New Kicks

Just a quick post to show off my new shoes. My old ones were up over 420 miles so it was time to transition to a new pair. I always like to have an overlap before I retire a pair of shoes somewhere around 500 miles. In a sad statement of how few miles I have run this year, my old shoes are the pair that I ran my marathon in last year. In the peak of my training I had a pair that only "lasted" for about 2 months of running. Of course I still wear the retired shoes for non-running activities, but I'm starting to get a collection of those built up.


So here they are. I have upgraded from the Saucony Omni 7's to the Omni 8's. Some changes have been made and the shoe actually received the Runner's World Editor's Choice award. The biggest change in my eyes is the removal of the plastic webbing on the outside edge by the toe that was added to the Omni 7's. It really bugged me when I was running and I debated switching to a new shoe. I guess enough people complained that they dropped it back off. The shoe is also a touch lighter, they have moved the arch support back slightly, and added additional cushioning to the heal. All in all, I think they have taken a step forward (no pun intended). My first run, 6.4 miles of mixed surfaces, on Saturday went well and was the longest run I've done since my Half Marathon in April. No pain, discomfort, or any other issues noticed. I really think I will like this upgrade and I hope it won't take me as long to reach 500 miles this time around.


So for your oooing and ahhhhing pleasure, here are the pics. Now catch me if you can...



The top one shows you the tread, this one gives a clearer image of the profile. The other noticable change is making the webbing grey instead of the previous white. They also use quite a bit more metallic silver. They just look flashier than the previous models.

Roswell Rise 'n Run

Last Saturday I ran my first 5k race this year… kind of. Last May I ran in a 5k that was put on by my church. It was free and was more focused on participation than competition. I came in 4th overall behind two teenage brothers and their mom. I lost to the mom by about 3 feet having started my kick too late. That race I finished in 22:12 about 3 weeks after I ran the Salt Lake City Half Marathon. Because it was so small, not truly "open" to real competition, they started 30 minutes later than the announced time, and because I had to leave literally 2 minutes after I finished to get home, shower, and drive for 45 minutes to make it to my son’s Karate Tournament…. I guess I never felt like it was a real race. But looking back I guess I missed my best opportunity to brag about finishing in the top 3 for the males and 1st in my division! What was I thinking!

Anyway, as to this week’s race. Ever since Peachtree I’ve been taking a break and then after my cruise in early August started to think about running again. I went a couple weeks and realized that August had become my lowest mileage month in a year and a half. To get me off the couch and moving again I went out and signed up for the Thanksgiving Day Half Marathon here in Atlanta. I’ve done that race for the last two years.

Having signed up for that, I realized I needed some near term races to get me started now instead of say, the first week in November. So, after searching the Georgia race database, I found one close to home in September. The 4th Annual Roswell Rise n Run.

I had to show you the logo because it was a bit ironic. Sure, it was dry during morning registration, but for the last week and about 5 minutes after the race started it has been nothing but rain here in Atlanta. Not as bad as it was on Monday – Atlanta’s 100 yr storm event – but it was setting the stage for the flooding, saturating the ground.

The race is a nice 5k/1k fun run combo but as usual, that is always trouble. They lined us up all together and who do you think made up the first 5 rows? You guessed it, about 40 6 year olds with their moms to do the 1k. The director with the bull horn suggested that if you don’t run under 5:40 miles, you may want to move back but that didn’t seem to phase but maybe one or two of those kids. They blissfully got ready to run and the race director blissfully didn’t push the matter any further.

As they sounded the horn a swarm of 6 year olds broke out of the gate like they were running a 100 yd dash. There rabbit start probably saved them from a good trampling as it stretched out the field a little before they began to tire. It was funny to be weaving through kids with the sound of mothers behind me yelling at their kids to slow down. By the 100 yd mark I made it past the last kid just before the course took a 90 degree turn. I didn’t look back but I can only imagine how bunched back up that field got making that turn.

The course started at an Elementary school and ran into a nearby park. One of the first quirks of the race was the speed bumps. The road in the park had speed bumps every hundred feet or so it seemed making for some modified strides to avoid them. I was happy when the course turned off the road and onto a crushed stone path that winds through the park. That was however, about the time the rain started coming down. It never rained hard enough to detract from the running but it was a bit more than an annoyance.

At the 1-mile mark I realized I had gone out a bit too fast for the amount of training I had put in. Mile 1 was in 7:11. I was quite winded and knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold that pace. The course then took a turn through the woods over some marked roots and into a neighborhood behind the park. I’ve never run a race that included so many various types of running surfaces.

Shortly after returning to the park through a wooded trail section back onto the crushed stone I reached the 2 mile mark. Mile 2 was in 7:53. Slower but really more in line with what I was expecting. I came around a corner and saw the race photographer from True Speed Photo. He was sitting under a table to keep his camera out of the rain but it produced an interesting angle on the shots, almost diagonal and obviously from a low angle. I really liked them, except for the obvious pain in my face...


Mile 3 is where I really started to feel my lack of training. There were some more hills here and tight turns. Interestingly the course doubled back on itself several times so you were sharing a 6-foot wide path with runners going in the opposite direction. The organizers did a good job setting up cones to keep traffic flowing correctly though.


Thoroughly soaked at the 3 mile marker I was hurting and had a little discomfort in my right hamstring (so long as it is not my IT Band, I’m okay with it!). Mile 3 was painfully slow by my standards and I was pretty upset with my 8:29. That is training run time, not a race! Mad at that split I took off for the last .1 miles as hard as my winded lungs would let me. The last .1 miles was in 41 seconds (6:50 pace if you were to extrapolate it out…). Of course it helped that the final tenth of a mile was all downhill, but we can leave that part out, right? We’ll also ignore the fact that my PR of 21 minutes flat translates to 6:46 per mile for the entire race, not just the final tenth of a mile…

It all goes to prove that when we aren’t moving forward, we ARE moving backwards. There is no such thing as standing still.

Post race was interesting. It was the first 5k I have ever done that didn’t finish at the start line. We finished in the park and had to walk back to the school to get to the food, free stuff, and the T-shirts. At the finish line we asked which way to go and one of the volunteers pointed a group of us in the wrong direction. We ended up walking the long way around, back on the course with runners still going, probably going a good mile, instead of the ¼ mile short cut most people were pointed too. I guess I looked like I needed to walk a little bit more.

As for results, I can’t find them posted anywhere so I don’t know where I finished in my group or overall. My time as I passed under the clock was 24:15 but that was not "official". At first I got a little excited as I noted that I was the second card dropped in my division’s slot, then I realized he was pulling them out and logging them as he got them. I should have known that that time wouldn’t be anywhere near the podium in the 35-39 yr old male division…

So, there you have it, my first full race report in quite a while. And look Real, a blog post with NO mention of bowel movements, wait a minute, crud! Ignore this paragraph please. Anywho…

Poor Neglected Blog

Other than my wife, I have two dedicated friends who are probably the only people to have noticed the fact that I haven't posted a thing since May. Both of them have reached out to me this month with a gentle reminder that they do in fact care and want to hear from me. One was a college roommate of my wife to which I owe an unplayable debt of gratitude, the other is a cyberfriend that I have known for a couple years through the magic of the Runners World Online discussion Forums. One might think that I they have guilted me into writing this update, and one might not be entirely wrong, but on a bigger scale, there is a reason I haven't written of late.

As we all know, the bulk of my posts are about running. Guess what has been suffering this summer? After my Half in Salt Lake I really stopped running. Not cold turkey, but comparatively so. I think I ran maybe 20 miles a month through the summer, then in August it was maybe 15... Yeah, I "ran" the Peachtree in July, perhaps the first big race that I didn't do a race report for. Maybe I'll go back and do one. But the bigger issue was that even then I didn't feel like much of a runner. I walked for a short portion of that race because I was undertrained for it and got winded up Heartbreak Hill. Other than when I hit the wall in my Marathon, cramping in both legs from the hips down, that is the only race I have ever walked in a race. (Starting line crowd weaving not included) While some would kill for a 52 minute 10k, myself included 3 years ago, I am having a hard time stepping backwards to step forwards.

With September has come new attitude. I have rejoined the Runners World discussion forums, started running 2-3 times a week (for a start), and even signed up for a race or two. I'm running a 5k this weekend, looking at another 5k on October 3rd, there is a trail race in the park I do my daily runs in in early November, all leading up to the Atlanta Thanksgiving Day Half Marathon that I have run the last two years. With that as a goal, I am striking out to get back to where I was a year ago. With determination, a cooperating IT Band, and a little luck, I'll get there.

There, ya happy? More to come.