeRunner 305 at this point, and figure it’s fair to give it a real review now. I’ve still been using a program made by RunnersWorld for racing a 10k, in preparation for my half marathon. The most important thing is for me to get more miles under my feet, and the speedwork is always good for strength, speed, and to keep it interesting. I’ve also started running with music on again, which is a great distraction from the monotony of running.

My only real gripe with the unit is that it averages your pace over far too long a period of time. I’m not sure what the time is exactly, but I can be doing a 6:00 pace after coming down from a 12:00 rest, it will tell me to slow down (because my target will be, say, 7:00) yet it will be displaying 8:00. Other than that, it’s great. You know exactly how fast you’re going (or rather, were going over the past 30 seconds or so), how far you’ve gone, and have a great, easy to setup program to keep runs different. Last night for example the workout was 2 miles warmup, then 7 sets of 1/4mi fast then 1/4mi resting, five minute break, 7 more sets, and finally a 2 mile cooldown. I was out running for close to two hours, which I’ve never done before, yet I never felt bored. It was easy to just keep focused on the next interval. The HR monitor is nice to have, and helps the unit get a reasonably accurate estimate on calories burned for your run. All in all, a good product, especially for half the cost of a 405.

In other news, it looks like the trip to Silverton is off. There’s a big storm (supposedly) coming through, and I’m still a little sick. Bummer.

FiveFingers: 50-mile review

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

I’ve had my Vibram FiveFingers KSOs for a few weeks now, and have reached roughly 50 miles in them, including a single 25 mile week. At this point, I think they’re great. There’s a freedom to running in them, as you truly feel everything under your feet. I feel faster and lighter on my feet, and my pace is faster for a given effort level than it feels.

The downside is that barefooting really works your calves. My calves continue to be tighter and more sore than I ever could have imagined, and although there is some improvement, it’s still to the point where I’m nearly hobbling around the day after a 8.5 mile interval run. Today is supposed to be a 9 mile easy run, but I’m taking a rest day as there’s simply no way I could do it. Additionally, I’ve torn holes on top of both of my second toes from scraping them on rocks, concrete, dirt, etc. I’ll probably need to patch them fairly soon. That said, I’m sticking with them for the time being. Hopefully by the time I hit 100 miles the soreness will no longer be an issue.

On a side note, I’ve been using thedailyplate.com for the past few days (which is a part of livestrong.com now) after being turned on to it by Nate, and it’s already an obsession. It’s a great way to set goals with exercise and calories, and accurately track how you’re doing on a day to day basis.

Run, then keep running, and then run some more

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

Since getting my Forerunner, I’ve been putting in quite a few miles (all wearing the fivefingers). The first run was on Saturday, and since then, I’ve done 18.5. If I do all the runs from my training program, this week (Sunday -> Saturday) will be around 33 miles. I’ve never had a 30-mile week. Cool!

A couple weeks ago I was turned on to the Niketown running club (on the 16th St. Mall) by someone at the Slattery’s run club. I’d never heard of it, and information about it online was pretty scarce. I went with Nate, who’s lucky enough to work less than two blocks away. It was great, with quite a few seriously fast runners. I paced one guy for a mile and a half who eventually started pulling away. When I looked at my watch, I was moving at a 5:40 pace (and couldn’t keep up anymore). He stopped to turn back, when a few guys came by who had been moving slower (9:00) earlier, and were up to a roughly 8 minute pace. Then it was 7:30. Then 7 flat. And then 6:30. Half a mile from the end they were gone, as I couldn’t keep up after 5 miles of race pace. Awesome, I’ll definitely be back (especially to get that 100-mile club shirt!).

Garmin Forerunner 305

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

I ordered this toy as something to help me run more at the same time I ordered my replacement Foreman grill. I’m always fascinated by excessive data and fancy gizmos, and keep trying to improve on my times. I’ve been slacking on running lately, so what better than a GPS and heart rate monitor built into one little unit to get me back at it?

I took it out for its inaugural run today, which was part of a 10km training program I downloaded from runnersworld.co.uk . I’m running a half marathon in 6 weeks, but there’s no 6 week half-M program there, although there is an 8 week 10km program, so I took that and lopped off the first two weeks. Today’s run was 5 miles, with the first and last being warmup/cooldown. I did it in 40 minutes, which I’m pretty happy with especially given the ridiculous winds that were blowing around town today. I’ll certainly be ready for the Colfax half in May. A month after that, I’ve got it set to start a 16 week program to prepare for the Denver Marathon. My targets? 1:30 for the half (though I’ll be stoked at 1:39:59) and 3:30 for the full. It looks like I probably won’t make it skiing this weekend (despite the ridiculous amounts of snow) thanks to my car being horribly banged up in the hit & run last week, so I’ll go for a longer run tomorrow most likely.

I got mine from Amazon and had it in about a week with free shipping. I’d strongly suggest a HR monitor for people trying getting serious about working out, and if you want to/can afford it, the GPS is a great addition for running.

Run to Work

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

As most of you know, Denver finally got some precipitation after an incredibly dry winter last night and into this morning. As many of you are aware, biking in the rain (or even just on wet pavement) sucks, particularly if you don’t have fenders (which I don’t). On top of getting you wet, it tears up brake pads, picks up leaves/dirt/grime, strips off dry lube, and is generally just miserable. On the other hand, running when it’s cool, dark, and damp (like it was this morning) is great. It was a decent pace at 39 minutes (for just under 5 miles), which I’m sure will improve as my feet get more used to the fivefingers. I didn’t feel like I was moving fast, just a leisurely run, so if I can get my distances up, a half marathon will be substantially under 2 hours. Perfect.

Preliminary Review of the FiveFingers

~ Mike ~ Leave a comment

I’ve had the chance to take my new FiveFingers KSOs out on a couple 5k runs now. The first was on Thursday, which was pretty flat. The first portion was paved, and felt fine. The middle 2 miles was mostly grass, and it felt better than running has ever felt for me. Getting back on asphalt for the end was painful, and I was glad when it ended. I was fairly happy with them at that point. Today I ran another 5k, which was hillier and had a more solid mix of hard and soft surfaces, as well as a boat-anchor of a dog (wtf Scout, you were fine on Thursday!). Running on asphalt and concrete felt a lot better than it did last time, though my calves were more sore (I assume from the hills).

I’m happy with them so far, and look forward to trying to get ready to run 13.1 miles with them in 8 weeks.

Update: I was hoping to go for a long-ish bike ride today (60-70 miles) but that won’t be happening, as my calves are very tight today. Maybe something on the shorter side, we’ll see.

Five Finger Shoes

~ Mike ~ 2 Comments

Yes, that person is wearing shoes. For a few months now, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of barefoot running. When I lived in the downtown area, I ran 4-5 miles nearly every day. It was fun and challenging, with endless stop lights to race against (and timed so well that you can just go faster and faster until you’re nearly all-out for half a mile). Since I was running so much I started to develop shin splints on a fairly regular basis. After a little research, I found that heelstriking was the likely culprit, and changed my style to land on the balls of my feet. Almost immediately, I could run every day completely pain-free.

Sadly, I’m no longer able to run my course through downtown anymore (unless I want to ride my bike in 6+ miles first), although I still am running in a better style. I saw these shoes sometime last year, and figured it as the next (if a bit “extreme”) logical step. I grew up running around barefoot half the time, so I couldn’t imagine it’d be a difficult transition. Though I grabbed a pair of Vibram FiveFingers KSOs at REI on Monday evening, I haven’t been able to take them out running yet. Lounging around is plenty comfortable and easy though, and I hope to get out for a couple miles after work today. With any luck, I’ll be running the half marathon in them. I’ll report back as soon as I get a chance to run in them.