Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Starting a little past halfway

ok so I've been running for a while. I continue to figure out new things and sometimes I remember them.
Some things I've learned are...
- I can avoid chafing by wearing shorts with no liner and Vaseline or Desitin on what Johnny Knoxville calls "the gooch." This works well enough for a marathon and for practice runs of up to about 20 miles. For longer runs, either long tights and Desitin in the aforementioned locale and where the seams contact the skin or quarter tights worn wrong side out w/ Desitin.
- Relax Balance Turnover as keys.
- Pick up my heels.
- Don't overstride/Keep feet under me.

Things I'm learning include
- Stretching correlates positively with lower leg injuries (i.e. it causes them).
- It looks advisable to put in runs at 60% to 70% of the target distance.
- Preliminary results indicate that tea with sugar and rice result in a smooth energy curve and no abdominal distress. Just read that Kenyans get about 23% of calories from ugali (corn meal), 20% from sugar, 14% from rice, 13% from milk (in the tea).
- I like long runs, up tempo runs up to maybe 20 miles, and hills.
- Intervals just don't agree with my right hip/hamstring.

I've hit PR's as recently as last year (9.12 miles in an hour, 8 times a 1 km, 500 ft hill in 1:59:57, my one marathon so by definition a PR, the only 5k time I can remember, etc.) but this year I'm kind of flat in spite of having fewer injuries. I'm interested in RUNNING 100 km on the road but without results so far. I'm planning to try a 100 km time trial in a month. Ran a 44 mile run a week and a half back and spent a good week afterwards feeling worn out. Ran 40 miles a week prior to that and had no such problems so I'm still running into little mysteries. So I think for now I'll try to limit my long runs to 40 miles, every other week and try to get in some up tempo runs and hill runs in between. One other factor (here comes the excuse) is that my work schedule has been all over the place the past few weeks. It should return to normal next week which means that I can run in the morning before work.