No, Not in the Ribs!

What is the worst possible injury for a runner? I maintain that it is bruised ribs because that’s the one that I’m currently dealing with and my present reality trumps your facts and evidence to the contrary.

Two weeks ago I took an elbow to the ribs playing indoor soccer and launched myself across the pitch tout de suite, writhing in pain for the ref to see because that’s the way you play soccer. Despite my theatrics no foul was awarded so I guess I’m not as good at soccer as I thought. Ever since that unjust incident it has been painful to run for any length of time. Each step feels like someone is poking me in the ribs from the inside, and taking a deep breath is completely out of the question. You can see how that would make running difficult, more so than it normally is. I’ve checked my symptoms on WebMD and it says that I probably have radiation poisoning so obviously it wasn’t just an elbow to the ribs, it was a NUCLEAR ELBOW to the ribs! That really should be an automatic red card, in my humble opinion.

The worst thing about all of this is that rib injuries seem to take forever to heal. This is the third time I’ve injured my ribs playing soccer and in both of the previous instances it took upwards of six weeks before I could run without pain. I guess that’s just the way it goes. I get older. I get injured. I heal slower and complain about it here.

Also, I recognize that this is the second post in a row wherein I’ve used a French term and I do feel bad about that but I also think it brings a little class and culture to the blog, a little je ne sais quoi if you will.

Plus ça Change

The days gave way to weeks, weeks drew out into months, the months became years but even the years were not as long as this analogy. It’s been a while since my last post. It will be two years on October 2nd and that post was pointing you to a new parenting blog collaboration that I abandoned faster than a carefully constructed race plan.

I don’t expect that anyone still checks this space for updates and I’m guessing that my RSS readership died with Google Reader. I’m OK with that. I’m not really expecting that anyone will read this, let alone comment. I’m actually not really sure why I’m writing this at all except that I felt drawn back to this space. I don’t know if this is a lone post out of the blue or if it is the beginning of me writing again, though I suspect it’s closer to the former than the latter. I’ve given up on this blog and returned to it more often than an addict that can’t escape the allure of the high and yet can’t quite achieve the discipline to quit.

Not much has changed since my last post; I’m still running, I’m still just as slow as you remember. I’m still happily married to Candis, and I still have two kids that have managed to grow up more than it feels like they should have in the past two years. I’m still on the good side of 40 but the countdown has switched to months, not years. I even still get offered free shoes every now and then.

Plus c'est la même chose.

A New Blog

This is just a quick post to let everyone who’s still reading know that I’ve been invited to join a new parenting blog called Bottle Fed Parents. I’ll still be posting about running here on Half-Fast, in fact I’m currently working on a post about how horrible teenagers are which might seem like it would belong on a parenting blog but it’s not about my kids it’s about teenagers that I encountered while running so it’s running blog material.

I’ve also been roped in to a 5k by some coworkers so I’ll probably have an update about that sometime after the race is over. Office bragging rights are on the line.

That’s all for a later date though, the purpose of this post is to point you to Bottle Fed Parents where I’ll be joining Nitmos, Razz, and X-Country2 in cautionary tales of parenting.

In Training

Training for my November half marathon is going about as well as can be expected. I’m up to 10 miles now on my long runs now and I seem to be completing them a little faster than I had expected. The key here is to have really low expectations. Aim low and you’ll never be disappointed, that’s what I always say. There’s still 7 weeks to go which is plenty of time for me to build up my long run to 12 miles. I find that I race best at this distance if I can get in a few 12 mile training runs prior to the race. I smell a new PR in the works and you know what that means? It means at least one more post this year so that I can beat my chest and brag about being just a little bit more towards the front of the middle of the pack than I was before. (That sentence made sense in my head.) I’ve already had one new PR this year if I had 2 I’d be just about impossible to live with.

Since I’m not posting all that frequently here, I’ll leave you with a new running blog suggestion: Vomit Colored Shoes. He writes with the same sense of humor that I try for here and he pulls it off better than I do. No, no you’re right, nobody does it better than I do but he definitely does it more frequently. He’s still in that cute, post-every-day stage that new bloggers go through so head on over there and leave him some comments. It sounds like he’s a fairly new runner too so you should feel free to give him lots and lots of unsolicited advice, just be sure to mix in some really bad advice every once and a while to keep him on his toes.

Failing to Plan

I feel like I’ve been running long enough that I can go out and run several times a week without needing a specific training plan. In the past I’ve used any number of online training plans to lead me right up to my target race date and some of them have worked great and some of them have failed miserably. (It’s always the race plan that fails, never the runner). My point being that I don’t feel like I need some printout to tell me the type or distance of my run today. I can figure out on my own whether I should be doing intervals or a tempo run or cross training or how quickly I can increase my mileage etc.

I feel like I know myself well enough to determine the best training plan for my upcoming races. I feel like I know myself better than Hal Higdon or Yasso or any of these other running gods that put together training plans but I also feel like this is the kind of pride that goes before a fall so we shall see what becomes of me in November. All this to say that I’m winging it for my fall half marathon, it’s the Half-Fast way.

I’m Not Back
Viper asked on my last post if I was ‘back’ and then before I could respond (hint: I was never going to respond) Randy congratulated me on being ‘back.’ Let me just clarify that I’m not ‘back’ per se, I’m just enjoying writing again. I quit writing here because it became a chore. I felt that in order for this to be a successful blog I needed to post x number of times a week and that drained the joy from it like a freshly unclogged toilet. By saying that I’m not ‘back’ I can feel free to write when I want to and fill the blog up with crap at my leisure, always a more pleasurable activity.

Mmmmm Pancakes

As promised in my last post my training has started! Yes, I’ve been running a lot more lately but I’m not sure if I can actually count it as training because I haven’t been posting my runs on Facebook. Does it even count as running if you don’t tell Facebook about it? Right now I’m leaning towards the Heart Center of the Rockies Half Marathon in Loveland in early November. Pros: It’s only $50, cool heart shaped medal, free pancake breakfast, tech shirt included, it’s 11 weeks away, and FREE PANCAKE BREAKFAST! Nothing is more satisfying after a run than trying to consume all the calories that you just burned. Cons: apparently you have to run 13.1 miles or something.

Last night while I was out training for my pancake half marathon (my new preferred name for the event) a lot of geese were flying overhead. I couldn’t decide if I should look up at the geese so that when they pooped I’d see it coming and be able to dodge it, or if I should look down so as not to take a goose deuce to the face. I tried it both ways but none of them ever opened the bomb bay doors so maybe I’m over-thinking this. I’ll continue experimenting and keep you posted. I also had a close encounter with a coyote on my run but I was less concerned about that, especially when I saw the ACME brand rockets he was using. Meep, meep!

Training Starts Tomorrow...

... always tomorrow. As of late there’s been a severe lack of running going on around here. Between vacationing in St. Lucia, camping trips, entertaining guests from the UK, birthday parties, BBQs and a ton of other things it seems like I never have time to run. Of course it doesn’t help that when I have had time to run I’ve chosen to sit on the couch instead, I guess I can’t blame it all on scheduling problems.

Since brute force of will power seems to be failing me, I’ve decided that I need to sign up for a fall half marathon. Nothing motivates like that ‘oh crap I’m not ready for this’ feeling that you get from seeing a race looming on the calendar that you’ve already paid for. I actually wanted to run the Denver Rock ‘n’ Roll Half this year but it’s less than 6 weeks away and Oh crap, I’m not ready for that! It’s also $115 which lands somewhere between excessive and extortion, both topics that I know plenty about as a banker.

If you know of a good fall marathon (preferably late fall) then let me know in the comments because training starts tomorrow!

We Have a Winner!

First of all, a HUGE thank you to all of you who supported this cause whether it was with a comment or a donation. I really didn’t expect the response that I received and it was wonderful to see.

Without further ado let’s get on to announcing the winner. Congratulations to Road Warrior of Philly to LA on Foot fame. Here’s what you need to do to claim your prize:

Send an e-mail to me (halffastvanilla@gmail.com) with a shipping address. How easy is that?

For those of you wondering how the Relay went it was a huge success. Thanks to you, our family reached our fundraising goal and the total fundraising for the night was in excess of $90,000.
Suck it, cancer!

Tell Cancer to Shove it - Win Prizes!

Ok, not prizes but prize. A while back someone gave me the Sony MP3 player that you see pictured to the right to give away to a lucky reader. Since I’m a lazy pile I’ve been waiting for the opportune moment to give this away and now that I’ve already missed several opportune moments it’s time to step up to the plate.

So, if you leave a comment on this post in the next week (prior to Wed, August 8th) then you will be entered into the drawing. This means that your chances of winning are really, really good because let’s face it, you’re probably the only person still reading this blog! There have been no more than 10 comments on any of the posts I’ve written this year and half of those are probably just me trying to up my comment count.

If that’s not good enough for you and you want to further increase your chances of winning then there’s a way to do that too! Here’s how:

This Friday my family and I are participating in the Relay For Life Cancer Walk at a nearby high school with Candis’s aunt who is a cancer survivor. It’s something that we’ve done before because it has been close to both our families. Candis and I are fortunate to know quite a few cancer survivors but many, many more people don’t have survivor stories and that is something that we’d all like to see change. So, if you DONATE HERE then I will give you an additional entry for every $5 you donate to the cause.

In summation:

Comment telling cancer to suck it = 1 entry

Donation to Relay For Life = 1 entry per every $5

A New 10k PR!

That's me in obnoxious day-glo yellow.

What could possibly cause me to get my lazy butt in front of a computer and write a new post for this dilapidated blog? The only possible answers are that I’m back to brag about getting either a new PR or a new pair of shoes for free; in this case it’s both! Go me!

This past Memorial Day was the Bolder Boulder 10k and I ran it in 51:27 which is a 40 second PR. To say that I’m pleased with that time is a gross understatement. My last PR at the 10k distance was in 2008 during the Bush administration. It’s been an eternity since I showed any improvement at the 10k distance and it was getting difficult to keep my ego as inflated as I like it.

So, what was the cause of my new found speed? Was it hard work and training? Hardly. Was it tons and tons of intervals? No thank you. It was as easy as dropping this extra 15lbs that I’ve been carrying around since the Clinton administration. Would you believe that being 15lbs lighter allows you to be faster? Crazy, huh? The product whore in me also wants to tell you that it was probably partially due to the fact that I was wearing those free Saucony Kinvaras that I mentioned in the previous post. I bet they make you run faster.

As for the new pair of shoes that I mentioned in the opening paragraph I’ll have more about those later (probably much later given my recent posting frequency). For now let’s just say that Mizuno has invited me to be a part of the Mezamashii project which I can only assume has something to do with forgiveness and being kind to your enemies since I’ve only ever had bad things to say about Mizuno on this blog. One time I even wrote a limerick about my Mizunos. You can find out more about the Mezamashii Project here including the literal translation of the word which is from the Japanese, ‘meza’ meaning can’t be bothered and ‘mashii’ meaning to check for previous posts on the topic. The Japanese language is such a compact yet oddly specific language.

Oh yes, again

Yeah, this just happened. I'll have a new post coming next week sometime wherein I will rename my first child Saucony.

Saucony Kinvara 3

These Boots Are Made for Running

I have no idea who Jeremy Scott is but apparently he’s some kind of fashion designer that is finally bringing some Southwestern flair to the sports world. Just check out these running boots!

I don’t mean to imply that these shoes are out there but Lady Gaga’s wardrobe consultant was taken aback by them. I however am in love with them. I simply must have a pair. Race photographers would be unable to snap just one picture of you if you were wearing a pair of these bad boys, especially if I were to pair them with my bikini briefs and a mesh tank top. Oh how I long to race in some Adidas boots.

Don’t worry ladies, Jeremy Scott didn’t stop after he envisioned the Men’s boot, he rode the crazy train all the way to toon town so there’s a lady’s version too.

They’re still probably safer than running in Reebok EasyTones. All you need now is a dri-fit cowboy hat to complete the ensemble. Speaking of completing the ensemble, you can check out all of Scott’s hallucinations at his Adidas product page which includes winged shoes, gorilla shoes and even fringed track pants. Yes, fringed track pants! So many jokes to be made and so little time to do it in.

Hat Tip: With Leather

How to Trim Your Tree

You’ve no doubt already trimmed your tree which means this advice is probably too late but that really doesn’t matter because it’s not going to be very good advice anyway so why do you care that it’s too late? You see what I did there? I made it look like you, the reader, were an ass for being picky about my advice being both awful and late; this is how you move to the top of the corporate food chain, kids.

What better way for a runner to decorate their tree than to do it with race medals? Not only are your medals festive and shiny but they come with a handy ribbon already attached. Plus, now you have the perfect opportunity to tell all the guests at your Christmas party the story behind every triumphant race. Spare no detail because people love it when you talk about yourself. It’s joyous and self-aggrandizing all at the same time, just like Christmas is supposed to be!

Merry Christmas to all of you who are still reading my inconsistent drippings here, you’re my favorite readers.

How Bad Do You Want It?

I can’t really explain why I like this video so much, but I thought it was worth sharing. It makes me want to go run hard, and that’s never a bad thing. I’m even considering downloading the mp3 to play on my iPod when I run.
 

 Hat tip: theCHIVE

Pumped Up Kicks

If you’re one of those people who thinks that I don’t post enough to be getting free stuff to review then you might want to go ahead and skip this post.

You see, the kind people at Saucony decided that I’m exactly the kind of person that should be testing and writing about their new Saucony 8mm drop shoes. I was as surprised as you are, probably more so because the last time they sent me shoes I went out of my way to call them ugly (the shoes not the people at Saucony).

When I took my new Saucony Guide 5s out of the box it was love at first sight. Unlike the last pair of Saucony shoes these are not uglier than a batman villain nor do they look like part of Boy Wonder’s costume. How running shoes look is important to me because I’m a very superficial person. I can afford to be superficial about my shoes because I’ve run in so many different types and brands of shoes and have almost never had any problems (*cough*Mizuno sucks!*cough*).

However, since I know that some of you like to pretend that you don’t judge a book by its cover let me tell you about Saucony’s new line of 8mm drop shoes. The line includes the Guide 5, the Triumph 9 and the Hurricane 14, together they form the Justice League; fighting crime wherever it exists. These shoes all have an 8mm heel-to-toe drop as opposed to the more typical 12mm. Basic math eludes me, but my assistant tells me that’s a difference of 4mm or, to put it in perspective, the size of my tiny, banker heart. According to Saucony this difference “puts the runner in a more balanced, comfortable and powerful position without reducing cushioning or stability. Also, runners can more easily adjust their stride to a midfoot strike, aligning the lower body to absorb impact.”

I’ve never been a fan of messing with your stride and foot strike unless you’re seeing frequent overuse injuries, but if you are going to start adjusting your foot strike it’s best to make small, incremental changes. These shoes would be a good starting point for someone who was looking to gradually change their foot strike or make the switch to barefoot running.

The shoes are really comfortable to run in and to sit around and watch football in – they’re a double threat! They’re lighter than my other shoes at 10.2 oz (yes I weighed them). They don’t feel like they’re altering my stride as radically as the Saucony Hattoris did and they’ve made me roughly 25% faster! (Blatant lie!)

Many thanks to Saucony for the free shoes. Your move, Pearl Izumi.

For more on the geometry of these new Saucony shoes check out this video on YouTube.

Running Infographic: Men vs. Women

You know what the problem is with all these infographics? It’s that they’re too easy to consume. They’re put together with lots of pretty pictures to distract you and then lazy bloggers post them because it makes for a fun, easy post with minimal writing involved. We just accept everything we see on these charts as FACT and that’s a dangerous thing to do, which is why I did a lot of research before posting the infographic below. OK, that’s a blatant lie. I just ooooohhed and aaaaahhed at the pretty colors and posted it without a second thought. That’s how I roll here at Half-Fast.

Enjoy.


Brought to you by Running Music 
So, why did they title it Sports Bras vs. Speedos? Who runs in Speedos? I might have to try it, they’ve got to be more comfortable than running in these cargo shorts.

Heart Not Included

A while back I was offered a free heart rate monitor by Caitlin who works for Adidas in the hopes that I would review the product here at Half-Fast. In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that Caitlin also sent me a free iPod Touch and washes my car every other weekend. (Only one of those is true.)

The Adidas miCoach Connect heart rate monitor syncs with the miCoach app which is available for your iPhone, iPod Touch, Android device and even your antiquated Blackberry. Setup is quick and easy and there’s even a 12 minute assessment workout that you go through so that the miCoach can figure out your various heart rate zones and paces. That’s how it works in theory, but when I was done with my assessment it told me that it could not figure out my paces because they all looked like the same slow pace. I tried the assessment again making sure to start out nice and slow and it worked better the second time. Who’d have thought that I don’t put much distinction between a level 5 effort and a level 10 effort? Those are both out of 100, right?

Here’s some pros and cons:

Pros

• The App is free and so is the miCoach account that you create when you sign up.
• Workouts are automatically uploaded to you online account when you finish.
• I can analyze the crap out of my runs even more now.
• Easy to use.
• It provides a real time review of my effort level.
• It tells me when I can slow down.

Cons

• It sometimes tells me to speed up, this does not elicit a positive reaction.
• You have to wear that thing around your chest, though it does allow me to predictably say “I’ve got something I’ve got to get off my chest,” every time I get home. Yes, every time. My wife can vouch for that.

That’s about it. It really is one of my favorite running apps, even when I don’t use the heart rate monitor.

Updates!

I’m getting old. That’s the first update. Lately it seems like something always hurts; my calf, my groin, my back, the list goes on and on. I never realized when I wrote this poem that it would turn out to be prophetic. Not only does everything hurt, but everything gets injured easier and heals slower. Getting older sucks.

My days are numbered. No, not in terms of life, in terms of continuing to be faster than my boys. David and Graham ran the Granby Gutbuster 5k over the summer. Their previous 5k PRs were both in the 37 minute range but they managed to complete it in 30:13 and 33:20. That was good enough to put David (age 8) 3rd in the Under 12 age group and Graham (age 6) 5th. Our families keep telling us that we obviously passed on the running talent to our kids but I’m starting to suspect that these aren’t my children because I don’t have any running talent. I have to work very hard at running to be this mediocre. I’m the 99% of running talent.

Finally, Candis and I ran the Denver Half Marathon last month. Naturally, I managed to roll an ankle right in the middle of my training and couldn’t run for a month (see first paragraph). I finished in 2:08 and Candis in 2:12. Those are hardly the times of ‘talented’ runners. We are middle-of-the-packers for life, not to be confused with the extremely talented Green Bay Packers.

My first DNS

Did Not Start. The Breckenridge Independence Day 10k was held on July 4th as the name would imply. It was only because I was so excited to do this race again this year that I was able to roll myself out of bed at 5:30am on a holiday morning after a night that I’m sure included some drinking but I honestly can’t remember how much. I quickly dressed and arrived at race registration around 6:15am groggy but somehow still energized to race. As I neared the front of the short line of runners I heard the lady at the registration table tell the runner in front of me that registration was closed. I remember laughing at this and I’m not sure now if it was because I thought she was joking or because my sleepy mind couldn’t clearly comprehend this horrendous new development. Either way it wasn’t funny for very long. The temporary registration table was folded up, the line dispersed and the world seemed to go on around me as I stood there in bleary-eyed disbelief. I mingled aimlessly with the other runners all the while feeling like I stood out because I was the only loser without a bib. Finally one of the ladies from the now defunct registration table came over and told me that “the trail’s all marked out if you want to go run it right now.” But I didn’t want to run it right now, I wanted to run it in 45 minutes with all the other runners. I came here for a race, not a time trial.

Without all of the adrenaline and energy that goes along with waiting for a race I became very aware of how tired I felt. I decided that what I needed was some coffee. Coffee soon turned into coffee and donuts and when I decided that I shouldn’t eat any more donuts I bought two dozen donut holes, or as I prefer to call them ‘little balls of heaven’ to take back to the friends with whom we were spending the weekend. Unfortunately not all of the little balls of heaven survived the trip.

When I got back to the place we were staying I found our kind hostess in the kitchen making a hot breakfast and so I traded in 18 donut holes for some eggs, bacon and hashbrowns and there might have been a pancake or two in there as well. I really don’t remember at this point, I just know that it was a good trade.

That’s how my Independence Day started, and it ended with the lamest fireworks display that you’ve ever seen. You can suck me sideways, Breckenridge!

Any plans for the 4th?

That seems to be the popular question for making small talk around the office these last few days. Either that or “Are you doing anything fun for the 4th?” I’m running the Breckenridge Independence Day 10k so I thought I was doing something fun for the 4th, but then I started trying to explain it to people: “I’m getting up stupid early to run with 300 other people up a single file trail that rises from 9,600 feet to 10,400 feet before coming back down again.” It doesn’t sound like something I’d normally describe as fun, but maybe my sales pitch just needs a little work. Those endorphins must be powerful things to make us do the things we do.

Candis and I ran this race last year and I really enjoyed it, Candis not so much. That explains why she’s sleeping in this July 4th and I’m running it by myself. I have no idea how fast I’ll be able to run it since it’s a tough course and last year Candis and I took it pretty easy, even walking through some of the steep climbs. I think I’ll be happy with anything under 60 minutes.

So, what about all of you? Are you doing anything fun for the 4th are you running a race?