Home Update

 It appears these are coming out about monthly, so here we go.

Life feels a little like Groundhog Day at times, but the little one started distance learning preschool a few weeks back, so that's given our days a little more variety.

Raking leaves was one of our preschool projects

The little one has been interested in books since he was one or so, and for the last few months he "reads" books he has memorized to his sister.

Reading a Sandra Boynton book

Laura has been doing the (not) parkrun 5k on the (not) parkrun course about once a week. The first time we came out and played on the playground and cheered her on each time she went by on the figure eight course.

The family after Laura's run. Notice the cowbell

The littlest one enjoys being on the move. I've let her crawl around a little outside, but she can only be on her own for a couple seconds before she tries to put things in her mouth. Pretty sure she got a bite of leaf during the taking of this picture.

We made it out to Afton Apple Orchard — an annual tradition. It was nice doing something socially distanced outside.

I've been enjoying staying home with the kiddos the past seven months. With the new one being so little, it's amazing the changes that have taken place in such a short amount of time.

Be well.

Sponsor a Mile: Donate to World Vision

Last year when I ran the Twin Cities Marathon, I raised money for Team World Vision. World Vision provides agricultural training, access to clean water, and essential health care among others. When I raised money last year, I raised over $50 per mile of my 26.2 mile race. I dedicated a mile to each person or family that donated.

It was motivating and meaningful during the marathon to think about and thank people each mile of the marathon, and I felt good about helping bring clean water to communities in need.

Initially I thought I wouldn't do another run for charity for a while as I didn't want people to feel pressured by me too often to donate.

But, I decided that I did want to make a difference with my marathon (even though it's virtual) and raise money for a cause I believe in. I won't, however, ask anyone individually to donate. Even if just one person besides me donates, I'll be happy.

If you do want to donate, please let me know what mile you'd like to sponsor, and I'll put down your or your family's name on a wrist band and dedicate that mile to you.

You can donate at the World Vision Fund or on Facebook.

Thank you, and be well.

Workouts and Confidence

 Over ten years ago I wrote a post, "Confidence in Workouts," where I opined on my guarded realism in my workouts' predictive values for races. In it, I wrote that poor workouts sapped my confidence more than good workouts improved my confidence.

A poor workout would make me question my goal time of a race while a solid workout would make me feel only somewhat more confident about an upcoming race. Since then, however, I've read, "If One Bad Workout Lowers Your Confidence Level, You Weren't Confident in the First Place," an article from Matt Fitzgerald on the 80/20 Endurance Blog. 

In the article, Fitzgerald writes, "an athlete’s best workouts are actually the most accurate indicators of their current fitness level and performance capacity." He goes on to explain that it is impossible to perform above one's current level of fitness, and relative easy to have a bad workout due to a variety of factors.

I had an amazing workout this past Saturday — eighteen miles with nine miles easy pace, six miles goal marathon pace, and three miles tempo pace. I nailed all my paces and didn't feel crummy afterwards.

Fitzgerald also writes that one should keep a level head and avoid extreme ends of confidence and insecurity (I really recommend the article as it applies to all areas of life), so I'm not going to get overly confident about my upcoming marathon based on this workout, but it does have me feeling more confident than it would have in the past.

Run well.

Streaks, Niggles, and Hypomania

All things must come to end. As of October 10, I had run 62 consecutive days and reached my 10,000 steps goal for 48 days. I hadn't kept track of my steps before, but my previous running streak record was 47 days.

This morning, I woke up feeling exhausted. After being up by 5:30 a.m. or earlier every weekday for a few weeks, I decided I was done with my running streak. I'd been having some little niggles in my feet and ankles (which I think were due to an old pair of shoes), so I decided that with the exhaustion and the niggles, it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a day off.  

I also cut back my mileage a bit because I read that it's possible that exercise can exacerbate or cause hypomania and mania, though whether exercise causes hypomania or mania or that excessive exercise is caused by mania or hypomania is not clear (Can Exercise Cause Mania?).

Tomorrow I'll be back at it, partly because I've come down from the mild hypomania I'd been feeling for a week or so and partly because exercise has a positive effect on depression. I generally get a little depressed after a hypomanic or manic episode, so staying active is important.

I enjoyed the running and steps streaks, but it feels right to let them end.

Be well.

Running Tourism

Though we’ve definitely slowed down since we had our first kiddo, Laura and I love to travel. We have a few travel goals—we’d like to visit every state park in Minnesota and every national park. We’ve got a ways to go, but we’re planning on really amping it up in about twenty-five years. Besides those two big goals, Laura is also aiming to run a half marathon or farther in every state. So far she has done so in ten states. 

While I’m not planning on running any sort of race in every state, I absolutely love running in places we visit. I know some places have companies that give running tours, but as of now, our tours have been self-guided.

Now that we have a four-year-old and a nine-month-old, I like to reminisce about times when we had a little more freedom with our travels.

One of our favorite trips was a road trip to visit several national parks in Colorado and Utah. While at Arches National Park, we had a limited amount of time, so we did some run/walking to see more of the park. By doing so, we were able to see probably a third more of the park had we just walked. I also got to do a run at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and got to see a little more of the park on foot.

The next year, we flew to San Francisco to tour the city and then drive to see some California national parks and run the Modesto Half Marathon. While we didn’t run in any national parks, we did do an awesome run over the Golden Gate Bridge and through Presido Park along the beach.
California Running

A year later, we did a trip out east, and I got in some amazing runs. Laura and I got to run together in Niagra Falls, Ontario as well as running the Shoreline Half Marathon at Hamlin Beach State Park along Lake Ontario in New York.
Shoreline Half Marathon

I’ve also got to run in numerous state parks including Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, Lake Bemidji State Park, and a memorable run in Banning State Park where I forgot running shorts and ran in some cargo shorts instead.
Banning State Park
Big Woods Run

How about you? Have you had any memorable runs in unfamiliar places?

Cadence: Injury Prevention Update

 It's been a little over six months since I took all of March off to attempt to heal from an injury. I wrote in a previous post about some things I've done to reduce to risk of injury. You can read about it here.

The one thing I didn't mention in that post that I'm also doing to prevent injury is increasing my running cadence. Like many things involving the human body, there's not solid evidence that increased stride rate helps reduce injury risk, but there are some studies that indicate it might. You can read about stride rate and injury prevention from a couple perspectives (How to Prevent Injury by Improving Run Cadence by Laura Norris from the Runkeeper website and Does Running Cadence Predict Injury by Alex Hutchinson from Runner's World).  

The lowdown on cadence is mixed with some studies suggesting that increasing stride rate may help prevent injury and some studies showing that there is no significant distance. From what I've read, I decided that increasing my stride rate may be helpful.

In the "How to Prevent Injury by Improving Run Cadence," Norris suggests that rather than working to a magic number, one should increase stride rate incrementally by 5%. Then, if that runner is staying healthy, she or he can increase cadence again if they desire.

Read the Runkeeper article above for how to set up tracking and setting a desired stride rate. If you don't have a smart watch or app on your phone that tracks stride rate, you can simply count your steps for a minute several times during a run to calculate your stride rate. Be aware that stride rate changes depending on how fast you are running.

I worked on increasing my stride rate with the help of Maelz Sport. I like the app's simplicity and the fact that it will keep beeping when listening to a podcast or recorded book.

I've successfully increase my stride rate by 3 - 5 % depending on the run. My stride rate was fairly high to begin with, so I didn't see a need to try and increase it more than that.

So, if you're frequently injured I'd say that as long as you increase your stride rate slowly it may be worth a shot to see if you can reduce your injuries.

Run well.

Gross Workout of the Week

 

I have no idea why I'm smiling in the above photo. I had just finished my grossest run ever — sixteen miles, three of which were filled with bugs. I was running along the Minnesota River on the Minnesota River Greenway Trail when a bug flew into my eye. It's my least favorite thing to happen on a run followed by a bug in my throat.

So I keep going and I'm noticing more and more bugs. I'm not an entomologist, but I would call the tiny hell beasts gnats. And they were awful.

What started as a bug in my eye turned into clouds — not an exaggeration — of disgusting little bugs. I could feel myself running through them, and with their fragile little wings, rather than bounce off me, they stuck to my arms, chest, and face. The picture above doesn't even do it justice. I wiped off my arms several times, and my arms still looked like this:

Gross. When my run was finished and I got to a mirror, I took three bugs out of my eye.

So my other runs this week were nice. The fall temperatures have been perfect, and the only downside to my runs is that I'm running really early, so it's dark outside and I have to wear a headlamp.

Weekends when I run in daylight have been nice. After those gross pictures of gnats, here's a picture of a tree I ran by: