First of all, the first day of it was great. Highly successful, and easy to implement.

It was a Rest Day though, so I guess I can’t give myself too much credit. Unless I want to pat myself on my back for listening to my body?

Still, since that would have made a lousy Plan Premier post, I decided to wait until the end of Week 1 and get into the plan a bit before breaking out the trumpets and the red carpet.

My plan this time around is a 14 week plan, taken from the Runner’s World App. I haven’t modified it right now, instead satisfied to have a target. You can see it on the “Training Calendar” above. The basics are 1 speed workout (tempo run or mile intervals) and one long run a week. The rest is easy run mileage to pad to a reasonable weekly mileage. It incorporates a couple of backoff weeks, where I run easy the whole week and drop some miles, hopefully to come at those following weeks with fresh legs.

As far as starting points, you don’t get much more basic than this plan, but I think with the long calendar (14 weeks to race) and the strong speedwork mixed with nice 20-30 mile mileage, that I’ll be in shape for a sub 2 at Pittsburgh.

That said, I got to test my resolve with this plan already; my very first week had some plans that interfered with my scheduled runs. A birthday party for a friends daughter (Happy Birthday little B!) meant that I had to pull ahead my very first speedwork a day.

Resulting Week:
Mon Rest
Tue 4mi @ 10:57 (target 10:32)
Wed Tempo Run, 3mi @ 8:47 (target 8:47)
Thu Rest
Fri 4mi@10:32 (target 10:32)
Sat Rest
Sun 8mi@10:08 (target 10:32

Pretty solid starter week, with 21 miles counting the warmup and cooldown on the tempo run day. I am minding the advice I’ve always received about training, that when it begins it never seems like enough and when it’s over it always seems like it’s too much, and I’m just going to stick, slavishly, to the plan. Really, it does ramp up pretty quickly to multiple 30+ mile weeks.

I’m taking the slow pace really seriously; I’ve heard a lot about runners running too fast, and stacking up injuries and disappointment rather than taking easy runs for what they are, which is a pleasurable pace that builds up your aerobic base, the only way possible; slowly but surely.

The last thing to comment on is more carryover from my “Snow Blind” post last week. The unseasonably warm weather this winter means that not only was that run a fluke, but that I went out running in just a single layer on Sunday. That 8 miler before the Super Bowl was just ideal conditions, and the hardest part about following this plan is not skipping my rest days in favor of “just a few miles, since it’s so nice out!”

Today was such a day. I stayed at work until sunset just to make sure I wasn’t tempted. It paid off, too. Tomorrow for my first mile repeats of the plan, the temperature is supposed to be golden, and my legs are fresh and ready to go.

As is typical of a Sunday in my house, I had a lazy morning, a great breakfast (homemade biscuits and sausage patties! scrambled eggs!) and then idled around waiting for Steph’s Zumba class to start. Then, right when I realized her class was about to start, I begged her to help me get ready for my run. I stall, dreading actually getting started with that run, a run I look forward to each and every week. Sometimes I’ll stall until I eat again, sometimes I’ll stall until the weather does something I like. Yesterday I just stalled until I had finished a video game that I’ve been playing.

Well, Steph was out to Zumba, all done with her exercise, and back, before I had dressed and gotten out the door. Sensing my nerve having a slight window before it gave out entirely, I kissed her goodbye while she was still on the phone, and headed out for my run.

But with all that stalling, I hadn’t really thought to look at a weather report, or heck, glance out the door.

It was snowing.

I ran west, through Belleville, because that had been my plan, and I didn’t know where the snow was coming from. Besides, it was those big, separate flakes you feel like you are running between, not through. In fact, it’s what you could think of as a peaceful snow. No accumulation on the earth-warmed roads, and that natural muffled silence that a light snowfall gives the world.

As I crossed over Belleville Lake, the snow began to slacken as I apparently ran out of the storm. I mused about how little I, as mostly indoors creature, really ever get to experience the passing of a storm in ‘three dimensions’ as it were. I think of weather as lasting over time, not existing over locations, though of course I’m aware of the movement of storms from highway drives. Still, the realization that I could run out of the edge of a snowstorm and into brilliant winter sunlight was quite entertaining for the next couple miles.

And then I got a further lesson in how snow works. As I returned from my out and back run, I approached the same snowfall that I had left behind. In the intervening half hour though, it had changed! Gone were the idyllic fluffy white flakes, replaced with snowflakes packed tightly together as they fell, cold and wet, rapidly accumulating on the road, and reducing visibility to barely 20 feet in front of me.

The sudden snowfall seemed to have stopped traffic, though Denton Road is not very busy even during good weather. I saw only one more car before I reached town, to be greeted by one of the main intersections, snarled up by SUVs and sedans alike slipping around on that most unpredictable surface, freshly fallen snow. I decided (wisely, I like to think) to stick to the sidewalk rather than taking my life in my hands by risking crossing for my normal route home.

As abruptly as it came through, it was over. Once again, the very local nature of weather phenomenon showed through, and the last half of my run was in overcast but peaceful conditions, the only evidence of the storm’s passing a deeper chill in the air on this side, and the crunch of frozen slush on the road as I ran in closer to home.

Sometimes, even when there’s nothing really remarkable about a run, it feels remarkable enough to describe.

Plenty of people have enough self discipline to come up with a real set of rules and stick to them. I just run unless I can’t. That’s my simple rule.

This week I had two instances where I couldn’t. Last Friday I got a head cold, which I ran 8 miles with on Sunday. I took my customary rest day on Monday, despite the day off and the warm weather. By Tuesday night I regretted missing that chance to run. The headcold progressed to seemingly a sinus/bronchial infection, which knocked me out for 17 hours of sleep, and had me miss work, and any thoughts of a run, on Wednesday.

With hacking and coughing dominating over speech, I worked from home Thursday and Friday. With that flexibility, I entertained thoughts of daytime runs, so Thursday I ventured outdoors at the end of the workday, only to find that winter had actually arrived. 21 degrees on the weather report did not tell the full story of the bitter cold I encountered as I stepped out the door. Combine that with my weak state, and I turned around after merely a 2 mile total run, with my fingertips and face going numb.

Luckily after a doctor’s appointment on Friday, the magic of antibiotics, combined with beer & pizza with friends in Toledo, had brought me back from the brink, so after a week of merely 2 miles, I ran 5 miles Saturday and 8 miles sunday for a respectable 15 mile week.

I don’t always know when that commitment to always run is going to really work, but this time it did. Running all those miles this weekend picked my mood up following a really crummy week, and put me in the mindset to lay down my plans for training for the Pittsburgh Half in the spring. Instead of feeling like Pittsburgh is just a distant concept, I’m looking forward to starting my 15 week plan in the week of the 30th.

So in the evenings over the past few weeks, I dove into Sport Tracks, to learn a little bit about 2011.

Total Miles: 1,000.98 miles

A number so good it got its own post, last time. Still, this number means a lot to me. Running a thousand miles is something you can easily put into context for non-runners, and “almost 1,000 miles” just would not have had the same ring to it.

climb: 22,509ft
descent: -20,763ft

Sadly, this is 7,000 ft short of an everest ascent, but I’m amused to see I ascended 1,800 feet more than I descended! Must be some section of a route that really is uphill both ways.

Time: 177:09:35

177 hours is 7.37 days. I spent more than 2% of my year on my feet, running. It’s funny to think that that seems like so much out of context (over a week) but I spent a lot more than that sitting down. Hard to imagine that 2% of my time makes for an active lifestyle.

Calories: 181,643

That’s 52lbs worth of calories burned. Since I lost 40lbs last year, that means that I’m doing well, but not perfectly. While increasing my activity by 182k calories, I increased my food intake enough to offset some 42k of those. That’s about 115 a day, not bad, but not perfect.

Pace: 10:37
Avg Pace in January: 11:38
Avg Pace in December: 9:58

These are just paces for each and every run of mine, which means you can’t take it to mean best to best comparison, but as a bulk measure of how fast I’m running it’s pretty gratifying that my day to day pace increased by more than a minute and a half.

Breakdown

This is a breakdown of my workouts, by what day of the week they occurred. I ran on 43 Sundays, which is damned near all of them. Those sunday workouts account for 21% of my workouts, and about 35% of my mileage. By contrast, because of rest days, I ran on only 9 Mondays, for a paltry 42 miles. In the middle, forming the sort of backbone of my mileage, I ran on 36 of my Tuesdays and 35 of my Wednesdays, but those two together only accounted for 28% of my mileage; that’s the short weekday run showing its face, at less than half my average Sunday run.

This kind of analysis is hugely interesting to me, and I’m glad to be recording the data to pore over in the future. I can see my injuries as low points in the weekly mileage, I can see my races right after mileage peaks and corresponding tapers.

Overall, reminiscing through data has been great, but I think the one number I’ll never forget about 2011 is 3. The number of half marathons I completed.

Stephanie and I are staying with our friends Chuck & Annette for our annual NYE bash with a huge group of my oldest and dearest friends. As a result I had the synchronous and satisfying experience of finishing 2011′s running right where I started it. With a 5 mile total out and back yesterday, I rounded off 2011 to almost exactly 1,000 miles. At 4.5 miles (where I hit the mark exactly, by my estimate) I was emerging from Schenley park, at the foot of the hill where Annette and I ran a few miles to start off the year, doing laps of the track on the Overlook, the Cathedral of Learning looming seemingly at eye level, as emblematic of Pittsburgh as the crazy hill arrangement that makes such a view possible. When I hit that point I cheered and shouted, though I was alone, and no one was around to share it with. I was thinking, in my heart, of my excitement to share it with all of you.

Logically I know there’s nothing more magical about 1,000 miles than there is about 999. But as with every milestone, (5k, 10k, 10 miles, 13.1 miles) the meaning is in our curiosity about them. I will tell you that among the people I told at the party, which was immodestly too many, not one asked “Why 1,000?” We all seem to understand the fascination with round numbers.

I hope that everyone out there had as good of a 2011 as I did. I will keep writing (and running) in 2012.

Before I pore over the numbers, and consider my accomplishments, there’s one more brass ring to grab. In early December, I noticed I was only 76 miles away from a round thousand miles. I laid out a few weeks of running compatible with hitting that milestone. Today, taking advantage of being home at midday during the winter, I ran 4.5 miles in the cold sunshine of Southeast Michigan, where winter has remembered to apply its customary temperatures, but has not yet settled in the dim grey canopy that doesn’t lift until spring. With that run, and with 3 days left in 2011, I’m pleased to report that I am at 992.5 miles, 7.5 miles remaining to the big 1k.

It will be a pleasure to fit in two more 4+ mile runs over the next 3 days. In fact, for this Christmas holiday the days on which I’ve run, I’ve felt much better than the days where I don’t. Even if it sounds like cornball, Runner’s World Quote of the Day stuff, in 2011 a day I ran was a better day.

Well, last Thursday, I felt like a failure. My weight routine has been a consistent rotation of 4 exercises intended to be total body exercises. Clean & Jerk, Squat, Bench Press & Pullups. The ‘centerpiece’ of it is effectively the Clean & Jerk, because it is a truly great total body lift.

If you do it right. Which I found out on Thursday that I don’t. And when I tried to do it right, I bashed myself in the collarbone, screaming out a curse at the top of my lungs. After that, I was pretty much done. I couldn’t focus, anger-induced adrenaline had replaced the functional excitement to do physical activity. I felt like if I picked up something heavy again that night, it was going to be to throw it.

I skipped my Saturday weightlifting session, hoping to get some distance between me and that miserable session, but when I arrived on Tuesday, I wasn’t feeling much better. I still don’t know how to do a proper Clean & Jerk. But I started over, reduced the weight and am trying to learn. Ideally, I’d have someone who knew what they were doing to tell me, rather than just my vague recollection of youtube videos. But alas, the trainers at my gym aren’t really interested in talking to me, and their style doesn’t quite mesh with mine, so I think I’ll just keep fumbling my way toward it.

Fumbling my way toward it is how I’ve gotten this far in everything else. Here’s to feeling like a failure, and getting back on the horse. Er, bench. I don’t really like horses.

Also, with that year end coming, I’ve got some vacation that I need to burn. (Ford vacation is use-it-or-lose-it annually) So I took this past Friday off, and on that occasion, had the opportunity to have a run worth talking about.

I woke up late, ate some delicious peanut butter & brown sugar oatmeal, and considered running longer than my 5 miles, in support of the quest for 1000 miles in 2011. With a relatively light breakfast and having risen late, I decided that running out for lunch would be a good idea. I set out, dressed lightly and carrying a water bottle and my wallet. Sadly, my ‘dressed lightly’ was a bit too light, and I had to turn around about a 1/4 mile frmo home to change my gloves and hat out for more reliable ones. The gloves were too light, and the hat, a knit cap from my Stomp the Grapes Half Marathon was just too loose for running.

After that false start, which padded an extra half mile on, I ran 3.5 miles to the local diner, Dimitri’s Kitchen, where Steph and I eat breakfast nearly every Saturday morning. It felt good to swing in to a familiar spot and settle in with a cup of coffee right in the middle of a long run. Slightly self conscious, and a little bit cold, in my sweaty running gear, I enjoyed a turkey club (Dimitri’s has, bar none, the best turkey club I’ve ever had) and and a few of those cups of coffee. A few people around me in the diner were marveling at my having run in for a little lunch, but they may have just been trying to think of something to say besides, “Phew, what’s that smell?”. Then, fortified by my meal, I ran back home, for a total of 7.5 miles. I wouldn’t want to stop in the middle of a race to eat a big heavy meal and down three cups of coffee, and my stomach did protest a little when my body demanded we send blood-flow to my legs in lieu of my digestive tract, but overall it was a very good experience, and a nice, active way to spend a few hours of a vacation day.

Then, Sunday, probably inspired by that unusual and somewhat invigorating run, I elected not to run just a 8-9 mile out-and-back or loop, but instead to explore the I275 Metro Bike Trail which I’ve seen increasingly promising construction and enhancement of. However, to see much of that, I had to have Steph drop me off and pick me up for a point to point run.

Having braved a grey morning so far, I dolled up in a similar outfit to Friday, unsure that the promised break in the clouds would materialize. When it did, about 4.5 miles into my nine mile run, I found myself shedding clothes and festooning my camelbak with shed layers. The overall run was amazing, 9 miles at a brisk but not forceful 9:30 pace, with winter sunshine in abundance. I always enjoy point-to-point runs; while you can’t beat the convenience of a loop or the predictability and reliability of an out-and-back, there is something amazing about the feeling of really transporting yourself somewhere quite far away on your own two legs. At the risk of abusing an oft repeated cliche, if you’d told me a year ago that I’d be travelling in an unexpected way from Hannan Rd & South Service Drive up to the shopping centers on Ford Road, I would have been more willing to believe I’d fly there on a winged pony than that I’d run the whole way in 90 minutes.

Overall, it was nice to have two memorable runs in the books. With the extra miles from those, I think I’ve got a plan on the books for the holidays that will get me to 1000 miles in 2011. I’ll keep you posted!

So if I run 76 more miles, I will reach 1000.

I did not set an annual mileage goal this year, because I was focused instead on the accomplishment of the half marathon. I didn’t want to have anything interfere with proper rest & training amounts, like a goal that wouldn’t necessarily help. Sometime over the summer I noticed that if I continued on my then-current path, I would hit 1,000 easily. I still didn’t set it as a goal, because I had two more half marathons to run, PRs to get, and a long season to eventually recover from. When I had the ITB injury on the last weeks of prep for Stomp the Grapes, I decided not to fret the 1000 miles, and to concentrate on running the race, and then recovering. Taking two weeks off and running easy this winter were higher priorities.

All of that is in the books now, and with New Years looming close, I’m just 74 miles from the big milestone. With 3 8 mile runs planned, and 7 5 mile runs, along with some warmups for workouts, I’m going to be quite close, and may intentionally pad on some miles to reach four digits.

There’s a certain magic in round numbers, isn’t there?

I picked her up at 8:00am at her place, and we had what is almost a stereotypical experience. I asked where the venue was, she told me, but said “It’s weird, the front page said 8:30am, not 9:00am for race start…” So we headed out, not knowing if we’d end up rushing in to the start line and catching up from the back.

Luckily when we arrived at 8:20, there was no evidence of the race being imminent, so we were able to get our timing tags on, and I was able to pin on my wearable xmas lights. Yes, that’s right, since I raised $325 for Arthritis Foundation, I bought some battery powered xmas lights and ran the whole race decked out like a sparsely decorated tree.

The photograph doesn’t do the lights justice, but it was pretty amazing.

We lined up near the back, because Sheryl & Diana are still working their way up to a full-running 5k with that very popular couch-to-5k plan. Unfortunately, Diana’s bluetooth headset chirped its last before we got to mile 2, so our breaks became a little bit more random, as the ladies were alternating between that sweet race day adrenaline that makes you want to run extra, and the pain of pushing themselves. That pain is what running is all about! Great job, Diana & Sheryl!

We got near the end, and Diana tragically started lying to poor Sheryl about how much distance we had left. See, we hadn’t crossed the 3 mile line yet, and Diana started saying things like “It’s just a few hundred feet from this corner!” and “the finish is right up there”!

Then when I started reporting the real distance from my Garmin, and getting nasty looks! I’m sorry, Sheryl! But you finished, and with 5 more weeks of C25k, you’ll be running strong the whole way in no time.

The race was well organized with a great, enthusiastic finishing line crowd, and a fun raffle/awards ceremony in the movie theater afterward. My favorite form of comedy was the raffle announcements where we all had tickets from the same spool, so the first 3 of 6 numbers were always the same. Still, people got really excited every time he called out those three numbers, with an audible noise of anticipation through the room. Then you’d hear 200, then 99, then 9 people groan in outrage and agony as they were eliminated as the called the next 3 digits in slow progression. Somehow, this reaction never got old to the MC, and he started drawing out the calls longer and longer.

I had a great time going out and doing a run for the purpose of sharing the day with my friends and helping out a good cause, and can easily see myself doing some more things like this in the future.