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2012 Chickamauga Marathon Race Report

May 8, 2013 One comment

 

2012ChickamaugaMarathon

This report will be “out of date” within the blog because I am writing it almost 6 months since Race Day. Here is post where I talk about the ‘upcoming’ Chickamauga Marathon.

Race Morning
The Chickamauga Marathon is located in Northern Georgia, pretty close to the Tennessee border and not too far off the interstate. This allows the Chickamauga Marathon to be a day trip race, being able to leave in the early morning and return the same day.

I fell asleep the night before with a couple of alarms set, but I think being anxious about the race was the deciding factor in me waking up. In those wee hours, I gathered the rest of my gear (95% was set out the night before) and loaded it into the car. I put Rock Tape on my hamstrings to prevent injury and shorten the healing time, after all, 8 days later I was going to be running the Flying Monkey Marathon.

One interesting thing about this fall’s training regiment is that I fed myself with just an apple or two before my long runs. And it worked. So, given that I was racing today (I was shooting for a PR time, if not a sub-4 performance), I cut myself 3 of them to eat in the car.

The trip down to Chickamauga was rather uneventful, except when I turned onto the main street leading to Race Start. The traffic was heavy and stressful. Fortunately for me, I landed a decent parking spot right in the main area where START/FINISH was located. I ran down to Packet Pickup to grab my stuff and head back to the car to get ready.

I hadn’t found Susan yet, but Chickamauga is not a mega race, so I wasn’t too worried that I find her. And while I waited in the line to answer Nature’s Call, Susan found me and we were able chat a bit before the race start. I had noticed someone wearing an ASD Athletes shirt, it was fellow runner friend Darrell James!

My plan was to finish the race and then head back out on the course and run with her back to the finish line.

Race Start
The Chickamauga Marathon is intimate enough that you just walk up to the starting line and the spectators create the one and only corral. And like at all races there was lots of excitement in the air.

One cool thing about the Chickamauga Marathon is that it is run primarily through the Civil War Battlefield, and what better way to start the race then with a big mofo cannon? When it fired, it was so loud! Good thing I had already used the porta-potty.

Miles 1-5
The first 5 miles I managed to record sub-9 minute miles. Now while I knew these were a little fast, they felt really good.

2012 Chickamauga02

Miles 6-21
I’m used to running with little to no crowd support, or even few runners, but there is something uplifting when people are cheering, even if it is not specifically for you. I did have my Marathon Maniac singlet on, so I would get the “Good Job, Maniac” which then I knew was for me. This helped keep up my pace for a majority of the race.

I was reminded on the second loop that the Chickamauga Marathon course has some inherent difficulty to it. It doesn’t have any huge hills that are quad busters, it the “rolling” hill profile.  If a “Hill” is a rise in one plane of space, call it the X-axis, Chickamauga has many technical turns with rises and dips on the Y-axis. It’s sneaky… and if you don’t recognize it, it’ll get you.

Psychologically, there’s a bunch of battle monuments through out the entire course, so you get to reflect on those who were there and what they had to endure. Battling with the 1860s warfare technology… tough.

Even though I was running the course efficiently, I was starting to fatigue. At this point I was on target for a 3:54ish finish, but I could tell that I was going to have to give back some of that time, but the question was how much.

Mile 22-Finish
One thing you learn while running 20+ marathons is not to panic. However, while you learn that, practicing it is something completely different. Instead of trying to muscle through “The Wall”, I went straight into marathon survival mode. This included unstructured walk/run intervals, plenty of fluids, lots of looking at the watch and mental math. After 3 hours of running, that mental math gets tough, but strangely helpful, it helps keep your mind off the fatigue in your head.

The last few miles, my pace was all over the place. Mile 23 was in 11:45, Mile 24 was in 10:42, Mile 25 was in 11:40 and Mile 26 was in 10:47. When I eventually get to writing my book on marathons, I am going to have a whole chapter on the last 2 miles of the race. It’s here where I do a good deal of “technical” running with almost 1/2 of it is mental preparation for the finish line.

I didn’t really study the map very well (shame on me, especially after my 2005 ordeal with Chickamauga) and so when I reached the last 0.5 mile I realized that I wouldn’t have to go around the entire loop to finish the race. Instead, it was up a small hill and then a right turn onto the loop with 0.2 miles left to go. Once I realized this, I could hear the finish line commotion. My mental math was calculating a 4:07 finishing time, but was unsure if I could last much longer.

My current PR time was 4:08:38 which I ran at the 2007 Chickamauga Marathon.  It was going to be close, I knew that I had to be deliberate when I walked because I didn’t have too much time to give.

I am a “Kicker”, this means that at the end of the race, at some point I start to run as fast as I can toward the finish line. It doesn’t matter how good/bad the race was or how well I am feeling, I find a point on the course and decide that is when I am going to go full throttle. The last 0.2 mile of the course, is about 0.15 mile down hill, sharp left turn to the finish line. At the 26 mile marker, I started to lengthen my stride, then increasing the turn over to speed up. Once I neared the last turn, I started to accelerate on a wide turn. I knew that I didn’t want to turn too sharply and lose speed just to gain a few feet in distance, my speed would make up more than enough. The clock was ticking closer to 4:08 and I didn’t have anymore time to spare.

I pushed faster, then reached deep inside and used every last drop of energy that I had. As I crossed the finish line, the clock was right near 4:08:30. Given that this was the Clock Time, I knew that I had successfully achieved a PR time. My official time, Chip Time, was 4:08:02, a 36 second PR.

Post Race
My legs were spent, I had nothing in them. I hung around the finish line waiting for Darrell James to finish because he was not too far behind me. I walked over to the food tent where I ran into a fellow Knoxvillian, Jason Altman – race director of the Covenant Health Knoxville Marathon, to learn that he won the marathon overall.

I took a few minutes to get some food and drink in me. Then I headed back out to meet up with Susan. Unfortunately, my master plan of running ALL the way back on the course to find her was thwarted because my legs were so exhausted that I made it about a mile where I had to stop at the water stop right before Mile 25 to rest a while.

I headed up to the part of the course where there was a timing mat and the guy was nice enough to let me rest my legs by sitting in his chair. Susan found me lounging around, but soon we were off to bring her to the finish line. It was so nice to get to chat with Susan while actually running and not on via the intertubes. I told her I doubted I would ever run an ultra marathon (a race greater than 26.2 miles) because at that point I had logged in about 28 miles and felt like crap. Of course, that was just crazy talk… I think there’s a 50k in me. :)

I gave Susan the low-down on the finish line, because knowing is half the battle. I was going to split off from her near the finish line. Her crew (Chasen, Isaac and Isabelle) were waiting to see her finish and Isaac even ran the last part of the race with her! Way cool! Here’s her race report to see some pictures from the race.

After the race, I went back with her and her crew back the to hotel to get a Stout Approved Ice Bath. Thanks to Chasen for getting all the ice. My legs were coooold but felt pretty darn good afterwards. The best part was that Susan had a surprise for me to take home, a Homemade Chocolate Cheesecake. Oooo it was so good… I recommend everyone getting one!

I headed back home with a PR time and cheesecake. It would only be a mere 8 days that I would be running the Flying Monkey Marathon. I ran Chickamauga for “business” (i.e. for time) I was going to be running Flying Monkey for “fun”.

 


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Running Recap

May 8, 2013 No comments

“Who’s pushing the pedals on the season cycle?” – Season Cycle by XTC

Is it April May already? Wow! Back in the day, I’d post a monthly recap of my running. So let me get back on the band wagon slowly… start with a 4 month update. What surprises me is that running is so much part of my life, but in actuality, I haven’t run that far or that often. 2013 so far:

January through April,

I have run 27 times for a total of 136.61 miles:
January – 7 times for 36.1 miles
February – 7 times for 38.1 miles
March – 5 times for 20 miles
April – 8 times for 42.41

I ran 2 Races, both Half Marathons:
2/9/2013 Strawplains Half Marathon 1:54:25 (which was a Personal Course Record)

4/7/2013 Covenant Health Knoxville Half Marathon 3:11:57 (I ran as a Pacer for the 6:00 marathon finishing time and went and found a friend before officially crossing the finish line)

The 2013 Covenant Health Knoxville Marathon Pacers Back Row: Ryan Prout, Tony Owens, Wayne Sherman, Seth Ramaley, George Lockhart, Angelin Miller Front Row: William Brown, Terry Higgins, Ken Sirois Not Pictured: Cruz Pitre, Nicole Howe — with Ryan Prout, William Brown, Tony Owens, Wayne TheManimal Sherman, Seth Ramaley and George Lockhart at Knoxville Convention Center.

The 2013 Covenant Health Knoxville Marathon Pacers
Back Row: Ryan Prout, Tony Owens, Wayne Sherman, Seth Ramaley, George Lockhart, Angelin Miller
Front Row: William Brown, Terry Higgins, Ken Sirois
Not Pictured: Cruz Pitre, Nicole Howe — with Ryan Prout, William Brown, Tony Owens, Wayne TheManimal Sherman, Seth Ramaley and George Lockhart at Knoxville Convention Center.

Compared to my 15 year average of running for each month:
January – above average by 4.5 miles
February – below average by 12.3 miles
March – below average by 17.3 miles
April – above average by 16.21 miles


running

Preparing for Battle(field) Marathon

November 6, 2012 No comments

As I compose this, there is (technically) less than 4 days until the 2012 Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon and so this warrants a blog post to try to capture what I have done to prepare for this marathon. I would have liked to post on a more frequently basis, like in the blog-old days.

Marathon Training: The Ups and Downs

Training for this marathon has been the Dickens… it’s been the best of times and the worst of times. As with my Standard Operation Procedure for a Fall Marathon, training officially kicked off on August 1st. However, on July 29th, I pulled my hamstring and that put a damper on getting my training started like I wanted. All was good, it was at the beginning… I could deal. I would train for 12 weeks instead of 14.

For the most part, I followed my training schedule at least until I got an infection in my right leg. That infection, which was pretty annoying, kept me from running for almost 2 weeks!

Something new and different that I have been doing for this marathon season is taking TaeKwonDo classes while I am training. I had waited until after the Knoxville Marathon this past April before I started taking classes again. I was afraid that jumping into TaeKwonDo while running long distance would be too hard on my body. So, I started back with TaeKwonDo after Knoxville, so that my body would be used to the different exercises during the summer and then I would start in the fall with a TaeKwonDo base as I started running the longer distances.

So far, running and TaeKwonDo have complemented each other. TKD has improved my flexibility (GREATLY) and  body coordination (I’m thinking some parkour!) while my running has given me great stamina and recovery when it comes to free sparing in TKD. There’s a high percentages of Black Belts in the adults class, so being able to have the stamina gives me a slight advantage. Of course, I still get schooled each round, but I like learning this way from the senior students.

Marathon Training: By The Numbers

August
Total Miles: 57.12 (Average pace over all runs 8:53)

September
Total Miles: 92.58 (Average pace over all runs 9:05)

October
Total Miles: 68.49 (Average pace over all runs 9:21)

Marathon Training: to the Music

During most of my runs, I usually am listening to something on a portable device.  Now, I do not do this when it comes to sanctioned races though and I don’t seem to have any difficulty switching between the two. This Fall Marathon season, I seemed to have a Tale of Two Genres (yes, another Dickens reference).

At the start of the training, I listened to audiobooks while running: The Mood Cure by Julia Ross and a few others. However, after the infection setback, I switched to music. On the drive to Chickamauga, I’ll listen to the music but will run sans headphones. I’ll just listen to my internal speakers playing music in my head.

History apart from the Civil War Battlefield

The 2012 Chickamauga Marathon is not the first time that I have run this race. Quite the contrary, in fact, exactly 5 years from Saturday, I ran the 2007 Chickamauga Marathon in my personal record time of 4:08:38. It is my intention, even despite the setbacks, to keep the Chickamauga Marathon as holding my PR time, except with a faster time!

In 2005, I also ran at this event, except I signed up for the 10 miler race. However, I arrived late and in a rush, I started with the marathoners… 30 minutes early but I didn’t realize it until sometime later. Then took a wrong turn, was chased by dogs and ended running much more than 10 miles. Hence, ALWAYS know the course and the start time! You might just save your toe nails.

This year, I am excited to be running with Susan Stout, long time running buddy who we finally get to run in the same race!


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Long Run Flipside

October 8, 2012 No comments

Strange things can occur on the long run. This past Sunday, I had something of a time altering experience in which I am driven to write about this small happening rather than finishing up the post that I have dedicated to 6 weeks of my training.

Since Running is not everyone’s special interest, I am going to toss up the Visual now and include a couple of definitions. Hopefully, you non-runners who have made it this far won’t fall asleep.

Long Run Stats

I was supposed to only run 18 miles during this run, but I miscalculated when I should have turned around, I ran a BONUS 0.75 miles. I am really only looking at the run up to the 18 mile point. The table shows each mile split (i.e. when I hit my stopwatch – tried to do it at mile intervals), how fast I ran each one of those splits, and how much time it took me overall.

The first 9 miles took me 85 minutes to run (Yellow Square)… that’s 1 hour 25 minutes. That means, on average for the first 9 miles, it took me 9 minutes and 26 seconds to run a mile.

But something happened around mile 11, and something in a good way. The second 9 miles took me 78.38 minutes (Green Square)… that’s 1 hour 18 minutes and 23 seconds. An average mile in 8 minutes 43 seconds. In the industry, that’s called a Negative Split. And it’s a sizeable one too!

You might say it could be the course, but the course I ran was pretty much out-and-back, meaning that I was running across the same terrain. The first half was about as hilly/flat as the second half.

This run was 5 weeks out from the Chickamauga Marathon, but it suggests that were I able to keep my performance up for another 8 miles that I could finish in under 4 hours (my highest goal for the marathon distance). Who knows what it really means when it comes to Race Day (November 10th 2012), but it bodes well.

You non-runners can wake up now…


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The First Two Weeks

September 4, 2012 3 comments

The first two weeks of the fall marathon training had a total mileage of zero. That’s right, there was no mileage because of a “tweeked” hamstring. August 1st is the day that I used for my mid November marathons. I have found that 14 weeks is the optimal training period for me. Anything longer than 14 weeks and I tend to get bored and stray from my plan. Anything less and I end up packing in too much speedwork and not enough long runs.

So, there I was, the last weekend in July. On Saturday I participated in a regional Taekwondo tournament, placing 1st in my pattern and 4th in my sparring. On Sunday, our church had a end of summer party for our MERGE program at Tata’s, a local gymnastics training place. I ran and climbed and jumped and swung on the ropes, dropping into the foam pit. All was just peachy and I went to play ultimate frisbee with some of the guys from church.

I’ve only played ultimate a couple of times, my frisbee throws has room for much (very much) improvement. However, I can run, and run and run… Sometimes even fast. And I can catch two, although my vertical jump is hampered by gravity.

After warming up and playing for about 20 minutes, on a rather mundane play, I started off toward a wide position. Nothing too fast, it wasn’t a quick turnover but whatever I did,my hamstring was not happy. I instantly felt a pain in my right hamstring and I knew in 0.759 seconds that I was done for the day. Thankfully, I could still walk on it but I limped off the field.

I immediately started first aid on it, compressing the sore area, light-light stretching, and even getting some ice on it. Thankfully, it was not tender to the touch and did not see any bruising. But now what was I to do? I was clearly injured but had to train.

At least the injury came early in the training. I wasn’t deep into training, so for me to miss runs, now was the time. I decided to play it day by day with Wednesday being the first day that I thought about running. When Wednesday came, it was a little better but not enough for me to try it out. All during the week, I had it wrapped, iced it when I got home from work and tried not to be too strenuous.

I used walking up stairs as a barometer of how it was healing. For at least 8 days, it ached walking up the stairs. Since I have a desk job, I used a tennis ball as a make shift roller that I used work the hamstring.

If my memory serves me correctly, I was contemplating trying to run on it that Tuesday, 8 days since the injury. However, the upcoming Friday was belt testing for Taekwondo and I still needed one more class. I used Rock Tape on my hamstring for the practice and again on testing itself. Not only did the testing go well, but the legs were fine afterwards. I did take the precaution of skipping running over the weekend.

My marathon training for the first two weeks summed to the grand total of 0 miles. In other words, my fall training was reduced to a 12 week training period, something I’d rather do when I had more of a base but what can you do?


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(marathon) is a Battlefield

August 16, 2012 One comment

“We are gone, mile to mile we run
No promises, no demands
The marathon Is A Battlefield”

-with apologies to Pat Benetar

For the fall marathon season, I was in a slight quandary about what to do. The marathon that I really (really, really, really) wanted to do, Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey Marathon [Nashville, TN], switched their registration process from a fast and furious open registration to a weighted lottery process. Thus, I was not assured that I could be able to register for the event.

With registering for Flying Monkey in doubt, I didn’t want to be left high and dry without a marathon to run. I was concerned that by the time I found out if I got into the Flying Monkey or not, my other candidate, Chickamauga Marathon [Chickamauga, GA], would be sold out. Also, the early registration (i.e. cheaper) for Chickamauga was going to end BEFORE I could even enter the lottery for Flying Monkey much less find out if I had made it.

So, I went ahead and registered for the Chickamauga Marathon so that I would know that I had a fall marathon on the schedule. Training could begin on August 1st and all would be good with the world while I waited for Flying Monkey. When the Flying Monkey lottery opened up, I made sure that I registered first thing. After all, maybe some of the weight of the lottery was how quickly you put your name into the lottery.

So I know now my fate with running the Flying Monkey. I will be running Flying Monkey on Nov 18th. What about Chickamauga you ask? What about everything? I will be running Chickamauga on Nov 10th. Yes, 8 days apart… but it is okay… I am a professional and I have a plan.

 


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Back on the Grid

July 24, 2012 2 comments

The one bad thing about vacation is that the world doesn’t stop, therefore, the time that you are relaxing things like mail, work and items needing attention build up. So while my vacation ended on July 9th, it wasn’t until July 16th that I finally had control of email both personal and work. Now that I have a little bit of a breather, I can now get down some of my thoughts.

VACATION

Myrtle Beach, SC was our vacation destination. It works out that My Lovely and Talented Wife grew up close to Myrtle Beach and so some of her immediate family still lives in the area. This gives us an advantage. First, we get to use the beach condo for our vacation stay which helps greatly with the budget. Second, staying at the beach is like a mini family reunion.

One drawback about the beach is that the mobile reception (Sprint) stinks. For the most part the connection to the network is sufficient but it goes into spurts of connecting/not-connecting which makes using apps that must connect to the network frustrating. Hence, I essentially stopped using Facebook and Twitter. In addition to mobile network difficulties, access to wifi networks was minimal. The condo that we stayed in had free email in the lobby, but there’s not a whole lot of comfortable working space and it’s all the way down in the lobby.

I was also having phone issues (Sprint EVO shift) with the memory and so I cleared the data for Facebook and Twitter. I never logged back into them because of the aforementioned network connectivity issues. Plus, I didn’t want to spend all of my time surfing Facebook and Twitter.

Most days we went down to the beach followed by going to the pool. We watched the movies Madagascar 3 and Brave, both which got thumbs up from The Kids.

Apart from family that live in the area, Pete, aka “Pa-Pa”, and Janet, aka “J-lo”, came to spend a number of days with us at the beach. Pete is my father (technically he’s my adoptive father, some of you might remember the passing of my biological father back in 2006) and Janet is his girlfriend of many moons. We don’t get to see them very often because of the whole space-time continuum (they live in Virginia), so this was a bonus.

Even despite the technology issues, I was able to read the ebook Frost Arch by Kate Bloomfield via the Kindle App on my phone. It was pretty good, actually, I liked it enough to want to read Book 2 of the Fire Mage Trilogy called Flamethroat (released date of August 1, 2012). I got word of Frost Arch from Pixel Of Ink. It’s a fantasy book set on Earth in the wayyy future where humans have evolved to have magical abilities. This is the story of Avalon Redding who is, you guess it, a fire mage. She can conjure and control (kind of) fire. As a potential danger to her family, she feels that she must leave and start a new life. She strikes out on her own in the cover of night and within hours of leaving she’s already getting herself into potential trouble. Ms. Redding is a very intriguing character who she crosses path with a host of equally interesting friends and foes.

One strange thing that happened on vacation was that I ran 0.0 miles. I brought everything that I needed. I even brought my fashionable Dump Runners Club headband to keep the sweat out of my eyes.

GRRRR… software issue and part of the post lost… so here is the short-short version:

I didn’t run because I chose sleep over running and was cool with it

The kids get to have birthday parties both in TN and in SC because of vacation timing

I’m back on the grid and have more posts to write. I am also working on an episode of my podcast, Gravity[at]1053′


Life In General, running , ,

Back to Atlanta

June 15, 2012 One comment

I had the chance to return to Atlanta GA this past week for work. We were staying at the Hilton, so I knew that there would be treadmills at my disposal since I would be missing 3 days of lunchtime run slots. I would have preferred to run outside, but I wasn’t sure of where the Hilton was located in Downtown Atlanta and whether it would be relatively safe for me to be running out and about.

I was having some major congestion issues, it was almost like I had a full-blown cold except for the fact that I had no signs of actually being ill. I deduced that it must have been a result of my Chiropractic appointment when the massage therapist worked on my upper back. She had mentioned that it was REALLY tight, and therefore the toxins released from that session was coarsing through my body. I had gone through something similar for about 6-8 weeks back in September, so the whole action-reaction was still fresh in my mind.

Sure enough, if I could massage the muscles in my back by using the corner of a wall, then my congestion would go away for about 10-15 minutes but then come back. I was able to run for 3 miles on the treadmill and I only really stopped because the air in the workout facility wasn’t moving very much and felt stuffy.

On the way back to Knoxville (ab 3.5 hour trip), I made an appointment to see my chiropractor. I had my shoulder worked on again and now the obnoxious amount of congestion is gone but I still have some small amount of rattling in my chest. I’ll work on my back over the next few days and see if that won’t help some.

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I thought on my trip that I would have time to work on the next episode of Gravity[at]1053′ but I didn’t get further than making a few talking points. I’m thinking that I will need to redesign a few things with the podcast such as the name since the ampersand won’t work well with Twitter. I’m also thinking of redoing the show intro as well.


Life In General, podcast, running

Before the Fall

June 5, 2012 4 comments

I just posted my May running recap and while I was writing that post, I wondered what my June and July would bring. I had a friend at church ask me if I was running any summer races. My reply was that I did not have anything planned other than a 5k in August even though there are quite a few races around here during those months.

Historically, I don’t run very much in June and July. First, there is the heat. It usually takes me all of June to acclimate to heat, so that running in July, August and first part of September is manageable. Second, June and July is my rest period in between the Spring Racing and Fall Racing seasons. Expo 10k is the Farewell to Spring racing while the Scholar’s Run 5k (the one on August 18th) is the Hello to Fall Racing (fall training technically starts on August 1st).

Now, just because I don’t log much running during June and July doesn’t mean that there’s not running stuff happening. It does have LOTS of planning and this year, late July is going to be crucial. My fall marathon of choice is the Flying Monkey Marathon on November 18th. My “alternate” marathon is the Chickamauga Marathon on November 10th. However, it is not that simple…

FMM LogoThe Flying Monkey Marathon is advertised as a marathon for fools. In fact, it is so foolish that training for the marathon is futile. Now, as someone who run the Flying Monkey marathon with little training, I agree. Flying Monkey is a marathon where you are going to get a PR if it happens to be your first marathon, and if it is your first marathon, that’s pretty foolish. However, the Flying Monkey marathon is super cool and sets the bar high to other marathons on how marathons should be organized and how to treat the runner. It’s so popular that it sells out fast. Real fast. Because of this, there is going to be some sort of lottery. What this tells me is that there is a chance I might not be chosen, therefore, I need a Plan B… so say hello to Chickamauga Marathon.

Chickamauga Marathon just happens to be the course of my current marathon PR time. It also does a great job of treating the runner right, it’s just not as sassy as Flying Monkey. A bonus for Chickamauga is that it’s less than 2 hours away, an easy day trip. Another bonus is that “I Run For My Life” Susan has Chickamauga on her short list. Except that if I am going to run Chickamauga, it’s going to be for business (PR time) not for a social outing.

These two race’s registration will collide together at the end of July. Flying Monkey is supposed to have their lottery toward the end of July or on the traditional day of Flying Monkey registration of August 1st. Chickamauga is having “early bird” registration through July 31st. It might be that I won’t to know if I am running Flying Monkey before Chickamauga goes up in price. If this is the case then I would need to register for Chickamauga and then see if I get into the Flying Monkey Marathon.

Worst case scenario, ‘I don’t get into Flying Monkey’, would be the easier of the two scenario as I would only have one fall marathon. Best case scenario, ‘I get into Flying Monkey’, would be the tougher because I would have 2 marathons within 8 days of each other. But for those of you who have been around, might remember that I ran a similar set up back in 2008, with Rutledge Marathon and Flying Monkey Marathon.

Either way, my Fall Marathon training will start on August 1st regardless of the number of marathons I will be running.

 

 


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Monthly Running Recap: May 2012 Edition

June 4, 2012 2 comments

I wonder when the last time that I actually posted a monthly recap. Given the fact that my Race Reports are either none existent (i.e. 2012 Prediction Run, Calhoun’s 10 miler, Strawplains Half Marathon, Whitestone 30k and Expo 10k) or they take forever to post (i.e Georgia Marathon and Knoxville Marathon), I would venture to guess somewhere back in early 2009.

Ha. You see? So what are you going to do?

"It doesn't matter. It's in the past."

But there is no need to worry about the past. So let’s see what the descriptive statistics say about the month of May in 2012:

Total Mileage: 37.2 miles over 9 running excursions (average month of May from 1999-2011 is 26.6 miles)
Mileage Year to Date: 325.43

Types of Runs:
4 – EASY 8:41 min/mile Average pace
4 – TEMPO 8:32 min/mile Average pace
1 – RACE (Expo 10k – 8:28 min/mile Average Pace)

Fastest May Mile Split: 7:21
Fastest Split Interval: 1:12 (Last 0.2 of Expo 10k equivalent to 6:00 min/mile pace)

I’m anticipating June and July to be about the same mileage. Fall Marathon Training starts in August and to battle the heat in June and July, I’ll do more speed work. That’ll be more sessions, but shorter. I don’t have any planned Races in June and July, but you never know.


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