Progress

I've recently read that progress is about direction, not speed. That's good, because I've also just been out for the slowest run in history.

Short strides, heavy, heavy footfalls. Everything is tight, everything is a bit achy. I'm back up around 230, long off the wagon.

Short strides may be a nice metaphor, though. Direction, not speed. Goals distract me. Goals (sometimes) overwhelm me. But if I set myself in the right direction, and focus on what is immediately in front of me, I can make progress. I don't need to run 25 days out of the month, I need to run today. I don't need to go 10 miles, I need to go one step. Then another.

That sort of thing.

Not much time now, but I wanted to check in. Took my old short run, just to the beginning of the bend around the Shedd and back. Got home and stretched. Quick shower now and out the door. Have a good one.

It's a Week

Stats: 17.6 mi; 198 min; 2832 cal

That's Week One in the bag. 


I missed a day, June 11, with my friends in town. Saturday. Should have been easy, but it just wasn't. Every time I tried to clear a half hour for my run, something came up. It's a good lesson, though, because that's the sort of thing that can happen. I don't want to fall into a trap of making up miles with longer runs, either, because that will be too handy an excuse, and eventually the miles will pile so high that I skip the whole endeavor. So instead I just skipped Saturday. Which is fine. It's fine because I ran Sunday. Another big step: running after I miss a day. Technically, my goal is six days per week, and I accomplished that. But I have to look at it from the perspective of running everyday I can. And Saturday was a good example of why. If I'd taken a day off earlier just to be lazy, I still wouldn't have been able to run on Saturday. And I'm the type of person who requires a certain critical mass to accomplish things. I wish I had a better sense of how much mass is required for various tasks so I could harness that knowledge and turn it into productivity. Maybe I'll look into that.


So June 12 I was back, running in Michigan, where I stayed a few days with friends and family. I ran along the lake, and did 3.2 miles each of yesterday and today. Yesterday I ran with my friend; this morning I ran with my brother. They're each in much better shape than I am, but slowed down to be charitable. 


People were nicer running along the lake in Michigan. More smiles, more waves. My legs were tight, but I think it will get better soon. This will be a rough patch, physically, as I push through and teach my body what I expect of it. My muscles whine, but respond. Once in a while I will feel a line of tightness, like someone is pulling on a string connected to a specific part of my calf or hamstring, but it passes after just a few strides. 


This morning I went earlier than usual, before 6am. I chased my shadow out, then turned and let it chase me back as I ran almost directly into the sun. The hills are more gradual out here, but it definitely affects my body running on different terrain. It's a different routine, and harder to prepare for, mentally, just because I don't know the surfaces as well. So as I felt my way down the road, my brother trotted along behind me. My cardiovascular health is a bit of a mess. My heart rate was down today, but my breathing felt labored and off. Still, it was a beautiful morning. The lake was dark, the sky was gray, the leaves glowed a light bright green, and the horizon along the lake was huge and perfectly clean, perfectly straight. Though not perfectly straight. It's a trick of the eyes. When you see the horizon along the lake, you must be able to see enough mileage to see the curvature of the Earth (which is bigger than you'd think). But the line doesn't seem to curve. The ancient Greeks noticed this, and when they built the steps to their temples, the raised them slightly in the middle so they they looked straight even though they weren't. They'd discovered that a straight line, viewed from a distance, actually looks like it dips in the middle.


We ran by a deer this morning, also, right in someone's front yard. Had to pass within 15 feet of it, and it didn't do more than look at me and bend an ear. My brother didn't see it. It was on beach when we passed it on our way back. My brother waved and said "Good morning," like he had to everyone else we'd passed. He's a funny kid.
 

Lemon Bars

June 9, 2011. 

Stats: 3.0 miles; 33 min; HR 157/180; 492 cal.

This was not the plan. I did not intend to write every single day, and I probably won't. But writing things down helps me remember them, helps me process them, and helps me write better. You'll thank me in future posts. You're welcome.


I added some distance today, worried (completely irrationally) that my body would just get too used to the 2.6-mile run and would refuse to ever go any farther. At any rate, I discovered that it is more or less exactly 1.5 miles from my building around the entire curve of the Shedd Aquarium. That's a useful mile-post to have tucked away in my memory. 


It poured last night, and when I woke up this morning I was dreaming about hail. "I can't go out running in a hailstorm," my dream-self said to me. But I woke up anyway, and decided to chance it. There wasn't any hail. There wasn't much lightning left. A severe weather advisory from weather.com warned me not to cross any flowing streams, but I didn't really encounter any of those, either. 

There's a certain quality of light that I love, when the sky is gray and overcast, but the sun is low enough somewhere beneath the clouds to light everything up in an orange/yellow/honey light. By the time I got to work, it was just dark and gray outside. But in the early morning, between fits of rain, it was really nice.


There were far fewer runners and bikers out in the rain. I didn't even see a single one until I was already in the curve around the Shedd. I imagined that the people out running in this weather would be the really committed runners, and that it would be a sort of bond between us, and we would smile and nod knowingly as we passed each other. It turns out I was the only one who thought so. I waved, I smiled, and I got nothing back from anybody today. Not even a glance. Just as well. 


I ran almost the whole way. So that's something. Heading back out from the underpass beneath E. Solidarity, there's a little incline where I had to walk, briefly, because my HR was up. And my HR monitor beeped to warn me I was pounding more than 168 bpm as I ran back through the gravel path of the Gold Star Families Park & Memorial, but I didn't stop running there. Instead, I had a minor breakthrough. I was confident my HR would come back down, even if I kept running (it did) but, more importantly, my pounding heart actually felt good for the first time on these runs. Up until today, I always felt a little like I was forcing lemon bars and cookies through my arteries, or dust and garbage. It was nice to feel my blood thin out and circulate properly for a change. I didn't make it all the way up the pedestrian bridge at 18th St. without walking, but the rain started to fall more heavily as I got there. My first thought was of failure. Failed performance: I was too slow to beat the downpour(I was almost home). Failed judgment: if I'd only run the 2.6 miles, I could have beaten this rain home. But these thoughts lasted only about a second. And instead, I thought this: it sounds like the rain is cheering me on. I didn't care to get soaked. I was already wet with sweat, so why not rain? It was refreshing, but not cold. And as it rained harder, the cheers grew louder, urging me up the bridge and to finish my run strongly. 


Of course I had a lemon bar this morning with my coffee. So, there's that.

Day 2; Disclaimer

June 8, 2011.

Stats: 2.6 miles, 29 min, HR (ave./max): 154/176.

First a disclaimer: 

I am not a medical doctor. Surprise! What this means is that I am not trying to tell you that you should run, that overweight men should run, that men in their 30's should run: nothing. I make no recommendations based on health or fitness and no warranties of safety. Frankly, I'm not even sure it's a good idea for me to run.

Good. Glad that's out of the way.

Shaved almost a minute off my Day 1 time. So that's something I guess.

Day 2 was easier because: (a) I had a day in my pocket already committed to the effort, so I am pot-committed in a sense; and (b) I didn't overdo it on Day 1. Day 1 was at least two weeks in the making, two weeks of me setting my alarm, waking up, snoozing, checking the internet, bargaining, going to work early, and generally doing whatever I could to avoid running. Day 1 was hard because I knew that it was "Day 1" of something, and not just going for a morning jog. Day 1 carried with it the prospect of everyday that would follow, either the burden of hundreds of miles of waking early and running or the burden of a failed project. Day 2 was just the next day. So I woke up more easily, I got into my running shorts easily, I strapped on my heart rate monitor easily, dropped a load of laundry in the washer, and took off. 

Day 2 was harder because my muscles are not used to this. Quads and hammies and whatever muscles are buried beneath love handles are all a little tighter today. And not good tighter, not firm, just sore. I felt it most after my run, walking down the three steps out of my building on the way to work. But I felt it on my run, too, with my calves refusing to relax and my feet cramping. And here's the unavoidable truth: I'm heavy. I'm overweight (actually "obese"), sure, but that's different from the actual fact of the weight. That's a ratio, or some sort of value figure. I'm not talking about fitness here. I'm talking about the sheer load of weight. When I run, I empathize with the soles of my shoes, smashed repeatedly against the pavement by my foot. Think of it this way: a gallon of milk weighs about 8.5 lbs. We've all felt the heft of carrying a gallon of milk, and it's not something we'd want to carry far. If I were at an appropriate weight - at the very heaviest I can be without being overweight, a BMI of 25 - I would have to carry almost 6 gallons of milk to approximate the load I'm carrying in extra weight. Can you imagine running 2 miles with 6 gallons of milk tied to you? Or even going through the motions of a normal day? Not ideal.

I saw two runners today who stood out to me, one a short skinny-but-broad-shouldered guy and one a tall thin girl. The guy looked like a wound spring. He was running faster than I was already, but looked like with his next step he could break into a full on sprint, or jump three feet in the air, or stop and change direction completely. Like he had a palpable energy coiled inside him. I thought about myself, and how I felt as I ran. I feel mostly like I am doing everything I can just to keep from falling down. I could not stop or change directions quickly, and couldn't burst into a significantly faster gait. I am basically on tracks, something of a victim of inertia at the moment. The girl looked light on her feet. The cushions of her shoes barely compressed with her footfalls. She looked strong, with a toned physique, but she looked like she had the same specific gravity as the air and, if she wanted to, could just go swim away from me without touching the ground. 

I walk for 3 minutes, quickly, to warm up. I do this instead of stretching because I have a vague recollection of reading somewhere that I shouldn't stretch cold muscles, and walking is a good warm up and other things I don't clearly recall. So it's what I do. I stretch some after I get back home. But I finish my run coming out from the 18th St. pedestrian bridge over the South Shore Line tracks. One of my goals is to run all the way up the incline to that bridge. It's at the end of my run, and pretty steep, so my heart rate usually spikes a short way up and I have to walk the rest. If you wondered where in my run I hit 176 beats per minute, now you know. Once I get to the top, I'm able to run again, and I run down the other side and try to sprint up the slight incline back out to Calumet Ave., then walk home (quickly) as my cool down period. I stop the timer when I get to my building.

So two days are in the bank now. The sinews that tie my spine to my pelvis to my femurs to my shins are all achy. But they will adjust. Training.

Could Be Great

June 7, 2011.

Had a run this morning. Could be a great one. Here's how I'll know: if I run more, it was.

I'm a lapsed athlete, still strong, but awfully horribly out of shape. Horrociously out of shape. I've been told by my doctor to get healthier, to lose weight, but I haven't. That's not what this is about. It's been years, anyway, so that's proven a poor motivator. Really, running isn't even about getting healthy from running. Running is about strengthening my resolve. Running is about building habits. Running is about an example for the rest of my life, a show of will, something I can translate into other habits. And it's a way to move my body.

This morning I tipped the scale at 219. At my height (5'10") that's 12 lbs over the cutoff between overweight and obese. So I've found myself at a point where my goal is to be overweight. My goal. Nice.

Today I ran 30 minutes (including a 3 min warm-up walk and a 5 min cool-down walk, but not including stretching time). I went about 2.6 miles by Google Maps. I took the pedestrian bridge from Calumet over the Metra tracks at 18th St, hugged Soldier Field around its Southeast bend, and then passed through the Gold Star Families Park & Memorial to the Lakefront Trail. Then I headed North along the Trail, under E. Solidarity Dr. (which leads to the Adler Planetarium), to the Shedd. I stopped there and turned around.

Today my goal was to get out. I told myself Soldier Field would be fine, as long as I got out there and moved. Tomorrow, my goal is to cover the same 2.6 miles. Eventually - and I don't think it'll take that long - my goal will be to increase my distance.

Now, I know I could run farther. I used to go to the river and back, and that's some 6 miles or so. I wasn't in tip-top shape then, either. But that was a once-a-week run, and that isn't what I'm after now. Now I'm after consistency. I want to train my body to listen to me, and I want to train my mind to control my muscles. I think I can get fit fast (though at 33, I'm not sure anymore), but the trick is consistency. Training. Six days a week. I suppose I could run a marathon at some point, but I'm not the sort of person who needs a purpose like that to train. Actually, that would probably be counter-productive to have something like that in mind. I have too much bravado ingrained in me, too much of something that would make me want to wing it, that would want the challenge of running untrained, of testing blind. And that would be bad for me. I already did a half marathon like that, about in the same shape I'm in now, and it was not good for the knees. Not one bit.

Speaking of which, as soon as I started to run today, my right knee hurt. Luckily it was only for a minute. I considered stopping, I guess, if I'm being truthful (and why not be?). But I didn't stop. And after I got a little grease on that hinge it worked just fine.

There was a heat advisory. Muggy hot heat, unseasonable heat, upper 90's. Though it's June, so how unseasonal is it? I know it's not technically summer, but June can be hot, and summer shouldn't even be in the upper 90's. There's really no appropriate season for that outside of the tropics. So the air was thick and warm and sticky, and I couldn't tell as I ran whether I was sweating or just collecting moisture from the air. But it was bright (for 6:30am), sunny and clear. The lake was ... I don't know, actually. I don't remember looking much at the lake. I remember running in odd patterns to avoid deep rocks on the crushed limestone path through the park, because I didn't want rocks in my shoes. I remember the other runners and bikers were mostly women or older men. But I don't remember looking at the lake. I think I usually shift my focus to the lake as I round the curve of the Shedd Aquarium and take in the city skyline. But I never rounded the Shedd today, so I never really focused on the water. The grass was green, though, and baking in the heat already. I don't think it ever cooled down from the night before.

My equipment is Karhu shoes, Craft apparel. Karhu/Craft sent me the shoes, shorts, shirts and socks for free. I have a Polar heart rate monitor that I got for my 30th birthday from close friends. It's great, but needs a new battery. I'll try to get that done tomorrow on Wabash. I'm trying to run with pace, so I'm not dragging my feet and not just walking oddly. But my heart can't yet keep up, so I end up stopping now and then to cool it. For the whole 30 minutes, I averaged 152 beats per minute, with a high of 176, and burned (supposedly) 411 calories. I definitely ate more than that for lunch, more than that for dinner, and more than that as a snack with my coffee. But that's ok. For now it's just about running. For now it's about learning one good habit, learning to cultivate it, learning how to train myself. Then I'll train myself in other areas. Then I'll train my diet, I'll train my office (a wreck), I'll train my writing. I'll train everything eventually. In time. For now, it's just about running.