Reflections

Sep 21, 2011 by Greg Fowler

Normally, I try not to draw attention to myself when running. Someone might notice just how goofy I run. Now is the time of year I have to start making an exception.  Daylight fades fast in the evenings, despite daylight savings time fall back being over a month away,  so it is time to break out the reflective gear for night running.

There are many options on the market to make yourself more visible to on coming motorists – reflective hats and shirts, vests, and lights.  Here’s what I have in my closet:

1. Basic vest. At a minimum this is what I use and recommend you do, too.  It is lightweight and doesn’t get in the way. I use this one from Nathan:

2. Reflective hat. I’m a head wear person. Some aren’t.  So, I usually wear a reflective hat, too. I use one from Brooks similar to this but in the yellow version:

It is washable and mine has a flashing light on the back. My light died after a few months, though.

3. Safety yellow t-shirts. I lucked into these shirts – one long sleeve and one short sleeve.  They were a gift.  I normally don’t run in cotton shirts, but I make an exception for these at night. When combined with the vest, I’m pretty visible.

4. Blinking clip-on light. I have tried the blinking lights with little success.  They have 2 problems – the batteries don’t seem to last and I can’t seem to find a good place to clip them. They are inexpensive and worth a try, though.  Here’s the one from Nathan I have:

5. Water resistant jacket or pullover for cooler weather. I bought one similar to this last spring in a clearance sale:

Finally, the common sense items for the night runs: stay off busy roads with no sidewalks, run facing traffic, and ditch the ear phones.

Be careful out there.  You don’t have to run at night to encounter danger from motorists.  Actress Reese Witherspoon found this out last week: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44434373/ns/today-entertainment/#.TmkCSWr1g8k

POFIFOTO!

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Once Upon a Time

Sep 15, 2011 by Greg Fowler

I have to admit a little pride here. Lately, my cross country running teenager has exploded to a new level of speed. He set personal records twice in the opening 3 meets, by almost 1 minute each time, and the speed gap between us continues to widen. And I love it. He’s been working hard, and I’m proud of him.

I was fast once, too. 4th grade field day. 40 yard dash. 1st place. Here’s a picture the ribbon to prove it. However, my childhood sports journey took a more traditional route of baseball and basketball, so I never built any long distance speed. Now that I work pretty hard at training for long distance running, including workouts to get faster, I get frustrated at my lack of progress at improving my pace, especially in the 5K.

Why don’t a improve faster? Besides age, some of it is probably due to not training correctly. However, I have a theory on speed in older runners: If you ran track/cross country as a teenager and returned to running later, then you can regain some speed, at least compared to others in your age group. Conversely, if you didn’t run early in life, then you just won’t get fast. To me, learning speed as a middle age runner with no past running experience is very much like learning a new language or musical instrument as an adult. If you had other languages or musical training as a child, you can be fairly successful, but if not, the road is quite bumpy and frustrating. It is a theory for now – or at least a rationalization for my lack of speed. I’ll need to poll some of the 40-50 year olds that can still break 20 minutes in 5K races to learn about their pasts. In the meantime, I’m going to keep working on improving pace with weekly speed workouts, not accepting the fact that I just may be a slow old guy now!

Speed Training

To get faster, you are supposed to do speed work, which trains your body to not hit the wall so fast.  One of my favorite speed workouts for beginners is this:  Go to a local oval track.  Walk or slowly run a lap or two to warm up.  Then do the speed workout by running the straight always at an increased pace over your normal pace.  Not an all out sprint, but faster than normal.  Then walk the curves.  Work up over the course of a few weeks to be able to do this for 10-12 laps.

Here are some links to additional speed workouts:

Runner’s World

Active.com

POFIFOTO!

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Cross Country: SCTCCCA Coaches Classic 2011

Sep 11, 2011 by Greg Fowler

This past weekend, I attended what I think is annually the largest cross country meet in South Carolina.  Over 70 schools from across the state descend on the Sandhills Research Center in Columbia, SC.  The runners compete in 7 divisions, 4 varsity and 3 Junior Varsity.  For a break down of the finishes, you can click here.

Thundering Herd

This year the organizers broke the JV boys division into two divisions, 7th-9th grades and 10th-12th grades.  In previous years, this race had over 800 boys in it.  I had hoped to show you a video of the 800 person stampede of a start.  However, with the split, my video here is of the 7th-9th grade division and probably has 300+ in it.  I still think you get the idea.  That’s quite a start.

T-shirts

One thing I’ve noticed at cross country meets is the clever t-shirts the teams have come up with.  I took pictures at Coaches Classic to share:

 

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Be Negative

Sep 8, 2011 by Greg Fowler

Bigfoot.

The Loch Ness Monster.

The Lizard Man of South Carolina.

Negative Splits.

Some would argue the first three in this list are not real.  I would argue they are more real than the 4th – the elusive negative split.  This is one term I left out of my post called Who Knew? where I listed terms I did not know before becoming a runner.  So what is a negative split?  In simplest terms, it is running the second half of a race faster than the first half, and I have yet to do this.   Why?  Mainly because it takes an extreme amount of discipline to start out a race at the proper pace.  With a crowd and adrenaline pumping, most people start way too fast and then fade during the last parts of the race. I am guilty of this.

So why should you are I care about a negative split?  First, I believe I’ll feel better at the end of the race, with more fuel in the tank.  I won’t get into too technical here, but if you start out too fast in a race (or even training) your body will start preserving itself too early by shutting down your fuel supply (hitting the wall!) and make you miserable.  Once you hit the wall, it is hard, if not impossible to get back on track.  Second,  I like the idea of actually passing people toward the end.   I hear some people do this.

So, this is a new race and long training run strategy for me,   Some might think this not giving it all, but I think this will be a smarter way to race.  I guess when I think about it, the negative split is more like a hole-in-one or a no-hitter than Bigfoot.  It is real and can be done, but it is rare.  I’ll keep you posted.

POFIFOTO!

 

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Summer Summary

Sep 6, 2011 by Greg Fowler

September is here.  Even though school has been back in session a couple of weeks now, I guess the passing of Labor Day weekend and the start of college football make it official: Summer is over.

So while the kiddos took a break from school, I used the summer to learn some new things about running.  Here’s what I learned in summer session 2011:

1. Trail running is great fun. Sometimes something wonderful is right under your nose.  For several years I’ve literally had a trail in my backyard – a two-mile loop nature conservatory trail around the neighborhood that I had never used for running.  Until this year.  In an attempt to get out of the sun, I started running this trail, which led to running other trails, which led to completing my first official trail run.  I am now planning another trail race in January – the Harbison 50K.

2. Barefoot running is fun. And therapeutic. I’ve mentioned my 2nd attempt at barefoot running in another part of my website.  The first attempt really didn’t involve being barefoot, but instead consisted of running in Vibram Five Fingers.   That first attempt didn’t go so well.  This summer, though, in attempt number two, I have actually been running barefoot.  I started slowly, with short quarter mile or so runs and built up.  Over the last month and a half, I have run about 13 miles barefoot, with a longest run of 2 1/2 miles.  May not sound like much, but it is a start.  My feet are strengthening for sure, and my problematic left foot is better.  I’d say it has improved from a C- to a B-.  I plan to continue barefoot running.

3. Blogging is fun. But a lot of work.  Kind of like running  As an IT person, I’ve enjoyed learning some new software (WordPress).   If you compared my blogging pursuit to my running pursuit, I’m probably still back in 5K land.  I’ll keep at it, though.  Hope you’ve enjoyed it so far.

Hope you had a good summer and are ready to enjoy the upcoming fall weather!

POFIFOTO!

 

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