My second week of training is complete. I continue to fine-tune my training plan. I had 3 miles on the schedule for after work on Tuesday. However, I was feeling some soreness with my right lower leg (below the knee) on Monday and somewhat into Tuesday. With my history of injuries, I don’t want to take any chances with hurting myself, especially this early into the training cycle. So I decided to skip Tuesday’s run again.
( ) = # of miles on my plan
Tuesday – 0 (3)
Thursday – 5.01 (5)
Friday – 10.03 (10)
Saturday – 6.05 (6)
Sunday – 3.26 (3)
Weekly Total – 24.35 miles (26)
Overall I feel good at the end of the week. Today’s run I did with my wife biking alongside me (she’s been doing this for some of my shorter runs and it is great having the company). Compared to the run last Sunday, this one felt easier and my legs felt better – even though I did more miles this week than last. Hopefully that is a sign my body is actually adapting to the miles.
I’m excited for this coming week as hopefully will be getting a fun delivery, we shall see and I’ll update as things unfold.
We had some crazy rains/winds here with more of the latter than the former. These last few nights I’ve actually been awoken due to the high winds outside. Somewhat scary as there have been multiple trees in the neighborhood that have either have large branches fall or even entire trees (as seen below). Here are some shots from this past week’s training:
Broken branch on the river trailRiver is slightly lower than previous but still fairly highMore daylight under the bridge than last week
On today’s run, I went to check out a new neighborhood, McKinley Village, that is being constructed just outside of the midtown/downtown Sacramento area. Many in the East Sacramento neighborhood were very resistant to the introduction of a new houses because they were concerned of the increase in traffic and congestion. The location of the site is interesting because it sits between a freeway and some raised train tracks. They actually had to create a tunnel under the train tracks for a road in and out of the neighborhood (as below).
Entrance underneath the railroad tracks
That means there’s only one way in and out. Eventually I believe they are supposed to create another ingress/egress from another part of the neighborhood. I guess within the “Village” there is supposed to be like 5 different sections. So far they only have model homes built and sales offices open. You’ll see from the pictures below that the designs of the homes vary greatly. With the space being so open right now, it looks a bit strange having a contemporary condo next to a more traditional looking home.
Lake – yet to be built-up homesPicture right after entering McKinley VillageLooking south from the entrance of the VillageClose-up of some homes – look how closely they are to one anotherContemporary condos?Front of the condosCommunity clubhouse
Another unique feature of the neighorhood is that there is supposed to be an art walk within a park area. So far they have a few pieces up already next to what looks like a bocce ball court.
Rabbit Ears or leaves? (juxtaposition of a billboard by the freeway in the background)Leaf shaped bench
There is also a clubhouse and I guess a community pool. As you can see, there’s a ton of sitting water as it has continued to rain a good amount the last few days.
Beyond the wall is the Business 80 freeway. I will say that the sound barrier is not that bad but you can definitely hear the hum of the cars going by.
Freeway right behind the wall
One huge negative (at least in my own eyes) are that a lot of the houses actually sit in front and behind each other – like those apartment parking spaces where it is one long space and you can park two cars but need to move the outer one to get the inner one out. I can’t imagine having a house so close to another home and also having absolutely no yard whatsoever, but to each his/her own.
The house in the back is all squished in therePicture of the exit
So my first week of marathon training (Big Sur International Marathon at the end of April) is done. It did not start off well. We’ve been getting some pretty crazy rains and rainfall totals here in northern California lately. My first run was supposed to be last Tuesday. We had some historic rains last weekend that continued into the early part of this week. My original plan was to run after work on Tuesday. By the time I left work, the rain was still steadily coming down and I was just tired. So I skipped it. I definitely want to follow a plan more closely this time (considering I’ve never followed one before), but I am not going to be a slave to it. I am going to listen to my body as well. Overall I’m still happy with my week.
( ) = # of miles on my plan
Tuesday – 0 (3)
Thursday – 4.2 (4)
Friday – 8 (8)
Saturday – 4 (4)
Sunday – 4 (4)
Weekly Total – 20.2 miles
Injures/aches – mild right Achilles pain after the last run of the week. Some mild soreness of right knee also present.
My first run on Thursday I purposely ran over to the American River to see how it was looking. Various parts of Sacramento have been flooding with the recent rains. I know it is very unlikely for the American River to flood but I wanted to see how much it had risen with all the water we’ve been getting. Boy I was impressed. Here are some pictures of the river.
Normally there’s a lot more air underneath that bridgeThe water plant (structure) typically has many more feet of white building underneath it
There’s supposed to be a dirt pathway you can walk on at the bottom of the greenery
The first run of 2017 is in the books. I made it out for 4.3 miles and some short(ish) intervals mixed in. I happily accomplished by 2016 goal and thought I’d set some modest goals for this coming year.
Goal 1: Stay Healthy
This will probably always be my goal each year with regards to both fitness as well as life in general. I’ve now been running for 7 years consistently and the first 6 years have been plagued with various injuries.
Goal 2: Finish Marathon #4
I’m signed up for the Big Sur International Marathon. Everything you read about running a race often involves having multiple goals for the race. This way you have a fall-back goal if it isn’t your day. So typically people will set up a Goal A, Goal B, Goal C. My A Goal would be a PR (which isn’t that ambitious considering that’s anything less than 5 hours). It is a little ambitious because of the hilly nature of the race. For Big Sur, everyone says not to even try for a PR and just enjoy the beauty that surrounds you, which I do plan on doing (that’s why it is my A Goal). My B goal is to finish feeling good (each of my first 3 marathons ended with me walking – I suspect I know why too). Finally, my C goal is to finish before the 6 hour cutoff.
I suspect that the reason I’ve not had good luck with finishing any of my prior marathons in a satisfying way is because of my lack of training volume. I haven’t really ever followed a strict training plan for my marathons. I know that this probably has had a significant impact on me on race day. So I’m going to try to stick to an actual marathon training plan this time.
The one difficulty I will run into with this race is that I’ll be traveling the 3-4 weeks prior to the race. This potentially impacts my long run (20 miler?) and the timing of it. I will most likely need to make an adjustment and do the longest run prior to the trip and just maintain my fitness on my trip.
I’ve started to break in some new kicks as I start my marathon training program. I’m returning to the original brand that I used to run in almost exclusively: Saucony. I have enjoyed the Guide series and so have started putting in mileage on the Saucony Guide 8. So far just one run but I like them and the green in them.
I finished off 2016 with a nice 4.5 mile run. Honestly it felt like the best run I’ve done in the last week or so.
The end of 2016 is upon us. It’s been a good running year for me. I managed to go the entire year without any major injuries. I definitely chalk this up to my newer rotation of shoes – 3 different shoes of all different types – and no aggressive changes to my mileage. My goal going into the year was to hit 70 miles per month (an arbitrary goal but one that was more ambitious compared to anything I’d done previously). A few years ago I had attempted to do 50 miles per month but that was derailed with injury about 4-5 months into the year.
I’m happy to report that I hit my 70 miles/month goal and also have a new PR for total yearly mileage. The breakdown of my monthly totals is as follows:
January – 75.87
February – 71.24
March – 77.05
April – 74.36
May – 70.45
June – 72.08
July – 71.56
August – 71.74
September – 70.89
October – 71.43
November – 70.16
December – 75.8
Total yearly mileage – 872.6 (183 runs)
My previous highest yearly mileage came in 2013 with 718.7 miles. I chalk up the previous few years of much fewer miles (500-600) due to injuries. This past year I only ran 2 races. My goal was to have an injury-free year of running, which I accomplished. I’m pretty proud of the 70 miles/month goal. I’ll admit there were a few months where I had concerns about not making it.
This year I also added a GPS running watch to my aresenal. I bought the Garmin Forerunner 225 in January and have been using it consistently for most of my runs. I don’t obsessively look at it on every run as I know many running coaches suggest having at least a few runs with no GPS watches/phones/etc to just enjoy the run. I, luckily, am able to do those runs even with my watch on without looking to see how far I’ve gone or how fast I’m running. My phone GPS also hadn’t been terribly accurate so I was glad to have something a little more reliable.
Runner’s World magazine had an article talking about decluttering as it pertains to running gear (clothes, shoes, hats, accessories, etc). Growing up I was in an environment where we kept things. By things I mean “everything.” You never know when you’re going to need something. My wife is the complete opposite and tries to keep material things to a minimum. I have slowly been trying to be more minimalist as the years have gone by. After reading the article, in which the author professes to having way too much running gear, I thought I should probably join in this movement and start slowly culling running shirts. I have collected quite a few tech t shirts from various races. I profess to never having actually purchased a tech t-shirt since I have obtained them all through race registrations. My cubby that I keep my shirts in was over-stuffed and some of the shirts I have are 6 years old. So far I’m retiring the following two shirts (my wife looked into places where I can actually recycle these shirts rather than going into a landfill somewhere).
The meteor martian was my first and only 10K race to date. I still can’t believe I ran it as quickly as I did (52.75 minutes). The AFC 5K was my first race in SD, which culminated in the RnR SD Marathon in 2011. Both shirts served me well in many many runs in the last 6 years.
StewsCat 