running journal

[hoopsguy]

So earlier this week I picked up a new running watch, the Garmin Forerunner 235. This replaced the Garmin 210 I've used over the last three years. I figure this represents a decent time for me to get a little more serious about my running, fitness, health, etc. I'll also likely mix in some information about other stuff going on outside of running to provide context for the results, or lack thereof, over the period of time that I update this thread.

So, this morning I set out to run a moderate effort 7k run. I've got a 3.5 mile race coming up in a little less than two weeks, and I had already gotten in a speed workout earlier in the week. Saturday normally is a moderate/short run, with Sunday being my long run for the week. The remainder of the week is a bit hit-or-miss, but I'm working on getting a little more rigor into this routine.

One difference with this watch is that it has a built-in heart rate monitor. Previously, I had to wear a separate strap across my chest to capture this data. I was THRILLED with not having that on for my run this morning. Over the past couple of months, the strap had begun to irritate my skin and I've had what looks like a minor rash in that area. Hopefully that disappears in another couple of weeks without having that strap to irritate the skin 3-4 times per week. The start of this run is mostly uphill, which leads to some slower times as I get warmed up, but the 2nd km is always significantly faster. And that is where I found myself today, with my 1st km being about 9 min/mile pace and the 2nd km being sub-8. At this point, I decided to change gears and run a 5k with the middle 3 k as a tempo run.

For those who aren't into running, the idea on a tempo run is to have a slower start/finish, but a middle section that is challenging. By challenging, I mean at a pace that isn't race pace, but isn't too far removed from race pace either. I've never quite hit a 7 minute mile pace 5k, so tempo run for me usually starts a little under 5 min/km. I tracked in the 4:40 - 4:50 for each of the 3km middle of my tempo run, before slowing up for something north of 5 min/km to finish.

The new watch tracks records/achievements and since this was my first run with it, I got several today.
- Longest Run: 5.22 km
- Fastest 5k: 25:04
- Fastest 1k: 4:41
- Fastest 1m: 7:38

And other stats, some of which I know to be flat crazy. The one that I will be interested to see over time is the VO2 Max.
Recovery Time: 43 hours
VO2 Max: 47
Race Predictor: 22:11 5k, 46:01 10k, 1:41:57 1/2 marathon, 3:31:54 marathon

So, lots of data to sift through. I use a few different websites to track data. Strava, Smashrun, Veloviewer, and Athlinks. I'll talk more about these in other posts, as well as some of the data above.

[Northwood_DK]

Congratulations on the new garmin.
I love my Felix 3 but I do struggle with the Race Predictor. They seam way to optimistic.

[hoopsguy]

Originally Posted by Northwood_DK

Congratulations on the new garmin.
I love my Felix 3 but I do struggle with the Race Predictor. They seam way to optimistic.

With regards to the Race Predictor numbers, here are my current PRs for each of those distances.

5k - 22:12 (9/14/2014) ... so off by one second from forecast. Pretty good! But I'm expecting to break that mark this year, hopefully about a month from now.

10k - 48:39 (4/19/2015) ... don't run many of these. This was on a fairly hilly course. I'm targeting a 10k run next month where I expect to beat this time, but 46:01 feels pretty ambitious. I'll suggest that I think I can split the difference if the weather cooperates.

1/2 marathon - 1:49:53 (8/30/2015) ... only ran three of these, with this being my first one. I'm going to improve this time before year is out, but my goals for the year are under 1:47. So hitting 1:42 seems well outside the realm of possibility

Marathon - never done, won't be doing one this year. And when i do, the odds are extremely slight that I'm within 10 minutes of this projected time.

[hoopsguy]

A day late posting this, due to yesterday being my daughter's birthday. With both family party and friends party on the schedule, I had to set the alarm early to carve out enough time for the long run.

Sunday has been my long run day for a couple of years now. As a general rule this year, I've been getting in 3-4 days of running each week. I try to find one easy run and one speed run during the week, depending on my motivation and challenges with work schedule. On weekends, I've been consistent with a relatively short Saturday run (3-6 miles) with some pace and a long Sunday run. I had been training for a half marathon in late April, and I've now got another one on the books for July, so I'm normally putting in something in the 8-15 mile range on the long runs.

For those who are reading along and have some experience with training plans for running, I'm very flagrantly disregarding the "long run = 30-35% of miles for week" rule with this approach. I'm hoping to get a little closer to that range by upping the running to 5 days per week, with more pre-dawn runs and mostly easy miles added to the mix. But I'm pretty sure that 50-60% of my total miles for this year have been on Sundays.

Back to 5/15. This was my 3rd of a series of 4 Sunday runs looking to up my mileage from 12km to 21km. Given some of the rain that we had last week, I wanted to avoid any trail running. I've got a relatively new (50 miles) pair of Brooks Glycerin 12s and I wasn't seeking to run them through a ton of mud and puddles. With that in mind, I decided to target a course that would run past five of the six elementary schools in our school district. I don't know where the 6th one is, but I've heard that it is quite a bit further away ... maybe I'll add it at some point when I'm looking for 25+ km.

I started off with the two furthest out schools; well, the furthest out ones that I've run past before. My town is essentially divided in half by the Fox River, and I live on the east side of the river. These two schools were on the west side. I've lived here a little over a year, and I'm guessing I'm like many runners who know the major bike paths in the area and have a few established routes. Beyond that familiarity lessens with each passing mile further from home base. In my case, I only have one semi-standard run that goes across the river. I've visited each of the two west schools one time each.

So naturally, I got a little lost tracking down the first of the schools. The net result was that by the time I had hit each of those schools and made my way back across the river I had already racked up 12km. From a pace perspective, I was around 9min/mile and was comfortable that I would finish a half marathon in under 2 hours if I opted to extend the run. Goal was 18, but there was no way I was going to hit the remaining three schools and get home in 9km.

So I ended up getting to 4 of the schools, missing the one that is about a mile east of our home. I pushed the distance out to 19km, which matched the "oops half marathon" from last month. A couple of new records on the watch:
- Longest Run: 19.21km (per Smashrun, this is actually my 8th longest run overall)
- Fastest 10k: 55:08

It seems like the Recovery Time, VO2 Max, or Race Predictor values did not change after adding a second race. Not sure what to make of that ... guess I'll learn more as I stack some additional runs together. At the very least, I would think that Recovery Time would have been impacted by putting together a long run like this.

I'll be sneaking in an easy run this afternoon. I've got some birthday cake to work off, but I want to take it easy on my body. I dashed right from the run into the shower and then into entertainment mode with the family rather than taking a long shower (or sometimes soak in hot tub) and slowly emerging from my post-run stupor. And I was definitely feeling some aches and pains yesterday ... nothing of the knee injury variety, more like "I'm too old for this stuff" sensations. The run this afternoon will be in 75 degree weather, which is about 35 degrees warmer than yesterday morning.

[hoopsguy]

One more side note - it was a little humbling taking a look at Strava and seeing 3 other folks who had posted longer/faster runs than me in the 24 hours surrounding this run. Not that I think I'm a particularly fast distance runner, but I didn't expect to see that many people all showing me up on the same day.

[hoopsguy]

A couple of updates.

5/16: Did the easy run that I had referenced before. Ran it about as slow as I'm capable of self-pacing, assuming I'm not restricting pace on a heartbeat run or something similar. Actually picked up a side-stitch about a mile into the 4km run, which was a little annoying given the pace. But it was about 45 minutes after lunch, so probably not totally unexpected. Going from memory, the watch did re-calibrate recovery time and VO2 Max. But I didn't record those value.

5/17: planned no run, given the heavier effort earlier and plans to spend day/afternoon/evening with daughter. It was her school's "Field Day" event so I went to help judge the hurdles event and then took her immediately after school to a trampoline place called Epic Air, as well as dinner and a favorite treat place. Fun day, still enough walking to get 10K steps, but decidedly unhealthy eating on all our parts.

5/18: somewhat unplanned lazy day. I knew my daughter was meeting a friend after school, so I planned to get my run in after work. My wife had other plans, as we ended up meeting for dinner and drinks.

5/19: first dawn run of the year for me. I've got the Chase Corporate Challenge run in a week. This is a intimate little gathering for me and about 35,000 of my closest friends. The distance of 3.5 miles is pretty non-standard, but close enough to 5k that I normally don't do anything different for preparations. After feeling like I was going kind of fast over my first 1k today I decided to kick the run into gear as a prep for the Chase event. So I shortened up my run a little bit and ran up to the 5.6k mark, including going much harder uphill than I normally would over this area. And a few new watch achievements:
- Fastest 1km: 4:21
- Fastest 1m: 7:17
- Fastest 5k: 23:55
I will need to shave about 25 seconds off that time to hit my goal of 27:00 for the Chase race. Doable given zero warm-up today, moderate hills on the course, and expected boost from having other runners on the course. Only real worry is that I'll have to navigate around a ton of folks, particularly if I start further back with my co-workers. I would be thrilled if the watch showed me approaching my actual record 5k time.

Weight - haven't mentioned this at all yet, but some terrible eating over the past couple of days has pushed me up to 174. At 5'9" that isn't awesome. I'm looking to get under 170 and maintain that weight within the next month. Most of this month has been in the 171-172 range, so this seems pretty reasonable. Medium term, I've got ambitions of bringing the weight south of 165 and 160, but there are some dietary changes required. I'm sure I'll touch on that in future posts.

[hoopsguy]

Grrr, annoyed with the watch today. 2nd run this week where I pushed myself a bit and don't have heart rate info to show for it.

Friday - another easy run. Normally, I do my long runs on Sunday but due to some family travel over the weekend I'm switching the long run to Saturday. So with that in mind, I went about as easy as I could over 4k. Only real hiccup was GI rearing its ugly head to distract from about 3.5k of the run.

Saturday - Set out to do a half marathon in under two hours. As extra motivation, this was the first time we had agreed to let our daughter stay at home with no parents for a short stretch of time. So I wanted to clear this in under 2 hours on a relatively warm morning. After a relatively sluggish start over the first 5k, I found a nice groove and found myself throttling the performance back from 8:30 minute mile pace. At 9k, I saw a group of 6 runners emerge from where I was planning to turn, heading north. I decided to follow them, changing up my planned route. As it turned out, they were going a little slower than I wanted to run and after chatting with them it sounded like they were close to wrapping up their run. So it was time to start working my way back, with the realization that I was likely going to be covering more than a half marathon.

That seemed OK for another 5k, but at the 17k mark I ran into a pretty long and steep hill. My pace was sane for climbing the hill, but I was pretty dead for the next couple of miles. The pace fell back to just shy of 10 minute/mile for the 20th km, before closing out for a slightly better finish to the run. I pushed the run out to 2 hours (to the second) and then walked for about 30 minutes to conclude the walk. A quick phone call confirmed my wife was home with the kid, so I could walk in good conscience.

Achievements:
- Fastest 10k: 53:37
- Fastest Half Marathon: 1:56:10
- Longest Run: 21.75km

All in all, pretty happy with today's run outside of not having heart rate info. I believe that is the fastest half marathon I've run that wasn't a race. The distance shows up on Smashrun as my 2nd longest run ever. I got some experience running in warmer weather, which I am going to need for the July half marathon. And I pushed hard at a point where my body was ready to quit.

I'm up to 120km on the month so far, which potentially puts me in pretty good position for my first 100 mile month. It is my top distance month of the year so far, and it puts me at 456km on the year. With a goal for the year of 800 miles, I'm 11km off pace ... not bad, given that I was 50km off near the start of the month.

So, now it is time to "taper" for my 3.5 mile race on Thursday Not sure what that means, other than I'm probably not going to run any further than 5 miles over the next couple of days, likely won't run hard until Thursday, and almost certainly will take Wednesday off. I would be thrilled if my 5k time for that run eclipses my 5k PR of 22:12 but it isn't a major priority.

[Kodos]

Nice run! It's funny, but my only official half marathon was also my slowest. I went out too fast and died at the end. My practice halves were all better. Next half I'll be smarter.

[hoopsguy]

I've probably logged about 3-5 practice halves, and none of them have been in same range as my real runs. The first two half races I ran last year (two weeks apart from me; I'm a dumbass) I felt like I died pretty hard on the final 5k, but was able to stay (more or less) on the pace I set over the first ten miles. The training right now is to help me feel better about those final 5k of the half. I don't want to be fresh as a daisy at the end of one of those races, but I do want to feel like I've trained appropriately to pace myself throughout. And, ideally, have something left when I'm looking to close out the run.

At the start of the year I set a goal of 1:47:00 for a half marathon this year. That would represent about 3 minutes off my PR, and nine minutes better than the run last weekend. I anticipate running my half marathons in mid-July and late August, so I had better get to work on adjusting to heat if I want to not only PR, but hit those goal times.

[hoopsguy]

So I may have been a little optimistic about getting to 100 miles this month. I'll likely have to put in some pretty serious miles over Memorial Day weekend to hit that mark, given the short runs this week in advance of the 3.5 mile race tomorrow. Not going with a full taper, but also not going to stick a 10k mid-week either and probably will give myself a recovery day Friday if I push hard during the race.

Did an easy run this morning, and for the third time in the last ten days did not get heart rate info. Very aggravating. Upon further reflection, I thought this might be tied to a recent firmware update for the watch. And it appears, based on the power of Google search results, that I might have correctly deduced root cause.

https://forums.garmin.com/showthread...274#post835274

Anyway, there are a couple of tips on how to work around the issue while awaiting a later firmware update to fix the issue. I'm hoping they work, as I hate, HATE, HATE running races and not having good data to review after the fact.

[hoopsguy]

Had the heart rate working this morning, and decided to look to cap my effort at 135. So anytime I hit that mark I would pull back on effort, to the point of walking if that became necessary. I tried to stay in the 130-133 range overall, and think I was able to more or less do this over the last 70% of the run.

What I found interesting was comparing results of this run from Tuesday, when I ran 100% on feel, and Wednesday with the HRM. Here are the splits, for pace and gross adjusted pace (estimate for elevation neutral time), and cadence. HR listed for today as well.

Tuesday:
1. 6:45/km; 6:18/km, 158spm
2. 6:15/km; 6:25/km, 162spm
3. 6:08/km; 6:09/km, 164spm
4. 6:13/km; 6:32/km, 162spm
0.2. 6:31/km; 6:08/km, 162spm

Wednesday:
1. 6:49/km; 6:22/km, 158spm, 121bpm
2. 6:04/km; 6:14/km, 164spm, 131bpm
3. 6:19/km; 6:20/km, 164spm, 132bpm
4. 6:05/km; 6:24/km, 164spm, 132bpm
0.2. 6:31/km; 6:07/km, 164spm, 132bpm

Overall pace differed by 0:01/km. Cadence and each of 1km splits all quite close. So it appears that my easy run pace sits pretty close to 135 beats per minute, even if I'm not locking in on that number with my watch.

Also, my cadence slows down when I'm on my easy runs. If I'm running <5:00/km then I'll usually see cadence in the 170-175 range, and I expect my race tomorrow will put cadence in the 175-180 range. As a longer term objective, I would like to get to a point where my cadence is more consistent rather than so directly tied to speed/effort.

[hoopsguy]

First race for the journal; Chase Corporate Challenge. This was my first run, back in 2013. I agreed to run it with a co-worker, and spent about 4-5 weeks getting practice runs in the neighborhood preparing for the run. I'm not sure if I appreciated the difference between the 5k distance and 3.5 miles that make up the Corporate Challenge, but I do know that I ended up walking in order to complete the race in 30:51. Good for 8:48 mile pace. That number came down to 28:31 a year later (8:08/mi) and our company skipped the event in 2015. So for this year, I set a goal of 27 minutes, which I figure got me somewhere around 7:50/mi pace. It wouldn't be a record 5k pace for me, but this race isn't exactly conducive to PRs.

There were 27,000 people who showed up for this one, per the announcement at the outset of the race. The corral system set up so that roughly 1,000 people end up in the "elite" corrals and the remaining 26K are funneled into the rest of the area. Because people generally line up with their co-workers, you've got a mix of faster runners, slower runners, and walkers that are all jumbled up together. Which makes for a very congested race, particularly the first mile.

Normally, I head over with a group from our office and we settle in the middle of the pack. But the group left before me, and I was with one other straggler as we arrived near the starting area. We were unable to locate the other 20-ish people from our company, until seeing the fastest runner of the group snaking his way up closer to the start of the non-elite area. So I did end up a little closer to daylight than I would normally. We departed about 3 minutes after the beginning of the race, with maybe 2K people in front of me on the course. Which likely saved me a few seconds on the overall race time.

The first 500 meters was almost entirely spent dodging slow folks in front, trying to find some kind of a lane to run in. At this point, the race in on Columbus drive, which offers 8 (maybe 10?) lanes to run in as we approach Lower Wacker Dr. The Lower Wacker part of the race covers the middle two miles, before re-emerging on Columbus to finish. Another challenge emerged with Lower Wacker - entirely expected, based on past races - due to GPS signal being lost somewhere before the first mile marker.

Did I mention that it was hot? Temperatures were around 80 at the 7PM start, which made it the warmest day we had so far this year. And that I was battling a head cold that had emerged the previous morning? Neither of those were super awesome in terms of hitting my 27 minute goal. But my 1k split showed a time of 4:40, which had me running ahead of schedule. All the splits after that were useless, due to the GPS failure, so it was about running by feel from that point forward.

Hot night, Lower Wacker Drive, tons of people, rain the past couple of days = a nasty, muggy hot box of a run. I didn't know if I would be using the water stations going into the run, but I pulled up to both of them, futilely trying to sip a smidge of the water before dumping the rest on my head. I was definitely tiring approaching the 2nd mile marker, and turned my focus on breathing and quickening up my cadence while hoping to shorten stride length.

This race has one pretty annoying element down the stretch. When you jump back on Columbus you see signs showing your time in what appears to be the end of the race. However, that is just the "mile 3 marker" and you have a couple more blocks to go, before taking a left turn and then sprinting for the last 200 meters to the finish. That got me both my first and second times doing the race, where I opened it up for the 3 mile marker and hated life for the last 1/2 mile. This time, I was just lamenting how much further I had to run on Columbus to get to the sign.

I would like to say that my finishing kick was strong, and I guess it was in terms of passing more folks than passed me. The official time for the race was 26:34, but with the splits messed up on Strava (which had me running 6.2km, or about 400 meters further than I did) I can't easily qualify what parts of the race were particularly good or bad.

In terms of the watch, I do not think that the heart rate metrics were correct either. Up to this point, I had observed the watch being in the right ballpark the vast majority of the time on my resting heart rate (with short durations of being insane) and distance runs. But if I'm to believe this data my heart rate was lower in the middle of the race than it was over the first mile.

1km 4:37/km 152bpm 170spm
2km 4:04/km 155bpm 174spm (not horribly off, but likely wrong)
3km 1:09/km 146bpm 176spm (um, yeah ...)
4km 3:50/km 150bpm 176spm
5km 7:24/km 153bpm 174spm (clearly not right either)
6km 4:46/km 176bpm 174spm (think this is accurate)
0.2km 11:17km 168bpm 134spm (junk data, I guess ... mis-clicked following race, but thought it was for just a second or two)

So I had hoped that the heart rate data and cadence data would be reliable, even if the GPS screwed up my splits. I largely trust the cadence, but I'm positive that my heart rate would have spiked up throughout. The max heart rate of 185 is entirely in line with expectations. Average cadence of 173 seems right on, even if I wish it were a tiny bit faster. But all in all, the data on the run does more harm than good. I got 4 achievements on Strava for that run that are all bogus.

As far as the watch goes, again I've got bunk data that I'll need to figure out how to purge:
- Fastest 1 km: 1:37
- Fastest 1 mile: 4:16
- Fastest 5k: 20:50

I only see an option to "Clear All Records" but further digging gives an option to "Clear Record" ... however, it doesn't clear the entry, but the record entirely. So that isn't great either, but I suppose better than flushing all data.

Closing thoughts on run + watch. Chase Corporate Challenge is a total mosh-pit of a run that would be a sure skip if it wasn't a fun event to do with non-runners at work. The last point probably keeps it on my schedule, even if I hate the actual run itself. As far as the watch, I'm disappointed with the heart rate data I got when pushing myself for this distance. A 5k race is, to a large extent, an aggressive tempo run. I anticipated some challenges with surges in activity, but not on something like a tempo run. And I'm still holding out hope on there being more granular controls over records, but for now I'm disappointed in what I've found without breaking out the manual.

[hoopsguy]

Quick update - looks like there is a "Restore Record" option. So I have retained my 1k and 1mile marks on the watch, but the 5k is dumped. So just need to go post something faster than 23:55 and I'll have no remorse

[hoopsguy]

Thread revival. 23:54 on a training run over the weekend for a 5k, so nudged that number down a bit. Considering that I wasn't looking to run a 5k for pace, but felt fast on the first 2k, and that is a pretty encouraging time.

I've been working on a Hanson Half Marathon training plan for the past couple of months, in an effort to have some more rigor around both speed training and getting out more regularly. For my last half marathon of 2016, I posted a 1:48:20 time ... PR by about 75 seconds, but not too close to the 1:47 time I set at the beginning of the year. I have set a goal of shaving 5 minutes off my 1:48 time and I think I can do it if I get consistent with my training.

To that end, Dec 2016 and Jan 2017 show the most miles that I've ever posted - 190 in December and 177 last month. It probably makes sense to post my 2017 goals:
Miles: 1000 miles (up 800 from goal last year, which I hit on New Years Eve)
1/2 marathon: 1:43:20 (5 minute improvement)
10k: 46:00 (48:39 is current best)
5k: 21:00 (22:12 is current best)
Run Ragnar: Madison to Chicago in June

I'll likely be satisfied with hitting the mileage mark and setting PRs across the board, but if I'm going to hit the 1/2 marathon time I feel like the other ones should all be pretty natural by-products. I'm going to need to do speed workouts to hit those numbers, period.

And so far, that has been a challenge in 2017. I got off to a good start at the end of December, when I was able to work from home the last couple of weeks. But I've struggled to get into a good rhythm with morning runs, and my January has largely felt like trying to squeeze in runs rather than stay with the program. Mileage needs to get up to >200km/month and I need to hit both intervals and tempo runs every week.

Second to last note - VO2 Max moved for the first time in months following the 5k run, and is currently listed at 50.

Last note - weight is down to 170, after peaking around 177 in November. I don't have a formal goal weight for the year, but 165 is about the lowest I've been able to hit since college. I think 160 should be doable with continued mileage plus a modicum of discipline with eating. At this point I remain more focused on portion control than making good food choices.

[hoopsguy]

Oh, and kiss of death .. I have been feeling as healthy as I can recall feeling as I've increased mileage over this training program. Knees have not given me any issues in weeks, I've not felt any issues at all in hamstrings or anywhere in my legs at all. I was definitely worried about what would happen when ramping up from 15-20 miles/week to 30-45 miles/week. And while I haven't hit the upper ranges of the latter set, I've cleared 30-35 miles several times while running outdoors in icy conditions and have held up so far.

[muns]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Oh, and kiss of death .. I have been feeling as healthy as I can recall feeling as I've increased mileage over this training program. Knees have not given me any issues in weeks, I've not felt any issues at all in hamstrings or anywhere in my legs at all. I was definitely worried about what would happen when ramping up from 15-20 miles/week to 30-45 miles/week. And while I haven't hit the upper ranges of the latter set, I've cleared 30-35 miles several times while running outdoors in icy conditions and have held up so far.

Good for you Hoops. Glad its working out