Screeching halt

This is gonna be a good news - bad news kind of post. The bad news comes first....and it's definitely not good.

Last Tuesday started out as an innocent day, and I ran an easy 7.5 miles. Nothing wrong, right? Well ever since that run ended, I have had a pain in my lower left hip and in my left butt. A couple of people (including two physical therapists) I talked to say that it's my gluteus medius that needs strengthening and a couple say my sciatic nerve might be pinched a little. Whatever it is, I don't think I'm gonna be able to run the half marathon on Sunday. And it's a bummer because I've really been looking forward to it...

So that's the bad news. Not much to it, that's all I gotta say about it. Another interesting thing that came up was my diet. A massage therapist I know was checking out my injury and she inquired about what I eat. From there she delineated that I'm not getting enough protein in my diet, and she advised me to buy a certain protein supplement. I was skeptical at first but then I went home and did "A day in the life of Justin" and realized that I usually only get about a third of the protein I should be getting. Her analogy was that her father wanted to build a log cabin a while ago, but he didn't have enough lumber to do it. Once he got what he needed, he was able to build it. Same goes for my gluteus medius....it's been underdeveloped this whole time and mostly because I haven't been taking in nearly enough protein. I thought it was interesting, and a bunch of the guys at work agree with it. So since last week I've been taking a closer look at my diet and trying to balance things out a little more.

Good news? MSU football is 4-0 after a 31-14 victory over Notre Dame! AND Notre Dame is 0-4 for the first time EVER! (Apologies to Jess). It's also the 6th straight game MSU has won in South Bend, which is a new record (USC had 5 in a row)...hence the picture. Late in the game with MSU leading 24-14, MSU had 4th and 2 from the Notre Dame 30 yard line and was going for it. As the ball was hiked, the QB Brian Hoyer looked like he fumbled the ball, and I was thinking "Crap...there goes that opportunity..." but then he recovered and threw a touchdown to the tight end. What I read in the paper the next day was interesting - it was a trick play. Hoyer meant to act like he fumbled the ball right after it was snapped so that it would confuse the defense. It's so convincing that it almost always gets our OWN defense in practice! So yea...I guess you might as well have fun when you're winning. Now the real test begins....Big Ten season. And the first game is at #9 Wisconsin on Saturday....time to man up!

Here's to keeping my fingers crossed for running this weekend. One of my co-workers brought up a point that I shouldn't run through because look what happened when I ran the marathon. 7 months down the drain. So don't worry, I'll be smart about it. It's just so frustrating because my training seemed to have been going well. But that's just how things go sometimes.

Deja Vu

Two years ago when I ran the Playmakers Autumn Classic 8K, I ran about 20 seconds behind my buddy Tony for the first 3 miles. Eventually I passed him on the 4th mile and beat him by 9 seconds. I hadn't forgotten about that and I was talking trash to him at work in the past couple of weeks, and he said it wasn't gonna happen again. Well....

Sorry, Tony...

It was pretty cold on Sunday morning here, about 37 degrees when I left my apartment at 8am, and the race was at 9am but I warmed up pretty quick and went with a singlet and shorts, as you can see in my picture. I was guilty of thinking about my knee in the couple days before the race, so I wore my IT Band strap too just in case. The warmup went well too....well, except for the part where I tripped on my sweatpants and skinned my knee on the road. It was a blessing in disguise though, as the "road burn" took my mind off my IT Band and made me focus on my running better. It's weird how that works out.

Eventually the starting gun went off and we were racing. There was pack of 12 or so runners (including Tony) that sprinted out, but I let them go because I didn't want to go out too fast and ruin my game plan. First mile went by in 5:46, which was right what I wanted. Most of the first three miles I ran with the leading woman, and I think I let her dictate the pace a little bit because I slowed to 5:53 and 5:51 in the 2nd and 3rd miles. I was also about 20 seconds behind Tony the whole time, and when the 3rd mile marker passed, I knew it was time to drop the hammer. Now or never, right? I left the leading woman behind and went after Tony. He had another guy with him, and I passed him about a quarter mile into the 4th mile. And then about a quarter mile after that, Tony was in my rearview mirror, almost exactly at the same point as two years ago. After that, the closest guy ahead of me was way up there, probably about 150 yards ahead, so I was stuck playing mind games with myself. Nobody to chase after, was Tony gonna catch me? Am I slowing down? Am I starting to get tired?

Apparently the last two questions were a no, because my 4th mile was 5:38...which really surprised me. But I shook it off and tried to keep it up for the last mile. 5:45 later, I was thru the chute with a finishing time of 28:53, which is 5:46 pace and a new PR, good for 3rd in my age group and 9th overall. The craziest part of it all was that I beat Tony by 8 seconds...almost a carbon copy race of two years ago. Weird, huh? And to tell you about the wonders of chip timing, the closest guy ahead of me was WAY ahead of me....yet some 18 year old turd beat me by one second. Oh well.

All in all, it was a successful race for me. Would I have liked to run a little faster? Of course, but it was my first race since last October and I was just wanting to get back into the swing of things.

In other news, MSU won again, this time an even harder fought 17-13 victory over Pittsburgh in which the defense stayed strong throughout the whole game and especially in the 4th quarter. Next up is Notre Dame in South Bend, and I'm really liking the prospects of another Spartan victory down there. Especially since the Irish haven't scored an offensive touchdown in their first three games and are 0-3. Sorry Jess :)

So that's that. 13 days til the half marathon!

Football euphoria

Could things be going any better in the college football world? MSU is now 2-0 after a hard fought 28-17 win over Bowling Green, Notre Dame is 0-2 after being blown out by Penn State (Sorry Jess....lol) and Michigan is 0-2 after getting rolled over by Oregon. The only bad part is ND and UofM play each next week and somebody has to win. But maybe MSU will be 3-0 after playing Pittsburgh, that's something to root for!


On Thursday I did an easy 5 miles around Lake Lansing, where the 8K race is gonna be this weekend. At least I planned it to be easy....I was going at an easy pace but it seemed to be laboring. My left shin was bothering me all of a sudden, and afterward it just kept bugging me. Hello shin splints, we meet again. So I iced it a couple of times the rest of the day Thursday, and then analyzed how I felt Friday morning. I was pretty hesitant about getting out there for a run on Friday but I wanted to do a moderate tempo run. I ran a mile warm up and things felt good so I decided to go for it. The tempo was gonna be 6 miles in duration but I decided to cut it to 4 just in case. I didn't want to make things worse than they already were, even though I was feeling good at that moment. I was gunning for 6:25-6:30 pace, and I ended up doing 6:23, 6:26, 6:27, and 6:15 (I had some adrenaline at the end I guess), so I was satisfied with that. Add the 1 mile cool down and that's 6 miles.

I took Saturday off, as I was at the MSU football game. It was a great day except for the shin. I was sitting on a table in the morning with my feet dangling and somebody hit my other leg accidentally, which in turn slammed into the shin that has the splints. Soooooo it hurt pretty much all day and I wasn't near any ice or anything to try and make it feel better. I was planning on running 13 or 14 miles on Sunday but finally after hours of thinking about it during the afternoon on Saturday, I decided to delay it until yesterday morning. Sunday morning I biked 12 miles instead, and things felt alright. The 13 miler went great yesterday too, my shin wasn't bothering me at all. I ran the half-marathon course just so I could see it all, even though I've run on portions of it so many times before. It's fairly flat, but it's kind of cool how some of it is on streets, some is on paved trail, and some is through a now defunct golf course. So you get a little bit of everything in there. The local newspaper here has a countdown on their website, and then if you click The Course button, you can actually see the course. Somebody actually biked it and videotaped the route, and they sped it up to show what it's going to look like when we run it....I think it's pretty cool.

Sunday was also the 9th race in the 12 race Playmakers Race Series - the Dewitt Trail Run 5K. I'm used to it now, but sometimes it still amazes me how the older runners in this area can hold their own against the young guns. Check out the top 10 from Sunday...

# Age Time
1) 41 16:26
2) 44 16:41
3) 23 16:47
4) 21 17:06
5) 44 17:23
6) 18 17:42
7) 47 17:55
8) 29 17:58
9) 18 18:33
10) 46 18:38

There's just as many masters runners in the Top 10 as there are young people. And it's like that almost every race. It just goes to show that not everybody loses speed and endurance as they age....well, just not as quick.

"I hate to put it this way, but there were [Detroit] Lions games that were less embarrassing than this." --Detroit Free Press writer Mitch Albom, on Michigan losing to Oregon

Michigan WHO???

Appalachian State: 34
Michigan: 32

I don't think it can be scripted any better. If there's one school that this was gonna happen to, I'm sure glad it was Michigan! They're the laughing stock of the nation right now and I'm loving every second of it. I was at the MSU game against UAB which was happening at the same time, and everytime they announced the score, it was like, are you kidding me?? What an embarassment. :) (The pic is of App. State students celebrating.)

So here's the recap of my week: Tuesday I did the same workout that I was supposed to do a couple weeks ago but my calves were too sore. Well I was fully intending to do it but I have a habit of getting out there at like 10:30 or 11:00am when the sun is already a bit unhappy. I warmed up for a mile then did 2 miles at 10K pace...I was gunning for about 5:55 pace and actually did it in 11:46 (5:53 pace). So that wasn't a bad start....but I was sort of gassed. Then I was to do 2 x 1 mile at 5K pace...I was gunning for about 5:40 on these. The first one I did 5:43 and that took all I had, and the second one I was absolutely gassed and finished in 5:47. So instead of finishing with 2 x 800m at slightly faster than 5K pace, I just did a mile cooldown and called it a solid 6 mile day.

Wednesday was a nice swimming recovery day, then Thursday I did a hard tempo run. The plan called for 30 minutes at half marathon pace minus 15-20 seconds. So since my goal is 6:30 miles during the half, I was gunning for 6:10-6:15 pace on this run. The first two miles went by in 6:11 and 6:06....not bad, but I felt like I should be slowing it down a little for my own good. I was running on the river trail so I went a quarter mile down and then turned around. The quarter mile out was 1:34 (6:16 pace....ok good, I'm where I want to be) and the quarter mile back was 1:31 (6:04 pace....uhhhh, did I get an adrenaline kick or something?). I think I did because I rode that kick during the last 2 miles in 6:07 and 6:02. And I really felt pretty decent. It was supposed to be a comfortably hard tempo run, and I made it that way. And in the mile warmup/cool down and that's 6.5 miles.

Friday morning I worked with Todd on my alignment exercises and then biked for 40 minutes, then that night I went for an easy 5 miler. It went alright, but my knee was barking a little after the run. Saturday was gameday (MSU is 1-0!) so nothing happened that day, but Sunday I did a "half-marathon simulation run". An 11 mile long run where I do the first 6 miles easy and then the last 5 miles at half-marathon pace plus 20 seconds. I did those first 6 aroud 7:30 pace and then whipped out the last 5 in about 6:45 pace. And those last 5 miles sucked because I had been in the sun for so long the day before, and the sun was beating down on my once again that morning. Anyway, I made it and called it 28.5 miles for the week.

Let's see what this week will bring...I can't wait for the Autumn Classic 8K on the 16th!