Let's go for a 10-mile swim, er, run

Well, no new major incidents of family drama to report in the past 24 hours.

Maybe I am setting the bar too low in terms of expectations, but I’ll take it.

Had a great run today. So many people in the group were away on summer vacation this morning that I found myself in an unusual position: pace group leader.

The half dozen or so folks training at a 10-minute-per-mile pace took off with me in the lead. I kept glancing at my Garmin to make sure I wasn’t taking the group out too fast until we warmed up. I was aiming for as much as an 11-minute pace over the first mile. We clocked it at 10:24. Second mile was a bit under 10. Sorry about that. Then we steadily logged a few 10-minute miles, nearly right on the dot.

The humidity was intense. At times it felt as if we were swimming, rather than just running.

Still, it felt good. On the way back, I even kicked it into a higher gear a little. The group largely had dwindled away by that point. A few were running longer than 10. Two others took a side trip to use the facilities nearby. Another slowed down quite a bit, saying he was tired. I took off on my own, posting several sub-9-minute miles.

I am feeling strong. A few twinges in my feet, now and then, but so far nothing too serious. A heck of a lot better than this time last summer, that's for sure. It intrigues me to think how I might perform in a race. I did go ahead and get signed up for the Komen Race for the Cure run in a few weeks.

Should be fun.

Pavement psychotherapy

My mind is a jumbled mess.

I haven’t slept all that much the past couple of nights.

My Dad is 1,000 miles away and his health is slipping. My step-mom has a flair for melodrama and doesn’t share a lot of details – a great combination. When she does offer an update, I am not sure whether it is understated or hyperbole.

My Mom, who is 1,000 miles on the other side of the country, is in the process of losing her apartment and this week she lost her job.

A good friend just found out his wife has cancer.

Relative to these other issues, this may seem ridiculous, but the doping-mired Tour de France also is really bothering me. It has been an Oz family tradition for years to follow those amazing bike riders on their race through France. I would read up during the day and then provide an update to the Ozlings at dinner that night about the latest stage. Last year was a punch to the gut when Floyd Landis won, but then was cast under a cloud of shame for a positive doping test. Now, this year the debacle that has become the race is absolutely unbelievable.

Unable to do much about all of this, it felt good to get out on the roads this week. Often my mind raced from issue to issue, large and small, as I logged the miles. As much as I could, I tried to concentrate on the rhythmic beat of my feet, hoping to get lost in some sort of Zen moment that would ease my worries.

Had a good 7-miler on Tuesday and today I did 5. I’ll rest up tomorrow and then see if I can’t do a 10-miler on Saturday to finish the week strong.

Play Ball!

Looks like I am not the only endurance athlete in the Oz family. Last night, the littlest Ozling played a T-ball doubleheader in the blazing heat. Brutal.

I would rather go for a 10-mile run. Those dudes were tuckered out by the end of the night.

When the first Ozling arrived – nine years ago this coming week -- some of my buddies asked if I was disappointed that I was not having a son. Crazy talk. She was immediately, has been and is a gigantic joy in my life. We’ve had a blast, reading together, camping together, playing sports together, talking and joking together, working on various school projects together and cooking together. Then a couple years later when we were awaiting the arrival of her brother, my buddies resumed their chatter along the lines of, “I’ll bet you are glad you finally are getting a son.” More crazy talk. Frankly, I thought it would have been cool for our Ozlings to know the special bond of sisters. But I really didn’t care. Girl. Boy. Whatever. As long as he or she was healthy, we were blessed.

Emotions triggered by baseball this summer have taken me a bit by surprise.

I enjoy the game, follow the local teams and like to get out to a few games each season. But I can’t claim it as my passion.

Yet, standing in the front yard having a catch with my boy has been amazing. What a difference between last summer, when he was five, and this year. He’s been so focused on how to position the glove just right so he can snag the ball. “Back up!” he implores. “Throw it really, really far.” I do. More often than not….he snares it. And when he throws it? The kid’s got a bit of a gun.

Sometimes I’ll persuade my daughter to join me. She can catch. She can blast the ball with the bat. But she often looks like she is out there to please me. Not because of an inner joy beckoning her to play.

Feeling a ball thrown by my son smack into my mitt. Watching him take a practice swing, then position the bat just right, take a breath and then – as his coach implores, “load and then explode” – boom the ball. Seeing him act like a human vacuum cleaner on first base. Or grinning at him as he begs to bat last so in the everybody-bats-each-inning-T-ball league he can smack the ball and run all the bases with abandon as if he just crushed a grand slam…

It all just…..makes my spirit soar.

23 miles in two days

Yesterday I ran 10 miles and today I followed it up with another 13. No, I haven’t completely lost my mind. Today’s outing was on my bike.

All this talk about triathlons and biking got me intrigued. Not enough to sign up for a tri, but this morning I did reintroduce myself to my bicycle. Yes, there literally were cobwebs down by the pedals. And the frame was a bit dusty. I might have taken it out once in the spring, but otherwise this was the maiden voyage of the season. Pathetic.

The time required for a bike workout has been one of the biggest obstacles. I started thinking last night about sneaking away for a ride today. This morning I whipped up a batch of pancakes, mixed-fruit topping and sausage for Mrs. Oz and the Ozlings. Hoping that might have bought a little goodwill from the family and a morning pass out of the house, I then pumped up the tires, strapped on my helmet and cruised away.

It felt great. In addition to the enjoyment from soaking up some rays and feeling the breeze on my face, this seemed to be the best stretching regime I have tried in a long time. As I pedaled down, sometimes I would keep my leg extended and then drop my foot for an extra stretch of my calf and Achilles while I coasted. How’s that for multi-tasking?

I wound my way over to a trail running through Kansas City’s Waldo and Brookside neighborhoods. The Trolley Trail took me north to the Nelson Atkins Museum and its semi-bizarre outdoor sculptures in the shape of giant badminton shuttlecocks.

Sharing the trail with walkers – both of the two-legged and four-legged variety – runners and a few other bikers was a new experience. I don’t exactly have what you would call fast closing speed while running so a flopping of my feet a bit louder than usually tends to offer plenty of warning to others as I approach. On the bike, though, as I approached someone from behind I would call out a calm “On your left.” Many of the walkers and runners had iPod’s crammed into their ears and were oblivious to my presence. A few dog owners continued to let Fido roam widely on the leash, creating a fun obstacle for me to dodge. One walker offered a “good morning” as I passed and another thanked me for the alert, saying he wished more bikers would do the same. Too bad trail courtesy is in such short supply.

I’ll be curious to see how my legs feel in the morning. I logged 13 miles in a little over an hour. Didn't really push the pace, but I worked it a bit on some of the uphills. I probably will be up for the easy three miler called for on the schedule in the morning, though I might rest the legs if they are feeling zapped.

Swim, bike AND run? On the same day?!

Suddenly I find myself surrounded by triathletes.

My neighbor finished his first tri on Sunday (Go Bob!) and another neighbor competed in the same race. RunningJayhawk swam, biked, ran and, as she described so perfectly on her blog, “kicked ass” Sunday in The Danskin Triathlon in Wisconsin. Danielle took home a trophy for her efforts in the Cornman Triathlon in Iowa. Then the weekly e-mail from my running group arrives to tell me that six of our Saturday-morning-run peers also completed a short-course triathlon this past weekend.

The swim-bike-run crowd seems to be popping up all around me like mushrooms after a spring rain.

I am often puzzled when my co-workers, or even family members, express surprise, a bit of shock or, frankly, look at me like I am a bit crazy, when I tell them I have just run 8 miles, 10 miles or maybe longer.

After my frustrating marathon DNF last fall, a good friend told me not to worry about it. He said he thought that I was just as crazy to have run 19 miles as he would have thought I was for completing 26.2.

In a world where so many people can’t imagine moving briskly for even a mile or two, I guess this widespread lack of comprehension about longer runs is understandable.

I bring this up because I feel some of the same mixture of puzzlement and awe when I look at triathletes. Pumping arms and kicking through a maelstrom of bodies in an open water swim, then, after surviving that, jumping out of the water to strap on a helmet and shoes to climb on a bike to log an ungodly number of miles and then, finally, go for a run – by which time the sun most likely is beating brutally down – now that is amazing.

That is just on race day. People who have the discipline to log so many miles on a bike, in their running shoes and in a pool to train for these events also are amazing. I checked out this triathlete’s training schedule on BuckeyeOutdoors and was nothing short of stunned.

These athletes all are so inspiring.

Hearing the war stories and reading blog reports of recent races has left me pumped up this week. It’s added a bit of energy to my early-morning runs. While I have no intention of rolling my more than a decade-old hybrid mountain bike into a tri, I am itching to sign up for a race. There are not a lot of other 5Ks or 10Ks this time of year in this area. The Komen Race for the Cure, though, is coming up in early August. I can’t wait.

Hot times

I must admit that I am a weather wimp.

Bring on the snow and cold and I’m fine. I’ll bundle up – won’t necessarily be thrilled as I warm up over the first mile – and log some miles. Not a problem.

But on mornings like today when I walk out the door at 5:09 a.m. and immediately encounter a wall of heat, it gets inside my head. Granted, this wall of heat consisted of 77 degrees, but that just doesn’t seem right when the sun hasn’t even gotten out of bed yet.

I was only going for three miles this morning, but I was thinking about the weather for most every step. It’s days like this in particular when I really miss Wisconsin, where I used to live. Many summers it rarely rose above 90. Early morning runs were quite pleasant, sometimes offering the slightest hint of a chill when running along the shores of Lake Michigan.

After moving South a couple years ago, my summers are much different. Saturday’s run was a bit of a scorcher. The course for the day was south of Kansas City at Longview Lake. My schedule called for eight miles, which was a blessing. Many of the full marathoners had much longer runs that kept them plodding and sweating through the heat for much longer than my hour and 20 minutes.

I may be a weather wimp, but it's not all in my mind. The heat definitely can take a toll on a runner's body.

The organized Saturday runs come complete with water and Gatorade stops every couple of miles. Staying hydrated is a big deal, obviously. When I go for my solo training runs sans water stops, it’s more of a trick. I have a couple courses that include water fountains, but that’s not much of an option as I go through residential areas.

It’s been a relatively mild summer so far, but it looks like the heat has arrived. The mind games I encounter while trying to cope with the hot weather should be interesting.

What's your goal?

I took off this morning like a rocket out of a bottle, like a ball of flame out of a Roman candle, like a…..string of poor puns fired off by a bad stand-up comic.

Sorry about that. Just got a bit carried away on this morning of Independence Day! Happy Fourth of July.

I was flying, though. At least for me.

After clocking the first mile in a fairly reasonable warm-up of 9:20, I then, in a steady, longer-slow-run sort of way, put the hammer down for 8:42, 8:42, 8:46, 8:52 and an 8:48 to wrap-up my 6 miles.

Felt good. Really good. A great way to start Independence Day.

Made me start thinking about what’s a reasonable pace for a half marathon. If I can train smart so my body doesn’t break down, I think shooting for a goal time rather than only a finish is a reasonable objective. Then again, maybe I should just dial it back a notch, listen to my body and focus on the train-without-injury-and-complete-the-race goal.

Obviously, I have a bit more time to ponder that question. I haven’t even signed up for the race yet. I’ll probably go with Kansas City’s Half, though Tulsa has a race a few weeks later that is supposed to be a well-organized and fun run.

I definitely have moved ahead to embrace the idea of a half.

As I was listening recently to Steve Runner on his Phedippidation’s Podcast, he said something that grabbed me by the shoulders and shook some sense in to me. The difference between a jogger and a runner is an entry blank for a race, he said.

It’s not the piece of paper so much, but that the runner has set a goal.

“For many, the goal of running a half marathon road race, 13.1 miles from start to finish, is an impressive life-affirming goal that can be achieved through hard work and persistent effort,” Steve Runner stated during Fdip No. 103.

In addition to weekly encouragement and tips, Phedippidations is offering me some additional motivation as I prepare for a fall race.

Phedippidations is a driving force behind an intriguing concept of a virtual road race literally involving runners all over the globe. This October will mark the 2nd Annual Phedippidations World Wide Half Marathon. They also have added a "Kick the Couch" 5K road race this year.

The event is not going to occur in any single location. Instead, runners everywhere can sign up online and then run an organized half marathon or just 13.1 miles that they map out themselves. By participating with a run on the weekend of Oct. 13-14, or, like myself the following weekend, runners will be able to “feel that you are part of a community of friends all over the globe” by supporting the event’s premise of “Think Global, Run Local.”

Snap, Crackle and...

While a snapping and clicking cacophony might be amusing coming from a bowl of cereal, it’s not so good to hear such sounds coming from your own body.

Like a metronome keeping time, I was treated to a click, click, click (or was it a creak, creak, creak) coming from my right ankle, or maybe my knee as I ran this morning. As silly as it may sound, I couldn’t really pinpoint the location.

Not really any pain associated with it. And, as I ran on and warmed up a bit it seemed to disappear or at least fade away.

I occasionally have encountered these sounds before, never really thinking too much about it. Just figured it was something unique to my freakish body. Well, as it turns out, I may be freakish, but, in this regard at least, I am not unique.

Runner’s World included a blurb in its August edition about “Listening to the sounds your body makes can help you recognize and avoid injury.”

Turns out that “clicking” comes form tight muscles pulling joints out of alignment. “Creaking” is associated with a muscle, tendon or ligaments that is tight and needs to be stretched.
“Crunching” comes from inflexible joints, usually in the neck, hands and feet.

“Pop” and “Snap?” Bad, possibly very bad. Someone experiencing these conditions usually can be recognized by the fact they are writhing on the ground, probably screaming if not at least loudly groaning. Best case is ligament or muscle pull. Worst? We’re talking fracture. Yikes.

So, the good news is that I am not experiencing those terrible conditions. Not quite sure whether I was hearing a click, creak or a crunch this morning. Whichever it was, though, I’ll take it as yet one more reminder that I need to be more disciplined about not only logging the miles, but consistently devoting more time to stretching and improving my flexibility.