Change of Plans

The last couple of weeks have been pretty exciting.  We're having another baby!  I'm totally stoked to have another little person running around the house, or, at least for the first few months, eating, sleeping, and crying.  We'll be heading back to the U.S. to have the baby, so this kind of throws a wrench in my plan to run the Bangelore 50 km in November.  I guess I'll just have to quit running and writing about it.

Ha ha.  Just kidding.  I found another race in Washington, the Grand Ridge 50 km.  I've got some more awesome news too.  Since the GR50K is near my hometown, and they also offer a marathon, halfmarathon, and 5-mile run, I talked my brother into running his first marathon there with me.  He asked me to send him a training plan and some tips on running, and he dove head first into training.

The Grand Ridge Trail Run course is a halfmarathon loop that the marathoners will do twice, and the 50K'ers will do the halfmarathon loop twice plus a separate 5-mile loop at the end.  I'm hoping that my brother and I will finish relatively close together, at least within an hour or so of each other.

We should get back to the States a month or so before the race, so I may even get to go on a couple runs with my brother before I get to see him in race-mode.  I've definitely been missing family here in India, and having the opportunity to go home for the holidays, have a baby, and run my first ultramarathon with my brother running his first marathon sounds absolutely amazing!

This is a bit of a shift in topics, but I wanted to post some pictures of the local running in India.  There is a park I regularly run at that has tons of peacocks roaming the grounds.  It's been pretty cool to find my way around some new places, and I'm hoping to get in on some long runs with the Hyderabad Runners.

4 or 5 peacocks wandering around in the grass

A peacock checking out the runners

A section of stairs winding up through the rocks

Who knew peacocks could fly with that giant tail?

This guy wanted to race

Happy Running!

Juggling Life and Running

I've found myself in a little predicament in balancing running and my family life.  In the past month I haven't missed a single scheduled run, and have been regularly hitting in the mid 30 km's each week*.  I've been getting excited about feeling like I can actually start pushing my endurance limits again.  Last Saturday I hit a new distance high for India of 14 km.  I'm still nowhere near the mid 60 km weeks I was logging in the States, but I'll get there.  This all sounds great, but, unfortunately, the ever increasing amount of time spent on the trails leads to an ever decreasing amount of time spent at home.  I'm faced with the challenge that runners everywhere face, how to compromise with the ones you love to make time for the activity that you love.

I run early in the mornings, so it's not so much the amount of time that I'm gone.  Basically the only thing that I'm missing out on at home is sleep.  I think the major issue, is that I generally run on both Saturday and Sunday, so there never gets to be a lazy wake-up-in-bed-together kind of morning with my wife.  I've thoroughly enjoyed mornings in the past of waking up to the brightness in the room, rather than a blaring alarm clock, and rolled around half awake, perhaps pillow-talking with my wife, or not, until we hear the distant squawking of our son in the other room.  One of us would then  go and grab him to bring him into our wonderful Sunday morning lounge made up of blankets and pillows.  We all just get to be a family together, and it's great.  As gratifying as running is, the mornings together aren't the same if I go and run for two hours, then eat something because I'm starving by the end of a long run, then shower, then try to climb back in bed. At that point our minds are in two entirely different universes.

I've always exercised 5 days per week with 2 rest days, both of which were on weekdays, but now I'm contemplating moving to 6 days per week and having that one rest day be a really good one on the weekend.  The biggest obstacle I foresee is that the weekends are my only chance at big distance running, but I think I can get around that by adding another day to run during the week.  This will allow me to keep my volume up, hit one long distance day, and still get to dedicate one day to just being a dad and a husband.

I'll give 6 days per week a try, and see how it works out.  The only way to know how my body and mind will respond is to give it a go.  I think it actually sounds kind of nice approaching my rest period with the same 'quality vs. quantity' mentality often used for training days.  I know that my wife will be happy that we'll get at least one day on the weekend that is all ours, but I'm also excited to have one day that I don't need to wake up to the alarm clock, and to experience more of the blissful mornings we used to before I started running all the time.  I know that balancing time between the things I love will be an ongoing struggle for, well forever, but the simple fact remains that both of these are things that I love.  I'll always find a way to make it work, both for my family and myself, but it may require a little trial and error.

*When I said, "...hitting the mid 30 km's each week" I was referring to my total distance adding in the kilometers of rowing also.

Traning Summary for Last Week:

Monday:       Off
Tuesday:       6.32 km; 34:42; avg. pace 5:29/km
Wednesday:  Rowing 4.0 km; 19:20; avg. pace 4:50/km
Thursday:      Rowing 4.0 km; 18:56; avg. pace 4:44/km
Friday:          6.36 km; 34:14; avg. pace 5:23/km
Saturday:      14.02 km; 1:18:58; avg. pace 5:38/km
Sunday:        Off

Total Distance:  26.7 km
Total Time:       2:27:54
Average Pace:  5:32/km

Happy Running!

Shoes, Shoes, and More Shoes

Well, there went another exciting week on the running front.  I'm gradually building my endurance again, and running is becoming more and more enjoyable, even if I do need to run through clouds of burning trash smoke and be hyper-vigilant in avoiding cars, tuk-tuk's, goats, dogs, and motorcycles.  I think that I'm adjusting to the heat well, and I'll be back to logging some nice long runs very soon.  I've still yet to surpass 10 km since I've been in India, but I'll knock out a 12 km or 14 km run this weekend before beginning the long, slow, steady climb of building my mileage volume for my first 50 km in November.  I'm much leaner now, and I actually feel like a runner even though my endurance has suffered a bit as of late.  In reviewing my training log from my work-up to the last marathon I ran, I'm way ahead of where I started, both in terms of speed and volume.  Like I said in a previous blog post, I want to get to a point where my only goal isn't to just survive a race and simply make it to the finish line; I want to run hard the whole race, and feel good about my race-day effort and also about all of the work I put into training.

I finally retired the pair of Mizuno's I've been running in since before MCM 2012.  I ordered a pair of Montrail Bajada trail-running shoes that arrived last night from my favorite running site in the world, www.runningwarehouse.com.  I took them out for their first run today, and they felt great.  There's nothing like getting a new pair of running shoes, and feeling them on your feet for the first time.  It's probably 90% mental, but something about the relationship between a runner and their shoes is special.  Looking through my training log, I ran around 800 miles in my old Mizuno Wave Precision 12 Shoes.  We've spent a lot of time together, seen a lot of sunrises, seen a lot of sunsets, explored new trails, and I even set a marathon PR in those shoes.  It's sad to see them move to the running shoe graveyard in the back of the closet.

The sadness was quickly forgotten when I slipped on the new Montrail's.  They fit like a glove, or a perfect running shoe.  I instantly felt light and nimble, and couldn't wait to go to sleep just so I could wake up in the morning to go run.  I was darting around the house full of excitement, jumping here and there like I was Peter Pan or crazy kangaroo.  It sounds downright goofy reading what I just wrote, but running has become a passion of mine.  I love running, and thinking about it gets me excited.

I've bounced around from running barefoot, or in minimalist shoes (Vibram FiveFingers), to running in 'transition' shoes (Saucony Kinvara 3), to running in good ol' neutral runners (Mizuno Wave Precision 12).  I'm tired of reading the debates about how we're supposed to run, or not supposed to run.  The fact of the matter is, I like running, and I seem to do that best in a traditional style, neutral running shoe.  I don't particularly care if I run that way because I've been conditioned to by a life of running in 'normal' shoes, or if my bio-mechanics are just plain different than someone that can run barefoot all the time.  I'm going to stick with what works for me, and try to enjoy the sport I love.

Training Summary for Last Week:

Monday:       Off
Tuesday:       6.31 km; 35:25; avg. pace 5:37/km
Wednesday:  6.31 km; 36:44; avg. pace 5:49/km
Thursday:      Rowing 5.0 km; 25:19; avg. pace 5:04/km
Friday:          Off
Saturday:      10.01 km; 55:28; avg. pace 5:32/km
Sunday:        8.42 km; 49:37; avg. pace 5:53/km

Total Kilometers:  31.05 km
Total Time:           2:57:14
Average Pace:      5:42/km

Happy Running!