Everglades Trail Run

When I first started running, I got in the habit of setting three goals before I did a race.  The reason for this is that I am very goal-orientated, and I realized pretty quickly that if I just set one goal and didn't succeed, I would get frustrated with myself and angry.  Fortunately, I had sufficient self-awareness to also realize that if I kept this up, I wouldn't keep running for very long, because who wants to do a sport where you are always feeling frustrated and angry?  And sometimes the goals were good and noble, like when I PRed my 5k time.  Goal 1 was to finish in under 30:00.  Goal 2 was to finish with a 10 minute/mile split.  Goal 3 was to PR.  I PRed with a 10:06 mile split, so I will take that, since it was awfully close to Goal 2.

I'm not sure when I got out of the habit of setting three goals for races, but it probably was around the time that I started doing many more of them and my main goal was simply to get out there and run.  For some reason, I think I brought it back when I did the Philly Marathon in 2012, but honestly I can't remember what the three goals were (probably PR, run the whole course, and finished.  In that case, I PRed).  More often now, I might set one goal; for instance, my one goal for the 50k was finish the 50k, which I did.  I wasn't really worried about anything else, which is good, because I sure didn't accomplish much else with that particular race!

Today, though, I kind of brought back the three goals thing for the Everglades trail run.  This is maybe slightly misleading, since I switched goals during the race, then kind of decided that they were goals 1, 2 and 3.  My first goal, when I started, was to keep a run/walk pattern for the whole thing.  That was abandoned as it got hot, when I started switching goals to try and accommodate a run/walk thing, but then realized that I couldn't keep up any running at all and had to walk the whole remaining course (at around Mile 10 of the 16-mile course).  Then I came up with one goal and one goal alone:

1) Don't get heat exhaustion

And I accomplished that goal.  Heck, I even finished the race.

Lemme tell you, that finishing was no mean feat.  The temperature was unseasonably high today in south Florida, to the tune of 85F in the shade, so around 95F in the sun.  And the last four miles of this course were pretty much entirely in the sun at around 1pm.  This was almost my complete and utter undoing, except for this guy, Norm:

Norm was kind enough to walk me through those last four miles

I am not usually very talky when I run, but I think I am learning to be a more social person.  Although my opening remark to Norm was something along the lines of, 'Has anyone read Stephen King's 'The Long Walk'?  Because this would be good footage if they make a film.'  (Plot summary).  Because that is effectively how most of us looked for the end of the race: walking along at a relatively good pace because no one could run because it was really freaking hot.  Fortunately, no one was shot for dropping below a certain pace.  Whoo!

I do have to say that I thought I was awfully near heat exhaustion, but fortunately that does not seem to have happened.  Trust me, walking for 4 miles with no shade was very tough.  There was a part on the prairie early in the race which was beautiful but warm:

Everglades grass prairie

Some parts were nice and shady:

However, the real killer was the sun and there was an awful lot of it near the end of the race.  The path was nice, but by the time it got to around noon, there was no escaping the power of Mr. Florida Sun.  In fact, I had some pretty choice words for Mr. Florida Sun by the end.

Do you see any shade there?  No, not really

The race itself was well-organized and I plan to keep my ceremonial anti-gator whistle for a good long time.  Aid stations were totally stocked.  One trick that I learned was to add ice to your Camelbak when it is hot because it will cool off your water/beverage for an extended amount of time.  Also, this race had pretty sweet swag in the form of a great bag:

You might be wondering if I saw any fun nature on the trail.  For most of the race, all that I saw was buzzards circling, which seemed quite appropriate.  But there was a bit of fun after a while:

Take a close look

Then this happened (no zoom with this photo):

My theory is that the alligator hit the wall, tried some Powerade, and decided to take a nap instead.

So I definitely got my money's worth!

Hills vs. Heat

Holy cow, there are a lot of updates to share regarding running.  Like:

1) I did the 12-mile run in northern Georgia.  At the time, it was, by a lot, the hardest run that I had ever attempted.  At one point, I didn't even want to do downhills any more.  It was that bad.  Also, the whole thing was at 2200 feet and over which (who knew) is really hard if you usually run in flat swamps.  I was third last; the two people behind me hiked the course.  But I finished it!  And believe me, that felt like an enormous achievement.  There were at least two points where I was tempted to go back to the start instead of continuing onward.

2) Then I did the Rattlesnake Run and the 10-mile race of Wildhorse.  Both of these were more challenging than I anticipated.  Rattlesnake was hard because it was a week after the Georgia run and my legs were completed dead.  It didn't help that there are (Florida) hills there, plus it got hot that day.  Wildhorse was hard because the last mile was really hard.  Ever had to climb a hill during a race that was so steep, you needed to use a rope (rope was provided)?  I have!

2.5) I sprained my ankle (not running.  Wearing heels during a night out in Pittsburgh).  Fortunately, it was just a mild sprain and I was back and running in a week.

3) Today, which was a mess.  The plan was to do the 30K that is part of the X-Country Marathon.  However, let me share with you the weather this morning.  As a reminder, it is mid-November:

No.

We started at 7:30am, which as you can see presented pretty challenging conditions (far too close to the Threshold of Ick).  By around 9:30am, I realized that I was done.  Just done.  This race will live in notoriety as my first DNF (did not finish).  It was too hot and there were lots of parts of the course that were not shady.  So you can add ten degrees to those temperatures near the end.  And you know what?  After the fun bouts with heat exhaustion that I have experienced in the past, I didn't want to risk it.  I'm pretty sure that I did have heat exhaustion, but it wasn't as bad as last summer.  Probably the fact that I gobbled down some salty foods right away helped.  Go pretzels.

And I was definitely not alone.  There were at least a dozen other people who dropped out of the 30K race.

If you're curious, all of this is training for my next major challenge: Croom Zoom.  I signed up for the 50K.  Yes I did.  My first ultramarathon.  With any luck, the weather will be more amenable (also we start earlier).

So yeah.  I have not had a great month of racing, that is for sure.  But I am reminding myself that the more you challenge yourself, the more likely it is that you will run into adversity--and the races that I have been doing are challenging ones.  But adversity is not the same as being defeated.  Today was a mess, but that was due to circumstances out of my control.

And we now have the definitive answer: hills > heat

I'm a runner. Therefore, sometimes I do stupid things.

Some might argue that running in and of itself is a stupid thing.  Perhaps.  But apart from that, runners tend to do stupid things.  We try to hard.  We push too hard.  We injure ourselves.  We try to go too hard in the heat.

Guess which one I did this week?

Part of me wasn't wanting to share this with you because I like to think that as a slow and steady runner with 6 years of running under my shoes (5 of which have been in Florida), I have some handle on what one should or should not do in heat.  And I think that in my mind, I know what one should and should not do in heat.  So when I tried to run my long run on Monday, 7 miles, I wanted to anticipate what I thought the problems would be.  Instead, I wound up with the worst case of heat exhaustion that I have had since getting here.

Here's what I did right:

I took a sports drink and even planned to go by a drinking fountain.

I incorporated a walk interval into my run.

I reminded myself that the only way of adapting to heat is to go run in heat.

Here's what I did wrong:

I didn't go early enough.

I haven't been having enough sodium in my food.

And I believe that the final point here was the real problem (my symptoms are closer to 'salt depletion' than 'dehydration'...you can go look those up if you want.  They're kind of nasty).  Because I've been hydrated and my body temperature has been normal.  But I have not felt right since the run.  Normally, I am pretty sensitive to sodium, so I try not to have too much of it.  This time around, though, this precaution may have been the problem.

Today I had half of a bag of cheese curds for lunch.  That should help the sodium levels.

I still feel off and I'm not sure what to do.  I want to get back on the horse and run--I was already having mental blocks about completing runs in heat (hence why what should have been the Sunday run got moved to Monday).  But obviously I don't want this to get worse.  I suspect that this week will have some pool running at some point.  And I'm going to ensure that I only go early morning or in the evening to avoid the sheer evil that is Mr. Florida Sun in August.

I'm kind of annoyed, so I read stories about other runners who have suffered from heat exhaustion today.  One was a person who wanted to adapt to the heat, so she decided to run in the middle of the day on blacktop.  In summer.  In heat.  Not the best plan.  I'm not gloating over this, but it has been useful to remember that I am by no means the only one to do dumb things like this.  In fact, part of being a runner is that probably you sometimes do dumb things.  Besides going out running, of course.

It has begun

Wow, I didn't even realize how negligent I've been with this blog recently.  It isn't because I haven't been running.  I've been running.  Kind of.  Not as much as I might like, but still keeping a semi-regular schedule.

So what has begun?  Summer.  *shudder*  Yes, in April.  How can I tell?  The temperature today was 90F.  Here in Tampa, in the summer, the temperature gets to 90F pretty much every day in the summer.  If it gets over 90, we consider it to be super hot (this is just the actual temperature.  The Real Feel temperatures are more in the 100-120 range).  Now the humidity today was not summer-level.  The heating was not as evil as in the summer.  But it was still pretty warm.

I really wish that my brain had conveniently forgotten that temperatures are taken in the shade and therefore it was closer to 100F in the sun.  Boo brain.  I remembered this a few steps into my run.

More and more, I am regretting my decision to sign up for a run in April (much less another run in April, then one in May).  But the upcoming one is the one that I am currently regretting the most.  It's the River N Rapids 10k, a trail run, which makes it my first trail run.  I have no idea what trail runs are like.  It's in a state park in an area that should really be swamp.  Whoo!  Lastly, it starts at 9am.  Why I thought that I would want to run something starting at 9am in April is beyond me.  Possibly this occurred back when I was sick and running a fever.

As I was feeling very hot today on my run, I had a brief moment where I realized that I did not need to do this run simply because I signed up for it.  Bold.  Crazy thoughts here.  But I don't want to quit on it.  So I will do it but will plan for walk/running.  If it isn't so bad, I can just run.  If it is, then I have a strategy.  This makes me feel better about the event.  Now I can worry about being eaten by an alligator.

Half-marathon #3: done

I successfully completed the third of four half-marathons in the Halfathon today.  Whoo!  So what if it was my slowest half on record?  I had to tackle two bridges....twice each!  So make that four bridges.  One of which was sheer evil (Sand Key).

Another reason that my time was slow: at around the 11-mile mark, I noticed that there was a dead-looking fish on the ground.  A lot of people fish near the Clearwater Causeway, so I think that it fell out of someone's fishing bucket.  I felt bad for this poor, dead fish who was living out his last moments on earth in the bright, harsh sun.  So I picked it up and dropped it into the water.  Burial at sea for a fish during a half-marathon?  That, for me, was a first.  And likely a last.

I ran the race with a friend (the same friend who kicked my butt a few months ago at the 5k).  We decided to take things at a leisurely pace.  Since it was her first half-marathon, she was guaranteed a personal record provided that she finished.  And we did, so yay for her!

I do admit that at one point it looked like we might be last.  But we were not.  We overtook at least 3-4 people during the second half of the course.  Yes!

Weather: not ideal.  The humidity was not lower than around 75% for the whole race.  Ew.  The temperature, in and of itself, was okay in the high 50s/low 60s.  But the humidity made this not so pleasant.  Particularly since it was in the 97-98% range for the first hour.  It's winter, Florida!  You can abate with the humidity!  In case you are keeping track, that is nearing the threshold of ick (humidity + temperature > 160), as in the threshold of ick that we measure for summer conditions.  Also, Mr. Florida Sun came out to visit for much of the course.  Some of it was not very shady.  Actually, much of it was not very shady.  This means that the temperature was probably closer to 70, putting it even closer to that ick threshold.

Only one to go!  Also, I am now officially a Half Fanatic.  This makes it worth suffering through the last half-marathon and going over the evil bridges and everything.  Almost.  Hey, I get another t-shirt (well, a singlet) to celebrate.

Florida vs. The Great White North

Greetings from Canada, eh!  I'm here for a week and trying to get back in the swing of running.  After the chest cold, I was taking it easy for a bit.  Last weekend, I decided the time had come to run again.  I was in West Palm Beach and went for an easy, 30-minute run.  Except that it wasn't so easy because the humidity was horrible -- in the 80%-100% range (it was rainy).  In December.  Not fair.  But I did it, even though I didn't feel like I was running at my best, even taking out the awful humidity.

Much the same for my next run, which was on Monday in Fort Lauderdale (I was doing a Florida road trip, can you tell?).  This time, the humidity was okay, but Mr. Florida Sun was awfully brutal.  The run was by the beach, which offered great scenery but very little shade.  I did okay, but needed to walk a bit at the end.  Still a bit sick, I think.

On Thursday, I wanted to do some speed training on the treadmill, but the treadmills weren't working (?).  So I did pyramid pieces instead.  You alternate fast running and slower running (or walking, as the case was by the end of the last one) at different intervals.  I usually do 1-1-2-2-3-2-2-1-1 for a 15-minute pyramid (bold indicates where I ran).  It's a very good workout.  Again, not feeling 100% and still a bit sick.

Now I am in Canada, where it can be humid too, only you don't mind it so much because it's below freezing.  This describes yesterday pretty well.   I did a good job of dressing for the weather and I noticed that the wind can make an incredible different.  Places where the wind was blocked weren't so bad, but when you got the wind head-on, it was pretty intense.  My run was a 5-mile one with hills in preparation for the 10-miler that I am doing on December 26 (Boxing Day).  It went okay, although yet again, I do not feel that I am at 100%.  Maybe someday I will actually recover.  Until then, I am trying to accept that I may not be running at my best right now, but at least I am sufficiently recovered that I can run.  It's a big improvement over how I felt during the last half-marathon!

What a difference decent weather and a packet of caffeinated jellybeans makes

I can tell you exactly what a difference these two things make: a full 30 seconds off of my personal record (PR) mile split for a half-marathon!  That's a whole 6 minutes faster!  I think that actually it's closer to 7 minutes faster!

Really!

That happened!

The scenario: the first half-marathon in the Florida Halfathon series was today.  I was, to say the least, concerned, particularly after the last long run that I did where I was awful.  I decided to try being better about fueling: generally I don't eat much before a race, so I decided to change that.  I had one of my packets of caffeinated jellybeans prior to the race.  That apparently did the trick.  I don't think that I've ever felt so focused at the beginning of a long run.  This idea is staying.

Then, I was very fortunate in that the weather was MUCH better than anticipated.  It was 58F with a dew point of 50F.  Now admittedly, this is actually in the 70% humidity range, but it felt considerably better than normal.  And there was a pretty hefty breeze--actually, I could have done without the hefty breeze from a running standpoint, but it was fantastic from a not-overheating standpoint.  Also great: it was overcast throughout the run, so Mr. Florida Sun was not even a factor.

And I did not even come close to overheating!  I did have to walk a bit around mile 11 because I got going too fast for a while.  But I was back on track soon enough and polished off the last mile and finished in a much faster time than anticipated.  Considering that I was worried about being taken off the course for slowness, this was, to say the least, an unexpected surprise.

This was my benchmark race for the series.  I need to work on staying steady and getting faster so that I can power through that 11-mile slump next time.  On the other hand, who cares because I got a half-marathon PR!

WHOOOOOOOOOOO!

Apparently, it's the year of weird running surprises.  I got the age award for the 5k in April, even though I didn't run all that fast.  Then, I got my half-marathon PR on a race that I really didn't expect.  Considerably better than last year, which was the year of the cruddy race weather.

Finding patterns

I think that I have figured out one reason that running has been more challenging this year.  When I started the most recent bunch of training, I was in Germany, where the weather was not torturous.  I got used to running at somewhat normal speeds.  Now I am back in Florida and that is impossible.  So I get going too fast, then find myself done.  Last year, when I was training for the marathon, I was running at a considerably slower pace most of the time--like a minute/mile slower.  I need to get back to that speed.  It's not easy, as much as I try to remind myself.

Tonight was another one of the warm-up, run, cool-down runs.  I was aiming for a slowish pace and almost succeeded, except that I needed to walk around 2 miles and didn't quite maintain the pace I was hoping for as a result.  It got somewhat hot again, although conditions are still nowhere near as evil as the summer.  It's okay.  I was actually much closer to my planned pace than I have been on any of these runs to this point, so I see that as progress.  Also, heck, I went running, so that's always a good thing.

Tuesday I got out as well, although that was too hot.  Due to some evening plans, I had to get out earlier than I would have ideally wanted, with Mr. Florida Sun still out.  After the halfway point, I added some walk breaks.  And should have started more slowly.  Yes, I'm figuring out the pattern, it's just taking me a while.

This explains a lot

The heat index is calculated with the assumption that the person is standing in the shade.  No wonder being in the sun makes it so much tougher!

What difference does being in the shade make?

Quite a big one. All of the National Weather Service’s charts for calculating the heat index make the reasonable assumption that folks will look for shade when it’s oppressively hot and muggy out. Direct sunlight can add up to 15 degrees to the calculated heat index.

I'm not crazy!  Thank you, Mental Floss.

Incidentally, yesterday I ran 4 miles without stopping.  Yay!  The weather was still a bit nicer than usual.  Went around 9am.  I had planned to go this morning, but was feeling worn out from a yoga class last night.  Instead, I'll go either tonight or tomorrow morning.

Completing two more runs

Last weekend's runs were a 3 mile and an 8 mile as the long run (I'm getting caught up now, but have been staying on schedule, even if I haven't been blogging).  I was determined to complete the 3 miles without having to walk and fortunately, I accomplished this goal.  The weather seemed slightly more amenable than last Thursday, so maybe there was something particularly awful about that day.  It's encouraging that I completed the run since last week was getting frustrated.

Sunday I decided that even though I completed the 3 miles, I still wasn't ready to run 8 miles straight.  So I opted instead to do 0.05 walk/0.35 run throughout.  It went pretty well, although it was still extremely challenging.  No guilt about walking when conditions are that tough.  I also planned the run pretty well because I looped around a water fountain and I definitely took advantage.  Amazing how much liquid you can drink when it is hot out.

It felt funny doing a real long run again.  I wore my running belt, got my all-natural energy drink, took along some sport beans, and finished by downing a chocolate milk.  It's been a while since I needed all of these extras--since I was training for the marathon in fact.  It took me a little bit to remember the routine, but everything went quite well from the preparation standpoint.  Next week's long run goes down to 7 miles, although I think that I will probably run-walk it regardless.

One thing that I did not anticipate was that I need to go earlier because there is less shade than there was in winter.  As a result, I was in the sun more often, which I find challenging.  I think that I was accustomed to the sun being less fierce, but then again, the last long runs that I was doing were back in November, so things are a bit different.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger, albeit sweaty

Today was the real deal Florida AM run.  Humid (although in the 80% range because I went around 8:30), sun out, and too warm for running.  I did another one of my walk/run deals for 30 minutes.  During my first walk interval, I realized that this week actually has a different format than the previous weeks and that I was pretty sure this morning's run was supposed to be a fartlek.  Ah well.  Saturday is supposed to be 3M, so I will just move stuff around and finish up the week as is.  Tomorrow, then, is 4M (ew) and Thursday will be a fartlek.  That might not be so bad since there is walking in it (if I do a pyramid instead, which is fully what I intend to do), although I don't think that I will go very fast.  Actually, I should probably do three pyramids since it is supposed to be a 4M fartlek, so that is the new plan (each pyramid = 15 minutes, in a world where we are pretending that I run relatively quickly).

Today was another tough one, as evinced by the fact that sweat is still dripping off of me 15 minutes later (ew).  I had been lucky so far in avoiding Mr. Florida Sun--as he was affectionately known during marathon training--but today I figured I should face him.  He's still a strong and powerful entity.  But this is all part of adapting.  This run was not fun.  At least it wasn't hideously awful and I survived it.  I was a bit disheartened to realize that these are basically going to be the conditions for the rest of my training plan, but I tried not to dwell on that fact for too long.

Getting back on track

Yesterday I went for a run, but didn't have time afterward to blog about it.  So here we are, a day later.

I meant to go around 5pm; unfortunately, other events interfered that prevented me from following this plan (by which I mean, I discovered Angry Birds).  Yet I knew I was going to go running.  I could feel it deep in my runner's brain.  There is some point you reach where you know that regardless of how much you procrastinate or put things off, you are eventually going to go running.  I haven't felt this for a few weeks, so it was nice to know that my 'get up and go' was still in there somewhere.  Yay.

Because it was dark by the time I got out (thanks, Angry Birds!), I decided to run around my complex.  The loop is around 0.7 miles.  It is not the most exciting run, but has several good aspects: it is well lit, there is not much traffic, and you can't trip on any sidewalks or anything.  I've done the complex loop before and while it's not the most inspirational route, I like it when running at night.  Also, if any alligators pop out of the sewers, there are people around who can hopefully help before I suffer a fatal injury.

I decided to do 4 loops, so around 2.8 miles.  This wasn't about the distance or time, it was about getting out of the house and running (try that sentence in a Canadian accent!).  The first lap, I actually felt good, better than I had about running in a while.  Laps 2-4 were less enjoyable because the humidity -- which is still high -- caught up with me.  However, it wasn't as bad as Saturday since there was no Mr. Florida Sun to add insult to humidity.  Anyway, I figure that probably it is good to get acclimatized since likely the humidity will be here for a while.  I am doing another 5k in a week and a half...this was the one at which I was hoping to set a new personal record (PR), but that is not happening now.

Also, I became more acutely aware of how marathon training and shorter distance training really were different.  Back when I was training for the marathon, I would have just done my 2.8 miles (or whatever) and really not worried about performance.  Yesterday, I found that I was trying to keep up a faster speed.  This wasn't on purpose, but it did feel different.  So maybe it is okay that I'm not switching from one plan to another with ease.  Maybe that is normal.