Long Slow Distance

21.7 miles in 4:03 this morning, pace 11:12. That’s good enough for a 4:54 marathon if I could keep it up for another four and a half miles. Maybe. I’d like to run a 4:30 marathon, because that’s Boston qualifying time at my age, but it will be a push. Right now I’d need to find a downhill course.

I did have a couple of problems today though.

First: The skunk - smack in the middle of my favorite little two-rut dirt road alongside the railroad track. It was contentedly chewing away on vegetation between the ruts, more or less oblivious to the world. I stepped up on the track itself, walking slowly along the ends of the ties on the far side of the track, toward the skunk but as far as I could get from it without tumbling down the other bank. The skunk was facing the track, and spotted me just as I came opposite. The tail went up, but it was still facing me, maybe 10 feet away. I jogged away, bouncing from one tie to the next, and when I looked back, the skunk was running in the other direction. Mutual respect.

Second: The route that I had chosen for today is about 22 miles and goes through seven different municipalities including Oakdale, Pine Springs, Grant, Stillwater, and more. The railroad track would have taken me into Oakdale, where I would have switched to some paved trails. But the track goes under I-694 just before that point, and the passage under 694 was blocked. A hard-hatted worker came toward me and asked me not to proceed, explaining that they were doing "lead paint remediation" on the bridge. I could see a path through but he was blocking my way. I considered an end run around him, but gave in when he explained that his boss was watching so he really had to stop me.

There was no way around - only back the way I had come, costing quite a bit of distance. I figured out a detour which made the course about equal in distance to the original, but it bypassed two opportunities to refill my water bottle. Happily for me, Sunshine was available to bring a bottle just when I needed it. Totals: four Clif Shot gels, five packets of salt, and 40 ounces of water. That's not enough water - I should take about 2.5 ounces per mile, which would have been 54 ounces.

Perfect weather, the beginning of fall color, nothing hurts much. It’s a good run.

My Mom Is 100 Years Old Today

Tuesday, May 18, 2010:

MY MOM IS 100 TODAY! We had a heckuva party over the weekend, people coming to Minnesota from as far away as California. She's lovely. Go MOM!

I ran 20 miles on the park’s hilly, dewy, grassy trails today, though the dew was long gone by the time I finished. 52 degrees at the start of the run, 70 at the finish, bright sun throughout. There is some shade on these trails - perhaps one third shady and the rest sunny. The sun felt good at first, but toward the end I was slowing down and looking forward to the shady parts.

Sunshine and Sweet Pea spent about the same amount of time out there, and we crossed paths three times. That’s always nice.

I sucked down three GU gels and one Clif Shot gel. As far as I can tell, they are interchangable - neither gives me a stomach problem. I do prefer the ones with caffeine, though - they give an extra boost. The legal performance-enhancement drug. I also took five packets of "electrolyte," each containing 440 mg sodium chloride, 15 mg potassium chloride, and 18 mg calcium carbonate. No cramps of any kind at all. Very minor complaint from the left hip and right ankle. They'll be OK.

Loop 1	8.03 mi	1:26:07	pace 10:43
Loop 2	7.09 mi	1:20:59	pace 11:25
Loop 3	5.17 mi	1:00:00	pace 11:36
Total	20.29 mi	3:47:06	pace 11:11.

Although I really couldn’t go much faster, I know there was more left in the tank at the finish. I could have kept going at about the same speed. It’s good!

Saturday, May 15:

St Croix Valley Runners, the usual five-mile route. Good group today. I ran with Mike, who had recently finished the Eau Claire Marathon and was really in no hurry. I was looking ahead toward a 20-mile run in a few days and also had no reason to go faster than nominal, so most of the group finished ahead of us. We did the five miles in 45:00, pace 9:00. Plenty good enough!

Thursday, May 13:

Another break in the rain. This time I ran in the neighborhood, a somewhat-hilly 6-mile course all on paved roads. Finished in 57:38, for a pace of 9:36. No pains, no problems. Still a little tired from yesterday’s trail run, I walked up a few hills, but the time is plenty good. It’s a masterpiece.

Wednesday, May 12:

Break in the rain. We three ran in the park again, this time on the paved trails because the grass trails were soggy with an inch of recent rain. My left hip was a little cranky at the start, but it smoothed out in the first half mile and wasn’t a problem. I ran the hilly 7.9 miles with only one brief walk break, to chat with my sweeties as I passed them. Time 1:15:43, for a pace of 9:33. It’s a masterpiece!


Normal breakfast, oatmeal underneath. The blueberries are frozen ones, and that's working out very well, cheaper than fresh (especially now) and apparently higher quality too. Of course we do have to wash the blueberries (or any frozen berries) before putting them on the dish, because they come right from the field.

Good Long Run

Sunday, March 14, 2010:

Gauss and I ran 18.4 miles on hilly local roads, starting in a 35-degree fog and ending in the 55-degree bright sun. Actually, Gauss ran 13.5 and stopped to meet another commitment, and I ran another five. We didn’t go fast - neither of us could, actually, and we slowed several times for water, a few hills, and once for a long woods break. So the overall pace was slow, but represents what we could have done in a race today.

I was able to go a little faster during my solo five miles, because I didn’t have to stop for anything. No pains, no problems. Whereas I ran out of gas trying to go just 12 miles last week, I really had no problem with 18 this week, could have kept going, and didn’t feel unusually tired afterward. I can’t account for the difference, but it’s a masterpiece!

Splits: 2:45:18 (13.5 mi, pace 12:15), 54:12 (5.0 mi, pace 10:50), 3:39:30 total (18.4 mi, overall pace 11:56). At that overall pace a marathon would take 5 hours & 13 minutes, which is about what it has taken me lately. Huh. At the pace of the last five miles, a marathon would take four hours and 44 minutes. I doubt I can do that in the next few months, but it’s a good goal.

In fact, I just realized that my Boston-qualifying time has increased from 4:15 to 4:30, if I aimed for the 2011 Boston Marathon, because I’ll be 70 by then. I don’t intend to run Boston, but BQ is a good goal and it’s been a couple of years since I have done it. If the cancer stays stable, I may eventually be able to build that much speed back. Another 20-miler next week!

Saturday, march 13, 2010:

St Croix Valley Runners, Northland Tennis Courts in Stillwater, 7:00 am, as always. This time I ran with Gauss, while Dave and George jogged along behind and several others went out ahead. WAY ahead, it seemed, out of sight even. We finished the five miles in 47:05, well behind them.

Cool, foggy morning, trails mostly clear of ice, gravel roads soft and muddy.

Thursday, March 11, 2010:

Four miles in the Stillwater Bubble. I felt better than I did Tuesday, but not quite all the way back yet. I ran OK, kept the pace faster than 10:00 per mile. Good enough.


Normal breakfast. Mostly organic, oatmeal underneath.

Sixteen Miles

Stillwater Bubble. The softball guys start at 10:00, and a 16-mile run
takes 2 hours and 40 minutes, so I have to be there no later than 7:20.
And I really need to add another 20 minutes for bathroom breaks and such, plus I like to be done a half hour before the softball guys swing the first bat, so I showed up at 6:30.

Anyway I ran for 2:41:15, no walking. Assuming a pace of 10:00 min/mile, that’s 16+ miles. I did measure the pace once at 9:20, by timing one lap, but that was early in the run and I’m sure that I slowed down in the last third of the run. I felt tired in the beginning; in mile two my legs just felt weary and I wondered if I would have to walk some of the time. But somewhere around mile eight I got my juice back and had no problem from then on.

I took water every 20 minutes and a Clif Shot gel packet (w caffeine) every 40. I stopped the watch for water, gel, and a bathroom break, which is cheating a little because the watch doesn’t stop in a race, but in a race I can keep walking while taking water and gel and here I couldn’t. I think the watch was off for about 16 minutes in total, so the overall elapsed time was nearly three hours.  16 miles is about 90 laps of the Bubble, which means about 360 corners. 

No pains, no strain! Even the hamstring ache that bothered me Sunday was very subdued today. I’m doing my hamstring curls now. It’s a masterpiece!


Sunshine experimented with gluten-free pie.  Best chocolate pie I ever ate.  And it's not just for breakfast, either.

Sticky Twenty Miles

This is the weekend of the Lewis & Clark Marathon in St Charles, MO. We had planned for this marathon, and I had trained for it, but for several reasons we decided not to go. Nevertheless I still wanted to do a long run this weekend, three weeks in advance of TCM. So Sunshine and Sweet Pea drove me to Stillwater to run with the St Croix Valley Runners. I ran the usual five miles with them, mostly with Charley and Gauss. Then I strapped on water and took off through the city of Stillwater and cross country toward home, adding extra miles here and there to get almost 20, with more water stashed at about mile 13. Best of all, more than eight of those miles were on my favorite dirt road alongside the railroad track.

It wasn’t the best-ever morning for running, rather humid and plenty warm, temp about 72 and dew point 63. My visor was dripping three miles into the first five miles. But the heat didn’t feel dangerous, and the haze in the sky kept the sun from toasting my skin. I did feel some pain in the right knee, toward the outside, in the area of the meniscus perhaps. Happily, that went away in the first few miles. Later, toward the end, I felt some tightness in the hip flexors, but it also diminished and was barely noticeable at the finish.

This was the first long-run test of the new Nike Lunarglide shoes. They were fine, actually. Quite comfortable, no blisters, no problems. And the sole may even have taken on a little bit of curve, no longer as flat as pee on a plate, as my dad might say. I don’t think they are really designed for a mid-foot striker like me, but they are getting the job done and making less slapping noise than they seemed to make on the indoor track. They did pick up some rocks, but fewer than I expected and fewer than the Brooks Launch that I compare them against. So far I do like the Launch a little better though, just a bit smoother and quieter, and slightly lighter, but the difference is modest - they’re both good. I may end up using the Lunarglide for training and the Launch for racing at distances of 10k and longer, we’ll see.

19.9 miles in 3:31:13, pace 10:37. As usual I ran a very-modified Galloway method, running two minutes and walking one. That works SO well!


Post-run brunch with gluten-free pancakes by Sunshine.

Eight Slow Miles

Eight miles on the sand/gravel/dirt path along the railroad tracks. A train came through just before I got to the track, and no others showed up, but it was a wonderfully cool, delightful morning regardless.

I didn’t feel too energetic, so I did walk fairly often, but never for long. No pains, no problems.

Splits: 18:43 (2 mi), 20:19 (2 mi), 10:02, 10:04, 10:27, 10:47, total 1:20:21, pace 10:03.


Beef salad/dinner.

Eighteen Miles, No Problem

Friend Jim and I drove to the Gateway Trail bridge , ran to milepost 18 (Pine Point Park), then back past the car to milepost 9 near I-694, and back to the car again. At Jim’s suggestion we ran on the horse trails rather than the paved trail. I’ve never done that on the Gateway before, but I sure did like it. Those trails are a combination of sand, grass, and gravel, all of which are softer and more forgiving than blacktop. My feet feel just fine afterward, knees and hips too.

I do think that the softer surfaces take a little more work though - so 18 miles may be the equivalent of 19 or 20 on pavement in terms of energy output. So I believe. If so, 18 was the perfect distance for my long run for an upcoming marathon.

At my request, we ran two minutes and walked one, for almost the whole distance. Overall time was 3:07:54, pace 10:26. Not a good pace, but if I could keep it going another 8 miles, that would be a 4:34 marathon. I’ll take it! And I could have run another 8 today, though maybe not quite at that pace. The run-2 walk-1 system is a lot easier than just running.

Lovely, cool morning, 60 to 70 degrees, sunny with no wind, but the Gateway has a lot of shade. A feel-good morning and a feel-good run.

Gateway Trail users be advised: The trail is currently closed at Manning (Co 15). We went through, but on the way back we got yelled at! A bridge is to be built (reassembled) at Manning, and right now crews are building a bypass for us to use during that construction. Then they will start on the "embankments." While the bypass is being built, the trail is closed and may actually be impassible because of large machines working right on the trail. The workers really didn’t want us to go through this morning. The actual construction begins at about milepost 16 and continues northeast across Manning for perhaps a total of a half mile


Fruit bowl: Blueberries, home-grown raspberries, mango, organic strawberries, organic yogurt, a little dark chocolate. I love this after a long run. Plenty of nutrients AND hydration to boot.

Something Interesting Always Happens ...

Thursday, July 30, 2009:

Something interesting always happens when I run on my favorite dirt road alonside the railroad tracks. This time a train came, heading west as I was running east. I got to a street crossing before the train did. The crossing arms came down as I approached, and a pickup truck (blacktopping company) stopped. Then as I jogged along the track toward the train, crossing the street, the pickup suddenly zoomed around the crossing arms, nearly knocking me down. An opportunity for rarely-used language at high volume: The driver’s ears may still be burning.

And the engineer waved. All good. This was a long train, with several diesel engines on the front and three more on the back. It must have been at least a mile long, because I ran nearly a half mile while it passed in the other direction, going much faster than I was running. I wonder if the engines on the back are actually working, or if they are there just to make it easier for the train to reverse direction when it reaches its destination in the Twin Cities.

This was my "long" run for the week, just ten miles, and I took it slow, running three minutes and walking two, taking water every 15 minutes, and one gel at mile 4. 60 degrees with a little breeze, good running on the dirt road despite the overnight sprinkles. No pains of any kind whatsoever, and I felt stronger at the end than at the start. Breathing easy. End of 30 miles for the week. Next week 30 more, including a longer long run, probably 12 or 14 miles.

Splits: 55:38 (5 mi), 54:49 (5 mi), total 1:50:27, pace 11:03, includes two brief stops to pee. It’ll do just fine.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009:

Short run on local streets, just enough to hopefully keep the muscles in tune. What a beautiful, breezy, cool morning. Perfect running. No pains, no problems. 3.9 miles in 36:36, pace 9:23. Breathing easy most of the way.


Today's post-run breakfast: Gluten-free oatmeal with raisins and cranberries, organic strawberries, pineapple, organic apricot, blueberries, organic walnuts, organic plain yogurt, dark chocolate, organic nonfat milk.

Caffeine works!

On the way out to a 16-mile run I grabbed a couple of packages of Clif Shot Gels, one cran-razz and one orange. I ate the cran-razz first, at miles 4 and 8. Then at mile 12, I had half of the package of orange.

By that time I was getting a bit tired - walk breaks were more frequent and maybe a little longer. But around mile 14 my energy picked up again. Walk breaks nearly disappeared. This doesn’t just happen, so I checked the package of orange Clif Shot Gels and saw that it says "with caffeine." I had completely forgotten that any of the gels contained caffeine, and wasn’t expecting the pickup, so it was definitely physical and not psychological. I’ve felt this pickup from caffeine before, especially in marathons, but never quite so dramatically. Just 50 measly milligrams of caffeine from green tea extract, according to the package. The benefit lasted for at least two miles, perhaps more but my run was over.

Today the idea was to take it easy - long, slow distance. That’s just what happened. No pains worth mentioning, just tired muscles, which feels pretty good actually. Because of recent ankle issues, I ran in my last pair of Brooks Burns rather than the Summons that I have been using for training. That might have helped.

A beautiful 64-degree day, lots of people on bikes, a few on skates, and plenty of moms & dads pushing babies in strollers. Egrets and herons, with lots of noisy frogs for them to lunch on. Precious few runners, but it was nice to cross paths with my sweeties on the way back from the northeast turnaround.

Water at the even-numbered miles, gels every four miles. So far, barring any still-quiet injury, this run was an unqualified success. It’s a masterpiece.

Splits: 9:10, 9:47, 10:41, 8:54, 9:41, 9:37, 10:14, 10:10, 10:30, 10:24, 10:28, 9:05, 11:21 (phone calls), 9:31, 9:46, 9:10, total 2:38:28, pace 9:54.



Recent dinner: Bison garam masala with peas, spinach, onions, and tomatoes, and chopped cucumbers with yogurt.