Goodbye Old Friends

For me trail shoes become old friends. I usually run more miles and spend more time in a pair of trail shoes. They hang around longer then a pair of road shoes and I share some pretty good adventures with them.

Now I  am saying good by to my Inov8 RocLite 295s. Our friendship started  in January of 2012. I ran 50 and  25K trails races with these shoes plus all the training runs for the races. I have really liked these shoes. They have endured 627 miles and almost 2 years of trail running. They are still runnable, but they are starting to look unreliable. They are developing holes at the flex point at the toe box. One of the shoes string bindings has broken. Although they did not out last my 50 dollar pair of Nike Alvords, they seem to be a better trail shoe for me.

The Alvords were tanks and they still are in pretty good shape, but they were not as good on the trail terrain as the RocLite 295s. This is why I bought another pair of RocLite 295s. Maybe I will hike in the old ones or kind of give them a Norse/Teutonic send off in the backyard. So if you smell burnt rubber you might want to give them a moment of silence.

Suposed to be a recovery run

What a great run. I did not expect to have my best 8 miler in weeks/months on a recovery week. I have truly recovered faster from this 50K then I expected.  Monday was a pretty easy recovery run. I was a little achy Monday, but still managed a pretty good run. Today I felt great and the run felt great. I managed a great pace without a drop off at the end. Not sure if this makes sense having my best time in weeks only days after a grueling 50K. The Garmin recorded 8.26 miles on what usually is 8.29 miles in 57:56. Even with the stingy Garmin I had the best time in months.

Ready or Not... Dizzy 50K or Bust.

Well it's here... Dizzy 50K week. This year I hope to do better than ever on a 50K. I have run trails and vertically challenging long runs from spring until now. My 3 week training program has consisted of long runs, one week a technical trail run, one week a hilly 19 or 20 miler, and then an average 16 miler. I feel ready for the vertical trail sections this year. The only thing I could have done a better job on would be some long 3 to 4 hour runs.

My trail runs consisted of about 1800 feet of elevation over 8.5 miles and the long runs were around 1400 feet of elevation over 18 to 20 miles.

The weather looks great with a low of 49 degrees to start with. I feel great and my nagging ankle has subsided some in the last few weeks. I did a little tapering this week. 7 miles of hill repeats Monday and an easy 3.3 miler Wednesday. I went swimming Tuesday and Thursday and probably will Friday.

New Inov8's are broken in and my newly refurbished Garmin 305 is working great. Got the race day hair cut Wednesday and plan to eat a whole pizza Friday night. If I do poorly this year, I will be disappointed because I feel really well prepared this year.

Posted below is my 2010 effort at Dizzy 50K. This actual finishing time was around 5:20. The Strava data only counted moving pace.

2012 Cotton Row 5K ... No Taper, No Problem

This was a good race despite it being a late start on a warm day. I even managed the race with little or no taper.  I had run 16 miles on Saturday and biked 31 miles on Sunday. So race Monday I had no expectations. I had decided that after passing out the week before at the Priceville 5K I was not going to push myself. Well let's be honest I promised my family I would not push too hard.

On race day I got to see my cousin Jenny who has been doing a good bit of running and racing.  What made the race special was that my daughter Dru got up early and came to the race to cheer me on. My friend Dave Truitt was also at the race and I started out behind him at the starting line.It was pretty warm and the sun was beginning to bear down on us. I decided to not push too hard and enjoy the race. After about a half mile I eased passed Dan. Who was I trying to kid, this was a race.  My pacing was OK and I was feeling better than I thought I would. I managed a pretty good pace (6:30, 7:04, 7:38).  There was a pretty good breeze and there was some shade around the buildings.

When I came running down toward the finishing line all I could think of was not stopping to quickly and passing out. Seeing Jon Elmore at the finish also reminded me of the Priceville 5K pass out. I slowed, but ran out of the shoot and then ran on around behind the finishing area. Dru lost sight of me and it took us a while to find each other. She had found one of her friends from high school and I had found his parents, so eventually we all got back together.

I managed to finish 30th overall and 1st place in my age group. I wanted to run under 21 minutes but got a 21:10.  I will take 30th out of over 2000 runners any day. It was great to share the day with my cousin and daughter and not passing out was a real plus.

Prepping for McKay Hollow 2013

McKay Hollow was my first trail race and remains one of my favorites. I am back to some long runs and I did finish Black Warrior 25K in February, but McKay is a different level of race. McKay is more technical and more vertical. It is different right down to the rock, these are slicker limestone and the ones at Bankhead are more of a sandstone material. They are like running on sand paper. I love both these races,but I also have to acknowledge they are different.

I hope to do better each year, but coming off an injury I am not quite up to the level I was last year. I did do pretty good at Black Warrior this year. Not a PR but I did place in my age group. My weekly mileage is close to the point before the injury and I have done some trail running. I ran 8 miles at Rainbow Mountain in Madison Saturday to prepare myself for McKay. I managed not to have any major falls Saturday. The trails there are pretty technical, but lack the elevation of the McKay course. It is surrounded by residential housing, so it is a trail I feel like I can run by myself. Bankhead is to remote to run by myself.

2012 Year In Review

2012 was a pretty good year. I had some really good base mileage this fall.  I ran a duathlon, 50K, 5Ks and an 8K.

This year I ran 1409 miles at an average pace of 7:48 min/miles and biked 1490 miles at an average speed of  17.1 mph. It was a breakthrough year for my swimming. I swam 178 miles at an average mile pace of 35:10 which is 3 minutes better than the pace I had in 2011. 

In May I passed-out at the finish of Priceville Parks and Recreation 5K. This was the second time I did this. I passed out at Jesse Owens 10K in 2011. The ironic thing is that the 2 races are on the same day.  I still managed 1st place in my age group and 16th overall out of 124.  I beat the heat this year by running fast all summer and finished a 5K in August with a 20:16. This is faster then I believed possible for me in the heat of summer.

I developed more base this year. I was completing 20 mile long runs just about every Saturday this fall in preparation for the Rocket City  Marathon. In November I developed pain in the big toe and ball of my right foot. I was limping every where even walking. This forced me to stop running in November. I was able to resume running by the last day of the year.

God has blessed me with another year of running.