Run for the Wild Half Marathon

Ahh, my first Half Marathon!

How was it... In a couple words? Very Good!

In more words? Let me recount: 

As usual, left the house a bit frazzled, but thought I had everything and would make it shortly before packet pickup ended. Thankfully that was true.  

Got my bib and headed into the office for a few minutes, before this mandatory meeting at 8:35.  

That meeting turned out to be 8:45 and didn't have any new info.  

Back in the office at 8:50, took off the sweatpants, went with shorts. put on my spibelt with bib and honey in the pocket, Had compression short sleeve, and 2 long sleeve technicals on and the gloves, put my phone in the armband. Headphones around my neck, not in my ears. Tomtom on one arm for pace (set to a graph with a 10 minute mile baseline), Pebble on my other arm for starting Runkeeper and to control music.  

Out the door and to the startline, literally about 1 minute before we took off. Amazing what a NICE 32 degrees is compared to a windy 40 I had the week before. Or maybe it's just cause it's race day... Didn't need the gloves. Left them on for a mile, then they just got stuffed in my short pockets.  

Of course at the start I still have no clue how fast I'm going. I started out and was like "I feel fine", look at my watch and I'm running like 8's... "Uhh, is this gonna feel fine in another 10 miles?" So I slowed myself back a bit, but was still under 10 minutes. (Remember that it was just about 11 minute miles for my last training, so logically, this sounds really questionably fast to me...)  

Interesting to see down one of our city's main Streets as the race started out. I'd later find out there was only about 60 people for the Half. But, there was a large group in front of me, and I just kinda held as the last one in that pack. But after a few miles, I wasn't sure how many people were behind me(probably about 10), but they disappeared. "Did I miss something, am I last? No, they said there would be a Trooper driving behind the last one and he's not back there either."  

Basically just looked at my watch and the water stops, if it was about 20 minutes, I took a hit of honey right before the water stop and then grabbed a water. That is one heck of a pro-tip about squeezing the top of the cup so that you can drink on the run!  

I had also been walking for like 30 seconds on each of my 20 minute breaks for training. The most I slowed down was to pick up water which did seem difficult to grab the cup, but I kept moving! Didn't need a bathroom break either!  

Thankfully the return trip was downhill(minimal hills either direction), but I was feeling it more after around the 10 mile mark. But kept going.  

Around 10 miles was also where I was going to put my headphones on and get some music to push me faster, but something happened at about that point as well because the headphones just shut off and my phone started yelling out the runkeeper announcement of miles, pace, etc. So I turned down the volume on the phone, gave up on the headphones and for periods where I was alone, I played some music from the phone speaker.  

Also took off my top shirt around mile 11. Not bad if I do say so myself to not stop running, but get it untucked from two watches, take off my armband, get the shirt off, armband back on and tie the shirt around me!  

Passed another person in the last couple miles, and pulled out a speedier more like 9 minute mile at the end!

Ohh, I made it to the front page of the paper! (barely!)

St. Patrick's 5K

Well...
First off, it was a bit nicer to go on this one since it's basically the same setup as the Turkey Trot so I knew where to go when, etc.

I was hoping to break the 8 minute/mile mark and ideally hit like 7:30 which would put me head of one competitor from the turkey trot.

So...
The run went pretty well, though different.  For one, it was my first race using my Tomtom watch and I hadn't actually used the "pace" function where I said I wanted to stay within 20 seconds of 8 minute miles.  I figured it would beep at me if I was slower than 8:20.  Once I actually started the race, it gave me a pace reading and I wasn't really clear if that was a current or average pace...  But it started out under 8 minutes... Great!
But then there were a lot of 8 minute readings...
I think the race itself went as easy as any of them.  I did push harder in that last mile than I have for the previous 5K's.  Though this also seemed to mean that I didn't have that extra oomph in just the last block where I've passed people pretty quick.  That last block or two I was seriously feeling the "Really?  I have to go that far still? I'm seriously feeling like I need to stop!"  But I pressed on at the fastest I could manage.

Sure enough, I still need to play with that pace function to see what I'm looking at, but it must be a reading of average cause looking at the results afterwards I was well over 8 minute miles other than the very start and then I dropped it considerably that last mile to I believe under 8 minutes.

End result?

8:23

So not exactly what I was hoping for, but really that's still a PR for me, so WOOT!  And really...  I've only been training for distance and most of those runs are in the 12 minute mile range.  I think there has been one run in the 10 minute range.  I had one interval session Tuesday with some speed.  I was largely just picking a high number and hoping the distance training would translate to speed in a short distance.  Not necessarily realistic.

I'm happy!  Here I am right in front!

Humdinger.

Oh my....  I hope it in me to get through all of this...

So it was about a 2 hour 15 minute trip down to Danville PA for the Humdinger.

Got there, they parked us at the school and it was about a quarter mile walk down to the pig barn.  We even got to walk on part of the course.  Well this was beneficial since I had VERY little testing of my spikes on the Lontra's.  From what I could see it was not ice, it was crunchy snow.  So I decided to not take the less than fully tested spikes.  This was probably just as well as when the race did start I saw one of the exact same set of spikes I had and there was a woman running back to pick it up.

Anyway, I was there a good hour before the race. walked down to the barn on the course through the corn field.  First time I was on a course with manure on the ground!
Found registration in the pig barn, picked up my tag, a shirt, a bracelet for drinking(I put it on but never used it) and a timing chip.  So far my 5K's had only used the disposable ones built into the runner tags.  These were a chip and a velcro strap that you had to put on your ankle and then return.

So I went back to the car, put my tag and chip on, jacket off, sipped a bit of water and tried to relax.  Definitely plenty of the usual pre-race nervousness.

2:30 I headed back down to the barn(race started at 3).  Took a potty break and then hung around.  It was about 35F out so it was cool for standing around in my race layers, but not as bad as the 20F ish that my previous 5K's had been.

About 3 they started talking and split us up odd and even numbered people for the crossfire start where we went at 90 degrees against each other.  This went off actually much more smoothly than I might have thought.
Then it was off up through the cornfield.  I was only passing people.  That is still just utterly amazing to me.  At this point we had the full and half dingers all together.  I was doing well on the paths.  Maybe 8 inches of crunchy snow, much like the seasonal roads I have been training on.  Though with 60 or so people on there ahead of me packing down a path, you did have some options as to what surface you hit.  It was frequently better in my opinion to go for the deeper stuff to avoid the slipping.

Then we hit a bit of paved road and we were off into the woods on tight trails.  It took some time and effort to pass people there, but I did manage to find a few spots where I could either stride ahead, or go on the inside of a tree around a corner down a hill and pass some more.  I think I was only passed once.  Again, utterly crazy to me.

Then we were at one of the sections they had said was particularly bad and it was really iffy that you weren't going to slide off this 6" wide packed snow/slippery path and go about 15' down into the creek.  Well, a few hundred feet later we were redirected to climb this very steep slope like 20' up, go across an easier section for a hundred feet and then DOWN like 50' back towards the creek.  I looked down and said aloud "This is the EASIER way?!"  It was STEEP.  Everyone ended up just going on their butt and sliding down.  Of course I ended up not being able to stop myself before hitting the log across at the bottom and unfortunately there was a guy there ahead of me, but thankfully he was stopped and I managed to straddle him without a problem.
More of the tight stuff and then we headed out to a bit of a parking lot for a minute before back in the woods.  I think we may have cleared a mile or maybe 2 by then.  Whatever it was, it was definitely a feeling of "No way, that's ALL we've done so far?!"  But we kept going.  Then up some hills.  Oh, those hills sucked. And then across some more.  I think we split off from the half dingers somewhere around there...  Not sure if it was before or after the water stop.

Got to the first water stop.  One of the "attack mascots", "roadkill" in this case was facing away from me at the bottom of yet another like 10' steep decline and the people were all saying "Jump on his back!"  "Do it?!"  I looked at them like "Are you sure?"  They continued so I went down but with that incline it's not like I could just stop, so it was more like I just kinda rammed him from behind.  I stopped for a moment to get a Gatorade and head the guys looking at the camera say that it looked awesome, apparently possibly rather risque.  I am waiting to find this picture!
So back up the hills.  I think I let 2 people that I had passed back ahead of me when they didn't stop.

This was probably also about when we were still running across the hills, up the hills and the hills really sucked.  And then it was like "yeah, this hill really sucks."  And then I made the mistake of looking UP.  No way, really?  I have yet to look to close to my GPS data, but I'm guessing this was like an 800' hill and it was steep enough where you were frequently on your hands as well to keep from falling while getting up.  It rather sucked.
About at the top of this hill I believe was where I heard some weird noise and it seemed some kid was running off to the side with a tablet that was making noises, I'm guessing taking video, but who knows.  I was very tired and I kinda don't notice a lot when I'm running hard and tired.  I have yet to see any pics or video of me...

Crested that hill.  More running around, through the woods, across, ups, downs...  It mostly ended up being a number of events like "OK, some flat, 10 seconds and then we need to start pushing to running again.", OK uphill.  This really sucks, we;re walking/climbing.  OK, downhill, we're gonna go pretty fast, watch our footing, aim for the deep snow where people haven't been, slide through it, aim for the trees, wrap a hand/arm at it/around it to swing ourselves around and keep us on the track.  (this seemed to be where I would pass people.  They didn't seem to be doing the same tactics, most seemed to be sticking to the packed slippery stuff).

Most wasn't TOO worrisome, though I did have one time, barrelling down the hill, heading toward maybe a 3' deep creek and I saw it coming and said to myself, "Yeah, we better make this one or we're going to be face first into the oncoming side of that creek!"  I let out a bit of a chuckle once cleared that my footing had made it without crashing!  (:
I did fall maybe 3 other times, no biggie.  Expected.  Just sliding down snowy hills!

More rough flats, ups, downs, repeat.  Definitely tiring.  At one point I wondered if I was in last place.  I knew the 2 people I had been seeing repeatedly were a bit ahead of me and I hadn't seen anyone behind me.  Then I heard people and with the switchbacks could see there were a number of people just coming up on about mile 4 and I was up on mile 5.  I wasn't last! Woot!  And then I ended up passing a few more people downhill and kept them there.

Somewhere in there I hit the second water stop, I took a moment to down a Gatorade which apparently gained me beads.  From what I understood you got them from drinking beer or doing stupid human tricks, but hey whatever!

Getting around  the end of mile 5 we emerge and hit a bit of paved road, then back to the corn field, hitting mile 6.  Now we're directed across a creek about a half dozen times.  This was basically 4' declines and inclines across.  I hit them with the speed I could muster, because I'm not sure how else you would make it up some of them being almost vertical and limited things to grab/pull on and quite muddy with 60 people ahead of me.
Now across the creek for the last time, greeted by 2 girls "Congratulations you made it, down through the rabbit hole!" and I was directed down INTO the creek and there was a concrete bridge maybe 3' high with 6" of water in the creek that I had to go probably 10' to get out the other side.  Went well, though I think I did bump my head there just a touch at one point.  Out of that...  I think then we ran across some pit with like a couple foot wide pavement beam running across with fire down below.  I was tired and not looking that closely. It wasn't like I was worried about falling off and this was the end and things were happening fast.
Across that and I think we were back to the pig barn and I realized I knew this was a climbing obstacle I'd seen pictures of and either from just pumping my arms for an hour and a half, and/or swinging around trees, my arms were tired as well.  Ugh.  I stopped for a moment to try the first/hardest part, a rock climbing wall.  Then after a moment of thought realized it was going to be difficult to figure out just where to place my hands and feet and I was a bit tired, so I hopped a wall and went for the next hardest which was a rope hanging in front of wall with some 2x6's running crosswise.  So it was pull yourself up on the rope and walk up the wall.  It was hard and I had to try at about 99% effort to pull up to that last knot, but I made it up without issue(I wasn't sure before how it would go, let alone being that level of tired). and managed to dive into the second story of the barn.  Maybe a 15' climb.    Took me a minute to figure out which end of the barn to go after that, down the slide and I think it was on to the timing mat!

1 hour 39 minutes for 7.1 miles they said.  Got my medal, a glass of water and then found a couple wrap pieces and some soup.

Knowing the girls were waiting, I just grabbed them and ate as I was walking across the corn field back to the car.

I debated changing, but figured it was quicker and not much worse to just stay in my wet clothes for the ride back.  Mostly just the usual sweat.  Setting the heat to 85F seemed pretty good.
Was afraid that I had forgotten my wallet, but didn't really need to stop for food and I had filled the tank before I left so I wouldn't have to stop.  Though it did turn out I had my Mobil Speed Pass with me so I wasn't super worried.
As it turned out, I made it home on "add fuel", and later found that I had brought my money, just never zipped up the pocket or found it when briefly looking while driving.(I had brought about 3 bags of water/clothes/etc just trying to figure out what I needed).

As it turns out it seems for the Full Humdinger Males I was 58 out of 84.  For kicks, I looked at the female Humdingers and I would have been 9th place there!  So while not near the front of the pack, I still had 26 guys and about 30 girls behind me on the trails.  Not bad!  Especially since I had run just about zero miles as of like 6 months ago!

At the end, about to head home

Don't know who this is, but demonstrating the hills we we had to get up and down

Everyone starting out

 Shirt

The pig barn, that's the rope climb I went up on those boards.

Someone else demonstrating some of the slippery trails.  These were relatively flat, but not very wide and getting very slippery as they got packed in!

#58!

The slide at the end.

Back of shirt

My tag

My beads from drinking gatorade!

My medal!  This is about my first "real" medal and the one I have most earned!

The crossfire start:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=824704250877022&set=vb.231714346842685&type=2&theater

Race excitement!

ACK!
The Humdinger is coming up Saturday and the excitement is flowing!  7+ miles of running through crunchy, snowy fields, streams, hills, woods, pig barns, etc!  Oh and it's only Tuesday...

That's mainly what's in my head right now.

But here's the past weekend:
Kids/warm weather
It was like 45F both days.  And I had some easier runs scheduled.  Why not make them harder!?  (:

Saturday...  We bundled up Thing1 and Thing2, put them in the bike trailer/stroller with the front wheel attached and I headed out for 5 miles around the block...
Physical aspects:
Warm temperature was nice.
Wind was apparently in the 30-40mph range.  And that enclosed trailer...  Well, pushing it into the wind pretty much brought it to a dead stop even downhill when it really blew!  But I got some running in.  That stroller doesn't track straight either, but it's pretty easy to just tilt it so the front wheel isn't on the ground and then it goes pretty easy.  Legs were a bit more tired, but not horrible.

Mental aspects:
The toughest 5 miles ever.  Within the first 5-10 minutes my 2 year old decided she did NOT want to ride anymore so we had more than an hour of screaming.  SOOO tiring...


Sunday:
Again, another nice 45F.
Windy, but not as bad as Saturday.
8 miles listed...
Well, why not go crazy and try 2 year old on my back.
I didn't have a lot of hope for this, but from past experience, I had better hope that she'd be happier back there than in a stroller.

Physically?
WOW, I don't notice the 5 or so pounds of my Camelbak, but 25 or so pounds of kid?  That's a LOT more stress on the legs and joints.  We didn't really do any running, I did something more like power walking on the flats and downhills.  And thankfully Kenzie was happy to ride back there and semi-snooze.  It's hard to tell when she's on my back, but I think the 4-wheelers passing us kept her from fully sleeping for a while, and then she slept for about an hour.  I didn't go very fast, but I did go up and down the hills and over the snow all the way.
Then about 3 miles out she started waking up and making more noise.  I could barely tell she was awake at first.  Then she wanted more bouncing from me "running".  Then of course she started saying that she wanted to get out and walk herself and she couldn't seem to keep her bink in her mouth which was almost impossible for me to reach.
I managed to talk her into being a "good girl" and staying back there till we got to the last 3/4 mile around the lake without TOO much trouble.
I let her out once we were off the snow covered road and she was quite happy there, even though the first thing she did was fall over forwards.  But then she did a good job(though of course we went even slower yet) of walking along and did some bits of running as well.  As usual her biggest problem is keeping going down the road.  She wants to either veer off the side into the snow, or run across the other side of the road or something.

But in the end we made it without much of any screaming and we did all 8 miles so WOOHOO!  (:  Definitely harder on the knees though.  I should probably start incorporating more weight into my runs to get used to that(or more yet if I'm going to be hauling SIXTY pounds up ski slopes for Spartan...)  I think I have my half marathon training taking me up to 16 miles mid april and then some time before the marathon training starts, so maybe that would be a good time to start adding weight.

Oh, I did also as a "something is better than nothing" finally tie a rope to a beam in the garage.  It's about half as thick as a climbing rope and it's not in the greatest location, but it's some place I can at least grab a couple times a day as I come and go and at least start to get used to.  After a few days, I can pretty well at least do a pullup on it.  Only tried the feet a couple times, no luck so far, but I just looked again at what to do, so I'll have to see if I can improve my technique.  Just very difficult since right now my arms and hands aren't overly found of holding my weight much at all.

RACING THIS WEEKEND!

14 miles: Take 2

So Sunday I did another 14 miles.

End result?  Well, it's cool to see improvement.  I got faster and with less pain.

I did the half marathon in 2hrs 50min.  Would be nice to whack off a good 50 minutes off that time, but hey I've done it only about twice now and there's good improvement.

Got the 14 miles done in about 3hrs.

I think this was about 15 minutes or so faster than last week.

It was about 10F.

Part of this was less monkeying around on the road.  Maybe most of it, given the time I spent talking to the neighbors and then monkeying around with my pack and moving food last time.

Water...
Well, I now have the insulated tube from Camelbak.  Umm...  So it IS better than the UNinsulated tube.  However, I have the one with the meter on it, and THAT part is not insulated.  Guess what freezes first?  It also has a little turbine in there, so guess where the slush gets stuck first once the water starts getting thick anywhere in the tube?

So about the halfway point, I just took out the meter section and stuck it in my glove so I could thaw it out enough to clear it so as not to worry about it breaking anything with further freezing and then tossed it in my pack.

Well...  Then there is the bite-mouth piece that's not insulated...  Thought that would be open enough to not be a problem.  Guess what?  It was a problem.  So, about 5-10 minutes later when I went for water again, I took that off, and repeated the thawing, clearing, toss in bag process.

So the rest of the trip was done with just the open end of the insulated hose.  That pretty much worked.  sometimes at around 10 minutes it would require a bit of work to get it flowing again though.  If I wasn't hoping for Spring soon I might think about trying to get some heat of some sort going or something...

And on the water front, I ignored the meter anyway since it seemed to only read about half of what I was drinking(presumably the freezing doesn't help much with accuracy).  So I just basically ended up trying to take a sip every 5 minutes or so and/or after/between gummy bites or other fuel eating.

In the end, it seems as though I drank a LOT less as the bag still seemed pretty full, yet I did not seem dehydrated.  I still ended up having to find a few pee spots, but I think I may have cut a couple of them out.  Would be nice to get that figured out a bit better as I'd really rather not have to stop a couple times at porta-potties(if I'm lucky) during an actual half marathon...

I also tried a Honey Stinger Waffle for fuel.  Somehow I thought that's what they were intended for, but after actually using one, I rather doubt it.  They seem to be made to be eaten 160 calories at once and the main ingredient is wheat.  I think they worked just fine, but I guess closer to a normal bar than running fuel.  I think I shall be switching to raisins and/or honey rather soon.  Need to find a travel bottle or something for honey.

Made sure the phone was fully charged before I left and used the wired yurbuds headphones since I needed to shove them under my balaclava with the cold.  No problems other than the usual wire issues where they get caught or otherwise pull and are annoying.

14 miles

Oh let's see....
I made it 14 miles yesterday.  Figured I might as well just head over to the farm and back.  It was around 3 hours 15 minutes I think, but that could be cut down a bit.  Took a minute at the farm, and then ran into the neighbors and talked to them for a few minutes.
Then a few minutes to put some gatorade in the Camelbak and move fuel around.
Also too many pee breaks.
This was my first time with the new insulated tube for the Camelback and the meter to tell how much I'm drinking.  Notes:  The meter is a turbine in the tube and is not insulated...  Things still get slushy after 10-20 minutes and they get stuck at the turbine.  Thankfully not a huge deal to disconnect the hose, suck out both ends and get things going again.
Also not sure how inaccurate the gauge is on it's own, or just with the slushing problems, but pretty sure it was closer to reading half of what I drank based on when I seemed to run out after a 50% refill of gatorade.  And that's fine cause it would certainly work out better if I drank less and didn't need to stop 4 or 5 times on the return trip to pee!
I think next time I'll try it with about half of what the meter reads and see how that level of hydration works.

Lost one headphone bud thingy last weekend so I had tried my older headphones but found out they only last about 2 hours.  Then somehow I ended up taking them again today after already using them for more than an hour the day before.  That meant I had about 1.5hrs before they died.  So I just used the phone speaker for the rest of the run.

Either way, Just before I got back to our property at like 13.92 miles, the phone crashed/rebooted.  Not sure what exactly the issue was.  Pretty sure I saw the "background data restricted" message that shows up with low battery, but it was reading like 31%...  Maybe with everything running before the crash it dropped lower or something, but I would have thought I would have at least gotten a warning....  Historically, this phone(Moto X) has had a pretty reasonable battery capacity.

But this does make me question if I should be looking at a GPS watch again...  I'm really on the fence with that one.  On the on hand, it sounds great to have a device that theoretically should "just work" and not have any battery problems, etc. and give me perhaps some better info while running...
On the OTHER hand, it's not cheap, I THINK I'll have to take it back and plug it into my laptop to sync it and I still have some question if it's going to count towards my Gympact with it's uploaded logs to Runkeeper...  Plus, it's nice to just have everything centralized on my phone, along with music/podcasts or whatever...
There's also the question of if I start trying to get a bit of swimming in...  Not necessarily laps, but going across the lake maybe...  Not sure if my theoretically waterproof phone or the watch would work much better, each sounds like they have some issues from what I can gather...

The other big ticket item that I'm hitting YET AGAIN...  Is headphones.  I think I have at least a half dozen sets of BT headphones(SOOO much nicer than wired) and pfft, probably a couple dozen sets of wired buds, headphones, what not...
So I'm contemplating  spending some serious coin on a set of heapdphones in hopes of getting something that will go the distance...  Previous issues have been...  Physical breaking plastic, electronic breaking/battery dead/etc, battery life, losing buds, less than enjoyable comfort, etc...
Yurbuds seems to have a set with a lifetime guarantee, that goes over your ear(those seem to fit me the best), comfortable, 6hr battery life(hopefully that would cover the longest of my runs), and do not have a band, so I should be able to just have one in if I want to hear more of the outside world as well.  Not to mention that I'd like to think that would make it easier to remove/reinsert with one hand and without knocking the bud part off...  Though they do have those bud things, so that's a potential problem, but really I think they'll all have that.
I also looked a bit for headphones for swimming, but from what I can tell, bluetooth just pretty much doesn't work in water so I think I could use my existing wired yurbuds if I was going to try that...

Otherwise though, the run went pretty well.
I had a good amount of right side lower calf pain from the 12 mile run last week, but it was pretty much gone by mid-late week.  But I could feel it a bit during the 6 mile run Saturday(I think the hills get it more).  And I felt it Sunday, but it wasn't too bad.  Well, by the end it was getting pretty darn tired.  I was definitely walking a good bit more for those last few miles.  But certainly nothing not doable or anything to make me thing I can't go farther. Walking has always been fine and the last 2 weeks I've increased my long runs by a couple miles each time which is a bit of a stretch for sure.  And I think my other runs during the week have been more like 50%+ more than they were as well...
So I think overall I'm pretty happy with where I'm at and a bit of soreness isn't unexpected, I'm still working in these distances.

Really need to get a rope hung to try climbing, Humdinger is coming up in a couple weeks!

Just got a little excited...

Races are getting closer...  like 3 weeks to the Humdinger, then 2 weeks after that is a 5K...
I've mainly just been working on my distances up, but I've kinda got a bit of a bug to see if I can really get some speed up for that 5K... (:

Just need to figure out how to work in that training/testing with my long stuff...