Category Archives: Sports

The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.

Running, Sports

Race #51 – Quest for the Golden Pearl 5K

5 Comments

With exceptionally cool morning weather this week, I resolved last night to get up early today, and run.  It didn’t hurt that the Perseid meteor shower was also coming up on its peak (which is tonight).  So,  at 4:30am, I drug my tired self out of bed, threw on my running gear, and walked out on the deck, both to confirm the temperature was as predicted, as well as to see if there were any streakers in the sky.  The temp was great, but I saw nothing of the Perseids.  🙁

I scarfed a little breakfast (water and an English muffin with peanut butter and some wonderful honey from the pantry — this stuff was kinda green colored, and crazy sweet!), and trucked out to the site of my last awful run… the Wildwood Greenway.

This time, Mr. Sun wasn’t gonna harsh my buzz.

Last night, I set up my Garmin a little differently, albeit still for intervals.  In the ill-fated run on Monday, I set up intervals in the Training set of menus.  This was the way I was accustomed to doing intervals with my old Garmin, so I thought that was right.  When doing it like that, however, you can only specify a specific number of cycles of running and walking, and in the online app, splits are shown as a function of those cycles, rather than kilometers or miles.  Not great, but the price of entry.

Playing around with the menus, I saw that I could set up an alert for my running/walking intervals, and after a little testing from the couch last night, I knew I’d found the right settings — prompting for run-to-walk transitions (and vice-versa!), as well as preserving my kilometer splits.  Perfect!  With my intervals set to 30secs of running and 90secs of walking, I was ready.

So this morning at the Greenway, I exited the Jeep, stretched, and hit the magic button on the Garmin to start timing whatever was to come.  I knew that I’d use the first three cycles (six minutes) to warm up and wake up.  Those passed quickly, and I made a commitment…

I was gonna let my Garmin have its way with me, and make me its whiny bitch.  When it said “run”, I’d run.  When it said “walk”, I’d think about it.  🙂

And that’s what I did.  I powered up some hills that usually cause me big grief.  I ran down the backside of some hills, extending my running cycle into my walking cycle because it felt good.  In fact, I ran up some of the hills faster than I ran down them.

It didn’t hurt that the temperature was twenty-five degrees cooler than Monday night, or that I only had the sun on me during the second half of the course.  It also didn’t hurt that I found a commitment this morning that’s been lacking lately.  Yes, I’ve been finishing my races, but on the terms my weak gray matter has been dictating, not at the level of capability I know I have.  This morning, I gave up control of that to a little plastic widget on my wrist, and it forced me to run more consistently than I have in a long time.  In fact, today was sub-50min moving time (those stupid traffic signals pushed me to 50min overall), and that was tremendous, especially after Monday’s debacle.

I’ve never tried running before my workday began, but this just might be a good thing for me!  Now, to go off and reward myself with coffee and Cap’n Crunch…

This race benefitted Water.org, which pioneers innovative, sustainable solutions to the global water crisis, giving women hope, children health and communities a future.

Race Course

Apple Existence, Cycling, Geek-Speak, Running, Sports

Say Hello to My Little Friend

iPod Shuffle (4th Gen)
iPod Shuffle (4th Gen)

I’ve had a love affair with music since I was a kid.  I can’t remember a time when music wasn’t a huge piece of my life.  And because of that, I love running with music.

A long time ago, I picked up a tiny little iPod, the iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation) to carry music with me when I went cycling or traveling.  I loved that little thing, and it still works very, very well to this day.

However, as I’ve started to do more running, I’ve discovered that you cannot control that model of Shuffle with the on-cable controls — no volume adjustments, next/previous track, etc.  When I’m running, I’ll find that a particular track at a particular time doesn’t hit me quite right, and I wanna skip it.  Sometimes, I’ll find a track that was so good with my pace that I wanna repeat it.  While you can do that from the front of the Shuffle, you sorta have to fiddle with it on your waistband or pocket, and that’s a little distracting to me.

4th and 2nd Generation iPod Shuffles
4th and 2nd Generation iPod Shuffles

As I started to research, I got tangled up between the newer iPod Nano (I have an older one of those too!) and the newer Shuffle.  The new Shuffle pays attention to those on-cable controls and is really teeny, but the new Nano had Bluetooth for headphones.  I even bought some new Bluetooth running headphones to see if I could get them to fit my earholes and get used to them.  No deal.  You see, I love my Bose sport earbuds, despite being cabled.  They fit my ears like they were custom made for them, and ultimately, that’s what made my decision easy.  Shuffleland, here I came.

A few things of note.  First off, the price now is about half what I paid for my first Shuffle.  They both only sport 2GB of storage, but with an option in iTunes, you can “down convert” files to 128kb/s, putting more music in the small space.  Even at 128kb/s, the audio quality is fine for my old ears when I’m out running or riding, and 2GB has always given me plenty of variety when I’m out putting trails behind me.

I’ve had this little thing for a couple of weeks now, and I really love it.  It’s teency, even smaller than the previously diminutive Shuffle.  This time, I even got it engraved at the factory. The only complaint I have about the engraving is that it is really, really small, and is more like a printed message, making it very hard to see.  Still, I know it’s there, and that’s a good thing.  🙂

Packaging
Packaging

I was struck with the reduction in the size of the packaging.  In the photo, you can see the difference in size between the little plastic coffins these two devices were shipped in.  Apple’s gone to some lengths to minimize the amount of packaging in many of their products, and it really shows with the tiny little box for the new one.  One casualty of that move — you only get one Apple sticker, instead of two.

Charging
Charging

The charging system has also gotten smaller.  With the second generation device, there was a long cable and a little dock.  The new Shuffle has a little pigtail cable that plugs directly into the headphone plug.  I kinda like that, especially given that I’ll be traveling with this one to races around the country.  In fairness, it is a little awkward to plug into the back of a Mac or iMac, but works great with my MacBook or a USB hub.

So, after a couple of weeks of putting it through its paces, I think I’ve decided this new little piece of gear is a keeper.  Hopefully, it’ll last as long as my first Shuffle!

Running, Sports

Race #50 – Phone Home 5K

After my success on Saturday morning, I got cocky, and returned to the Greenway yesterday afternoon.  I thought I’d have a great time of it, zipping through 5km, and maybe even adding a few more miles.  And even more optimistically, I set my Garmin to work through  some interval work to see if I could get my times down.

Mr. Sun, however, had an entirely different plan.

I got out to the Greenway just after work, and noticed it was hotter than I expected.  Earlier in the day, we’d had a small storm come through that scrubbed out the atmosphere, and made things really nice.  Apparently, nature abhors a vacuum, and where the humidity had poured down as rain, it was replaced with vicious crazy nasty humidity with big, nasty pointy teeth.  So, not just hotter, but more humid.  Hooray.

Jumping on the trail, I started moving my feet.  I knew I’d take five minutes or so of walking to warm up, and shortly after that, I started to work my intervals.  By the end of the third interval, I knew I was not landing in a happy place, and quickly, my times fell off, and I was looking at conditions and a pace more like the ugly race in Washington almost a month ago.  This too, had turned in a death march across the desert of pavement.

I slogged on, and on, and on, wondering if this distance would ever be complete.  It felt like some kind of sick Groundhog Day, with the pavement beneath my feet never seeming to end.  I finally got to my three-quarters complete point, and knew I was gonna make it through.  Frankly, there’s really no option but to finish — there’s no way to get back to the parking lot, shy of some kind soul stopping on the side of the road to rescue you and ferry you along.

So, I finished — yay! — but I was toast afterward.  Note to self… heat and humidity DO NOT MIX!!!

Race Course

Running, Sports

Race #49 – Sage Rat River Run 5K

Somewhere along the way, I’d heard of the virtual races at Virtual Run World, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t watching them for  races.  Their medals were kinda large and gaudy, and didn’t trip my trigger.  However, I learned recently that they sponsor a “real world” race, and that they were selling off excess medals from those race series.

That race is the Sage Rat River Run, which is run at a variety of distances, and one of those is 5K — right in my wheelhouse.  The other thing that was enticing about this was the rat on the medal.  Darla’s been chasing rats in tubes as part of barn hunt, and doggone-it, I wanted to have my own rat reward!  🙂

I decided to return to the Wildwood Greenway, and run on it for the first time in a couple of years.  This is a great paved trail, with paths on both the north and south sides of Highway 100 (Manchester Road), and is the site of my PR at 5K back in 2012.  Of course, on a nice day, it’s pretty crowded with walkers, runners and cyclists.  Yesterday was no exception.

I’d intended to just go 5K, but kinda got in a groove, and started exploring the trail, getting into some of the nooks and crannies I’ve never explored.  Before I knew it, I was over five miles for the second weekend in a row.  And once again, I found that I had a nice rhythm going (albeit not the fastest in the world!), which is giving me some real confidence about the upcoming half-marathon in Tulsa come November.  I get it that five miles is significantly less distance than 13.2 miles, but the early returns are looking promising!

So, with this weird course yesterday morning, I have no good way of extracting splits for either 5K or 5mi.  C’est la vie.  Sometimes, it’s about the journey, rather than the metrics!

Race Course

Running, Sports

Race #48 – Road Shark Five Mile Run

Given that we all survived another Sharknado, I just had to run this virtual race!

I wanted to challenge myself, and do something a little longer than the 5K races I’ve been doing lately.  Five miles is about 8km, and is a small stepping stone to the half-marathon distance (a little over 21km) that I’ll be doing in November.

Frankly, I’d been dreading this run for a few days.  It’s summer.  This was the longest distance I’d done in almost three months.  And lastly, I was doing it on my own — no race support, other runners, etc.  All that weighed heavy on me as I thought through my route planning for this morning.

I landed on a good, extensible course, which was the path up Clayton Road.  That’s been my favorite 5K route, despite the recent runs on the Wren Trail course.  I’ve favored Wren lately because of traffic.  I love having music in my ears when I’m on course, and Clayton Road just has too much traffic on it to do that, unless you get out early in the morning.

I ate my regular raceday breakfast — toasted english muffin, with peanut butter and honey, paired with a tall glass of water —  stretched and headed out around 6am, just after sunrise.  And right from the start, this run felt different.

The weather was amazing, especially given the heat we’ve had over the last couple of weeks.  I think that was really fortunate for me, as I’ve proven many times this summer that I don’t do well in the heat.

I marched down Clayton, and things were coming easy.  Way easy.  I got to my turnaround point for a 5K, and did a little bit of a gut-check.  Did I have it in me to go beyond this point, and complete these five miles?  I felt good, so I plowed on.

When I planned my route a few days ago, I was surprised to see how far up the road my turnaround point was gonna be.  Somehow, my brain had that location figured to be a whole lot farther away from the house than I’d just seen on the map.  I just knew that couldn’t be right, and I knew I’d be watching my Garmin to make sure I knew my “real” turnaround.

I got closer to my planned turnaround point, and began to climb the last hill on the eastbound side of my route, and I was struck by just how far I’d come… both in my personal journey, as well as this run.  I would never have believed I could’ve travelled on foot so far.

I turned around — and my race planning was correct! — climbed that hill again (from the other side), and got into a great groove going down the long grade as I continued westward.  In what seemed like no time, I passed my 5K turnaround point, knowing I had just over 2km to go.  And right about then, I got a gift.

A business was watering their lawn.

I didn’t dance in the sprinklers, but I did take it in, and let it rain down on me.  Even though it wasn’t especially hot this morning, that unexpected shower felt wonderful, and was the best part of the route this morning.  I was energized by this, and continued to work toward the ranch.

It seemed like I blinked, and was home.  It seemed like the whole course went by so fast, especially the last 2km.  If I had to guess, I was enjoying the benefits of that “runner’s high” that I keep hearing about, but has never quite found me.  This wasn’t the longest run for me — that was the Hospital Hill 10K in early June — but it was by far the best run I’ve had since I began this journey three years ago, taking advantage of my second chance after cancer.

So, how’d this match up against my 10K times two months ago?  Well, it’s pretty amazing.  In June, the race was just over six miles, and I covered it at a pace of 17:54min/mi.  This morning, I did just over five files, and covered it at 16:35min/mi.  I shaved 1:20min/mi off my time in June!  And frankly, this morning, I really believe I could’ve done 10km easily.  Things were going just that well.

After a couple of weeks of pretty challenging running, it was awesome to have a really, really good run!

Race Course
Running, Sports

Race #47 – Guts to Glory 5K

Yet another virtual race… shocker, eh?  🙂

(And yeah, the header image isn’t from this race, but it’s the only image I could think of that had a “gut” in it!)

Yesterday was hot.  There’s no other way to describe it.  Ninety degrees in the shade, and there wasn’t a lot of shade.  However, Da Lou had a “cold” front come through overnight, so the humidity was much less, which  was nice.

I was surprised at the number of folks out on the trail.  I guess the brutal heat of the last week had kept the casual runners and walkers (like me!) indoors.  With the ten degree drop in temperatures since Wednesday and much lower humidity, folks just had to break out, I suppose.  Kinda like cabin fever, but in the summertime.

For me, the heat was exhausting, but it always is.  Despite being a native Floridian, I’m just not a hot-weather kid.  I found myself drinking more water on the course — which is the right answer! — and was pretty dang spent by the time I got home.  There’s a good reason so many races are started in the morning, especially this time of year!

This race benefitted the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.

Race Course
Running, Sports

Race #46 – Remember the Fallen 5K

Anyone who’s read my ramblings about running knows that I love to be out in the rain.

I’d missed this virtual race around Memorial Day when it first came around.  The Virtual Strides folks brought it back recently, with another production run of medals.  After the events back home in Chattanooga, I knew I had to sign up, running this race for the city that helped shape me into the person I am today.

I’d targeted doing this race Saturday morning, but struggled getting myself together to do it, so I deferred to yesterday morning — one of the nice things about a virtual race.  I awoke around 5am to storms, so I didn’t exactly get an early start.  However, I did get started, and that’s a good thing!

Once again, I ran my neighborhood “three lap” course down Wren Trail.  It was raining when I started, which was nice.  And as I ran, I reflected on the last week plus in Chattanooga.  My home town has been bruised by the awful, awful tragedy perpetrated upon our military on their own soil.  My heart’s just so heavy over this.

And that’s why I ran this race… to remember the fallen in my home town.  #NoogaStrong, indeed.

This race benefitted the Special Operations Warrior Fund.

Race Course

Running, Sports

Race #45 – Hollywood Dash Mile

Normally, I don’t jump into short races like this one.  After all, I’m trying to build up my miles toward a 15K and half marathon later this year.  However, I couldn’t resist a short little race on a hot summer night.

This was this group’s first racing event, and frankly, it went off pretty well.  They looped inside the St. Charles Community College campus, which made traffic control and the course pretty easy.  I will say that the heat was miserable, but that’s not the fault of the event folks!

There were two waves of races — one non-competitive and another for competitive runners.  The non-competitive was fun to watch starting, with loads of kids and families taking off at “kid speed”.  Thirty minutes later, the competitive wave began, and I took off.

They had tons of volunteers along the way, and a course well-marked in quarter miles.  The race came and went quickly, and despite some slight hills, was very manageable.  Once again, I proved that I don’t do well in the heat, and did just as much fast walking as I did running.

This is the first “short race” I’ve done in well over a year, and frankly, I enjoyed it.  I’m definitely no sprinter, but I did collect a PR for me for both the mile and kilometer, which was pretty exciting.

The only hitch seemed to be with the finisher medallions advertised on the website for the race.  Apparently, there were only age group medals.  The event organizers have indicate on Facebook that they’re working on how to resolve this, especially since there were so many kids running the races.  Probably more on this another time!

Short race — short race report!

This race benefitted Recreation Council of Greater St. Lois, St. Louis Life, Treehouse of Greater St. Louis, Willows Way, Pathways to Independence, Family Advocacy and Community Training, Community Living, Caring Solutions, The Center for Autism Education and ShowMe Aquatics and Fitness.

Race Course

Running, Sports

Home Is Where the Hardware Is

As many of you have noticed (or tolerated!), I’ve been doing a lot of races lately.  Really.  A lot.  Many.

And because of my current need to have a carrot at the end of a rope when I run, I’ve brought home a lot of hardware from my efforts.  (I’ll leave my discussion about finisher medals with a previous blog post.)  Earlier this year, I grabbed a medal tree to display my medals, but my pace of races has picked up so much, that tree quickly became full o’ stuff, and was pretty unwieldy to deal with.

I’d seen some terrific medal displays from Lifespeed Sports last year at the Hospital Hill race in Kansas City.  I really liked ’em, but at the time, I couldn’t conceive of a time when I would need so much display space.  Funny what a year does to those kind of assumptions…

I saw Wayne and Cindy from Lifespeed again at Hospital Hill this year, and talked with them about creating a massive piece of shelvery to house my growing collection of race medals.  Becky and I talked with them for quite a while, and described what I was looking for.  Wayne was able to translate my sketchy description to his product, and we landed on a six foot long medal shelf with three tiers of hangers for my medals, stained ebony to complement the walls of my office.

Packed to Travel!
Packed to Travel!

A month later, the finished shelf was on the way, and on Tuesday, it landed on my porch.  I started unpacking it at lunch, and discovered it was packed by experts.  The box weighed almost seventy pounds, and was secured inside a custom built wooden cocoon.  Needless to say, it arrived very safely!

And frankly, it was pretty dang easy to put on the wall, using a sturdy piece of lumber atop which to mount it.  It took longer to unpack than it did to hang, and once hung, it was solid on the wall.  I quickly hung about fifty medals from it, placed a few things on the shelf, and made it a foundational part of the “love me wall” in my office.

My Precious!
My Precious!

I’m thrilled with the build quality, and think this will last me quite a while.  When I asked Wayne at HH how many medals he thought that would hold, he thought about 200-250.  I’m not sure it’ll house that many (although Becky has some ideas that may help it store that number), but I get a funny feeling I’m gonna find out really soon!  🙂

Running, Sports

Race #44 – Wheels and Heels 5K

My dad used to say, “Sometimes you get the bear; sometimes the bear gets you.”  This race was definitely in the latter category.

I’d never heard of this race, and probably for good reason.  It was only the second time they’d run this event, and it included a 5K and 10K, along with a 10mi, 20mi and 30mi ride.  However, it was to benefit a broad set of good causes.  With that kind of coverage, and a medal at the end, how could I say no?

The race site was in Washington MO, which is about 45 minutes west of my house.  That’s about the same time it takes for me to get to downtown St. Louis for a race, so that wasn’t a bad thing.  However, that meant waking up at 4:30am in order to get ready, and be in Washington around 6am for packet pick-up.

I got there, and went to pick up my packet — shirt, bib, and sack o’ goodies.  The registration person asked my name, and then flipped to the second sheet of paper to find me.  Yep, there weren’t many folks signed up for the race — maybe 40 folks across both the 5k and 10k.  By far, this ended up being the smallest race I’d ever been part of.

After some opening comments by the organizers — reminding us to stay hydrated due to the heat advisory, and not to drink the water because of a boil order in the area —  we were off just after 7am.  And much of the first half kilometer was downhill — sweet!  And then it was up-down-up-down through Washington.  And the hills just kept on coming.  I kept watching for a hydration station, which was supposed to be around halfway… and never found it.

Now, I learned a long time ago to always carry water when I’m running, walking or cycling.  You just never know when you’re gonna need a slurp, and whether you can find any close-by can be a crap shoot.  Today, carrying water was the smart money.  Apparently, someone had been stealing the course signs, so many of us at the back of the pack were actually off the race course by a few blocks where it mattered the most — around the halfway point where the hydration station was.  Add this to the hills and unrelenting heat, and it became a pretty miserable race pretty quick.

I never come to a full stop during a race, but I stopped on the course a couple of times to talk with the traffic marshals.  I needed rest, and that was a good way to do it.  And for the first time in a long time, I really questioned if I would finish the race.  In fact, I questioned everything — why I was doing this, whether I could possibly do races in the future, my own existence… 🙂  Sometimes, there’s just a little too much alone time on the route!

Finished!
Finished!

But, I finished, having gone a little more than 5K due to the hijinks with the race route.  I felt kinda bad for the poor kid that had to stand there and wait for me to show up to put a medal in my hands.

I never expected this race to be so tough.  I think the frequent hills were part of that, but I also think the lack of water (for my course), and the fact that I rarely saw another member of the race or staff during the race certainly added some mental challenge to the event for me.

Done is done, though, and I’m happy to drop another race in the books.

(This race benefited the National MS Society, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation – Gateway Chapter, and the Brad Cohen National Tourettes Foundation.)

Race Course