Old Friends

Over the past few years I've had the opportunity to connect with a few old friends.  In a couple of cases the friends were people who I hadn't heard from in at least a few years.  It was interesting to me finding out that, over the years, there had been several situations in which we probably just missed crossing paths.  Either we lived fairly close to each other, worked near each other, or in other ways could have easily crossed paths without knowing.

In the most recent situation, I walked out to check my mail and found a letter from an old friend.  Letter had not been mailed.  The friend had "snuck" up on my porch while I was home, dropped the letter in my mailbox and left.  When I found the letter there was no phone number or address or any other information in the letter telling me how to get in contact with her.  She even told me that she did not pull in to my driveway and then drove away without shutting her car door because she was afraid someone might hear the door.  Now, this was not an attempt to avoid seeing me.  She had other reasons for not wanting to be "confronted" leaving something at my door.

We did get in touch that day and got together for a long conversation.  I found out that, for nearly a year, she has lived right around the corner from me.  As a matter of fact, I run or walk by her apartment nearly every day.  Her daughter, who was only 5 years old the last time I saw her, is now 17 years old and had actually "thought" that she had seen me at one point.  She probably had.

It made me think about a day several years ago when I worked for my last employer.  I worked at Meijer and, as I was walking around the store, I saw someone I recognized.  The only thing was that I could not remember how it was that I knew this guy.  I walked around several times looking at him, trying to figure out how it was that I knew him.  He finally said something to me to let me know that he also recognized me.  As we talked I realized that we had been in the Army together.  Stationed in Germany together.  He had never lived in Ohio and was actually not a US citizen when he first joined the Army, yet I ran in to him in my own home town, where he had moved to go to school.

Things like this happen occasionally.  Whether it's coincidence, devine intervention, fate, or whatever, it keeps life interesting and keeps me in mind of one thing....

Set the Bar Too Low or Had a Really Good Day...Or Both

Well, my ultimate goal was to average about 12:34 per mile for today's half marathon.  I started off at about 11:04 a mile so I tried slowing down.  Five minutes later I was still at 11:04 a mile.  As I continued to run and continued thinking that I was slowing down, but my per mile pace kept getting faster.  I was basically running negative splits without even meaning to.  By the time I got to mile 10 I was averaging about 10:45 per mile.  I slowed down the last three miles and finished with an average pace of 11:14 per mile.  Still much faster than the 12:34 I thought was going to be my "push it" goal.

I had wanted to finish in under 2:44:40 and ended up coming in way under that.  My official finish time was 2:28:43.  My best time is about 2:20 back in 2009 when I was training for a full marathon.  Before I set a goal to beat that time, I'll see how my training is going.  However, I will set one goal now for the Columbus Half Marathon in October.  That will be to finish in under 2:23.  That would mean averaging about 11 minutes per mile for the whole 13.1.

The course for the Little Miami half marathon was just as advertised, shady the entire way.  As a matter of fact, it was almost 4 miles in before I could even see the sky through all the trees.  It was a very flat and fast course.  The only down side was that it was run on a bike path and there were a lot of bikers, some of whom obviously had no clue about common courtesy of how to act when sharing a bike path with runners.  Other bikers were courteous and careful when biking around the runners, but I really think it's safer to run on streets that have been closed down than it is to run around bikers on a bike path that is being shared...even in  a scheduled/organized run.

My legs were REALLY sore when I finished today, which is the norm for running half marathons.  They feel a little better now, which is good, because I am jumping right back in to training this week.  My long run on Saturday will be six miles, and in eight weeks I will be back out on the race course.

Columbus has tremendous crowd support for the first half of their marathon, so I'm looking forward to running that morning.

Running Bug Biting Harder

Well, as I prepare for my next half marathon this weekend I set up 3 goals.  My first goal (which is normally the "easy - I can do this" goal) is to finish in under 3 hours.  My last half marathon time was a little over 3:08, and given that I've trained better this time around and have dropped about 40+ lbs. since then, that should definitely be doable.

My second goal (which is normally the goal that I expect to be a little more difficult but can push for goal) would be to finish in under 2:54.  That would be averaging 13 minutes per mile for the entire 13.1 mile course.  I averaged a little less than 15 minutes per mile back in May, so that would mean bringing my average per mile pace down quite a bit, but something that I also think is doable.

My third goal (which is normally the hardest of the goals) is to finish in under 2:44:40, which would mean averaging about a 12:34 per mile pace.  That would also mean that I would finish this as my 2nd fastest half marathon.  I have been able to maintain a pace better than that for my 10 mile run, so I'm hoping I can maintain it for the full 13.1.

After finishing this half marathon I will jump right back in to training for the next half marathon that will be coming up on October 21.  The Columbus Half Marathon is a terrific course with a lot of crowd support.  I ran the full marathon in Columbus back in 2009, but the second half of that course did not have nearly the amount of crowd support that the first half had, which can make for a long run.

After finishing that half marathon I will jump right back in to a training program, but I've now got to re-evaluate that.  I am going to be running the Las Vegas Half Marathon in December.  I had originally planned to finish up Columbus and jump back in to my half marathon training, which I might still do.

However, yesterday the running bug bit a little harder, and I signed up to run the Myrtle Beach Marathon in February.  No, not a half marathon this time, but a full 26.2.  With no other races, I would typically start training for a full marathon 20 weeks out, meaning late September.  So, the question I have now is...do I fall in to the middle of marathon training and use Las Vegas as my long training run for that week?  OR  Do I do half-marathon training to prepare for Las Vegas and then jump in to full marathon training following that?  I'm not yet sure how that will play out since right now I'm training to run the full half marathon for Columbus, but plan to do the Myrtle Beach Marathon as a 5 minute run/1 minute walk marathon.  It may be October before I figure this one out, but we'll see what happens.

The Taper

Well, in just over a week I will run my next half marathon.  I've stuck to the training schedule much better than I did for the last half marathon I ran, so I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing some improvement in my time and in how I feel once I've gone the 13.1 miles.

I also hope that the weather next weekend is as cool as it is this weekend.  Yesterday I went out and walked 4 miles and it felt like I was walking on a nice fall afternoon (my favorite season).  After work today I will head over to the Olentangy Trail and run 5 miles.

The last couple of weeks I've been "tapering" in my training.  Basically, what that means is, I've been cutting back on how far or how long I run.  The purpose of the taper is to allow the muscles to recover from the hard training they've been doing over the previous 12 weeks.  During that time period they've been put through a lot and not given a lot of recovery time.  The taper is meant to give the body a chance to truly recover and rebuild itself so that it is in the best shape possible on race day.  However, you don't want to stop running completely or you won't be loose on race day and it will take longer to settle in to a decent pace.

One of the things that I like about running is that it has taught me a lot about life in general.  In life we sometimes have to back off and rebuild.  Give ourselves a chance to fully recover and utilize all that we've been taught.  But we don't want to stop living life completely or it could take a while to settle in to a good "pace".  BOY....is that insightful or what?!  I should get a job writing for a fortune cookie company.

Today marks my 20th consecutive day at work without a day off.  As it stands right now I will be off work for the next two days, and am planning on taking full advantage of the time off.  I guess by "full advantage" I really mean, not working.

Tomorrow I will get in my weekly weigh-in to see if I've lost any more weight since last week.  After that I'll head to church, then I'm taking my brother, who is also trying to lose weight, to a running store to get him a good pair of walking shoes.  After that I'm taking him to lunch/dinner to celebrate his completion of his course of study for the Methodist Church, where he serves as a minister.

On Monday I've got to do a light run and I may try to go catch a movie.  There are a few movies out right now that I'd like to see, so this may be an opportunity to relax and go see them.  You know....taper.

Long Hours and Running Too

Well, I'm currently sitting here at work for my 2nd week of 7th Day overtime.  My last full day off was on July 22 and my next scheduled day off is August 12.  Between people being off sick at work, a new dispatcher being trained, which takes one of our current dispatchers out of staffing in order to train her, and the annual Dublin Irish Festival, there have been a lot of slots that needed filled in order to maintain staffing levels.  I've been only too happy to help fill some of those slots, which will make for a nice paycheck, but also makes for a long three weeks.

For those who don't know, Dublin, OH has an Irish Festival the first weekend of August each year.  This year was the 25th annual Irish Festival.  I found out this year that Dublin's Irish Festival is the second largest Irish Festival in the United States.  Pretty impressive for a suburb the size of Dublin.  We pretty much have three "major" events in Dublin each year.  In the spring the PGA comes to town for the Memorial Golf Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club here in Dublin.  Of course, like any "all American" town, we have our Independence Day celebration, which always includes a parade and a free concert that usually brings in a well known performer.  And the Dublin Irish Festival.  The festival is kicked off on Thursday evening with a 5K run in downtown Dublin.  I've run this race in the past and was happy, as part of my return to running and part of my half marathon training, to run it this year.  I started off a little too fast though and it cost me.  No matter how many times I run this course, I keep forgetting just how long that hill on Marion St. is when you have to run it.

The actual festival starts on Friday evening and the weekend draws very large crowds.  Of course that also means a lot of hours worked by the police department.  With the festival being held the first weekend of August each year we can usually count on two things.  First, it's going to hot.  Forget about global warming, it's just hot in August in this part of the world.  That typically leads to some medical issues with the heat for those who are elderly, have medical conditions, or drink too much.

The other issue that typically comes up during the Irish Festival weekend is that some type of severe weather watch or warning ends up being issued at some point during the weekend.  Evacuating a crowd that large from the festival has proven to be an "interesting" endeavor at times, especially if they have not yet finished drinking that beer they just bought.

On another front, I've begun to taper my running in preparation for my next half marathon.  My two weekly runs will drop from 60 minutes to 40 minutes this week and my long run is only 5 miles this Saturday.  In just under two weeks I will run the Little Miami Half Marathon in Morrow, OH.  While I do have a couple of "goals" for this half marathon, I do keep reminding myself that this is more of a training/evaluation run.  I want to see where I'm at as I continue to get ready for the Columbus Half Marathon in October.  While most half marathon training schedules build in a two week rest period following the actual race, I will be jumping right back in to training a few days after this half marathon.  After I finish the Columbus Half Marathon I will again jump right back in to training in preparation for the Las Vegas Half Marathon, which I will run in December.

While I have some goals in mind for the Columbus Half Marathon, my only real goal at this point for Las Vegas is to have fun.  They advertise their half marathon and marathon as the opportunity to "Run the Strip at Night".  I have been to Las Vegas and walked up and down the strip in the evenings, but this will be a unique perspective.  It's what is known as a "destination run".  A run that has the ability of combining a vacation along with the run.  I've done destination runs in the past; the Myrtle Beach Marathon and Disney World Half Marathon.  Those were situations, like Las Vegas, where I scheduled the run as a way to give me a nice place to go on vacation.  I've also scheduled vacations and then looked for runs to do in those locations while I was in town.  Then there were the destination runs that fell somewhere in the middle.  Like the Tunnel to Towers Run in New York City.  That was a run where the run itself and the destination were equally important.

I do plan on going to New York in September to run the Tunnel to Towers Run again this year, and am considering going back to Myrtle Beach in February for their Half Marathon.  The Rock and Roll marathons and half marathons look to provide some opportunities for some other destination runs too.  A couple of new cities have been added to the list of Rock and Roll Half Marathons, so I may look at doing some of those next year.