I’ve hit a running plateau
Posted: March 14, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: running 1 Comment »I love running. I usually feel good while running and enjoy periods of my life when I am running often. But this is not always the case. Here are my four least favorite situations to be in as a runner in order from crappiest to just plain crappy.
- Starting to run after taking several months off. You feel like you’ve just started running (see #2 below), except you can still remember how good you were only a few months ago. This makes the fact that you suck now all the more apparent and misery-inducing.
- First starting to run. It is hard to start running. It takes weeks, sometimes months, to see any positive effects. Often, you will gain weight as your appetite increases faster than your metabolism. It really is no wonder than so many people don’t stick with it. It sucks for a long time before it gets good.
- Hill reps. If you like doing hill reps, you are a masochist. From the moment you start up that damn hill, everything hurts and you know you’ve got to run up it at least another five or six times. You constantly feel like you’re going to vomit and muscles that you rarely work out are sore for days after.
- You hit a running plateau.
It is this last point that I’m in now. Running plateaus generally occur at about the midpoint of most training programs. During the first few weeks of training, you steadily get better, with each run feeling better than the last. You’re getting faster and every run starts to feel easy. After a few weeks of this euphoria, you hit a plateau. Instead of getting better, each run feels the same, but compared to how great you were just feeling, it feels like you’re slogging through each run. You’re working harder than ever and not getting any faster or better.
I rank this fourth in my last of crappy running periods because the challenge is mostly mental. Physically, I feel fine and am still improving, albeit imperceptibly. Running just isn’t as much fun as it was during the first few weeks of my training. Experience is on my side, however. I’ve been in this situation before and know that plateaus eventually end. Once they do, training becomes fun again as my body ramps up for more speed and distance gains. For now, though, it’s a matter of waiting it out and slogging through a few bad runs to get back to the good.
Very sad puppy story
Posted: March 2, 2010 Filed under: dogs | Tags: dog, sad Leave a comment »I saw a dog, a Golden Retriever puppy, get hit by a car the other night. I was jogging on the opposite side of the street. I saw him leap out of a parked car from a child’s arms and immediately get struck by a passing car. I helped him off the road and into his owner’s car, and she took him to an emergency veterinary clinic. I don’t know if he made it through the night and probably never will. I have a dread feeling that he did not.
This was one of the most disturbing events I have ever personally witnessed in my life (yes, I’ve led an easy life and yes, I’m very sensitive about animals); though it happened days ago, I still cannot get the image of the dog and his distraught owners out of my head and I doubt that I will be able to for a considerable time. The experience has made me think a lot about pets and I want to share some of my thoughts in the hope that it will make me feel a little better.
1) Take care of your pets! Our animals may, at times, seem independent (cat owners can especially relate to this), but I assure you they are not. Our pets are 100% dependent on us for their care and protection, an enormous burden that lasts for years. It is not something to be entered into lightly nor is it a task which we can ever waiver in our devotion to. The sad results of any such lapse are flashing through my mind as I write this.
2) I felt unable to help this poor animal in any meaningful way. I and other bystanders covered him to keep him warm and helped him into a car, but that was all we could do. In talking to my sister about this incident, I joked that I have decided to become a veterinarian just so that I can do something more if any event like last night’s ever occurs near me again. This is obviously preposterous, but I cannot shake this awful feeling that I failed this poor dog.
3) For every dog like the one I met last night, there are hundreds without an owner to rush them to the expensive suburban emergency clinic when they are sick or hurt, who die cold on the street, forgotten or unknown. The idea of the events of last night, multiplied by hundreds, is very difficult for me to live with. I could not help the dog from last night, but I can help others who can help by donating money or time to rescue and shelter organizations. I encourage other animal-lovers out there to do the same. Donate to the ASPCA and the Humane Society. Find a local shelter and donate money or your time to them.
“We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” Immanuel Kant.
I believe that this quote can and should be applied universally to mankind. These animals are our responsibility. How we treat them is a reflection of who we are. I hugged my dog for hours after coming home from my run that night. I also brushed his teeth, looked at his eyes and ears, checked his tags, and practiced “stay” commands with him. But mostly I loved him, and I hope you all do the same with your pets.
My summer update
Posted: September 29, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: running 2 Comments »This summer has flown by in a flurry of high expectations and failed goals. That’s not to say that I had a bad summer; on the contrary, I had a terrific summer. I just didn’t happen to meet any of the goals that I set for myself. I knocked off two books from my reading list: Wathcmen and The Historian. I ran a 5k, the New Orleans Rebirth 5k, in a disappointing 24:50, just keeping a 8:00/mile pace.
However, I’m not terribly disappointed with myself. Yes, I would have liked to read more and run faster, but I did read some and run faster now than I did at the beginning of the summer. In particular regarding running, I am glad that I set a high goal for myself. I did miss that goal, but because of the many time constraints on my summer weekends (weddings, vacations, more weddings, etc.) it was inevitable. I didn’t run many long and fast runs because I was away so many weekends when I had planned to do these runs. I could have set a more reasonable goal for myself, like 25:00. If that had been the case, I would have barely met my low goal, which to me would have been much more disappointing than totally missing my ridiculous goal.
I could have done better on my reading list, and I have no good excuse for this. Traveling is no excuse; in fact, in most cases it gave me more time to get reading done. Instead, I played a lot of video games. As both are leisure activities, I don’t feel all that bad about the substitution. I still must make a better habit of reading, both because I do enjoy it and even I, a video game activist and aficionado, understand that reading is often more intellectually stimulating than grinding a warlock to level 80 in World of Warcraft (one of my many unspoken achievements for the summer).
Google results as proof… of nothing
Posted: July 17, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »I just saw John Gruber’s post calling CNN his ‘Jackass of the Week’ for running a story about the moon landing being a hoax. I couldn’t agree with him more. Reading the CNN article lead me to this passage.
Twenty-five percent of respondents to a survey in the British magazine Engineering & Technology said they do not believe humans landed on the moon. A handful of Web sites and blogs circulate suspicions about NASA’s “hoax.”
And a Google search this week for “Apollo moon landing hoax” yielded more than 1.5 billion results.
I have seen high numbers of Google results used before as evidence of something’s popularity, when in fact they are evidence of nothing. Google’s spiders crawl the deepest corners of the ever-expanding Internet, thus Google returns billions of results for almost any combination of search terms. It is awful that CNN would use the number of results returned in Google as proof of anything.
Running Update
Posted: July 15, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: running Leave a comment »Progress has begun on my goal of running a sub-20:00 5k, though the amount of progress is difficult to measure. I’ve stuck reasonably well to the 5k training program I am using, so in theory I should be getting faster. I’m using logyourrun.com to, predictably, log my runs and the easiest way to check my progress is through Twitter (www.twitter.com/khren). Personally, I feel great. It is nice to have a training program and I enjoy running fast. For example, the other week I ran 3 miles in 23:15, which is a sub-8:00 pace. While very slow relative to many other runners, it was very fast relative to my old speed.
I have also bought into the barefoot running craze. If you don’t know what this is, I’ll summarize. I take most of my information from these articles from Wired and The Daily Mail.
There is a growing body of research that says running barefoot is better for the human body than running in trainers. The theory behind this is that humans have evolved into good distance/endurance runners. Our feet all by themselves reduce shock to joints when running barefoot. The key problem is that many people (myself included) heel strike when running in trainers. This is not how your body is built to run; you should instead be striking at the midfoot to best reduce the impact of your foot striking the ground. Heel striking increases the impact of the strike on your feet, ankles, knees, and hips, and is the reason behind many running injuries. Running barefoot, you will instead naturally midfoot strike. Try it sometime, you will find that you will always strike on the ball of your foot when running barefoot. The articles mention several other ways by which your feet reduce impact. Thus, running barefoot is the best way to have a natural running stride and reduce impact on your joints. This is the theory at any rate.
I decided to test the theory for three main reasons.
- The articles I linked above mention several common running maladies, such as plantar fasciitis, that researchers blame on improper running technique caused by running in trainers. I have had nearly every injury specified and have always run in trainers.
- My training goal this summer is to run faster. In addition to the benefits I mention above, running barefoot builds muscle in your feet and calves, which should help make me faster.
- The Wired article turned me on to Vibram Five Fingers, which is a crazy shoe with toes. Here’s a picture of them on me. They are super crazy, geeky, and awesome. Barefoot running gives me a reason to flaunt these about my neighborhood.
To date, I have only run barefoot once, yesterday in the Vibrams for half a mile of a three mile run. As far as the shoes go, wearing them was just like running barefoot with heavily calloused feet. As far as barefoot running goes, my ankles hurt. It is supposed to take some time to get used to barefoot running, so I will continue to slowly ease myself into it. I will post updates as I discover if barefoot running is really better for me or just some hippy, anti-Nike crap.
Update: As you can see in Twitter, just did 6×400 interval training, first three in Brooks and second three in Vibrams. I was faster in the Vibrams, but my ankles are in some pain now. I think that tomorrow’s run will be in regular trainers.
