Oct. 20, 2008

Still running? Good. Me, too. I don't post much, but I get out there and train regularly.
It's paid off this year pretty nicely. Not in the monetary sense, of course, but in the personal satisfaction sense.
With my fall marathon now completed the tally for the year is two marathons, a half marathon, a 20k and a 5k. I PR'd in everything but the first marathon, but even that was an excellent event by my standards.
The quick summary:

Olathe Half Marathon, March 2008
What a miserable race this was. Olathe's fine, and the race is nice enough. It was just way too cold and there was a strong headwind most of the way. I went out too fast and never got into a rhythm or any kind of comfort zone. I didn't enjoy a minute of the race.
Still, I ran 1:51, my first PR of the year, and I felt good about the level of my conditioning heading into my first big race of the year.

Big Sur Marathon, April 2008.
Absolutely spectacular vistas and an extremely well-run marathon. It is hilly - very - and most people don't go there expecting to post a PR. I didn't either. All I wanted to do was make it up the famous Hurricane Point and finish in one piece.
I ran hills like a maniac in my training, and it worked. I chugged steadily up Hurricane Point, passing many a young and huffing whippersnapper along the way. It's an unrelenting 2-mile 560-foot climb. I enjoyed it, and at the summit I even took the race officials' advice and turned around to see where I'd been. Breaktaking.
Big Sur is so hilly that I think it forever changed my idea of a hilly course. Normal hilly courses no longer concern me all that much. On with the summary, though.
I finished the race in 4:13, at least 15 min. ahead of my own prediction. At the end, my feet ached a 10 on the scale from the constant downhill slapping, and my energy was gone. But, oh, what a beautiful stretch of road. I was convinced then that I could go under 4 hours on a more forgiving course.

Dam to Dam 20k, Des Moines, Ia., May 2008
A month after Big Sur I was in the Iowa Capital for a return visit to this race. I'd done it something like 23 years ago. A decent 10k runner then, I had no idea what it was like to run 12 miles. I crashed and burned, and vowed never again to run such a ridiculous distance.
Running isn't like a lot of other things that you might fail at in life, though. You can go back and try again. And after years of regretting that performance, I was ready to do some redeeming.
I was still in decent shape from my marathon training, but I really wasn't sure how my body would hold up to the faster pace of a shorter run.
I started slowly out of necessity. You have a huge crowd packed onto a narrow road atop the Saylorville Dam, and it takes quite a while to thin out. My first mile was around 10 min. and my second was a little over 9. After that I was under 8 the rest of the way. I kept thinking the pace was probably too fast and I wouldn't be able to maintain it, but I did, finishing in 1:41, a pace of 8:07. Twenty-three years earlier my pace had been 8:45. That was PR No. 2.
Since I'd never strung 10 sub-8 min. miles together before, I started having thoughts that maybe I'd crossed over into some slightly higher level of fitness. I didn't know what it might mean to future races, but I figured it couldn't be bad.

Susan Komen 5k, August 2008
I always run this race. It's just amazing to get out into a crowd of 20,000 runners and walkers. And they're all out there for a good reason: breast cancer research.
That said, I don't really like 5k races, because I always feel like it's a good opportunity to pull a muscle or pop a hammie.
This time, though, I got to the site early enough to jog a couple miles before the race. Then, I moved up as close as I could to the head of the pack so I wouldn't spend the first mile and a half dodging slower runners.
I got off to a real nice start and was out of the tight crowd within a half mile. There were people all around, but I didn't have to do much dodging. Most of the first half of the race is flat to slightly downhill, so you can get your pace up pretty quickly. I didn't even look at my watch; just ran at 90-95 percent of max, hoping I could keep that up for three miles.
Result: 22:40 (7:17), quite fast for me and another PR. I was, in fact, shocked I could run three miles in a row that fast without getting hurt.
Now I was sure I'd moved to a different level of fitness.

Training for the rest of the summer and fall went very well. I was routinely turning in tempo runs at 8:05 or 8:15 for 7 or 8 miles, even though my goal pace was supposed to be 9 min. per mile. I ran two or three half marathon training runs that came within a minute or two of my Olathe PR. My 20-mile runs were solid, and I recovered quickly. I turned my last 20-miler into a 21.5 mile run, just because I still felt so good at the end.

Kansas City Marathon, October 2008
I had looked forward to this race since May. I knew I was in good shape, and while I resisted setting a sub 4-hour goal, I still hoped I could do it.
I decided to run with the 4-hour pace group, and I patiently stayed with or just ahead of the pace leaders for the first half of the race. It was a good strategy, because it kept me from picking up the pace too early. The first half was done in 2:00:44, or a 9:13 pace.
My GPS quit working before the turn, so I finally just turned it off. When I do that, I actually tend to run better and faster, relying strictly on how I feel and keeping my effort at a level just below what would require extra energy burn.
So, I have no splits for the second half of the race, but doing the math I know I averaged 8:33, because my final time was 3:52:31. The time - a PR - beat my previous best marathon time by 18 minutes.
Any marathon provides numerous good and bad feelings. I tend to forget the bad pretty quickly. The good ones in this race:
- reaching mile 20 and knowing I had 60 minutes to run 6 miles and finish under four hours. I absolutely knew I could run six 10-min. miles. It made those last miles comparatively easy.
- coming down the chute, the clock well under 4 hours, knowing that finally, in my 6th marathon, I'd torn down that barrier. I know it probably looked strange coming from a 58-year-old gray-haired grandfather, but I threw a fist or two in the air.

I plan a couple more fun races before the end of the year, am tentatively planning to run the Little Rock Marathon next spring. In 2005, before my first marathon, Gov. Mike Huckabee invited me to run Little Rock. But since he didn't invite me to dinner, I ran in KC instead. I'll forgive him for that. I hear they have huge medals.