Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trots

 Thanksgiving has traditionally been a day of rest in my life. Eat, drink and be merry day.  I am not one to be a creature of habit.  For the most part, I embrace change. I believe I will run my first Thanksgiving day race this year.

There are two Thanksgiving days races that have piqued my curiosity. The first race is in my hometown and is called the Sticks and Biscuits 5K.  The race benefits local ice hockey teams. The second race is in New Cumberland and is called the Turkey Trot 5K. This race benefits Vickie's Angel Walk  - an organization who helps families fighting cancer.

I will most likely run the Sticks and Biscuits 5K, due to proximity.  Last year (2009)  was the inaugural race for the S&B 5K. Their website indicated they had timing issues.  In response to this issue they are using electronic RFID tag scoring this year. Last year's race was an astounding success in terms of the numbers of registered runners. There were nearly 350 runners.

This race is being heavily advertised in town as there are dozens of S&B 5K yard placards displayed about town.  I would like to be part of a hometown race which may draw in excess of 400 runners this year.  Many of the best runners in the area will be present.  I don't regard myself as one of the best runners in the area - not yet.

York White Rose Run results

As forecasted, the weather for this race was chilly. (Although it was not windy.)  As I was driving to York my car's thermometer read 39 degrees Fahrenheit. This race is a very easy commute so I had no anxiety accumulation due to bad directions or a general inability to find the course.

The registration area for this race is at the Sovereign Bank stadium.  There is plenty of parking next to the stadium.  This event is very well organized.

I picked up my race packet about a half hour before the scheduled 8:30 am  race time.  Last year I felt they had one of the most fashionable technical  t-shirts among all the races I entered.  I wore last year's York White Rose Run t-shirt to this race.  Again they did not disappoint with a very fashionable blue tech shirt.  They had extras for sale for $6 each - a bargain.  I drew the bib number 113.  Numerological significance - nada.

As I warmed up my hands felt very cold -  fortunately I had  Brooks running gloves in my inventory.  I also wore a running beanie and arm sleeves. My tolerance for cold weather has increased markedly since I began running. The 42 degree race time temperature felt fine - with the proper garb. (I wore too much clothing at last year's race.)

Since this was my third or fourth race which started outside the Sovereign Bank stadium in York I felt very comfortable at the starting line.  The woman who sang the national anthem before this race sang the best rendition of this song I have ever witnessed in person.  She had a great voice - to the extent I was pumped up to race after her performance.

Coming into this race off the heels of a couple of sub-par performances I had lowered my personal expectations for this race.  I set my Garmin watch's virtual partner for a thirty-eight minute race.  The virtual partner function yields instantaneous pace feedback throughout the race. I was able to lead my virtual partner for about 3.5 miles of the five mile race.  I fell behind in the last mile and a half.

I knew there was a formidable hill about 1.75 miles into the race.  What I did not remember was there is a steady incline of about an eight of a mile to get to this hill.  I navigated this hill much better than last year - but I still have room for improvement.  At the top of the monster hill is a person playing bagpipes to commemorate your successful climb of the hill.

I finished the race in thirty eight minutes and twenty-six seconds (38:26) - a full two minutes faster than last year's time on the same course.  I was very pleased with my performance - although I finished 94th out of 269 racers (top 35%). I knew there were a boat-load of runners ahead of myself.

I maintained my focus on racing my virtual partner.  Were it not for my virtual partner I may have let myself become dejected with regard to how far back in the pack I was running.  I successfully ran the race I wanted to run.

York White Rose Five Mile run

As my running season comes to close tomorrow, I find myself in a reflective and contemplative mode.  I have had a good year and am looking forward to the prospect of an even better year in 2011. The White Rose race is one of the few races I have run both last year and this year.  The organizers handed out an excellent red technical T-shirt last year.

I feel very blessed with my wife doing great at studying for her degree, my boys are happy, and we are getting by financially with help from our immediate families. In a lot of ways, I have never been happier in my life.

Back to running.  I am going to use the virtual partner function on my Garmin GPS watch and set a very aggressive thirty eight minute time goal for tomorrow's run. This translates to 7:36 minute per mile pace. I ran the Beach to Beacon 10K (6.2 miles) run at a 7:29 pace in August.  I believe the York course is slightly tougher than the B2B.

The virtual partner function yields instantaneous feedback relating to how far ahead or behind I am of my goal pace.  When I simply used my 1/4 mile split times as a gauge for pacing, I had to wait for the close of every quarter mile to get a new split time and adjust my pace accordingly. With instantaneous feedback I can make pacing corrections much more rapidly - which should contribute to an improvement over my current 40:35 five mile personal record time.

Hematuria Blues

There were several races last weekend I was contemplating running. The Cornwall 5K is a local race just minutes from my house. The Polar Bear 5K run in Dillsburg is held by the Northern High school XC team. Also, the Thon 5K with over 4,000 participants was held in State College, PA. I opted to train this weekend for the York White Rose five mile run next weekend.

Coming off the heels of my excellent training runs of recent I decided to test my mettle on a ten mile training run this past Saturday. The weather was excellent, partly sunny with a slight wind, and temperatures in the upper 50's.

On the whole I felt pretty good for the run. I average a nine minute per mile pace for the first five miles and a 9:30 pace for the last five miles. My standard fare for long runs is to carry a 20 ounce Nathan Sports bottled filled with Gatorade.

I was not sure how my kidneys would respond to a run of this length. In the past I suffered from severe hydration issues - which I had hoped to rectify by drinking fluids during long runs.

Much to my dismay I had blood in my urine (hematuria) for hours after this run. From a hydration standpoint I was fine - the color had not darkened due to dehydration. As much as I would like to train for a half marathon or even a marathon next year I have to listen to what my body is telling me.  I have to do research why I would have this problem.  This issue did clear the next day, Sunday. (after drinking cups upon cups of water all Saturday evening)

excerpted from Sports Doctor.com

Blood in the urine (hematuria) has been recognized in athletes since the 1700s. It is most common in runners, but has been reported in sports as diverse as field hockey, cross-country skiing, boxing, and bicycling.
Studies have shown that anywhere from 20 to 90 percent of marathoners will have some blood in the urine after a race. The blood can either be visible (gross hematuria) or invisible (microscopic hematuria). Microscopic hematuria is by far the more common type, appearing equally in men and women. Gross hematuria is more common in men.
If the hematuria is exercise related, it usually clears up within two or three days after abstaining from exercise. Most often the blood comes from the bladder. The jarring of an empty bladder during running causes bruises and bleeding from the bladder wall.
The bleeding is occasionally accompanied by lower abdominal pain and the passage of clots of blood in the urine. Bicyclists can also experience hematuria from the impact of the bicycle seat during bumpy rides.
Sometimes the blood can come from the kidney. While the exact mechanism is not known, shunting of blood away from the kidney during intense exercise is thought to cause a temporary, reversible leak of blood cells. Dehydration will worsen the shunting and also the bleeding. If the dehydration is severe enough, serious damage to the kidney can occur.
Most cases of exercise-associated hematuria do not cause permanent damage. Because it is a diagnosis of exclusion, doctors often order a medical evaluation if the bleeding does not resolve itself within two to three days after stopping exercise. Bladder infections, kidney stones, cancer of the bladder or kidney, or other kidney diseases are some of the problems that need to be excluded by tests such as cystoscopy and an x-ray or scan of the kidneys.
In your case, I am very suspicious that "running on empty" is the cause of your problem. Try drinking plenty of liquids the night before a run. Have your physician run a urinalysis after a well-hydrated run. If the hematuria persists, you may require a full work-up.

Excellent Training Session

I wanted to get out yesterday and run because they were calling for inclement weather for the remainder of this week.  I decided to do a track workout because I was not prepared for a grueling road run. I decided to do a tempo run for five kilometers.

I set up a quick workout on my Garmin Forerunner watch by entering in a distance of five kilometers and an overall goal time of twenty three minutes and thirty seconds (23:30).  This equates to a pace of  7:34 per mile - a brisk pace for myself. I enabled the virtual partner function on the watch.  This function yields a display which gives you instantaneous feedback of your actual pace versus your goal pace during your run.

As always, I started my run too quickly.  I was able to adjust my pace because the watch display indicated I was running much faster than necessary to reach my time goal.  I ran the first 1/4 mile (one lap) at a 6:45 per mile pace. I then slowed  to a 7:27 per mile pace for the second quarter mile.  The second lap turned out to be the slowest split of this session.

I believe the five consecutive long distance 'Test Your Manhood' eight mile runs I have completed have been very instrumental in building my endurance and conditioning in general.   I finished the last four laps of this 3.1 mile run at  minute per mile paces of  7:20, 7:08, 7:01 and 6:50.  I finished this run very strong.

I pushed myself at about 85-90% of my max effort and finished this 5K training run with a time of 22:25 - a full minute faster than I had expected to run.  This averages to a 7:13 minute per mile pace.

I imagine I could have slowed during my run to hit the 23:30 goal pace - but I was not laboring much more at the speed I was running.

One More Race This Year

The White Rose Five Miler in York is only eleven days away.  My last five training sessions have been exclusively long runs. Each session was eight miles on a tough, hilly course. Because this is a tough run for me to accomplish, I needed more than one day to recover between these runs.

In fact I needed three days of rest in between my eight mile runs.  The one occasion where I only rested two days between the eight miles runs is when I had my worst outing - because my legs were still tired. If I would follow an eight mile training session with a run of a shorter distance, say three to five miles, I would not need a full three days rest.

I imagine there are people who run eight miles several times a week - I am not currently capable of running that much with that frequency. I know these runs have made me a stronger runner because I have been able to climb the hills within this run much more aggressively. My legs feel stronger.

Upon reviewing my heart rate for my last run I noticed some abnormal activity beginning roughly five  miles into the run.  My heart rate (in beats per minute) begins to vacillate markedly.  At the beginning of the seventh mile there is a very large hill to climb. For whatever reason, my heart began to slow down appreciably.  I slowed at the hill, took much smaller footsteps, and began breathing much deeper in an effort to conserve energy while climbing the hill.

Running with a Virtual Partner

Yesterday I used my Garmin Forerunner 305 watch to run my eight mile 'Test your Manhood' route.  It's named as such because the route is laden with hills.  It's a tough eight miles. I used a slower time I had run this route as the virtual pace my virtual partner would be running.  I did not want to lose my first race against my virtual partner.

Overall the virtual partner pacing worked very well.  The only problem I had with the virtual partner functionality on my watch was there are six screens associated with the virtual partner functionality. The screen I wanted to view predominately throughout my run only contains a graphic of a two runners on the top half of the screen and a number pertaining to how far ahead or behind you are of your goal pace on the bottom half of the screen.

The black background on the bottom portion of the picture above indicates the runner is slower than the virtual partner's pace. A white background indicates you are ahead of the virtual partner.

I found myself trying to scroll through all these screens to find my average pace, how far I had run, etc.  It's hard trying to press buttons on a watch while you are running.  There is an auto scroll function available which will continuously loop through all the screens during the entire run.  I am going to activate this for the next run.

I am going to run this route again next Monday.  I am going to use my best time of 1:10:36  (one hour ten minutes thirty-six seconds) as the virtual partner pace. It's going to be hard to beat this time - but it will be kinda neat to get instant feedback relating to how well I am doing against this pace all throughout the run. It truly is a virtual partner.

Garmin Virtual Partner

I have been wearing  my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS for nearly a eighteen months and nearly 1200 miles and I am still finding features of the watch I haven't used.  The feature I have recently discovered is called a Virtual Partner.

I train exclusively in my hometown and have several routes I run on a routine basis during training.  The Garmin Forerunner uses the term 'course' to refer to a route that you run.  In a nutshell, I can save my most recent run on my eight mile 'Manhood tester' route as a course.  Then the next time I run this course, the watch will remember both my route and my times along the entire route.  A visual on my watch will let me know if I am currently running faster or slower than the last time I ran this course.

A dark background indicates I am running slower than my base or control course/time combination. A clear background indicates I am running faster than my saved course / time(splits) combination.

You can also just program a distance and time into the watch that you would like to run and the Virtual Partner will keep you appraised of your efforts to maintain the prescribed pace.  For example, I could have plugged in five kilometers as the distance and twenty minutes as the total time I want to run to arrive at a four minutes per kilometer pace. As I am running the five kilometers,  the Virtual Partner screen will display if I am ahead of my goal pace or not.

I found the following video on YouTube demonstrating the Virtual partner feature.

Self Discovery

In order to avoid living a life where you possess a dogmatic subscription to beliefs which do not change to reflect your environment, you need to effect a certain amount of time for self discovery. It's a relatively easy way to live your life by staying within your comfort zone.  It is very difficult to face some of the issues you have found to be problematic in your life and correct them.

Running has afforded me the opportunity to learn what I am made of.  To the lay person, running is not a very difficult sport.  Just put one foot in front of the other. To the elite athlete, who has been able to run five minute miles since the age of  fourteen, running is also deemed not very difficult.  Running is a very difficult endeavor for the newbie attempting to begin a new fitness regimen or hobby.

I am not made of steel, nor am I made of bamboo. I am not a marathon runner nor a sprinter. I value my roles as a husband and father much more than a runner.  Next year, I will need to dedicate more time to helping my sons learn to ride bike, swim, and play baseball.  While I do feel I have rekindled a certain amount of my youth via running, I am keenly aware I am not young anymore.

This is not a swan song for running within my life. I have just aligned my running expectations with my performances - which in my case is a major downgrade. 

Hershey Half Marathon

Hershey Half Marathon 2010 Reviews

I was not able to run this race this fall, however I was very intrigued with the prospect of having a half marathon available every year at a great time and only a couple of miles from my house.

Upon Googling the Hershey Half marathon I was able to navigate through the site and find the results.  Site design notice - a link to the results should appear on the opening page.   The results page opened with the following;

These are the updated individual results after reviewing tapes. We apologize for any confusion. Thank you for participating in the inaugural Hershey Half Marathon.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

I have no behind the scenes knowledge regarding the organizers of this race - but I believe they may have underestimated the resources necessary to execute a race.  The Beach to Beacon 10K race in Maine this past August (which I ran) used over 700 volunteers to assist with the race.

My primary concern with this race was the group which was selected to time the race had no presence in this area prior to the race.  I never heard of them.  When you you run a race, you expect the timing to be accurate. A secondary issue was there was no mention of the RFID based timing chips (B or D) on the Hershey Half marathon web site.


Hopefully everything went well and the genesis of a great fall tradition has commenced.