RunBlog

Any More? Mohawk Hudson Marathon 2012 Could I run a faster marathon? I decided to take another ride on the Lowell Ladd pain train to find out. He had coached me to my best time yet, so back to him I went. My training plan was similar to what I had experienced the first time around--higher weekly mileage, longer speed workouts, one day off per week. Looking back at my training log from 9 years ago, I wonder how my body held up to the pounding: 235 miles in July, 240 in August, and 243 in September. My last speed workout before the marathon was the same cruise interval workout of 3 x 2.5 miles with 400 meter recovery between. But this time I found myself on the road for business--in Jonesboro, AR, home of Arkansas State University. Sitting in the hotel the day prior to the workout, I found Jonesboro High School on Google Maps. I headed there bright and early the next morning. The workout went well, although I remember having to navigate a group of walkers. I don’t think they were use

Fernando's Fight Boston Marathon 2011 My first Boston as a qualifier! A bib number with 4 digits! (They order the numbers by qualifying time.) Pretty heady stuff. I wasn’t in great shape, however, heading into the race. In December 2010 I had my first serious experience with back spasms, which shut me down completely. No running, no biking until the second week in January. And the nagging groin injury I had was diagnosed as a hernia. I would need surgery to repair it. I asked the surgeon if I could train for and run Boston before getting the surgery. He said, “Yes, if it doesn’t get any worse and you don’t mind the pain.” Okay. We scheduled surgery for 10 days after the race. I bought one of those weird hernia belts, which helped ease the pain during training. I won’t get into the medical details, which I find kind of gross. Suffice it to say I was running with a low-level pain in the lower abdomen.  Sometime early in 2011, Fernando Morales was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma an

Barely My running stories wouldn’t be complete without a detour into a type of race that I love--team relays. In particular, there is a team relay on Cape Cod in the spring and one in New Hampshire (Reach the Beach) in the fall. I ran my first relay with GNRCers in May 2010. I liked it so much, I did another 12 of them. What do I like about them? Pretty much everything. For the uninitiated, here’s a quick summary of how the relay works:  There are 12 runners on a team. They are divided into two vans, each with 6 runners. Total distance is about 200 miles, divided into 36 segments of varying lengths (typically from 3-10 miles). Each person on the team runs 3 legs. So if I were runner #1, I would run leg 1, then my teammates would run legs 2-12, and I would pick up again at leg 13. Between runs, there’s a break of about 5-6 hours.  The race starts on a Friday afternoon and the team runs constantly until the finish sometime Saturday afternoon

Inside-the-Park Homer Bay State Marathon 2009 The fact that at age 55 I have been a runner for 20 years would be a surprise to my younger self. When I was younger, running was always a means to an end: catching up to a racquetball or an opposing striker. But at some point, it came to be me. My days begin with a run. My calendar features races. And I inhabit a runner’s frame.  But after two marathons in October 2007, my body pretty much fell apart. My training log for the remainder of 2007 has notes like “sore hip” and “can still feel hip soreness.” Duh. I had been ignoring or running through soreness for a while. It came to the point where I was limping at home and at work. Later I would realize that ignoring injuries was a classic “beginning runner” thing. “Just run through it, it’ll get better.” Until it doesn’t. So I bit the bullet and started with physical therapy.  My main issue was with the muscles in my right leg--the adductors. I remember saying to the physical therapis