Sunday, October 5, 2008
F@#k
So in response to my (admittedly lackluster) writing regime, I received some gentle "encouragement" to update the website. Shortly after my previous post (around the time the school year started to ramp up in intensity) it became clear to me that maintaining a training schedule commensurable with marathon preparation is not, unfortunately, a feasible objective at the moment. Right now, my plan for the academic year is to have finished all of my quals by the end of the summer (about six months to a year in advance of the "standard" timeline for UT students), so towards that end, I'm taking a relatively intense course load. I also live sufficiently far away that it takes me about an hour to get to and from school, so I'm also sacrificing 2 hrs/day just for my daily commute. Between these two demands on my time, there are simply not enough hours remaining in the day to properly prepare to meet my time goal. That having been said, this should not be construed as an abandonment of the goal of posting a qualifying time; rather, it is simply a postponement until my course load decreases (which will happen, at the latest, at the end of this academic year) or until my daily commute shortens (I'm seriously considering moving farther downtown next year, because losing 10 hrs / week sitting on a bus is, frankly, an unacceptable arrangement). So for the moment, I'm continuing to run when I can, and I will reevaluate the prospects for marathon training at the end of the semester, when I get my next course schedule. If all else fails, I will make my next attempt by February 2010, at the latest.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Trying to get back on the horse
So this week got off to a good start, and then I got swamped with work on Thursday, and that pretty much ruined it.
Monday, Sept. 1: Ran down to the school and back. Felt pretty good. (11.0 miles)
Tuesday, Sept. 2: Short day today (4.0 miles)
Wednesday, Sept. 3: Dave's apartment loop 2 (7.5 miles)
Thursday, Sept. 4: This is where everything went to shit. I got swamped with work today and stayed up until 3:00 in the goddamn morning finishing all of it. Goddamn my academic ambition. Didn't run today.
Friday, Sept. 5: Woke up very tired today. Ran Dave's apartment loop 2 again. This run kinda sucked. (7.5 miles)
Saturday, Sept. 6: Felt like shit today, and still have a lot of lot of work left to do. I'll go for a run later tonight when I wake up. (Later: Just did Dave's apt. loop 2 again. This one actually went pretty well, I thought, given how horrible/dead I felt earlier today. 7.5 miles)
Total weekly miles: 37.5
I was going for 40 miles this week, so I'm not off by much, but I'm still kinda pissed that I didn't quite get there (I'd have been comfortably over if I hadn't been swamped on Thursday). Really, I view the next few weeks' training as at least as much mental as physical: there are going to be many opportunities between now and February for slacking off or rationalizing my innate laziness, and I need to get in to the habit of formulating weekly and daily goals and sticking to them if I want to have any chance of success. So it's not so much the fact that I'm 2.5 miles short (which in the grand scheme of things really won't make a difference) as much as it's an indication that I failed in reaching my goal this week that's bothering me about this. On the other hand, my plan is to increase my weekly mileage by around 3 miles/week between now and mid-October, so if I stick to this daily mileage schedule next week (and include a run on Thursday), I should easily be able to get my mileage goal next week. On a related note, I think I should probably look around for another couple runs that I can do, because I think I'm very quickly going to get bored with these. I'm planning to start running from campus earlier in the day (rather than my apartment) as soon as it starts to cool down, since this means that I'll have a more interesting variety of things to run by (since UT is right in the middle of downtown Austin, almost immediately adjacent to the state capital), and also that I'll be running earlier in the day at a fixed time, so it will fit into my daily schedule much more conveniently than it is now, and at a fixed time, too.
Monday, Sept. 1: Ran down to the school and back. Felt pretty good. (11.0 miles)
Tuesday, Sept. 2: Short day today (4.0 miles)
Wednesday, Sept. 3: Dave's apartment loop 2 (7.5 miles)
Thursday, Sept. 4: This is where everything went to shit. I got swamped with work today and stayed up until 3:00 in the goddamn morning finishing all of it. Goddamn my academic ambition. Didn't run today.
Friday, Sept. 5: Woke up very tired today. Ran Dave's apartment loop 2 again. This run kinda sucked. (7.5 miles)
Saturday, Sept. 6: Felt like shit today, and still have a lot of lot of work left to do. I'll go for a run later tonight when I wake up. (Later: Just did Dave's apt. loop 2 again. This one actually went pretty well, I thought, given how horrible/dead I felt earlier today. 7.5 miles)
Total weekly miles: 37.5
I was going for 40 miles this week, so I'm not off by much, but I'm still kinda pissed that I didn't quite get there (I'd have been comfortably over if I hadn't been swamped on Thursday). Really, I view the next few weeks' training as at least as much mental as physical: there are going to be many opportunities between now and February for slacking off or rationalizing my innate laziness, and I need to get in to the habit of formulating weekly and daily goals and sticking to them if I want to have any chance of success. So it's not so much the fact that I'm 2.5 miles short (which in the grand scheme of things really won't make a difference) as much as it's an indication that I failed in reaching my goal this week that's bothering me about this. On the other hand, my plan is to increase my weekly mileage by around 3 miles/week between now and mid-October, so if I stick to this daily mileage schedule next week (and include a run on Thursday), I should easily be able to get my mileage goal next week. On a related note, I think I should probably look around for another couple runs that I can do, because I think I'm very quickly going to get bored with these. I'm planning to start running from campus earlier in the day (rather than my apartment) as soon as it starts to cool down, since this means that I'll have a more interesting variety of things to run by (since UT is right in the middle of downtown Austin, almost immediately adjacent to the state capital), and also that I'll be running earlier in the day at a fixed time, so it will fit into my daily schedule much more conveniently than it is now, and at a fixed time, too.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
First week back
So this was my first week of running again after getting to Texas (after having taken about two weeks off due to traveling/craziness getting set up here). I used Google Earth to plan out a few routes that are kinda nice (well, at least the ones that originate from the university are nice; the ones from my apartment are.... convenient). So far, I've got:
Dave's apartment loop 1: 6.5 mile loop:
I-35 South from my apartment to the 290, turn onto Koenig, then onto Airport, then onto Lamar, then onto Anderson, then back up the I-35 to home. Mostly flat, with a couple of half-mile or so gradual, steady hills. About 70% can be run on grass bordering sidewalk.
Dave's apartment loop 2: 7.5 mile loop bordering the I-35 South:
Just like the above, only instead of turning at Anderson Lane, you tack on another mile by instead following Lamar up to Rundberg, then turning onto the I-35 again and running south to my apartment.
Out-and-back to UT math department: 11 miles
Basically, you just follow the I-35 all the way in.
There's also a hike-and-bike trail bordering the river that's probably about a 10 mile closed loop and is about a 2 mile run from the math department building through downtown Austin that I'll probably take advantage of once the weather (and the humidity!) become slightly more bearable. Right now I've been mostly running from my apartment later in the day (around 7:00 or so) to try to beat the heat. So I suppose it's time for the obligatory summary of the week.
Wednesday, August 27:
Rented a locker for the semester at one of the UT gyms to store all my running stuff so that I could run on the trails bordering the river, rather than on all the cement around my apartment. By now, I'd gotten used to walking around in the heat and humidity, and so decided to go for a run at around 2:00 so that I could catch the bus back home at a reasonable hour (it takes me about an hour to get to or from the department because even though I don't live very far away, the buses take a very meandering route to get there in order to service a lot of the outlying Austin neighborhoods). I figured that I'd gotten used to walking around in the heat and humidity, so I'd be fine running in it, too. I was wrong. Very, very, painfully wrong. This shit seriously sucked. By the time I got back I was sunburned, dehydrated, overheated, and tired. I don't think I'll be using my locker at the university again until the weather cools down a bit (or until I need to do some interval workouts - we've got a nice track :-).
Miles: 6.5
Thursday, August 28
After the previous day's disastrous attempt at running from the school in the afternoon, I decided that I'd wait until later in the day and leave from my apartment, in an attempt to beat the heat. After doing some Google Earth-ing (Earth Googling?), I found a few loops around the apartment that I thought would be good for some recovery runs, and decided that I'd just scout one out. I was planning on running "Dave's apartment loop 2". In actuality, I ended up running about a mile and half beyond where I was supposed to turn off of the I-35, and then proceeded to completely lose all sense of my position and orientation. Even after having returned home and retracing my route, as best I could, with the aid of Google Earth and my admittedly capricious memory, I am still unsure as to exactly where I went. Let me just say that I have identified a route that I think is a reasonable approximation of where I went. I have decided to call it Dave's "Where the FUCK am I!?" loop; it's about 10 miles long, and has multiple self-intersections.
Although I actually hadn't planned on running a 10 mile run on this particular day, I actually felt pretty good when I finished it.
Miles: 10
Friday, August 29:
I had originally planned on doing a long(er) run of about 8 or 9 miles over the weekend, but seeing as how I inadvertently ended up doing one the previous day, I figured I'd just run standard 6.5-7.5 mile runs Friday and Saturday. I decided to do Dave's apartment loop 1 (so I could finally scout out the actual route iteself, rather than the wacky shit that I ran last time). Didn't get lost today, but this run did not feel very good. I'm not sure if it was some residual tiredness from the previous day's longer run (although I hadn't felt especially tired when I had returned the previous day) or because it was hotter or more humid, but it took me a long time to hit my stride, and even then it still felt harder than it really should have for a relatively short recovery run. My best guess is that my body is revolting at being pressed back into service after a two week vacation.
Miles 6.5
Saturday, August 30:
Woke up today feeling like shit. I had gone out last night with some math grad friends from the University, and hadn't gotten back home until around 3:00 AM. I pretty much spent morning doing chores around the apartment and buying groceries, and felt very lethargic by the time I'd gotten all my work done. By now I've concluded that my blah feeling was indeed caused by a two week running hiatus, and was seriously considering taking the day off because I wasn't feeling so great. However, in light of the fact that one of my objectives in training for this race is not to be such a weak little bitch any more, and given that indulging my soul-crushing laziness even a little is a classic slippery slope, I decided to just man up and do the run anyway. Surprisingly, today's run actually felt pretty good, in spite of the fact that I felt horrible when I started it. I ran at what I thought was a decent pace, at an appropriate level of effort, and actually felt quite refreshed by the time I made it back home. Perhaps it was the fact that, due to being tired at the start, I was simply running more relaxed today than I was yesterday, which is ironic, given that I'm certain I must have completed today's workout in appreciably less time than I did yesterday's. Perhaps I should focus on improving that aspect of my running on some of my other recovery days (not running more slowly, but simply concentrating on running at the same speed but more relaxed, so as to reduce the amount of effort necessary to maintain that pace). All in all, I would say that this run felt the best out of all the ones I've done so far.
Miles: 6.5
Total mileage for the week: 29.5 (over 4 days)
Really, the goal of this (partial) week was just to get some mileage under my feet and get my body used to running again after my brief hiatus; I still have at least about six weeks before I have to start my actual marathon training schedule (18 weeks leading up to the race). The primary physiological adaptations required for successful marathon running are pure endurance (accomplished by weekly long runs) and a high lactate threshold (accomplished by tempo running), so I think next week I'd like to start adjusting the distribution of my weekly mileage to bring it into better alignment with what I'll be doing once I start my training seriously. To that end, I think I'd like to include an out-and-back run to the UT math department (probably next Saturday), and perhaps one other medium-length (8 or 9 miles) run sometime between Monday and Wednesday next week.
Dave's apartment loop 1: 6.5 mile loop:
I-35 South from my apartment to the 290, turn onto Koenig, then onto Airport, then onto Lamar, then onto Anderson, then back up the I-35 to home. Mostly flat, with a couple of half-mile or so gradual, steady hills. About 70% can be run on grass bordering sidewalk.
Dave's apartment loop 2: 7.5 mile loop bordering the I-35 South:
Just like the above, only instead of turning at Anderson Lane, you tack on another mile by instead following Lamar up to Rundberg, then turning onto the I-35 again and running south to my apartment.
Out-and-back to UT math department: 11 miles
Basically, you just follow the I-35 all the way in.
There's also a hike-and-bike trail bordering the river that's probably about a 10 mile closed loop and is about a 2 mile run from the math department building through downtown Austin that I'll probably take advantage of once the weather (and the humidity!) become slightly more bearable. Right now I've been mostly running from my apartment later in the day (around 7:00 or so) to try to beat the heat. So I suppose it's time for the obligatory summary of the week.
Wednesday, August 27:
Rented a locker for the semester at one of the UT gyms to store all my running stuff so that I could run on the trails bordering the river, rather than on all the cement around my apartment. By now, I'd gotten used to walking around in the heat and humidity, and so decided to go for a run at around 2:00 so that I could catch the bus back home at a reasonable hour (it takes me about an hour to get to or from the department because even though I don't live very far away, the buses take a very meandering route to get there in order to service a lot of the outlying Austin neighborhoods). I figured that I'd gotten used to walking around in the heat and humidity, so I'd be fine running in it, too. I was wrong. Very, very, painfully wrong. This shit seriously sucked. By the time I got back I was sunburned, dehydrated, overheated, and tired. I don't think I'll be using my locker at the university again until the weather cools down a bit (or until I need to do some interval workouts - we've got a nice track :-).
Miles: 6.5
Thursday, August 28
After the previous day's disastrous attempt at running from the school in the afternoon, I decided that I'd wait until later in the day and leave from my apartment, in an attempt to beat the heat. After doing some Google Earth-ing (Earth Googling?), I found a few loops around the apartment that I thought would be good for some recovery runs, and decided that I'd just scout one out. I was planning on running "Dave's apartment loop 2". In actuality, I ended up running about a mile and half beyond where I was supposed to turn off of the I-35, and then proceeded to completely lose all sense of my position and orientation. Even after having returned home and retracing my route, as best I could, with the aid of Google Earth and my admittedly capricious memory, I am still unsure as to exactly where I went. Let me just say that I have identified a route that I think is a reasonable approximation of where I went. I have decided to call it Dave's "Where the FUCK am I!?" loop; it's about 10 miles long, and has multiple self-intersections.
Although I actually hadn't planned on running a 10 mile run on this particular day, I actually felt pretty good when I finished it.
Miles: 10
Friday, August 29:
I had originally planned on doing a long(er) run of about 8 or 9 miles over the weekend, but seeing as how I inadvertently ended up doing one the previous day, I figured I'd just run standard 6.5-7.5 mile runs Friday and Saturday. I decided to do Dave's apartment loop 1 (so I could finally scout out the actual route iteself, rather than the wacky shit that I ran last time). Didn't get lost today, but this run did not feel very good. I'm not sure if it was some residual tiredness from the previous day's longer run (although I hadn't felt especially tired when I had returned the previous day) or because it was hotter or more humid, but it took me a long time to hit my stride, and even then it still felt harder than it really should have for a relatively short recovery run. My best guess is that my body is revolting at being pressed back into service after a two week vacation.
Miles 6.5
Saturday, August 30:
Woke up today feeling like shit. I had gone out last night with some math grad friends from the University, and hadn't gotten back home until around 3:00 AM. I pretty much spent morning doing chores around the apartment and buying groceries, and felt very lethargic by the time I'd gotten all my work done. By now I've concluded that my blah feeling was indeed caused by a two week running hiatus, and was seriously considering taking the day off because I wasn't feeling so great. However, in light of the fact that one of my objectives in training for this race is not to be such a weak little bitch any more, and given that indulging my soul-crushing laziness even a little is a classic slippery slope, I decided to just man up and do the run anyway. Surprisingly, today's run actually felt pretty good, in spite of the fact that I felt horrible when I started it. I ran at what I thought was a decent pace, at an appropriate level of effort, and actually felt quite refreshed by the time I made it back home. Perhaps it was the fact that, due to being tired at the start, I was simply running more relaxed today than I was yesterday, which is ironic, given that I'm certain I must have completed today's workout in appreciably less time than I did yesterday's. Perhaps I should focus on improving that aspect of my running on some of my other recovery days (not running more slowly, but simply concentrating on running at the same speed but more relaxed, so as to reduce the amount of effort necessary to maintain that pace). All in all, I would say that this run felt the best out of all the ones I've done so far.
Miles: 6.5
Total mileage for the week: 29.5 (over 4 days)
Really, the goal of this (partial) week was just to get some mileage under my feet and get my body used to running again after my brief hiatus; I still have at least about six weeks before I have to start my actual marathon training schedule (18 weeks leading up to the race). The primary physiological adaptations required for successful marathon running are pure endurance (accomplished by weekly long runs) and a high lactate threshold (accomplished by tempo running), so I think next week I'd like to start adjusting the distribution of my weekly mileage to bring it into better alignment with what I'll be doing once I start my training seriously. To that end, I think I'd like to include an out-and-back run to the UT math department (probably next Saturday), and perhaps one other medium-length (8 or 9 miles) run sometime between Monday and Wednesday next week.
Monday, August 25, 2008
(Re)Initialization
So after the conclusion of what by all accounts could only be described as a spectacular failure to realize my competitive potential while running for Caltech, I've decided that I'm finally fed up with being a weak little bitch. To that end, I've decided that I want to get back in marathon shape in time for the Austin marathon (in February, about 5 months away).
After looking back over my performance the previous few years, I think the one take-home lesson is that it doesn't matter how good your training is if it isn't consistent. I also think that an objective assessment of the situation would indicate that it was only in my freshman and senior years that I really had anything approaching the necessary consistency in my workouts, which essentially explains my disappointing performances from sophomore to senior year.
My old high school cross country coach used to say that the hardest part of running was getting out the door in the morning, and in retrospect, I think that's true. I've come to the conclusion that my biggest running problem is just that I'm just naturally lazy. To try to counteract this, I've been trying to integrate running into part of an overall daily routine, (i.e., going at around the same time of day, so that it just becomes something that I get up and do as a matter of habit). I've been running pretty regularly over the summer (with the exception of the last week or so, due to my uprooting myself and moving halfway across the country), and I've been feeling pretty good so far. In fact, I've actually been feeling better than I can remember for a while in terms of running. I've also been regulating my nutrition much better than I had been at Caltech, which I think also accounts for some of this improvement. I've also been told that Austin has a pretty big running community, and one of the other UT grad students mentioned that there's a UT marathon club that I'm planning on joining. There's also (apparently) a series of races that build up to the Austin marathon; I think there's a few 5K's, then a 10K, a half-marathon, and something like a 30K, and then the actual race itself. In fact, after looking around on the Inter-tubes, it seems like there's some kind of road race going on just about every weekend here (Garrett actually sent me a link to one called the Skirt Chaser 5K).
Other than that, Austin's pretty solid. The other guys in the department seem pretty cool and pretty knowledgeable, and I've got a sweet setup at the university (no TA duties!), so all I really have to do is sit around and think about math all day (which, if left to my own devices, I'd probably be doing anyway :-). My current interest of the month has been "groupifolds", which I can only describe as KICKASS - these things are the coolest thing I have every seen in my life. I'm super serial.
-DR
After looking back over my performance the previous few years, I think the one take-home lesson is that it doesn't matter how good your training is if it isn't consistent. I also think that an objective assessment of the situation would indicate that it was only in my freshman and senior years that I really had anything approaching the necessary consistency in my workouts, which essentially explains my disappointing performances from sophomore to senior year.
My old high school cross country coach used to say that the hardest part of running was getting out the door in the morning, and in retrospect, I think that's true. I've come to the conclusion that my biggest running problem is just that I'm just naturally lazy. To try to counteract this, I've been trying to integrate running into part of an overall daily routine, (i.e., going at around the same time of day, so that it just becomes something that I get up and do as a matter of habit). I've been running pretty regularly over the summer (with the exception of the last week or so, due to my uprooting myself and moving halfway across the country), and I've been feeling pretty good so far. In fact, I've actually been feeling better than I can remember for a while in terms of running. I've also been regulating my nutrition much better than I had been at Caltech, which I think also accounts for some of this improvement. I've also been told that Austin has a pretty big running community, and one of the other UT grad students mentioned that there's a UT marathon club that I'm planning on joining. There's also (apparently) a series of races that build up to the Austin marathon; I think there's a few 5K's, then a 10K, a half-marathon, and something like a 30K, and then the actual race itself. In fact, after looking around on the Inter-tubes, it seems like there's some kind of road race going on just about every weekend here (Garrett actually sent me a link to one called the Skirt Chaser 5K).
Other than that, Austin's pretty solid. The other guys in the department seem pretty cool and pretty knowledgeable, and I've got a sweet setup at the university (no TA duties!), so all I really have to do is sit around and think about math all day (which, if left to my own devices, I'd probably be doing anyway :-). My current interest of the month has been "groupifolds", which I can only describe as KICKASS - these things are the coolest thing I have every seen in my life. I'm super serial.
-DR
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