Johnny Carino's!!

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Do what you know until you know what you don’t

May 9, 2011 2:24 pm by Paul Jenkins in General Stuff, Personal, Running

The long road

Mondays make for great days to procrastinate.  To think about all the reasons why we can’t do something, shouldn’t do something, and would fail if we did do something.  They seem to be the perfect days for looking at the end of a road and convincing ourselves that we could never get there, even if we gave it the old college try.  They are great for sitting at our computer for hours and hours working on pretend budgets that we just might need if we ever actually do win the lottery, which, of course, we won’t.

Mondays, it appears, are perfect for wasting.

Unless you’re sick and tired of the normal Mondays.  In that case, Mondays may just be perfect for starting.

It is so easy to focus on what we don’t have: money, energy, time, knowledge, the perfect networking connection.  But have you ever thought about what you do have?  Here’s a list: money, energy, time, knowledge, the perfect networking connection.

“Wait!  You just used the same list for both what we don’t have and what we do have!  Is that a typo?”

No.  It’s the truth.  When we talk of what we don’t have, what we usually mean is that we don’t have enough of what we actually already have. Think about it.  It’s not that we don’t have any money, or any energy, or any time; it’s that we feel as if we don’t have enough.  ”If I had more energy, I’d start down that road.  If I had more money, I’d pursue my dream job.  If I had more…….”

This thought came to me as I was running a week or so ago, and having a terrible time of it.  The seasons are now transitioning from cool spring mornings to blazing summer mornings, and the energy had been sapped out of my legs.  As I moved along (barely), I kept thinking about how far out of reach another marathon felt, or for that matter, another 5k.  It was as if the length of the journey overtook me and I suddenly felt overwhelmed with the thought of trying to reach my current running goals, such as running a marathon in under 4 hours and eventually – someday – qualifying for the Boston Marathon.

In that moment I lost sight of the fact that I have actually run 2 marathons, 4 half-marathons, and a butt-load of assorted 10Ks, 8Ks and 5Ks, not to mention the fact that over the past 3 years of training I’ve run enough miles to go from the Outer Banks to San Francisco, and then back to the Arizona/New Mexico state line on the return trip.  I’m not bragging, because there are plenty of people who have run a lot more miles than I have, but I am trying to point out that many times we allow the length of the journey before us to blind us to the strength in the journey behind us.

Unless you were born yesterday, you’ve been walking.  You’re not at the starting point.  That was years ago, and even if you’ve made wrong turn after wrong turn, you’re still not starting over from scratch.  You have what it takes to continue doing what you know, and if you’ll do what you know, in time you’ll come to know the things that you don’t.

The man who does things makes mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all – doing nothing.
- Benjamin Franklin

We are so easily given to paralysis.  We can have all the confidence in the world and still be turned into a deer in the headlights at a moment’s notice when the road before us takes an unexpected turn.  And just like me on that run, it’s easy to feel like the miles and miles you’ve already come did nothing but wear you out and set you up to fail now.

But in that moment, it’s time to remember what you know, and do it.  I don’t know how to run a marathon fast enough to qualify for Boston, but I do know how to run, and I even know how to run a marathon, and if I do what I know, my body will grow stronger as I run, and will eventually know how to run farther, faster, and stronger than it can now.  How can I be sure?  Because 3 years ago, I couldn’t run 2 minutes without sounding like a seal who had smoked 4 packs a day for a decade!  The road behind me reminds me of the strength I’ve gained, and reminds me that I’ve learned all I need in order to continue down the road before me.

Paul understood this principle, too.  When he was instructing the believers in Philippi on how to run this race we call faith, he summed it all up with these simple, profound, and life-altering words:

Only let us live up to what we have already attained. (Philippians 3:16)

There is hope in those words.  Hope of a future that is brighter than the past.  Hope of dreams coming true, goals being reached, and hands being raised.

There is freedom in those words.  Freedom from the length of an overwhelming journey.  Freedom from the overly-critical family member who only points out failures and never celebrates wins.  Freedom from the weight of what we don’t know, and freedom to learn it on the way.

And there is strength in those words.  Strength for another step, another mile. Strength for another stab at a goal that still seems so far away.

Strength for turning Mondays into the perfect day for…

…continuing.


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The difference between disappointment and regret

Apr 19, 2011 1:15 pm by Paul Jenkins in Evotions, Running

1 Corinthians 9:24
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.

Yesterday I had the chance to watch two events that taught me the importance of one truth. First, let’s talk about what I saw and then we’ll dissect what I learned.

What I saw – Part 1

Yesterday was Patriots’ Day, and anyone who knows anything about running knows that means the running of the Boston Marathon. Since it is pretty much the gold standard of marathon running, it’s the one time a year that I fork out money to watch a television broadcast on my computer. It’s also the one day a year that is my least productive, because until I’m fast enough to qualify to run Boston, I have to run it vicariously through people I know. This is done by text alerts and through online runner tracking, and while technology is amazing, the constant texts and page refreshes do make it hard to accomplish any real work.

So I’m sitting at my desk doing some creative work (creative license is a lot like poetic license in that you can do just about anything and still call it part of the work you’re not doing!) and the beeps are sounding on my phone while Al Trautwig and Larry Rawson give me the play by play of the race on my laptop, and for most of the men’s race Ryan Hall is leading and looking strong. Only down side to the race is that there isn’t an American woman anywhere near the front of the women’s race because Kara Goucher is still coming back from childbirth and isn’t as competitive as she usually is.

Just as I gave up hope of an American woman winning, I hear the distinctive Trautwig voice ask, “What’s this? A newcomer to the women’s lead pack?” I check the monitor and see little-known

Desiree Davila

Desiree Davila thrilled us!!

Desiree Davila running with and – perhaps more shocking – staying with two other Kenyan runners. They ran together for the final 10k and about a mile from the finish it became a two-woman race between Davila and Caroline Kilel. As they rounded the curve toward the end, Davila surged ahead only to find that Kilel answered and pushed a bit ahead coming down the final stretch. The B99 and I groaned as we watched the American’s hopes fading, but when Davila found the strength for one final pass, were suddenly screaming, high-fiving and three-throwing each other! Sadly, it was short-lived, and Kilel had the last surge and went on to win by 2 seconds over Davila. 2 seconds.

That’s how long it takes Apple to sell an iPad. 2 seconds.

If I had lost that race by 2 seconds, I’d have beaten myself senseless thinking about how close I’d come (of course, in this scenario I’d be a woman and that’s a little awkward), but Davila was all smiles recalling the race later. “It was the most excitement I’ve had in a race ever and just really carried me the last six miles,” Davila said. “I felt that energy, and I felt comfortable at the front and pushing the pace because of that. It really just carried me through to the finish line.”

While I was digesting how close our new-found hero had come to winning the Boston Marathon, I saw that the coverage had shifted to the men, and Ryan Hall was nowhere in sight. He had fallen out of contention, according to Trautwig, and I realized that the American draught at Boston was going to grow to 25 years. Hall, though, was upbeat in his post-race interview, and why shouldn’t he have been? He’d just run the fastest American marathon ever and finished 4th in the Boston Marathon. “I was out there running, and I was thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe this is happening right now. I’m running a 2:04 pace, and I can’t even see the leaders.’ It was unreal.”

2 Americans, 2 amazing races, 2 losers, 0 winners, 0 regrets, and 0 whining.


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They built a bridge. I ran over it.

Apr 12, 2011 2:01 pm by Paul Jenkins in Race Reports, Running

If you look real close, you can see me…

It’s funny how we can be so close to something so big, and never know about it.  Kind of like living with a big ‘ol buffalo in your den and waking up one day and realizing it’s been there the last 5 years or so.  That’s a little how I felt when I heard about the Bridge Run down in Charleston, SC.  Granted, I’ve only been running a little over 3 years, but I was still surprised that I’d never even known about a 10k that has been run annually since 1978 and which now attracts more than 30,000 runners each year, and this year was no exception.  A record 40,000+ registered, and just under 35,000 showed up and ran, so I felt like I had a good shot at finishing in the top 10…thousand.

Just to give some comparison to the numbers, here’s what some other famous races draw:

  • Boston Marathon: around 25,000
  • New York Marathon: around 45,000

The number of runners was about 2.5 times the population of my hometown and a little over half the size of my entire county.  From what I understand, previous years the gun has sounded and everyone just took off, so with the growing crowds they decided to use a wave start this year and we were herded into corrals based on our expected finish time.  I registered in the 49:00-60:00 minute finishers, and apparently so did about 33,000 other folks, so I ran in a crowd the entire race.  That part of the experience was pretty frustrating, because I had really hoped to go sub 50:00, which meant an average pace of around 8:00/mile, but I knew right away that it would be very difficult when I ended the weaving in and out of mile 1 in 8:21.  Still, I was hopeful that the crowd might thin after that first mile. Ummm, no.  


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A Tale of PRs, Pee and Puke (Almost)

Mar 28, 2011 8:25 pm by Paul Jenkins in Race Reports, Running

Great race. Great medal. Weird dude in the corral.

March 26, 2011 has been circled on my racing calendar for quite some time now. First, after running it last year with Chris Pate, we both wanted to run it again to improve our times. Second, it would be a good excuse to take both our families to see DC. Third, I bought a calendar that already had that date circled. Fourth, I knew I’d be able to get a PR (personal record) on this tough, but quick, course. I had 2 things almost guaranteeing that:

  1. I’ve been running tempos every week since the end of December and as a result my “easy” pace had become almost identical to the pace I ran for the entire DC race last year.  I knew that if I ran only a little quicker than that, I’d PR easily.
  2. Chris Pate.  Ever since he kicked the crap out of me during his first and my second marathon (great story – read it here), I’ve wanted to beat him.  He’s a great friend, and a fast runner, and had become my white whale.  When he mentioned something about going sub 1:50 in DC, I said it didn’t matter what he ran, cause I was going to beat him.  Unfortunately, he tweaked his knee in training and had to DNS.  It’s a shame, because it would have been a classic battle, too.  At any rate, the gauntlet had been thrown and the thought of a sub 1:50 kept me motivated in training, even though my goal going into the year was sub 1:55.

Since Chris got hurt and couldn’t go, that took one family out of the trip.  We had another family mention maybe going, but since we’re all headed down to Charleston next week-end for the Bridge Run, they decided not to do both trips.  As it turned out, nobody went except me.  Nothing says “hours of country music and talk radio” quite like an 5 1/2 hour road trip each way, so I set out at lunch on Friday with 610 The Fan blaring about the Duke and UNC Sweet Sixteen games and went off to pursue what would hopefully be a big PR for me, and at the very least my first half marathon finish under 2 hours after 3 previous attempts.

It's hard to take pictures while you're driving.

The drive up was fine, and I snapped a couple shots on the way into Washington.  I decided to go straight to the Expo and had hoped that I wouldn’t hit much traffic.  Yeah, right.  It took a bit to get parked and walk in to get my stuff. I saw some pretty good products, sampled some of the sports drinks, and chuckled at the guy giving the speech about the course and telling everyone to please look up around mile 12 so they wouldn’t miss the division of the marathon and half marathon runners. As he said, “With the blinking traffic signs and volunteers yelling at the runners, every year someone will cross the wrong finish line and be amazed at how easy that marathon was!”  On the way out I ran into Lou and Harriet, 2 friends I’ve met through the online running community at Running Ahead.  They’re both extremely strong runners, and I hope to be like them someday.  It was a nice surprise to bump into them in a crowd of a gazillion people.

Pretty uneventful night before the race. By the time I got to the hotel and checked in, it was after 8, so I ordered some room service (a club panini and fries, probably not the best pre-race meal) and ate it while watching some March Madness.  I made sure I stayed off my feet and probably went to sleep somewhere around 11:00 pm.

Decent crowd at the Expo when I was there.

The alarm sounded promptly at 4:41 am and I got up, had some coffee and a Cliff Power bar, and was in the car leaving the hotel shortly before 5:30 am.  I don’t mind saying that I was pretty nervous, I guess because the 2 weeks before the race I hadn’t felt any real groove in my runs, and so I wasn’t sure how my body would respond in the race conditions.  Traffic wasn’t too bad, and I was parked and done in the bathroom in time to run a couple of warm-up miles at an easy pace with some race pace sprints thrown in.  The warm-up didn’t do much to calm my growing concern, and as I made my way into Corral #5 I was in desperate need of a diversion.  Cue the weirdest dude I’ve ever met in a race…

As I stood to the side of the corral, one of the members of the 3:45 marathon pace group came and stood beside me, so I struck up a conversation with him about his strategy, how many marathons he’d run, etc.  I tried not to be too distracted by the way he was wrapping his foil cape around is waist, but when he handed me his empty Gatorade bottle and asked me to hold it, I asked him what he was doing.  Turns out that he does this a lot, and by “this” I mean wraps a foil cape from a previous race around his waist and pees in an empty Gatorade bottle while talking normally to a total stranger about what he’s doing.  2 words came to mind: BI…ZARRE.

Thankfully, crossing paths with Mr. Public Pee took my mind off the impending race long enough to breathe, and then we were off.  It was a little crowded for the first mile, but I was surprised how easily I was able to navigate to people and find a nice early rhythm. The first mile was a bit of an uphill and then flat for the second, and I got through them perfectly in 8:37 and 8:22.

I knew that miles 3 and 4 were downhill and so I’d planned on running them in the lower 8′s, and when I saw them click off in 7:55 and 7:57, I had 2 thoughts: I was running too fast, and I was running too fast but felt awesome and should try to run a 1:45.

I always wear my Garmin in a race to keep an eye on my pacing, and I also wear my heart rate strap, but I never look at my heart rate during a race because it just messes with my head too much. I say all that because maybe if I had looked at it, I might have made a different decision at this point in the race.  Since I didn’t, I kept pushing for a 1:45 and started the uphill section of the race.  Miles 5 and 6 are a steady climb of about 90 feet or so, and I covered them in 8:05 and 7:48.  I was surprised when I saw that the uphill 6th mile had been my fastest to that point, and I still felt fairly good.  Mile 7 was the biggest and steepest uphill of the race (at almost 100 feet of climb) and I ran it in 8:21 (which included a quick walk for a gel and water).  I felt quite winded at the top, but kept pushing on, thinking the worst was behind me.  Little did I know that my heart rate had already climbed to 193 during that last uphill.

My pre-race strategy was fairly simple.  I had decided that I’d check my time at key intervals like mile 5, the halfway point (mile 6.5), and mile 10.  Anywhere between 40-42 minutes for each 5 mile section was the goal, and so far I’d been on track.  Knowing that the course was more uphill in the first half and downhill in the last half, I had decided that a negative split was very possible, and so my halfway time goal was 55 minutes.  I’d hit it in 53:27, and knew that if I did run a negative split, 1:45 was still very possible.  Mile 10 would be my next big indicator, especially since miles 8, 9, and 10 were mostly downhill.  I had planned to run them close to a 8:00 pace, and when I saw that I’d done them in 8:19, 8:06, and 8:14, I knew something was wrong.  Finishing the first 10 miles in 1:21:44 kept me in denial and I did the quick math in my head about how fast I’d need to run that last 5k in order to get in at 1:45.

Without knowing that my heart rate had been averaging in the high 180′s ever since mile 5, I went for it.  Mile 11 was downhill then flat: 8:03.  And that, my friends, is where the run for 1:45 ended.  Mile 12 was uphill, and I had nothing left.  I ran it as hard as I could and would walk for a few seconds when I needed to.  it took me a few of those breaks to get to the top, and by the time I’d run that mile in 9:15, the 1:50 pace group passed me.

Without dragging this report on longer than necessary, I have to say that this is the moment of the race I am most proud of.  When I made the decision early in the race to go hard after 1:45, I truly believed that if I blew up in the last 5k, I’d still at least get a 1:50, and so when the 1:50 pace group passed me and I could feel my body fading like it has in my other half marathons, I really struggled mentally.  In past races, this has been my breaking point, and would normally mean a slower mile, followed by another and then another, and so on until the end of the race, be it a half or a full.  But not this time.  I remember saying to myself, This is why you ran all those tempo runs, why you pushed yourself to the limit week after week.  I felt like my goal was gone, and yet I still determined that I was going to push as hard as I could to the end.

I didn’t check my Garmin much after that point, only every now and then to see where I was time wise.  I don’t even remember seeing my pace, but I definitely limited my late race fade to that 1 mile, and later I was surprised to see that I’d run mile 13 in 8:24.

The final push of the race involved a small uphill climb followed by a right turn that led to the finishing chute.  As I pushed up the hill, I looked down and saw 1:48:something and was filled with mixed emotions realizing that it was very possible that I had pushed myself to the limit and was going to come up just mere seconds short of what I had worked so hard for.  Screw it, I thought, and dug deep.  As I entered the last 100 yards or so, I was shocked to look down on my watch and still see a 4 instead of a 5, and I sprinted for everything I was worth until I crossed the line and bent over with my hands on my knees and waited for the puke that I could feel in my throat.  A few deep breaths later I was still puke free, and I heard a volunteer asking if I was okay. I told her I was just really tired, but I was smiling, because bent over I could see my Garmin and it read…

1:49:32.

For the record, I ran 2 PRs during the race. The first 10k of the race was my fastest by about 3 minutes, and my finishing time for the half marathon was a 14 minute improvement over my previous best. Here’s the course:

 


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Last tempo run before DC

Mar 15, 2011 8:41 pm by Paul Jenkins in Fitness, Running

It’s been a long haul the last 3 months or so trying to get this slow body to feel somewhat natural running faster, and so far, so good. Today’s run had 5 miles of tempo running sandwiched by some warm up and cool down miles, and I was very pleased with the result. Average pace for the tempo section of the run was 8:07, which is good 15 seconds a mile faster than what I need to run in DC later this month to break my goal time of 1:50 in the half marathon. Not blistering, by any stretch, but it will be a nice, big PR if I can pull it off.

Here’s the profile of the run. Had a pretty decent amount of hillage in it (and yes, that is a word because I just deemed it so).


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