Doth quoth the DaveM

Running again

After some months of driftless, occasional running, I've decided I needed a goal to motivate my training. I looked at some of the upcoming local half marathons, but they're too soon for me to train up in time without a high risk of injury. I decided to train for the Capitol 10K, which I've run a few times in the past, but stopped running due to lack of interest. It's such a large race that fighting the crowd of people who've lined up in the wrong place takes a good mile, and I got tired of that. But it turns out to be about ten weeks out, long enough to get back into the groove. I set up a plan using the Runner's World Smart Coach tool. I'm hoping this will be motivation enough to stick with it and build my weekly mileage back up from about 5-10 miles up to 20.

Posted at 02:44PM Jan 23, 2008 by Dave Marquardt in Running  | 

Still running

I haven't blogged about running for a while, maybe because it's just taken up a routine part of my life, not an all consuming passion like it is when I'm doing marathon training. I'm just training for a half marathon this winter, and I have to say I like running fewer miles and not devoting so much time, particularly on weekends, to running.

Since I decided not to do a marathon this winter, that knocked me out of even starting the Austin Distance Challenge right away. So I've only felt compelled to run one race, the IBM Uptown Classic 10K back in early October. I contemplated others, but due to conflicts or just not being interested, I haven't done any.

I was originally training for the AT&T Austin Half Marathon on February 18, 2007, but due to yet another Cub Scout conflict, I'm going to run the 3M Half Marathon on January 28. I wanted to run both, but I made a vow not to let my running get in the way of Cub Scouts or family activities this winter, and have done well with it.

Finally, I was happy to see fellow runner and Sun blogger Scott has taken up running again. Keep it up Scott!

Posted at 12:57PM Jan 03, 2007 by Dave Marquardt in Running  | 

Once a Rogue, always a Rogue

Several weeks back I decided I couldn't join Rogue's AT&T Austin Half Marathon '06 training program because I had a conflict with the early Saturday morning long runs. But after Nick's soccer season started I discovered the earliest game he has starts at 10:00 and most are later. This should be plenty of time for the long runs that typically begin at 7:30 somewhere in the downtown Austin area. So I joined the Rogue program on Monday and attended my first weekly group workout on Tuesday evening. We did hill repeats near La Frontera in Round Rock. Good workout.

Posted at 01:59PM Oct 11, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  | 

Running, biking and heat waves

I've been slacking off on running the past few months, concentrating more of biking. I enjoy biking quite a bit, and have been biking to work when the weather is good. Unfortunately, the weather has been uncooperative. Currently we're in a heat wave with a predicted high of 104 degrees Fahrenheit!

I've been searching for a half marathon training program for the fall and winter. I've decided to take a break from marathon training this winter and concentrate on half marathons and shorter distances. I've decided I really don't want to go back to Round Rock Fit, as my last experience there was not so great. I'd like to go with Rogue again, but they currently only offer the half marathon long runs on Saturdays, which conflicts with my sons' sports in the fall. I checked out Runner's World Online web site, and found something new (to me), Smart Coach. You input a recent race time and distance, how many miles per week you're currently running, how hard you want to train, your long run days, the distance for which you're training, the length of the training program you desire (2 to 16 weeks) and the Monday recent or near future Monday you want to start training. It seems like a reasonable program that it spit out for me. What it doesn't seem to include is any guidance on hills like I got from Rogue last season. It does include tempo runs and speedwork, so it seems fairly complete.  If Rogue doesn't work out, I'll probably use SmartCoach.

Posted at 04:31PM Jul 18, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  | 

Rogue Trail Series: The Maze

I ran the first event of the 2006 Rogue Trail Series, The Maze 10K at Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park in Austin, TX, on Sunday 2006-04-23. This was my first trail race, and I thought it was pretty fun. According to this review there were about 165 runners who ran the 30K and over 100 of us who ran the 10K. While I got a little muddy, it wasn't all that bad. There was one creek crossing where you just had to take the plunge and run through the water. Fortunately, it was in the second half of the 10K loop, so I didn't have to run with wet feet for too long. The 30K was three times around the 10K loop, so I guess they had wet feet for significant amounts of time.

One interesting comment from the review was this:

Ferguson averaged about a 9:00 minute-per-mile pace over the rugged terrain of the 30K course. If that sounds easy, it’s not. He estimates it’s the equivalent of running a 6:45 pace for a road 30K.

So my 10:47 pace sounds slow, but according to my extrapolation of the author's formula, it was equivalent to 8:05 per mile pack for a road race. That's pretty fast for me. I was certainly tired out. With all the twists and turns and ups and downs, you do get much more worn out than a road race.

I'm contemplating running the next in the series, The Loop on 05-21. Again, the 10K option, but it sounds quite different, much less mud, lots more big rocks.

Posted at 01:38PM Apr 24, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  |  Comments[1]

Trying to balance running and biking

I've been trying to balance running and biking lately. I'd like to increase my biking, but frankly, riding on many of the roads around here scares me. And it doesn't help that I got yet another cold a while back, stopping me from either running or biking. We also went camping at Granger Lake this past weekend, and I've given up on trying to run while I camp, it just never happens. And finally, I really ought to pick up some sort of book on bicycle training, so I can improve in that area. I suppose ideally I'm aiming at being a duathlete, though I'm not sure I'm ready to go there yet. Maybe a triathlete, if I got better at swimming. I was at Nick's swim lessons at the Y yesterday, and thought that I should look into adult swimming lessons, as a refresher and to improve my strokes. Then I might be willing to tackle a triathlon.

Phew, rambling. Anyway, I am doing a race this week, the first of the Rogue Trail Series, The Maze 10K. I've only done one trail run of this type before, during my marathon training this past winter. So this will be an interesting experience. I intended to do a training run or two at Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park in preparation, but it didn't happen.

Posted at 02:41PM Apr 20, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  | 

River City Ten Miler

On Sunday 2006-03-19 I ran the newly revived River City Ten Miler in Austin, Texas. This race, on a nice net downhill course through the north side of Austin, has not been run since the mid-90s. My mid-level goal was 1:30 and I ended up with 1:29:10.6, with some nice negative splits.

From an organizational standpoint, this race was really well done. The starting area at Northcross Mall was laid out nicely, the water stops were nicely done and competed for our interest, and the finish area worked pretty well too.

Here's hoping the River City Ten Miler is back to stay!

Posted at 02:13PM Mar 20, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  |  Comments[1]

1 mile time trail

I joined a track workout group led by my marathon coach. Last night we ran a 1 mile time trial. Surprisingly, to me, at least, I ran it in 7:15. I went in thinking, 8:00 would be pretty good. I looked back at the Congress Avenue Mile I ran in September 2004, and my result was 7:16. And that was downhill!

I guess the speedwork we did during marathon training helped. Maybe resting up for a couple of weeks after marathon training helped too.

We're going to work on improving our strength and speed over the next couple of months and do the Congress Avenue Mile again on May 20. I'm hoping to improve my time a bit.

Posted at 10:25AM Mar 07, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  | 

No marathon for me :(

The Freescale Austin Marathon was yesterday (Sunday 19 February 2006) but I wasn't there. I caught a cold last week, and a fever on Thursday and Friday. While I felt quite a bit better on Saturday, by that time my wife was in the throes of the same illness, and I needed to be home to take care of our children. And in reality, I probably wasn't as prepared as I needed to be by Saturday. So I decided not to run. This was certainly disappointing after training for 24 weeks!

Yet, the show went on, despite a few icy roads and cold (for Austin) conditions. One of my friends qualified for Boston after at least the third try that I recall, and I'm happy for her. She's worked hard for it.

So, even before the marathon, I was thinking "What next?" Now, given all this training and no big race, I've got a good start at training to run the River City Ten-Miler. After that, I'm thinking of tackling one or more of the races in the Rogue Trail Series. And I'm going to start riding my bike more, maybe join some organized rides there too. I was also thinking of not training for a marathon next fall/winter/spring, having trained for 5 years and having school-aged children involved in various activities. One of my running buddies from this season suggested that I really need to come train again next year to make up for missing the marathon this year. We'll see. Train for a half marathon or two, maybe, but for a full marathon, I don't know. But I don't need to decide on that until late summer, I suppose.

Posted at 03:18PM Feb 20, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  | 

2006 3M Half Marathon

On Sunday 2006-01-29 I ran the 3M Half Marathon in Austin. The course was the same as last year, very much a downhill course. I was attempting to run at about marathon goal pace as a warmup for the Freescale Austin Marathon on 2006-02-19. Conditions were very nice, staring in the mid to upper 40s and rising into the low 50s as the race went on.

My race went well until mile 9 or 10 when my right calf got very tight and sore. I stopped briefly to try to massage it, but that didn't help all that much. I ran in on it, partly as an exercise to see if I could run through the pain. I could. I know some folks are probably thinking that it wasn't bright to run through the pain, but I really didn't feel that I'd injured anything. And if this same sort of thing happens on marathon day, I want to know that I can run through it for at least some amount of time.

Anyway, I finished with a chip time of 2:06:52 and an average pace of 9:41 per mile, beating my MGP by 2 seconds per mile. I also got negative splits, doing the first 10k at a 9:46 pace and the last 6.89 miles in a 9:36 pace. And that last part in spite of having a very tight calf for about 4 miles or so.

At any rate, not a bad race, even with the sore calf. I'm hoping I can work out the kinks in that leg before the marathon. We're in the taper now (or should I say peak) so I should have plenty of time to recover before the big race.

Posted at 03:13PM Jan 30, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  |  Comments[1]

RunTex to RunTex 22.9 mile training run

On Sunday 2006-01-22 I ran the RunTex to RunTex 22.7 miler (my Garmin Forerunner 201 showed 22.90 miles). We ran at long run pace, so we took it easy. I finished in about 4:15, feeling quite a bit better than when I had finished 14 miles at marathon goal pace a couple of weeks before. It was rainy and a bit cold, but in general not too windy. They threw some hills at us at about mile 15 or 16 for a couple of miles, to simulate having to keep running hard later in a marathon.

Overall, it was a good experience and a real confidence booster in preparation for running the Freescale Austin Marathon on 2006-02-19.

Next up is the 3M Half Marathon, noted for having a fast downhill course and an excellent goodie bag full of free 3M products.

Posted at 10:55AM Jan 24, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  | 

RunTex 20-Miler

I ran the new RunTex 20-Miler on Sunday 8 January 2005. Timewise, this race is in the slot that used to hold the RunTex 30K, which I ran a couple of times previously. For this race, I ran a 2 mile warmup, so my total mileage for the day was 22 miles.

For the first 14 miles of the race, our coaches asked us to run at marathon goal pace. Since I'm trying to run a 4:15 marathon, my MGP is 9:43/mile. I haven't gone back to look, but I hit it within a few seconds on most of the first 14 miles, and the last I looked at it I had averaged 9:41/mile for that period.

For the last 6 miles, we were given two options: Crank up the pace 10 to 15 seconds per mile faster, or finish up easy. Since my back was hurting fairly bad by mile 14, and I was feeling pretty worn out, I decided to take it easy, and in fact walked quite a bit those last 6 miles.

I'm not sure why I was so sore and tired by mile 14, but I speculate on a few things:

• lack of sleep. I didn't sleep all that well for a couple of nights before
• old shoes. The shoes I wore have over 300 miles on them. I have some newer shoes, but I just got them, and I wasn't going to risk breaking them in on a 20 mile race.
• nagging aches in my legs. I've had some aches and stiffness in both my legs the past several weeks, and they've never quite disappeared. This could be a factor.
• strong winds. The winds were blowing 20-25 MPH for much of the race, somehow almost never being at my back, despite a loop course.

Anyway, at least I nailed the 14 mile MGP goal. As for the race itself, it consisted of two loops around the Dell Diamond area in Round Rock, running through Old Settler's Park and out into the rural areas. I've run most of these roads quite a bit in the past, when I've trained with Round Rock Fit, which is based in Old Settler's Park. There was decent food at the end (though I had to ask for a Powerade) with fruit, cookies and breakfast burritos. The finisher's shirt is pretty nice too, a long sleeved technical shirt in black with the race logo and date in red and white.

Despite my ugly last 6 miles, I thought it was a pretty good race.

Posted at 05:12PM Jan 09, 2006 by Dave Marquardt in Running  |  Comments[1]

Ladera Norte training run

On Sunday 2005-12-18, our training group ran the Ladera Norte 21.5 miler. It's called Ladera Norte after the extremely nasty hill on Ladera Norte road. And I thought Mount Bonnell was bad! I walked a couple of times, and was told by someone who was behind me at the time of the hill and passed me later that I'd done a good job in that I walked way less than he did! The rest of the course was also nice, going through west Austin. If you need a long run in Austin with some pretty views, I recommend this course.

Posted at 05:29PM Dec 20, 2005 by Dave Marquardt in Running  | 

Decker Challenge 20K

On Sunday 2005-12-04 I ran the Decker Challenge 20K in Austin, Texas. When I say I ran the 20K, I mean it. I did not race it all, I ran it easy, as recommended by my coaches at Rogue Training Systems. And I enjoyed it much more that way, while reducing the risk of getting injured, getting in a long run, and staying in the Distance Challenge. As usual, Wish has a review.

Next up, after a five week break from races, is the RunTex 20-Miler, which replaces the RunTex 30K that used to be held at the same time.

Posted at 02:33PM Dec 05, 2005 by Dave Marquardt in Running  |  Comments[0]

Motive Half Marathon: right on target

I ran the Motive Half Marathon on Sunday November 20, 2005, for the fourth year in a row. The year before that (2001) I also ran the race, but it was a 20K then and had a vastly different course, not nearly as challenging as the course used the past four years. For those not familiar with the course, Wish has an interesting review.

The head coach of my marathon training program asked most of us to treat this as a marathon goal pace training run. One really good thing about using this course for that purpose is that you can simulate how you're going to feel late in the marathon by how you feel after running the monster hills of this course. The idea is that after the hills you can practice making up lost time while you may feel fatigued. Interestingly, for me, I didn't feel all that bad after these hills. I suspect the long runs we've done on hilly courses has helped, as has the coaches' advice to relax on the hills and "throw away your watch." Good advice.

My marathon goal is 4:15, so for this race I wanted to finish in 2:07:30. That works out to a 9:43 average pace. After the hills, I noticed I was slightly off pace, so I ran the last 6-7 miles a bit faster, but no faster than 9:33, i.e. 10 seconds faster of average pace. In the end, I felt really good about achieving 2:07:30, as I came in at 2:07:38.9 chip time, for a 9:44 per mile pace. And I felt pretty good after the race, and the 2 mile cool down run was pretty easy. Unfortunately, I didn't have time for an ice bath after the race, so today I'm a bit stiffer than I'd like. I've run this race faster, but felt lousier when I've finished, so I guess this may be a reasonable goal pace for me. Also, for me, this time, this race really flew by, I never felt like the race was getting long, as I have in the past. I'm guessing that's because I didn't get as fatigued as I have in the past, due to a slower pace and really good weather.

Another thing Motive is known for, besides a very tough course, is the socks that come with the race packet, and secondarily the t-shirt and poster. The socks are running socks that feature the custom Bison Stampede logo, and over the past four years the colors have changed each year. This year's colors are nice, but I suspect some macho guys will give them away to their girlfriends or wives, as they have powder blue on the heel and around the top of the ankle. On the other hand, who wants to give away running socks! :-) The t-shirt graphics are also really nice, and particularly the past couple of years I've really been impressed by them.

Posted at 12:37PM Nov 21, 2005 by Dave Marquardt in Running  |  Comments[0]