Treadmill knows best

Today's run (treadmill): 2.4 miles at 9:01

I've been traveling on business the last two days so I needed to adapt my workout to my location. I attended a conference in Philadelphia and stayed in a hotel located on Market Street, about a half mile from the Schuylkill River. I had hoped to do some picturesque city running but I questioned the safety of the area in the early morning darkness. That left me no choice but to use the hotel's fitness center that was well equipped with treadmills and elliptical machines.

I got down to the center at 5:00 AM and was surprised to see the room empty. It's rare when I find treadmills readily available in these places. I usually need to wait or I just go for a run outdoors. The treadmill immediately frustrated me. I simply wanted to start, get up to speed, and run my time. Unfortunately the treadmill would have none of that. I finally got it started and punched in my speed but the machine had decided it was going to let me run for only 20 minutes. It was a fast 20 and I ran my last six minutes under 8:30 per mile. After 20 minutes the machine kicked into "cool down" mode and I stabbed at the speed button to get back to my pace. After a few minutes it shut down and I gave up. Too bad because I had run well and would have liked to continue.

I'll be happy to return to the road on Friday provided the rain stops. if it doesn't, I'll have my first experience with the Resistance Runners on my guestroom treadmill.

Hard to resist trying the Resistance Runners

I don't yet know about the shoes but the packaging was impressive

After regretting my run on Tuesday morning and realizing that I needed some rest, I decided to forgo my planned elliptical session today. I'm glad that I did because I've been dealing with slight pain stemming from either my upper hamstring or my glutes. I don't think I'm hurting it when I exercise but it will heal better with an occasional break from those activities.

The only regret I have today is that I'm going to have to wait to test my newest running technology:  Skecher's Resistance Runners. Despite my earlier post where I poked some fun at gimmicky running shoes including these, Skecher's still offered to send me a pair to test. I'm used to companies that understand runners and running shoes but Skecher's seems to still be on the learning curve. When they asked for my shoe size I told them 10.5, D width. I soon received a call saying that they don't make them in a wide sizes so would I want to go up to an 11? I straightened her out on the fact that D is standard width but I wished I had chosen size 11's after I tried them on last night.

The shoes arrived yesterday in a huge box that was quite impressive. Cool materials, fancy overlays and lots of marketing hype about the benefits of the shoes. I don't know if this what you get if you purchase them retail or whether this is special packing for journalists who test their products. It was very different from the boxes you get from Brooks and Saucony that are made for easy recycling. The shoes aren't as silly to look at as I thought they'd be. I can certainly wear them in daylight hours but I won't be using them in a race. That is, unless they make me an 8 minute/mile runner. My initial impression was that they are snug for their size, especially at the toe box, and that the purposely unstable mid-sole is interesting. Interesting good or bad is yet to be determined. I'm traveling today through tomorrow so I won't have the chance to run with these shoes until Friday. I'll admit to being more curious about these shoes than I'd imagined I'd be.

Which friend do you want to be?

Today's run (street): 2.6 miles

I know a person who runs about 40 minutes every few days. The time is arbitrary because he doesn't wear a watch. He thinks that he runs about four miles each time he goes out but he's not really sure. My friend has little idea of his pace but guesses he runs around 10 minutes per mile. I know another person who cycles through a weekly regimen of training: intervals on the track, tempo runs, strides, Fartleks and distance runs. He knows his paces for all these activities. He usually hits his desired numbers. These two people enjoy running, but the way they engage is very different.

I'm somewhere in the middle in terms of activity and expectations. I do care about my distance and pace but I don't devote much time to the core training activities that help make one faster or better prepared for tough conditions. I view my running satisfaction against two criteria -- performance and experience. Performance is defined for me very specifically: a pace as far below 9:00 per mile as possible or covering a challenging distance. Experience is much more arbitrary. That's defined by how I feel. Some runs are relatively slow but feel great. That's a successful experience. Other runs hit the mark on performance but the price paid is pain and/or injury. Not so successful. As a recreational runner I look for equilibrium between these two criteria. When that balance is reached I am a happy runner.

Today I was not a happy runner. I took my usual rest day on Monday and by last night I was feeling ready to run. We had kinetic storms overnight with wind, thunder and lightning and I feared I'd be stuck on the treadmill today. It was slightly rainy when I got up at 3:45 and I decided to go for it. From my first few steps off my driveway I could tell that I would have trouble on this run. I couldn't generate the leg turnover I needed to get to my desired speed and I felt a bit tired. I hoped that initial fatigue would give way to a boost of energy after a few minutes and while things did improve, it wasn't by much. I ended up running for 25 minutes and only covering 2.6 miles in total. Sub-par performance against my expectations and a fairly miserable experience in the process. On one hand I did go out under rainy skies and did my workout long before most of the world was thinking about waking. If I was friend #2 I'd be furious about my poor performance. If I was friend #1 I'd probably think "That wasn't as much fun as usual, maybe next time I'll feel better." I think friend #1 makes the better point.

Kinvaras as a daily trainer?

These cool Kinvaras are becoming my everyday shoe

The transition to fall weather makes me happy. Although it will take some time to adjust my running gear so that I don't go out under-dressed like yesterday, I still welcome the change. This morning the temperature where I live is 51 degrees, perfect for a run but quite chilly when standing on the train platform. I always wish for this weather when enduring the heat of summer or the frigid cold in January. I'll enjoy it as long as I can.

I wore my Saucony Kinvaras during yesterday's run and I've started to really appreciate them. Lightweight but not insubstantial, they are minimally constructed but still reasonably supportive. The Kinvara is a neutral shoe and I thought I'd have trouble with it because I pronate when I run. I've had some 8+ mile runs with them without experiencing any problems with my knees or legs and that brings me to question the idea of stability shoe engineering. I suspect that because the drop off between heel and forefoot of the Kinvara is only 4mm, compared to 12mm, (common for standard trainers) the shoe facilitates a more natural mid-foot landing. This would logically neutralize the effects of pronation. I continue to rotate through my other pairs and still consider my Brooks GTS 10's my everyday shoe, but the Kinvaras are forcing me to rethink that these days. If I do move primarily to the Kinvaras I'll need to consider their durability and the thermal properties of the barely-there uppers compared with the Brooks' more substantial build. After all, it's getting colder out there these days.

Finally, a cold morning run. Wish I dressed for it...

The ducks were out at Caleb Smith this morning

Yesterday's run (street): 4 miles at 9:08
Today's run (street): 7.4 miles at 9:28

I waited until about noon on Saturday to run, mostly due to my reluctance to work up a sweat in the morning without the option of showering afterward. I spent the last 36 minutes strapped to my doctor's HRM in order to capture Saturday's workout. It was a pleasure to finish the run and end my 24 hours with this unit that was attached to me by four electrodes. I was still a little tired from Friday's stress test when I hit the road and though I managed a decent pace I felt like I was running in low gear the whole time. It felt as though I had a tether attached to me that prevented me to maintaining my desired cadence. My goal was to go out for a quick three miles but I ended up covering four. Upon returning home, I happily detached the electrodes and packed the HRM for return to the lab.

This morning I left early for my week's long run. My neighborhood boundaries limit my options for running real distances, after that I need to cross some traffic to prevent repeating the same roads. It was a chilly 38 degrees at 7:00 AM, far colder than I'd planned for the way I'd dressed. I did wear my best long compression pants but I didn't bring gloves nor a long sleeved shirt. I regretted my lapse when, after two miles, my hands were still semi-numb. Besides all that my run was pleasant, starting with a loop through my main neighborhood before heading into neighborhood #2 for a few miles. I stayed conscious of my pacing and tried to keep in the low 9:00 range. Despite the cooler temps my overall pace shows that I lost about ten seconds on each split. Although the numbers don't show it, I still felt like I ran better today than yesterday.

After a greatly appreciated (post run) hot shower we headed over to Caleb Smith State Park for a late morning hike. It's a really nice preserve with well marked trails. Every time I go there it reminds me of how much I'd like to actually run there. My wife, daughter and son did do some running while we were there but I chose to hike. I don't like running in jeans and my legs were fairly shot from the morning's seven miles. Despite missing my usual Friday run I still managed to get some good miles this weekend. The cold weather is definitely to my liking. I just need to be smarter about how I dress for it.