The value of a single workout

Today's workout (elliptical): 25 minutes

What is the value of a single workout? Can one exercise session make a difference? As I wait for Sunday, holding off from my daily runs to protect my knee, I'm thinking about the marginal value of a workout. Whether I ran Mon-Wed this week as planned or rested (as I did), it's unclear which choice would have prepared me best for my race.

My knee is still sore but the pain is abstract. It doesn't hurt to put pressure on my leg but there's enough soreness to remind me that recent damage was done. Earlier in the week I ran through some core exercises to keep active even if I couldn't run. Those sessions were useful but they didn't provide the same satisfaction that I get after a hard workout.

This morning I decided that I'd waited long enough. I spent 25 minutes on the elliptical using one of the lowest resistance settings but I worked up a good sweat and reinforced my aerobic conditioning. Today's session probably did little in terms of helping my fitness but psychologically it was a highly effective workout.

Resting is as hard as running

Tapering for this race has been tough. My knee is still exhibiting some soreness but I know I still have 3+ days of recovery prior to the half marathon. I wanted to get in one more run before Sunday but decided that protecting my injury is a far better strategy. I know that I shouldn't lose much conditioning after holding off from running for eight consecutive days but I'm struggling with the idea that I might. This lack of aerobic exercise is making me grouchy. I suppose it's better to have a negative response to rest than to embrace the sedentary lifestyle.

Getting strategic

This is my fourth consecutive day without a run. It's probably the longest I've gone without running since recovering from pneumonia over a year ago. My knee has responded well to the icing and compression and is much improved today. If it wasn't so close to race day I would have tried an easy run this morning. I felt like I needed to do some type of workout when I got up so I did a series of core exercises that included push ups and sit-ups. I'm not sure how much benefit I got from all that but I did work up a sweat.

I'm thinking a lot right now about my strategy for hydration and nutrition during the race. I'll carry electrolyte drink in a hand bottle and also rely on the water stations to supplement my supply. I've used GU Espresso Love and Roctane gels and I like them both. Per discussions with friend FS, I'll plan to take one 30 minutes prior to the start, another at around 4 or 5 miles and the last one at the 10 mile mark. My friend and accomplished marathoner CMc stressed that I should start slow and work up my pace as I go. Sound advice on all counts.

Marginal improvement

I've been holding off on activity since Friday because my knee is still tender and I don't want to do anything to aggravate it further. Yesterday afternoon I'd had enough of sedentary living so I ran through a series of core exercises and added some sit ups and push ups to the mix. I wouldn't call it a hard workout but at least it was something.

I've returned to work and have been wearing a flexible knee brace most of the day. There is still noticeable soreness in my leg and the pain seems to be primarily located just above the medial side of the meniscus. The pain has lessened but I still feel some occasional twinges when I move my leg laterally. I'm becoming more optimistic that I'll have sufficent recovery by the weekend. It is disappointing to have an injury so close to an important race but that's the way it goes sometimes.

The RICE stuff

The good news is that I seem to be doing everything right in terms of treating my knee injury. The bad news is that I seem to actually have an injury. I had hoped the pain was just soreness caused by a couple of longer than average runs this week but I obviously aggravated the tendons around my knee. Most of Friday's run happened on dirt trails and I would have expected that surface to cushion the pounding but the previous day we'd hiked a good distance and the day before that I spent 35 minutes on the elliptical using its highest setting. I'm a little nervous that I won't sufficiently recover for the LI half marathon that takes place one week from today.

I'm resting today and if my knee doesn't feel perfect on Monday I'll rest again tomorrow. If my recovery requires a hiatus from all workouts between now and next Sunday I'm prepared to do that. Besides, at this point I don't think additional short distance running will build any more conditioning. On race week a taper helps maintain fitness and rest is already part of that strategy. I've been practicing RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation and I'm definitely noticing some improvement. I'll continue to follow that process and hope for the best.

Taper plan & knee pain

Ice me!

I know I've pushed a little harder than normal over the past week, including two 8+ mile training runs, but I was surprised to wake up with a sore knee this morning. I'm not even sure if it's my knee or the muscles surrounding it, but it's clear that after ten days of runs and workouts I need to take a day to recover.

As predicted, the rain is coming down hard this morning. I'm actually happy about that. Nothing to tempt me to step out for a few miles. Rest is both prescribed and necessary. I'm using the Active Wrap cold packs to ice my knee and the areas directly above and below it. I'm not sure whether to run tomorrow (if the weather gets better) or if I should give my legs another day of rest.

I'm being more conservative about this taper than usual. Right now I'm thinking that I'll hold off this weekend and do easy runs on Monday and Wednesday, with a tempo run on Tuesday. I'll then rest on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and limit my activities on those days to walking or core work. I'm hoping that additional rest days will pay off. Eight days to go and counting...

Finally, I'm excited that my running buddy Brian will be joining me at the LI Half Marathon. He ran it last year and carried a video camera, documenting what turned out to be a difficult race. I'm thinking he'll have a better time of it this year. I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep up with Brian and another friend, TC, who just ran the Hook Half Marathon in under two hours.

A last long run before the half

Trail head to Southards Pond

Today's run (Belmont Lake State Park): 8.35 miles

After yesterday's tough hike (on top of a truncated morning speed session) I really wanted to give myself a day to recover. The weather for Saturday is not promising. It's supposed to rain the first half of the day and I wanted to get in one more long run before I tapered for my upcoming race. I decided to run the trails along Southards Pond and Belmont Lake in Babylon. These trails make up the Dirty Sock 10K course, one of my favorite places to run and a perfect spot for a training run.

I started at the trail head that serves as the exit to the Dirty Sock finish line and as I ran I thought about how two of my four hardest races were run on this course. Part of that related to the late August dates of the Dirty Sock race and the heat and humidity that comes with that. Today it was cool (42° F) and dry, so I had little concern that the weather would affect my performance.

I reached Southards Pond quickly and soon connected to the main trail that took me under the RT 27 trestle where a flutist was playing the Hollies' song "Bus Stop" (Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say / Please share my umbrella). It's not the first time I've run through there accompanied by flute music but it was still an unexpected pleasure.

The path winds quite a bit from there and eventually goes under the Southern State Parkway that sits just south of Belmont Lake. I ran around the lake taking in the water view, trees, ducks, swans and geese. I was feeling good so I ran a second time around the lake before heading south on the trail. When I reached 4 miles I took my first sip of Gatorade G2 and continued to do that every half mile from then on. I've discovered that this technique works well for me and I plan to do this during the half marathon.

My run back to the trail head was unremarkable and I felt that my conditioning was adequate for 13 miles. The only concern I had today was with my feet -- my small toes got mashed in my Kinvaras and I worried about how they'd do if I had to run another 5 miles. I plan to run in the Mirages during the race which will help in terms of support and structure but I need to figure out a way of protecting my toes.

Now it's time to step down the rigor and prepare for the 13.1 miles that lay ahead on May 1st.

Quad pain? How about a 5 mile hike!

My daughter takes the lead as we head toward the water

Today's workout (track intervals + hike)

I had hoped to repeat the experience of Monday's interval training and headed to the track with family in tow and stopwatch in hand. After a short warm-up around the track my daughter and I ran a few timed sprints. Before long my left quad began to protest loudly. It didn't feel so much like an injury as it did a warning and I quickly backed off. I circled the track again a couple of times at an extremely easy pace and then called it quits. My wife completed her workout on the track and we headed back home.

After lunch (and icing my quad) we headed to Caumsett State Park for a hike. Caumsett, which is located on 1,750 acres in Lloyd Neck, sits directly below Long Island Sound. It's only about 15 minutes from our house yet we'd never been there. The Empire Passport certainly makes it easy to explore new venues since there's no admission fees to dissuade you from visiting. We were amazed by the white-capped waves and ocean spray as we made our approach to the park entrance. We began our hike after looking at the map and headed north along one of the main paved trails.

Due to its adjacency to the Sound, the winds were strong and a little chilly, but that didn't bother us much. At the 1.5 mile mark we reached a mansion that is the former home of Marshall Field III. Directly behind this building are rolling grounds that flow sharply down to a pond that's circled by a dirt and sand path. Directly north of the pond is the beach line of the Sound. The kids played a little on the water but the winds were fierce so we headed back to the pond trail and followed it to another main trail that eventually took us back to our starting point.

We covered about five miles and about a third of that was on hills. It was a great workout for everyone and I had ideas about returning for a long run tomorrow morning. I will admit that the idea of doing a long run with those hills and that wind is a bit daunting. I'll see how I feel tomorrow when I get up. I'd actually prefer a rest day on Friday but with bad weather predicted for Saturday and Sunday, Friday may be my last opportunity to run a measurable distance before the LI Half.

For the record I did not eat cat

Misfortune cookies

Today's workout (elliptical): 35 minutes

Last night my family took me out to a local Chinese restaurant for my birthday and we had a great meal and a great time. We kept things going when we got home with ice cream and fortune cookies that were ostensibly packaged up with our dinner's leftovers. They gave me the honor of opening the first fortune cookie and it read "You just ate cat." There were a number of other questionable fortunes in the other cookies that were actually purchased online by my family. I found it all very amusing.

My plan today was either to rest or return to the track for some speed work. Yesterday we'd stopped by Sports Authority and I bought a stopwatch to help me with speed drills. The stopwatches on my iPhone and Garmin work fine but they are not easy to use when you do both the running and the timing. The unit I bought was $15 and it will be easy to carry as I run intervals.

When my wife started her daily treadmill run this morning I decided to join her on the elliptical to focus on some under-worked muscles. Anticipating a short session I set the elliptical to its highest resistance setting and figured I'd go for about 10 minutes. At the ten minute mark I chose to continue and worked the machine in reverse which was very difficult.

Reversing the direction was toughest on my upper body and my arms were aching five minutes in. I switched back to forward motion and continued for another 20 minutes, still at the highest resistance level. I finished feeling like I'd made some good progress in my conditioning.

I'm thinking about speed work tomorrow though I'm due for a rest day soon. There's only a few more days left for hard workouts before my half marathon taper. I need to make every one count.

It happens every year

I thought you were supposed to have fun on birthdays

Today's run (Bethpage State Park): 8.25 miles

It's my birthday today, an event that used to coincide with Patriot's Day, a Massachusetts holiday that was best known as the day they ran the Boston Marathon. Growing up in Massachusetts, I enjoyed the fact that I never had to go to school on my birthday, first because it was a holiday and later because we always had our spring break that week. It wasn't until college that I had to attend classes on my birthday. I may have chosen not to go on those days just to maintain the tradition. Well that was my story anyway.

We went to a large family dinner last night and near the end I was presented with a birthday cake. It was very nice of my wife's family to do this. The cake was selected by my brother-in-law who is a dedicated vegan. The cake was pleasant enough. I have no idea what it was made of but it tasted like a bran muffin with white non-dairy frosting. Yummy! Fortunately (or unfortunately) there were a number of un-vegan desserts available.

This morning I decided to celebrate my birthday with an 8.25 mile run on the Bethpage bike-paths. I bought an Empire Passport on Saturday and was looking forward to being waved through for my generous contribution to the park service but no one was in attendance. Oh well. I brought along my Amphipod hand water bottle and set out with a target of 8 miles. It's been a while since I've done a run exceeding 6 miles but I expected it to go well since my aim was to run it easy.

Useful GU

I consumed a GU Roctane in vanilla orange flavor about 30 minutes before my run and I think it helped get me moving at the beginning. The skies were gray with some very light rain and the temperature was a cool 50 degrees. At around the 3 mile mark I grew concerned about my stamina on this hilly course but I decided that I'd simply throttle my speed below my lactic threshold level (English: slow down but not stop) if I grew too tired. I recovered some energy by mile 5 but I struggled with the last long hill at the end that I always dread.

It was a good run overall. I maintained a pace in the high 9:00 range despite the tougher sections. I'll probably go even longer on a run before I return to work next Monday and begin my taper. I'm a bit sore from this run and yesterday's speed work. Add a day of recovery and the result is improved conditioning. Happy birthday indeed.

Karhu Fast 2's live up to their name

Today's run (track intervals)

You know those movies where the mousy librarian takes off her glasses and the leading man suddenly notices how beautiful she is? That was akin to my experience today with the Karhu Fast 2's that I'd damned with (very) faint praise in my recent review. In testing these shoes I thought I'd done an adequate job of assessing their capabilities, both on long runs as well as short speed bursts and tempos. What I didn't do - and shame on me for that - was put them to the test on the Tartan track. This morning, along with my daughter (who served as my running partner and coach), I used these Karhus in their natural environment.

Our plan was to run multiple short intervals to help build fast twitch muscles and anaerobic base. After a trip around the track at a moderate pace we headed to a side track that had sand pits on either end. That gave us about 45 meters of useful track length for our short, fast sprints. My daughter and I took turns running on this track beside some high school boys who were practicing their long jumps. We did multiple runs, going in both directions and were pleased with our speeds. My daughter (age 12) was able to match me or come within a second of many of my times.

We followed that first set of runs with another lap around the track and then ran additional sprints on the main oval. Again our speeds were good and I was happy that most of my running (besides the recovery jogs) stayed well below a 6 minute pace. The Karhus really shined today. I finally got the "Fulcrum" concept and ran on my forefoot, practically on my toes, bringing my knees up higher than I would on an aerobic run. The Karhu Fast 2 will be my speed shoe going forward and it even felt good at a sedate pace today. I'm still committed to a lower profile shoe like the Saucony Mirage and Kinvara as a daily trainer but the Karhu is a true sprinter. That made for a great practice today with my favorite running coach and partner.

Bethpage trails on a sunny day -- but I didn't love the run

Today's run (Bethpage State Park trails) 3.5 miles

By now I have a sense of how a run will go long before I take my first step. When I prepare my gear the night before my 4:00 AM runs I usually know how I'll feel when my alarm goes off in the morning. On weekends, when I run longer and later in the morning, I've come to expect a tougher time once 10:00 AM comes and goes.

That was the case today. I was up early but I didn't get out until almost noon. I wasn't feeling the drive to run and I even considered talking the day to rest. As the weather grew sunnier through the morning I decided to go for it. I knew that we'd see rainy weather for the next couple of days and I didn't want to waste a good day. I didn't feel it today but I knew I had to get out there.

I went to Bethpage to run the trails and started at the beginning of the bike path. I followed that for about half a mile before reaching an opening to the dirt trail that runs north. That trail eventually wrapped east and opened to numerous other paths. I followed the wider, better groomed, trail before deciding to switch to a single-track that first took me north but then bent right and eventually reversed direction. I continued through these trails, switching paths every so often and gauging my position by the direction of the sun.

I wasn't fatigued but my running lacked an energetic punch. In truth, it wasn't a very good run. I never got that free-wheeling feeling of roller coaster running that I often experience on the trails. After three miles I decided to pay attention to what my body was telling me and I wrapped it up after covering 3.5 miles overall. I still have a cold that I'm hoping will be over soon. A rest day tomorrow will be nice and long distance run is the plan for Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on weather.