Goal: 1,380 miles - Miles to go: ZERO!

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Two weeks, two miles, zero guilt

The nice thing about being a recreational jogger is that I don’t feel guilty about taking two weeks completely off. When I was serious about this running stuff, I would have never dreamed of taking two weeks off. It was impossibly for me to fully appreciate vacations because I had to find a time to run… every single day. Even when I went to places that had decent running trails, I wasn’t familiar with them and would end up doing simple out-and-backs to avoid getting lost. I remember one time in Sun River Oregon, my long run was a 90 minute out and back. Not 90 minutes total, 90 minutes in one direction followed by 90 (maybe 85) minutes in the other direction. Miserable right? That was the other thing about running in places where I didn’t know exactly how far a certain run was, I always made sure to be wildly conservative with my estimates. So I’d call a three hour run 20 miles, despite the fact that I probably wasn’t running any slower than 7:00 pace even on the hilly trail. It was crazy and sort of stupid, but that’s the way I was.

Now I can actually enjoy a vacation without that voice in the back of my head telling me to go running. Jenny and I were in Singapore and Bangkok the past two weeks visiting her parents and appreciating some well deserved time off (At least for Jenny. I’ve only been working at my new job since September and, like a normal person, I actually get weekends off). It was in the 80s-90s the entire trip with comically high humidity, not exactly the kind of weather I’d want to run in even if I did want to run. So over the two weeks I only jogged once, on a treadmill, for two miles. And I never even felt guilty about it. I was too busy enjoying the amazing sightseeing, food-eating, and elephant-riding.

Running two miles over the course of two weeks does set me back a bit on my mileage goal though. Fortunately a year is a really long time so I still only have to average about 28 miles per week the rest of the year and I’ll hit my 1380 miles easily. Since I aimed so low, taking two weeks off doesn’t actually set me back much from a fitness perspective because I don’t even have to be in shape to slog through a bunch of 30 mile weeks. It’s more a matter of finding the motivation to put one foot in front of the other for 30-45 minutes a day rather than being in shape enough to run any kind of respectable mileage.

With that said, here’s my strategy for the next month or so. This week, my goal is to hit 25 miles, that’s right about where I was before I spent two weeks gorging on pad thai and coconuts. Then I want to jump up to 30 miles per week for the entire month of February. That’s higher than I need to average for the year, but it’s still really low and shouldn’t be any problem. For a given week, that means running four out of the five weekdays, between four and five miles per day, and running six to seven miles Saturday and Sunday. I’d see an average week looking something like this:

Sunday: 6 miles
Monday: 4 miles
Tuesday: OFF
Wednesday: 5 miles
Thursday: 4 miles
Friday: 4 miles
Saturday: 7 miles

If anything, I might run a little shorter during the week and a little longer on the weekends since it’s actually mildly enjoyable to run at 9:00 when it’s light outside instead of before or after work when it’s dark and miserable outside. After four weeks or so at 30 miles per week, I’d like to bump it up a little bit to help make up for lost time and build a bit of a buffer. Ideally, I want to start hitting 10-12 mile long runs on Saturday and maybe 8 miles on Sunday. That’d actually be a somewhat respectable weekend of running and even if I continue my pathetic 4-5 mile runs the rest of the week, I could conceivably approach 40 miles per week. When it finally starts getting light enough before or after work, that’s when I’d consider bumping up the weekday runs. But still, I’m not going to push it. If I can knock out consistent 35 mile weeks by mid April, I’ll be happy.

This week so far:
Sunday: 0
Monday: 3.03

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Mediocre is okay, unless you're Daniel Lincoln

Week two is in the books and I'm still feeling good. Well, I'm feeling like ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag, but that's probably as good as can be expected having not run this consistently in years. I ended up hitting almost 25 miles this week, which confirms my suspicions that Runner's World is full of crap when they write articles about PRing in the marathon off 30 miles per week. To get good at something, you have to do that thing a lot. Running is no different, and 30 miles per week is not a lot. Luckily, I don't really want to get good at running, I just want to be better at life.

You know how people say that the key to a good life is doing everything in moderation? My motto used to be "nothing in moderation". I dedicated myself to running at the expense of almost everything else. It works out well if you're in a position where you can make some major sacrifices for something that you're passionate about, but it's not very sustainable -- at least not for me. One of the hardest things about coming back to running was knowing that it'd be impossible for me to compete with my college self. I couldn't stand the thought of losing some 10k fun run to a scrub who I could have wiped the floor with a year or two earlier. I know that sounds arrogant for someone who didn't even finish in the top 100 at Nationals, but I could clean up at local fun runs, just check out my back to back Jingle Bell Run trophies. Actually don't fact check that, I may have only won it once. The fact that I don't even remember speaks volumes to how much a logical person should care about fun run wins.

Regardless, a key to getting myself out the door again was accepting that being mediocre is okay. There are far more important things to me now than running an arbitrary distance as fast as I can. I know, plenty of people work real jobs and still run incredibly well. Wasn't Daniel Lincoln in med school when he won the Steeplechase at the US Outdoor Championships? Well those people are assholes for making the rest of us look bad. For now, I'll just be a little less of a candy-ass, next year I'll challenge Daniel Lincoln to race.

This week's mileage:
Sunday: 5.4
Monday: 3.16
Tuesday: 0
Wednesday: 3.61
Thursday: 4.55
Friday: 2.65
Saturday: 5
Total: 24.37

And of course, I can't sign off without mentioning the Broncos-Patriots game. It was disappointing, yes. But as I posted on Facebook right after the game, this was still the most enjoyable season as a Broncos fan since 1998. Maybe Tebow never becomes a consistent premier passer like Brady or Manning. But maybe he does. Sprinkled throughout a season of ugly throws and disappointing blowouts were brief moments of brilliance. There's definitely potential, and that's more than we've had since '06.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Goals and participation trophies

Goals are important. I know that’s not exactly a monumental revelation, but it’s true. Not in a “you can do whatever you set your mind to” idealistic way, but in a “if there’s a risk that you’ll fail at something, it might help you get your ass in gear” motivational way.

When I was a real runner, my overarching goal was to qualify for nationals. It was ambitious yet achievable. I still enjoyed running at the time, but a motivating factor to keep me out the door and suffer just a little bit longer and train just a little bit harder was knowing that I only had a finite amount of time to get my body ready to run as fast as it possible could.

My new goal is somewhat laughable and reeks of mediocrity, but it still helps motivate the hopelessly competitive part of me to stick with this silly training regimen of mine. Previously (post-running career), my workout schedule went something like this: I'd do no physically demanding activities for a couple weeks until I felt especially fat and useless. Then I'd run for a couple days in a row, maybe four or five times over the course of two weeks until I was sufficiently convinced that I was no longer at risk of obesity. Then I’d go back to sitting around doing nothing until I hit rock bottom again. Now that I’ve set a measurable and achievable goal -- one that requires a consistent commitment to something besides playing video games and eating pizza -- I’m getting out (and staying out) the door on a much more regular basis. Good job me.

But that’s enough self-reflective patting on the back for now. The more important point I wanted to make was wishing good luck to Drew Polley and the Hansons-Brooks team at the Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston this weekend. I ran with Drew in college and whereas I wussed out after achieving mediocre collegiate success, he decided to continue living the dream and see how far this whole running thing could take him. And for the record, there's a difference between truly racing a marathon and simply completing one.

Anyone who's ever run competitively at any level has probably experienced that awkward conversation when someone discovers that you're a runner, immediately asks how fast you can run a mile and whether or not you've ever run a marathon. Then they go on to explain that their neighbor's uncle's brother-in-law has run like six marathons -- you should talk to him. Listen, I'm sure I painted some pretty finger paintings in kindergarten, but that doesn't mean I should compare notes with Michelangelo if another chapel needs its ceiling painted. Running a marathon is great, it's a hell of a lot better than if your idea of daily workout is opting to take the stairs instead of the elevator. But it's not the same as racing one. Drew and those guys work their asses off to do something more than just finish marathons.

Weekly mileage update:

Sunday: 5.4
Monday: 3.16
Tuesday: 0
Wednesday: 3.61
Thursday: 4.55

Monday, January 9, 2012

Tebow 3:16

I’m an irrationally competitive person. I always have been. For years, I refused to do the running leg of the Junior Ski-to-Sea race because I couldn’t stand the thought of not coming in first. When I play Apples to Apples, I’ll be visibly irritated if someone makes a stupid pick for the winning card. I’ve gotten better in recent years, but I still care way too much about winning a game of Words with Friends than I should.

In college, my competitive outlet was running. I trained for months and months, logging thousands of miles for just a couple critical races. I remember so vividly the feeling of being a half mile from the finish of regionals in 2006 and seeing my coach, JD shouting “you’re 27th, 25th is right up there, GET HIM!” (top 25 had a shot at making nationals individually, and was my personal goal all season long). My whole season -- in retrospect, my whole career -- had come down to that last half mile, and without even making a conscious decision about what to do, I just starting sprinting. I passed one guy, rounded the final turn and passed another. As I strained toward the finish, I’ve been told the expression on my face made it look like someone was performing a lung transplant on me mid stride. I don’t remember feeling any pain, but I think I’d reached the rare euphoria just beyond agony and just before collapsing altogether. I finished 25th, and the rest is history (though a really obscure appendix in the history books that only anyone directly connected to our team knows about). But the point is that racing and running my ass off to try to beat people who had more natural talent than me was all I needed to satisfy that competitive voice inside me.

I have no desire to run competitively any more, possibly ever again. Now I’m one of those idiots who cares way too much about the success and failures of millionaire athletes who I’ve never met. Professional sports seem to matter so much more when you don’t have your own races to worry and competitions to train for. It’s like I’m that 11 year old kid again, inconsolably crying after the Broncos got upset in the 1996 divisional round of the AFC playoffs by the Jaguars; or running around the house jubilantly when Elway finally lifted the Lombardi trophy a year later. I need a competitive outlet. When I was running, that was great, and probably a healthier way to get my fix. But now I have Tim Tebow and my Denver Broncos.

What happened last night during the Denver-Pittsburgh game was amazing. I don’t care what teams you root for or how you feel about hyper-religious quarterbacks who spend more time praying than Tiger Woods spent banging hot blondes from 2006 to 2009. That game was in the top handful of playoff games in the last decade. On the first play of overtime, lining up like they were going to run the ball, sending a man in motion like they were going to run the ball, then faking a handoff like they were going to run the ball, all in order to set up Demaryius Thomas in man-to-man coverage against Ike Taylor who he’d been burning all night. It was confirmation that this was what Tebow’d been planning all along, a dramatic finish to a home playoff game that came impossibly close to never even happening. And Tebow played phenomenally nearly the entire game. He broke Elway’s Bronco record for passing yards in a playoff game. He made the “best passing defense in the league” look like a team crippled by injuries and missing several of its best players -- oh wait, I guess that’s sort of what they were... but still.

Some people have pointed to Tebow’s completion percentage as an obvious blemish on an otherwise Ashton Kutcher-esque face. That’s partially true, but keep in mind that a handful of those incompletions came on plays that would have been sacks, if not for Tebow escaping from pressure and throwing the ball away (sometimes purposefully, other times missing an open receiver along the sideline). It was the best game of his career, in the most important game of his career, and that’s exactly the type of performance I want in a quarterback. I never jumped off the bandwagon, but I’ll admit, I expected to die in a fiery crash weeks ago.

The game was a lot more satisfying than my attempts at running this week. Luke dragged me through 5.4 miles on Sunday morning and spent the lion’s share of the time trying to talk me into doing an iron-man with him. I don’t think he quite understands the only reason I’m running again is to feel a little less worthless and to avoid getting fat. Well, that and so I can have a place to post my long-winded odes to Tim Tebow. We averaged something like 6:30 pace for the run which was way faster than I’d been running on my own. The plus side to running, what was for me, a tempo run is that it gets the run over with a lot sooner. The down side is that it hurts to walk down stairs now. Holy crap, am I out of shape; embarrassing. This morning I logged my 3.16 mile loop, which I realized was fitting given Tebow’s 316 passing yards and the new “Tebow 3:16” meme that’s spreading through the internets. If this was a movie, we’d be calling it wildly unrealistic.

This week’s mileage so far:
Sunday: 5.4
Monday: Tebow 3.16

If you don’t count New Years Day, when I was too busy fighting a hangover and watching football to go running, I’m actually on pace for my 1,380 figure. Keep in mind, I’m going to be taking two weeks off to travel around Southeast Asia, so I’m not going to stay on pace right now. But jumping right into almost 30 miles per week is decent for a candy-ass who hasn’t run more than 3 days in a row for the last five years.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

My how the turn tables

I finished up my first week with a 6.67 mile run down the Burke-Gilman trail, bringing my weekly total to 21.31 miles, and surprisingly, only about five miles off of my goal pace. Considering I only ran five days this week and half-assed most of the runs that I did do, I'm feeling reasonably confident that I'll be able to make it to that prestigious 1,380 mile make for 2012 as long as I don't get bored and decide to refocus my efforts on pizza and beer consumption instead of logging miles. It was a little disheartening when I looked back at my running log from 2006 and saw that I put in 121 miles the first week in January with a 12 and 7 double on Saturday. But whatever, I own a house now -- in your face 2006 Woody.

But enough about running. I know what's really on everyone's mind is whether Tim Tebow will be able to upset the Steelers and continue the improbable journey that has captivated us all (okay, maybe just me). Outside of the "this whole thing is feeling like the first season of Friday Night Lights mixed with Air Bud: The Golden Receiver" argument that the Broncos will win because this is exactly what happens in TV and movies, I objectively (subjectively) feel like they have a legitimate chance to win. Roethlisberger is hurt, he's not going to be as mobile and will be much more vulnerable to Dumervil and Miller. Ryan Clark isn't playing because last time he played in the thin air at mile high he lost a couple internal organs -- literally. Mendenhall is out, Pouncey is questionable and won't be at 100% even if he does play. That's a lot of key players for the Steelers who will be limping into Denver practically asking to be upset. Don't get me wrong, Tebow has to play better than he's been playing the last couple weeks, and the Denver defense has to be on the top of their game, but it wouldn't take a miracle for them to win.

I've heard some analysts compare this Bronco team to the 2006 WSU Men's Cross-Country team. Just like the Broncos, that team had an undeniable lack of talent, a rough start to the season, and went into the "play-offs" knowing they'd need to perform their best and get a little lucky in order to win a trip to Indiana for the National Championship. Really, the only difference between the two stories is that the '06 Cougs won a trip to beautiful Terre-Haute while the Broncos are trying to get to some random town called Indianapolis. And I bet if you put any of us from the '06 team on the football field, we'd throw just as poorly as Tebow, so don't even try to play that card.

The rest of my picks for wild card weekend:
Texans over Bengals
Saints over Lions
Giants over Falcons

My miles for the week:
Sunday: 0
Monday: 4.12
Tuesday: 3.12
Wednesday: 4.24
Thursday: 3.16
Friday: 0
Saturday: 6.67
Total: 21.31

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

The hardest part is staying out the front door


You know how people say that the hardest part of a run is getting out the front door? That's a lie. The hardest part of a run is staying out the front door. If the key to getting in shape was as simple as finding the motivation to turn a door knob and push, there'd be no obesity epidemic in our country. People walk out of the front door all the time, rarely do they stay out the front door and go for a run. No, the hardest part of running is continuing to run, especially when you're out of shape.

When you're in good shape, you can get some satisfaction out of running because it's like flexing in the mirror. No one needs to see you hammer out a 20 mile long run at sub six pace for you to know you're kind of a bad ass -- it's an added bonus if you can find a way to bring it up in casual conversation though. Checking your watch every mile and seeing 5:58, 5:55, 5:54, is like the Jersey Shore guys admiring their waxed, oiled and tanned abs in the mirror before going out clubbing. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's fun to be able to take pride in yourself. But when you're trudging along at 8:30 pace, checking your watch every 47 seconds for when you can turn around, you feel more like Brett Favre during his last season with the Vikings. You used to win NFL MVP awards and lead your team to back to back Super Bowls (note that they lost to the Broncos in the second one), but now you're making more headlines for texting pictures of your penis to unsuspecting females than for throwing game winning touchdown passes. 

Three days in and I'm a 41 year old Brett Favre who can't even make it through a full NFL season. I've made it out the door twice, but came back in almost immediately both times. The good news is that I had exceedingly low expectations for this month. I'm Tim Tebow going 1-6 in the first quarter and luring the the other team into a false sense of security. There's still a 50-50 chance I'll rally in the fourth quarter and ride Matt Prater's coattails to an overtime victory. That, or I'll throw four interceptions in my last 16 pass attempts and get blown out 23-41 by the Patriots. Either way, I'm in the playoffs. Right?

This week so far:
Sunday: 0 miles
Monday: 4.12 miles
Tuesday: 3.12 miles

Weekly total: 7.24 miles
Monthly total: 7.24 miles
Yearly total: 7.24 miles

Miles to go: 1,372.76
On pace for: 883.28

Monday, January 2, 2012

It begins...

I ran 5,977.78 miles in 2006. I was a machine. Every day I woke up at 6:45 and went running, on Monday through Friday I ran again in the afternoon. Sunday was a long run of at least 20 miles and Saturday was an easy day of "only" 12. It sounds a little crazy to me now, but at the time I was focused, dedicated and disciplined. My goal was to help my team qualify for NCAA Nationals and I knew the best way to do that was to run my ass off every single day. I truly enjoyed it at the time, but running that much on that rigid of a schedule is mentally and physically exhausting. By the end of the year I was burned out. I had achieved my goal of qualifying for Nationals but my competitive running career was over. I stopped enjoying the peaceful feel of a cool 12 miles in the morning before most college kids had even woken up. It  started to feel more like job than a passion, which was ironic because I avoided getting a job all through college so that it wouldn't interfere with my running. So I retired. I hung up the racing spikes and sat on the couch.

I know I'm never going to be in that kind of shape again in my life. Lance Armstrong can make a heroic comeback from stage four lung cancer to win the Tour de France annually for the better part of a decade -- but he's a professional athlete. I'm just some dude who does computery medical record stuff and watches a little too much football. For me, a comeback has a slightly different definition. My 2012 New Years Resolution is to average running as many miles per month as I averaged per week in 2006: 115 (rounded up). So that's 1,380 miles for the year, a little over 26 per week. To give you a sense of where I'm at right now, in 2011 I think I ran about 115 miles total. This is going to be quite a jump, but I figure new year resolutions have a success rate lower than Tim Tebow's completion percentage so if I do fail it won't be the end of the world.

Back in the day, I kept a precise running log of all my runs (this explains why I knew my 2006 yearly mileage to the nearest hundredth of a mile (it doesn't explain why I was so obsessed that I needed to measure my runs to the nearest hundredth of a mile before the era of MapMyRun iPhone apps)). In 2012, I'll instead do the hipster thing and keep a running blog. This will hopefully keep me motivated by not wanting to let down the half a dozen people who end up reading this (hi mom!).

Let's quickly lay down the game plan and get a few preemptive excuses out of the way. January is going to be a really low month. I'll be digging myself quite the hole to climb out of. Not only is it dark before I go to work in the morning and before I come home in the evening, but I'm also going to Singapore and Thailand for two weeks with Jenny and her parents. The over/under for my total mileage while I'm there is zero (take the under). If my monthly mileage for January is 50 I'll be pleasantly surprised. My goal is to really ramp things up in the spring and summer when the weather's nicer and I can get in some long-ish runs. If I can string together a few 50-60 mile weeks in July and August, I think I'll be able to pull this thing off. Mainly, I just want to still be in the hunt when November and December roll around so I can pull off my own version of #TebowTime by going for 12 mile runs everyday and finish the year with an incredible comeback, logging the 1,380th mile as the clock strikes midnight. My other goal is to continue to make two Tim Tebow references every entry. Not really. But maybe.