Less time? Run faster

I found myself running behind schedule this morning and was unhappy to see that I had far less than 20 minutes to do a run that included time to warm up and cool down. At the same time I was concerned that I would not meet my (self imposed) minimum distance of 1.5 miles for a weekday run. Since time can't be controlled the only lever I had to play with was speed. I cheated a bit and got to my normal run pace in less than a minute before further cranking up the speed.

Now speed is relative, a fast pace for me would be an easy or even slow pace for an experienced runner. Indoors, I generally run at a 6.4 MPH tread speed which works out to about 9:22/mile. Today I ran closer to 7.2 MPH completing 1.62 miles in a little under 14 minutes for an 8:30/mile pace. That's where I want to be. It was hard work to maintain that pace, my average pulse rate was almost 6% higher than at my normal pace. According to what I've read I can even push that higher rate 9% to be within 80% of max. Having the HRM has been handy in helping me understand the effort I'm expending relative to other workouts (e.g., elliptical) and now I'm seeing that it's a good indicator for understanding how much further I should push to attain desired speed and pace.

My challenge now is maintaining that faster pace for longer than 1.62 miles. Completing a 5K at 8:30 would be great but I have work to do.

Yes, I get it, it's cold

I know March comes in like a lion but I didn't expect it to be such a fierce one. It was brutally cold standing at the train platform and the LIRR, owing to their unofficial mandate to break down at the mention of zero degree weather, was late. Ten minutes after boarding my feet were still thawing. As I stood waiting for the train, lamenting the fact that this week's snow interrupted my highly anticipated outdoor run in Cambridge, I tried to think of something positive to offset this late season weather. The best I came up with was that at 6:20 AM the sun had already come up. That made me happy because I realized that the cold would soon pass and the days will grow longer, allowing me to run earlier in the morning. I never used to to pay attention to the weather or keep track of sunrise prior to my return to running. Now I check the forcast all the time. I can't recall how early the sun comes up in late spring and summer but I'm hoping I'll be able to get some outdoor runs in during the weekdays at some point.

Sendentary Man has a new column today. I don't know about you but he seems to be a bit more profound and less sendentary these days. Although he starts out describing an epic battle between his humidifier and de-humidifier (this reminds me of an old Stephen Wright joke) he does make his point. I think. You decide.

Happiness is a warm treadmill

This morning I awoke to a foot of snow in Cambridge. From my hotel window I watched the plows working to clear streets and paths in Kendall Square. I went down to the fitness center for a run and indulged myself by selecting a treadmill with a personal TV screen.

I started my run and watched through the window as the snow blew almost parallel to the ground. People were walking in shovel-width paths that appeared to be two feet high at the sides. I watched the school closures on TV, virtually every school in the area is cancelled but happily MIT is open so my travel wasn't wasted.

I ran about 25 minutes at about 9:20/mile. It felt like a good weekday workout. I think my wife had a better workout though - she went out to shovel our driveway at 5:30 AM where we got more than a foot on Long Island. I'm trying not to think about my travel back to NY later today.

Newsflash: eating less calories helps weight loss

I was amused to see the article that the NY Times published last Wednesday confirming that reducing calories, regardless of source (fat, carbs, sugars, etc.) is the only way to reduce weight. Although this should be a very obvious point it's often missed and most diets center on the types of calories, not their overall reduction. Of course we also know the evil side of this revelation when people reduce calories using very unhealthy methods - anorexia and bulimia as examples. Eating less will cause you to lose weight. Eating less, concentrating on nutrition and running will make you lose weight and keep you healthy. Hey, if the NY Times can be that obvious then I can too.

I'm traveling up to Cambridge MA later today to visit the MIT Media Lab. I've served as my company's affiliate to MIT for the last ten years and I'm always excited by what I see and hear when I'm there. Since I've got back into running I have a deeper appreciation for some of the people I see there, like Joe Paradiso, who heads up the Responsive Environments Group at the Media Lab. This group developed most of the motion sensor technologies that are being used by companies like Nike in products like the Nike+ iPod and Sportband tracking systems. While I'm up there I'm hoping to do some running but the weather report is not encouraging: 8 to 12 inches of snow and ice expected for the northeast by midday on Monday. So it looks like indoor running for me. It's a good thing I like hotel treadmills.

This morning I ran 3.3 miles at about the same pace as yesterdays. It snowed a little overnight so I wore my Kutu’s, which felt a little snug. I also suspect the Kutus are slightly heavier than the Turbulence 13's which makes me tire a little sooner. I noticed today that when I end my long runs I'm almost never winded. It's more fatigue than lung capacity that makes me stop. I'm making progress with conditioning and I'd rather meet the challenge of fatigue than deal with aerobic energy limitations. I was happy with my run today but I admit I struggled more than Saturday when I ran a mile further.

In the long run

I look forward my weekend runs because, weather permitting, I can run outdoors and enjoy some actual scenery. Weekends also provide an opportunity to run greater distances since I'm limited to about 20 minutes in the morning during the work week. Over the past few months I've made it a goal to increase my average distance during my weekend runs to help prepare for two races, the first coming in 49 days and the second two weeks later. I am careful to track my pace and I collect a lot of data about my runs. It's a bit belt-and-suspenders but I use and used the Garmin 50 and the Nike+ Sportband respectively to capture real time information. Since I don't trust (for good reason) the distance accuracy of these devices I usually map my actual run against Gmaps or Google Earth to determine actual pace.

In studying what is now 6 months of run data I see a clear pattern in terms of distance covered by day. Saturdays are by far my best distance days and all my personal distance records have been made on those days. Although my intentions are always to meet or exceed Saturdays on my Sunday runs I usually fall short and I'm sure this relates to the fact that while I'm dedicated to running I have not reached a level of conditioning that allows me to complete back to back runs over four miles.

This morning I ran 4.3 miles at a 9:26 pace. Good for me but not where I want to be in 49 days when I compete in a 4 miler. The good news is just a few months ago my pace was 30 sec/mi slower on average and my top distances were in the low 3 mile range. So progress is being made. I'll see how tomorrow goes. We're due for some snow on Sunday but hopefully it won't start coming down until later in the day.

Bad advice and some that's good

This morning, while on the elliptical, I watched one of those celebrity entertainment programs (I think it was Extra) before the news came on. There was a lot of discussion about nutrition and they had a guest trainer to the stars who talked about a healthy diet that included five small meals a day.

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I think that's a reasonable approach, in fact I've heard the term "grazing" to describe that type of diet. What bothered me about this diet were the meal-snacks themselves: egg whites, cheese and meat. The portion sizes were small but the balance was completely off. There were no vegetables or fruit or whole grains. I'm sure that following this diet and training would help a person lose weight but unless the person was taking supplements I can't imagine it's a healthy approach. During other parts of the show they featured diet snacks, all of which included Philadelphia cream cheese. This was clearly sponsored and cream cheese is probably a better choice than butter or lard but I think it's disingenuous to represent the main ingredient in cheesecake as particularly healthy.

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I eat small portions in my four daily "meals" - pre-post exercise, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Total calorie intake is low and I am careful to balance to the food pyramid. Knock on wood this diet works since I rarely get sick and when I do it's usually a mild cold that leaves after a day. Yesterday, due to scheduling issues, I missed lunch and barely noticed. I had something small on the fly to remind my metabolism that I’m not starving so it should keep working. I remember a time six months ago when missing lunch would be much more noticeable.

I hope people recognize that just because a famous trainer on television promotes a diet that is disproportionately balanced toward protein it doesn’t mean it's a good choice.

One of these things is not like the other

Those who know me understand my viewpoint on smoking. I support personal freedoms and everyone has the right to do awful things to themselves (just don't do it near me) but I just can't understand why they would. This morning, on my way to the office, I walked by two people dressed for running who had taken a break to smoke. I passed them quickly and only caught a second of their conversation (which was in German) but I wondered how they could rationalize combining a healthy run through mid-town Manhattan with the indulgence of a cigarette break.

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I didn't look to see if they continued their run after the smoke or if they turned into the adjacent Dunkin Donuts to continue their hedonism. It did make me wonder how many runners are also smokers. It seems like a weird combination of behaviors but I'm guessing the percentage is higher than most would think. Never having been a smoker it's easy for me to judge and I am admittedly naive about how difficult it is to quit. All the same I just don't get it.

Quirks of the Garmin

I'm back to the work week routine and despite the residual fatigue that comes from rising at 4:00 AM I've settled back in to my running program. Although I am pleased with the Garmin 50 I've experienced some frustration with its operation, mostly due to its complex interface and its too simple instruction manual.

There are four buttons on the watch that do different things based upon the mode: time, training, intervals, etc. It is not obvious to the user which sequence of buttons need to be pushed to start an action, check a performance metric or calibrate the unit. The manual doesn't cover much of what the watch can do so I'm left frustrated knowing I'm not getting everything I can from the watch. In some cases the frustration comes from inconsistancies with the interface. For example, when in training mode, the usual default screen displays 0000:00:00 meaning "hit start and run." It then records distance, speed, cadence and pulse rate and will display any of those metrics by toggling with one button. That's great except when that display doesn't show up when you switch to training mode.

This morning I got going on the treadmill, brought the speed to my normal starting pace, switched the Garmin to "Train" and was annoyed to see that it did not give me my expected start display. So as I'm running at about a 6.5 mi/hr pace I'm jabbing at the watch in hopes of correcting this so I can record my run. Eventually I noticed a different display that seemed to be capturing distance so I left it alone and in the end it allowed me to save the run. The aggrevating part was that I ran at least .3 miles while this all played out and consequently none of that data was captured.

I'll see exactly what it did capture once the run is uploaded to Garmin Connect. I'm sure I'll eventually learn every aspect of the watch through trial and error but I'm puzzled by the lack of operational documentation. I wonder how many Garmin users give up on the features simply because the thing's so darn complicated.

Runners: emerging and re-emerging

This morning I did my first elliptical workout since discovering that a high resistance level can provide an equivalent effort to running. I had hoped to maintain a level of 10 (approximately 100 watts of energy) throughout the workout but I ended up averaging about 7 which kept my pulse rate about 10% lower than when I run. I wouldn't call it an intense workout but after 20 minutes I certainly felt like I worked harder than I did with previous elliptical workouts.

While I've been improving my routines for cross training and distance my wife has been changing hers as well. She has been serious about fitness for as long as I have known her and was doing some intense cross training and walking until she developed a debilitating calcium deposit in her shoulder late last year. She has worked hard to get past that and has returned to daily workouts, changing things up to minimize a reoccurrence of her injury. Over the last few weeks she started incorporating running into her treadmill routine, first in 5 minute intervals and now around 30 minutes at a time. I encouraged her to buy real running shoes and I think she appreciates the difference. I'm hoping we can all go to the track this weekend where she can experience some outdoor running.

My friend Adventure Girl has had a tough time over the last few months due to a bad soccer injury that required shoulder surgery in December. Consequently she has not been able to run, play soccer, rock climb or adventure race and I can't help wonder how frustrating her recovery has been. The good news is that she's been given the okay to begin running again and started last night. CK, another friend and experienced runner, has been suffering from a foot injury since late last year and he hasn't been running since completing a Turkey Trot in November. He's been skiing, playing hockey and doing other sports that don't cause the same stress on his foot as running. I'm seeing him today and hopefully he'll report that he's back to his running routine.

I'm glad to see everyone making so much progress!

The 20 minute challenge

The alarm went off at 3:55 AM this morning for the first time in over a week. I was surprised that I had some energy and I decided to run instead of elliptical (which I usually do on Mondays) because I hadn't yet recorded a treadmill run on the Garmin. Actually I had done that on Sunday but my lack of familiarity with the watch controls caused me to delete the run before it could be uploaded to Garmin Connect. That was annoying but it was only a mile so I didn't care. This morning I ran about 2 miles within my tight 20 minute window. Over the last nine days I became a little spoiled with the amount of time I had to run so I felt some stress to get my distance in today. I didn't get a chance to review my average pace or any other workout data because I had to move along but I'll do that tonight after I upload. I'm concerned that Garmin Connect will only accept the most recent run, unlike the Nike Sportband that would accumulate the runs and upload them in batch. That is until it stopped uploading at all.

Despite the short amount of time I had available this morning I'm happy with my run. Tomorrow I'll elliptical at resistance level of 10. So much for looking forward to easy workouts on elliptical days.

Training without straining

Graphic Copyright © 2008 Physical-Fitness-Trainer.com

After yesterday's long run I considered taking the day off from training. It's the last day of our vacation and it made sense to relax a little. I had a headache when I got up (due to a sinus condition) and my wife suggested that we take a walk around the neighborhood as a low impact activity. We set out with my daughter and walked for 40 minutes but, in the end, I still felt tired and my headache was still there. After lunch I decided to do a light workout on the elliptical using only the arms. I have discovered that by setting the resistance to 3 or 4 and standing in front of the unit (facing the back of the display) I can get a very good upper arm workout that's similar to the upper body effort of cross country skiing.

I did the upper arm workout for about ten minutes and then ran an easy mile on the treadmill, mostly to see how the Garmin distance tracking matched up to the treadmill's. After yesterday's long run I bumped up the Garmin's calibration slightly in hopes of reducing the 3% variance from actual distance covered. I was pleased to see that both the Garmin and treadmill were in synch with the Garmin running slightly ahead by a couple of 100ths of a mile. This is similar to what I experienced when comparing the Nike+ Sportband to the treadmill's distance tracking.

Today's walk, elliptical and run activities didn't add up to a highly taxing fitness day but after getting my pulse rate up on the treadmill, followed by a quick shower, I feel pretty good and ready to contend with the start of a new work week.

A PR for the ER

 This past vacation week has been great fun. We stayed close to home but did a lot of different things. I've also enjoyed the opportunity to run outdoors every day and I've covered a lot of distance: 25 miles since last Sunday. I'm 56 days away from my 4-mile race and I'm confident that I can cover that distance at a credible pace. I'm feeling ready and what was once a comfortable buffer measured in months is now looking like an unnecessarily long gap that's making me a little impatient. I'm tempted to look for a local race between now and April to just get one under my belt.

One reason I'm feeling this way is that I reached a new distance milestone this morning, covering 5.26 miles in about 52 minutes (9:53/mi avg pace). This broke my previous distance record by about .8 miles. Although I was off my normal pace I was very pleased with the run. I struggled a little at the beginning (I'd expected that since the first half mile was up an incline) but quickly settled into a good stride and knew that I was in for a long run. One of my biggest de-motivators has been the adjacency to my house. As I get closer to home, near the end of my run, I usually begin to feel the struggle to finish.  I decided today that I'd double back a few times far enough away from my house that I wouldn't have an expectation that I was nearing the end. It worked. I was at least 2.5 miles from home at the 2.5 mile mark so I knew that I had to cover 5 miles unless I stopped or walked. And I never do either.

I was surprised by how well I felt when I reached my house. My pulse rate was slightly lower than average and although my legs felt tired I knew I was good for another mile if I had to run it. For the first time I understood how people can get through 10Ks, half-marathons and even full marathons. I can't do any of those but I understand a little more how conditioning prepares you to run for hours at a time without needing to stop.

I may take Sunday as a recovery day, either an easy run or light cross training. 4:00 AM Monday morning will come soon enough and I'll need to be ready for a fast 2 miles to start my workday.