Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Tuesday 11/16/2010

Day one, week one of my marathon training.  Enter internal monologue:

"Damn it is cold.  Do I really want to go running now? Can't I wait...nah, get it done now."

36 degrees outside.  But after hobbling out of my bed, going through the motions stretching on my floor, I meandered out of my apartment to stare up at the blue skies.  And see the light clouds rise from my mouth.  Yep, it's fall in the Midwest.


Generally these days, I start by walking.  Why?  I read about walking before starting a run in Hal Higdon's Marathon.  I think the advice from a guy who has run 100 or so odd marathons seems to be a wise thing to do.  Plus it helps wind up my motivation to go run.  Specifically, "shit it's cold, I better start running to get this over with!"  And it was cold.  The fleece from the Chicago Monster 1/2 Marathon wasn't doing a good job of keeping me warm.  The irony of not being able to run that race did not really dawn on me. 

I get to my starting point, the entrance of my apartment complex and prep my watch and Apple product to time my run.  Then I bend over to take off my shoes.  I left my socks on.  It was 36 degrees outside, so I wasn't going to run completely barefoot.


And listening to NPR.  I don't quite dig listening to music since it does affect my pace (makes me run faster, run slower...I like to just maintain my pace); but its nice to have noise to drown out the brain telling me: hey it is cold; hey I'm tired; hey my feet hurt; hey this sucks.  That and to get some news since I don't watch TV seeing that I have an ancient TV that does not have a digital antenna and I don't really miss TV that much to where I will give COMCAST my money or go buy a digital antenna.

Generally the idea right now for my early barefoot training is to run around 10% of my runs barefoot.  This run was for 3 miles, so I should have planned to run .3 miles.  I ended up running .5 miles.  I guess it could be considered overdoing it, but .2 miles I don't think is enough to be over training.  Now had I run a mile barefoot...different story altogether.

So most of the first mile of my run dealt with listening about the referendum in Sudan dealing with the southern part of Sudan separating, which the northern part of Sudan is not too happy about; something to do with natural resources such as oil.  The one thing I noticed was that there is too much goose shit on the sidewalks here.  Far too much.  People in the area wonder why the local lakes here cloud up each summer with algae; maybe if they picked up their lawn clippings, didn't use fertilizers, and didn't have so many Canadian geese shitting all over the place, they might not have that problem. 

I didn't accidentally run in any goose shit barefoot.  I had already put on my Brooks Ghost 3 shoes.  By the way, even though I own a pair of Brooks, I am not a big fan of the shoe.  The pair I have are ok, but if I had a choice, I would much rather have a pair of Mizuno running shoes.  Mizunos are probably the best running shoes in the world.  Brooks are....well, they suck.  Nike running shoes are even worse.

When running, I tend to try not to think about the run.  It's more of an escape from reality in a way.  Its 3 to 10 to 20 miles of you and your breathing together.  Generally, I think about what I want to write about for a class, or an issue from class, or things that I need to do, or mulling about a book I read.  One of the mental games I play is playing the music discography in my mind.  Right now, the mental game I play is to make sure that I'm coming down on my forefoot and flexing my knee on impact while running.  That tends to keep me mentally occupied. 

So, I hit the halfway mark, turn around and start running back.  The cold is definitely kicking in as my muscles are tightening up in my thighs, calves, and hamstrings.  I don't feel the tightness in my shoulders either.  So it's a good run.  Any run is a good run as long as you don't get injured.

I really can't think of anything that stood out in the run, besides the goose shit.  Oh, it was cold. 

3.02 miles
10:32 pace (slow, but my goal pace for the marathon is 11:00-10:50ish)
533 kcal (estimated)

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