Boldly running where I've never gone before

June was a decent month, runningwise.  I finished the fitness regimen I had called “Spring Training,” ran some races and learned a few new tricks from friends as well as professionals.  It was kind of like summer school in a way, only more fun.

On Saturday June 3, I ran the Walter Payton Sweetness 8k.  Unlike last year when it was cool, rainy and sparsely populated, this year it was hot and crowded with 8k as well as 5k (which I don’t remember from before) runners and walkers.  In 2016, I got an age group award whereas this year I pretty much dragged myself along in the hot sunshine.  I enjoyed it but didn’t take any photos and didn’t stick around for the post-race festivities because I was pretty tired that day.  The photos below are from the race’s photographer and were downloadable without charge at her website:
http://tiffanypearlphotography.pass.us/irunforsweetness/

So that was fun but I didn’t win an award and in fact was slower than I wanted to be.  But my goal since recovering from the last injury was to work on endurance first and deal with increasing speed later in the season.

The following week, I headed west for the Cheyenne/Denver running trip which I described in a separate post a few weeks ago.  Jumping up from a long run of 11 miles the last part of May to the 13.1 miler in mid-June was the pinnacle of my distance push for this year.  The plan going forward is to run anywhere from 10-13.1 miles every other weekend as a “very long run”, and spend the rest of the time with tempo, speed, intervals and the like.  Since I work every other weekend, I will only have time for a 5-6 miler on the workdays and that will be my shorter “long run”. This is how I plan to maintain distance readiness for the halves coming up in July, September and October as well as to build speed for the fall 5k races which will hopefully find me a bit faster.  I don’t want to go out on a limb and say I’d like to PR, but hell, who doesn’t?

Those were the June races which represent the competition aspect of the month.  The lessons I learned as well have been valuable additions to my training.

First, I bought the new book “Train Smart, Run Forever” written by Bill Pierce and Scott Murr (who wrote my fave Run Less, Run Faster) which is geared toward older runners and features a seven-hour workout week that contains a lot of stretching and foam rolling, a small amount of strength training and quite a bit of running and cross-training.  I have adapted their plan for my tastes and am including it in my next training program.  The benefits I anticipate will be the addition of foam rolling which I don’t do at all now, increasing the stretching to include some techniques I have not done and also starting some 5-minute pre-run drills.  I will continue to strength train way more than they recommend and will substitute metabolic/boot camp DVDs for cross-training instead pf rowing and elliptical, but I’m pretty much going to follow their regimen very closely between now and November when distance running winds down for the year.

Also from my fellow blogger The Running Rebel, I learned a posture technique best described as “Pecker Out” in her post about the best running advice she’d ever received. I tried it on a 10 mile run, keeping my hips slightly forward and showing the world my imaginary pecker, and I felt like it did improve my form.

Later my running club buddy Judith and I were talking about our run/walk ratios one day, and she mentioned that she had tried 2:30/0:30 which gave her more energy to resume running than the 3:00/1:00 which has been my mainstay for a couple of years. So I decided to give that a try myself.  I wasn’t sure how I’d feel walking only 30 seconds but it was great!  The only glitch is when I’m running long miles and need to eat a piece of Rice Krispie treat or something.  It takes longer than 30 seconds to scarf it down and then drink some water, but that’s okay.  It’s my new ratio now and I believe it makes me just a wee bit faster.

So that’s pretty much it for June 2017.  I learned some cool new stuff from 3 sources that is making me a better runner and I ran 3 races.  I’d call it a successful month.  If this was summer school at Starfleet Academy, I’d definitely give it a good evaluation and hope I had earned an A.

July features another 10 miler and another half-marathon.  I’ll be back to talk about that as soon as it all happens.