LONG BEACH HALF

There's no getting around it, I'm out of shape, or at least in no shape to run a full marathon.  Although I had every intention of keeping up the pace after the LA Marathon, you can tell by the gap in time between this post and my last (real) post that I haven't been able to run much;  my last lengthy run was a pathetic, wheezing 10 miler in late July.  I went on a preparatory 5.77 miler trail run through Powder Canyon yesterday and was alarmed at how the entire world would spin every time I climbed a hill and I'd look like this guy:

A classic image of Netter's entitled "Angina Pectoris", frequently seen in med school. Especially if said med school was in Michigan. As in real people walking out of restaurants. Not necessarily in textbooks.

Since I'm not independently wealthy, and that career as an international underwear model hasn't really taken off like I'd hoped (apparently, you need a six pack and fewer spider veins), I didn't have the kind of time this past year to put the miles in that I'd need to run another full marathon.  But if you can't have a whole, how's about a half?

They'd promised that LA was essentially a downhill run, and they lied - that mutha was hilly, only in that slow, painful way that never seemed to stop.  They promised that Long Beach, being at sea level, was essentially flat, and that since the half is almost entirely at the beach, it had even fewer elevation changes - we'd see.  But with the hope that the promise of levelness would outweigh my dietary indiscretions (note photo above), I signed up for the Long Beach Half, bib number 13,991, which, coincidentally, also was my expected finishing rank.

I went with my running buddy, Nicole - well, "running buddy" in the sense that we talked about it a lot and since she's a mother of three and also a full-time nursing student whose husband would like to see her on occasion as well, and I had... a lot of not-running going on, we never actually got to run together.  My saintly wife drove us to downtown Long Beach (I often tell my wife that she's lucky because I don't enjoy watching team sports and therefore don't spend any time doing so, which in any other marriage might win me a gajillion points, only it's offset by the fact that she woke up at 5:30 am to drive me down to a footrace and then not only waited around for two and a half hours but also went to two different locations to cheer me on) (boy, when I put it like that...) where we alighted from the car like junior high schoolers at the mall and followed the crowds to the starting line.

A quick way to understand what a "thronging crowd" looks like is to wait around for the start of one of these big races.  It's different from a mob, I've seen one or two of those and they're scary as hell, and it's not that a thronging crowd is exactly unintimidating, but to hear the buzz and activity, smelling the sweat and random farting, you finally understand how a crowd can throng (perhaps I could write a "throng song" to explain).

Everyone's largely good natured, particularly at the back of the pack.  The runners are supposed to sort themselves into waves according to the time in which they think they're going to finish, and I suppose the positive view of things is that it's encouraging to see so many optimists together in one place.  If the meaning of that sentence was unclear, I mean to say that a lot of slooooow people pack themselves in at the front of the line, slowing down the people who are at times considerably faster.  Which I realized when I kept leaping from side to side and swerving through the crowd in order to pass all of the runners in front of me who were, improbably, even slower than I.

As a matter of fact, I kept passing people the entire way, which was really unusual.  I was happiest about my form, which seems to have lasted through the past 7 months of indolence, and perhaps even improved in efficiency, a quick, easy cadence, bouncing off the midfoot, arms up at my side, little wasted movement, actually, if I were less efficient I might be able to burn off more calories, but whatever.

Thirteen point one is, don't get me wrong, a long distance, but it's a lot less, about half I'd say, of 26.2, and I didn't weigh myself down carrying a bunch of gels and didn't worry about the need to aggressively hydrate, I just kept moving forward, one foot on the ground.  As opposed to one's self on the ground - I saw at least five people take tumbles on the road, young, otherwise healthy looking people, it was really odd, and I'm not sure if the accidents were attributable to klutziness, poor road conditions, just plain bad luck, or perhaps a combination of all of the above, but I've never seen so many people fall.  It was nice seeing so many of their fellow runners spring to the aid of these fallen runners, so quickly that I didn't even have the chance to lope over and begin the entire awkward, "okay, so, well, I guess I'm a doctor and it looks like you just took a spill"-thing, plus the whole I'll-bill-your-insurance thing gets everyone so worked up.

There's always a point in a long run where I'll ask myself, why exactly am I doing this thing?  Sometimes it's when I'm pressing the "send" button when I'm registering for a race online, today it was at about mile 11, and sometimes it's both.  And the reason, of course, and as with most of the things that I do, it's so I can eat another slices of pizzas, or drink another beers or four (I burnt 1,616 calories during the run - yes, I will have another basket of fries, thank you).  And then there's the entire sense of accomplishment, feeling of well-being, euphoric flood of joy around mile 8, etc. etc.  But the pizza, that's what makes it all worth while.

Ill-trained, but I still did okay, at least earlier on when I was dodging and weaving around slower runners (all of that extra lateral motion added 0.2 miles to my run - my GPS recorded a 13.3 miler), but I felt the cumulative inactivity of the past 7 months start to drag on my calves towards the end.  The very last stretch, the last 0.2, was a blessed downhill, a smile breaking on my sweaty face, and then the run was over.  I suppose, over the coming months, that I could put down the cheeseburger and try to find the time to put in some more training, and I do believe I'll try, especially so I can work on keeping my pace even. But like the blog says, I'm Positively Split...

Long Beach Half Marathon
13.3 miles.  1hr:53min:30sec.  8:32 pace.
1,616 calories.

Holy crap, has it really been two and a half months?

Busy.

Working on a book.

Not about running.

Mostly.

Get on the Midfoot!

As a nerdy, uncompetitive child, I didn't understand the allure of sunshine and sweat, but I think I'm getting it now...

Morning Pre-Work Run - Doing the Tighten Up w/VFF Bikilas
3.56 mi.  28 min.:01 sec.  7:52 pace.

Seldom Fidelis

I guess everyone saw this one coming;  that is, everyone except lil' ol' idealistic, romanticizing me.

It'll be different this time, better, and I swear that I won't get hurt this time.  Until I did.  Oh, Saucony Peregrines, I thought you were the answer but you only raised more questions when I began to feel pain in my left iliotibial band, questions like, "I wonder what shoe I'm going to have to try now?"

Here's the answer:

A new pair of Vibram FiveFinger Bikilas.  If they look vaguely familiar, it's because I'd actually had a green-and-white pair last year.  They were my first pair of minimalist running shoes, my inauguration into midfoot striding, and I was delirious about them for the few weeks that I had them, aching soleus muscles and all, until I noticed that the outsole seemed to be peeling away from the upper.  I took them back to the store and asked, "is this normal?"  To which the reply was, "nope," and I received a full refund.  "Okay;  can I get another pair?"  It was then that I learned that Vibram was entirely out of stock and it'd be another eight months before a new shipment came in.  Eight months!?  Glum city!  Shoulders slumped, I left the store, and developed a beautiful long termer with Nike's Free Run+ (more to come on the Nike Free Run line), which are what I wore to run the drizzly 2011 L.A. Marathon.

But as you've noticed over the past few posts, it's been time to find a new pair of shoes, and here're the latest belles of the ball:

All 10 piggies!  The Bikilas are named after Abebe Bikila, an Ethiopian marathoner who ran unshod to gold in the 1960 Rome summer Olympics.  (I'd tried the Vibram TrekSports briefly last fall but discovered that they gave me wicked blisters, which meant they went straight back to REI.)

Frankly, after my dalliance with VFFs last year, I hadn't given serious thought to getting another pair, thinking things like, hey, maybe they were just a gimmick, and besides, my wife is glad that I'm not wearing toe-shoes, but then Vibrams made a cameo in Parks and Recreation as part of Chris Trager's collection, and then after the capture of Osama bin Laden, these pictures came out on the birthdayshoes.com website about Special Forces footwear:

wherein some astute, perhaps footwear-obsessed observer, noted what the SeAL was tiptoeing through the tulips in:

Okay, so maybe you'll be tempted to joke that seeing these toe-shoes made Osama die of laughter, but I somehow think the double-tap bullets to the chest and head were the actual cause of death.

I didn't get the camouflage KSOs shown here, but rather got the Bikilas as Vibram's most running-specific FiveFingers shoes.  The soles on the Bikilas are a whole 2mm thicker, i.e. more padded, than the KSOs, and they have a slightly grippier treading:

I picked them up today at REI (20% anniversary sale!), and even though I should be getting ready to go to Milwaukee tomorrow, couldn't resist taking them for a spin.

I've written before about running in zero-drop shoes, and the Bikilas were familiar territory.  You get the same tap-tap-tap sound from the foot pods, although now that I've had a chance to sample several different kinds of minimalist shoes I have a better sense of what people mean when they say that one style has more cushioning versus another pair, etc.  It's nice to run in zero-drop shoes again, although I can tell where my knees have been weakened a little by running in more padded, built-up trainers, but at least there's no IT band pain.  Unlike the first pair of Bikilas I had last year, which had a totally hot-spot free liner, I noticed a little burning on the lateral midsole of my left foot.  But running down the street in these foot-gloves felt good, my running form tightened up naturally, and even though they may look a little ridiculous, perhaps in the right setting they could look intimidating to, say, a terrorist.

Probably not if I'm wearing them;  they'd probably just laugh at my farmer's tan.

First Run in New Vibram FiveFingers Bikilas

3.55 mi.  28 min.:31 sec.  8:01 pace.

Here We Go Again

My wife asks me to take a marriage compatibility inventory/test that’s in the book she’s reading – why do women find these things so interesting?

We get to the question, “can you name three things that are causes of stress for your spouse?” The first words out of her mouth are, “finding a new running shoe.” Oh – so that’s why women find these things so interesting.

I really wanted to like the New Balance MT101s, I really did. I’d read such glowing reviews about them in all of the trail/ultra/running blogs I frequent, as well as for another, more hidden reason: when I was in high school I had not-so-secret dreams of becoming a rock and roll god, a guitar hero, tight leather pants and big hair optional, but wailing feedback and distorted hammer-taps on the fretboard, multiple issues of “Guitar World” bought with my allowance when other, cooler kids were spending that cash on beer and drugs. A big part of this aspirational streak was the impulse to buy the same gear that my six-string saints slung – limited, of course, by budget – but the same brand, at any rate. I remember browsing the racks of one Guitar Center, dwelling on the Ibanez guitars, the brand that my then-current hero, Joe Satriani, played, when my mentor, who was helping me shop for a new guitar, pulled me aside, out of earshot of the salesman, whispering with no little frustration at my fixation, “hey, dude, why the hard-on for the Ibanez’s?”

Okay. So I wouldn’t call my desire to like the MT101s exactly a hard-on, and I wouldn’t call Tony Krupicka and the Skaggs my pantheon of running idols, but still, I really wanted to like the running shoe they’d had so much input into designing. And as you can guess, I didn’t.

So much seemed to make sense, the shoe’s light weight, lugged outsole, minimalist upper, but these attributes added up, at least for me, a shoe that was good from far, far from good. Perhaps it’s my own weird foot anatomy or something, but this shoe not only gave me some Achilles pain, also made the head of my fifth metatarsal ache, and after the second brief run with these problems I decided enough was enough and returned them to the store from which I’d adopted them.

I then did what a lot of people do when they’re looking for love: I turned to the internet. No, there is no eHarmony for shoes, no match.com for sneakers, but rather, I turned to Skynet with the hope that the wisdom of the running masses could crowdsource me some ideas for a trail-running shoe.

Which brought me to the Saucony Peregrine:

The Runner’s World Editor’s Choice award recipient for trail shoes, it’s a trail-running version of their wildly popular Kinvara, which is even more minimalizzle (meaning less actual minimalist) than the NB MT101, but has sold extremely well as a transition-to-minimalism shoe.

I’d shied away from the Kinvaras, because they just seemed like a lot more shoe than I had wanted as an aspiring minimalist, which you can see on this profile of the Peregrines:

Although they’re still light, particularly compared to most trail shoes, they feel oddly substantial, particularly if your benchmark is a minimalist shoe (not to mention your bare feet).

These things are definitely “Shoes”, capital S, and the Satriani-worshipping part of me that wanted to run like a Tarahumaru revolted against these things.

The toe box is, relative to many minimal shoes, fairly constrictive and more like a standard running shoe.  The outsole lugs are pretty impressive:

On the one hand, wearing these (relative for minimalist) burly shoes, as compared to a minimalist zero-drop model, makes you feel like you’re walking on pillows six inches off the ground, which runs contrary to the minimalist/Satriani ideal.  On the other hand, the heel-to-toe drop of the Peregrines is a much-more-minimalist-felicitous 4mm, compared to the near centimeter drop of the MT101s.

They ain’t pretty but they look like they’d git ‘er done.  For some reason, perhaps the lower heel-toe drop, they make me fast;  I can keep up with a mid-8 pace with surprising ease and lack of effort.  Maybe it’s the placebo effect of those chunky lugs, but I could run in them with a surprising speed.   One observation that’s been shared around on the interwebs is that the outsoles are surprisingly grippy, and I’d have to agree.  Perhaps it’s little more than the placebo effect, but even doing nothing as exciting as walking across the parking lot to the gym, I noticed a surprising degree of traction with these shoes, even just on the concrete walking from the car to the gym.

“What do you think of these?” I ask my wife.  “Oh, they look nice – they look like normal shoes.”  I know what stresses my wife out right now:  the thought that I might buy another pair of toe-shoes.

An Update, Plus, The Continued Search For the One(s)

If you were raised as an evangelical Christian in the U.S. during the latter part of the last century, you were probably subjected to what became the near veneration of sex and marriage (stay with me on this one, it'll get to running eventually) (although some of you may be wishing that I'd stay on the subject of sex) that led kids of my age to absurdities like the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye and the constant, embarrassed, giggly, socially-ritarded practice of "courtship" over dating and looking for "the one".

Bullshit.

Okay - before you get me wrong, it's not that I don't totally believe in and practice monogamy (if you're reading this, love you, honey!), but rather that attitude of looking for a "the one" blinded a lot of us to the fact that there are a lot of cool people in the world who don't have to be a "the one" to get to know and still be friends with, without all of that fussy pressure of asking every new person you meet if you're going to have to spend the rest of your life with them.

Which is (finally) the roundabout way of me getting to say that today, I returned the Merrell Trail Gloves to REI (quick plug for REI - the outstanding return policy is reason enough to buy from them).  Over the past couple of weeks I'd put about 42 miles on them, and during the course of these runs I'd discovered that at least for my feet, these shoes were totally wrong.  I've had a number of really lovely runs in these shoes, including several around the south end of Manhattan with a nice view of Lady Liberty, but:  there's the pain over the head of my fifth metatarsal that I'd mentioned a post ago, which improved with loosening the shoes, but persisted.  The final straw was a run I took today:  the pain I'd been having over my Achilles tendon worsened to the point that I kept stopping every half mile to adjust the shoes, and then considered taking them off entirely, but deciding for certain that they were going back to the store.

Which is a shame, because in many other ways they're terrific;  the upper is rugged but breathable, the outsole is grippy Vibram, and I can't say enough about how much I enjoy, and how much faster I am, running in true zero-drop shoes.  But over the past week or so I found myself guiltily reaching for other shoes before today's decision to drop the Merrell's for good.  I thug them, love them, leave them because I don't really need them - I have become the Jay-Z of running shoes.

And like any philanderer I found that I couldn't be without a sole-mate for long and spent part of the day glumly and somewhat frantically looking for alternates.  I thought about another pair of FiveFingers, which had the advantage of being zero-drop, but worried that they'd be too delicate for trail running.  I went to the local running shop in search of the New Balance Minimus Trail, which I'd eschewed as not minimal enough but found myself minimizing the flaws I'd thought of instead, like the ex-lover you pine for and try to explain away all of the negative traits that'd bugged you into leaving, only to discover that like said ex-lover these shoes had all found other homes (the store was sold out).  I thought about other popular trail shoes, but found them too expensive, too bulky, maximalist rather than minimalist.

When I found these:

The New Balance MT101.  No cute name like "Minimi" or "Trail Kitten", just the manufacturer and a model number.  Not bad looking, not weird looking, but not anything special either.  But before the current explosion of minimalist/barefoot shoes had set the shoe-world a-twitterpated, these were the go-tos.

 They have the distinction of having an association with this guy:

Nice kid, looks like Jesus, American ultra-running super-duper guy.  Runs 100 milers.  (Although he and a number of others are giving mad e-props to some Spanish kid named Kilian Jornet, who probably also has running shoes to sell, but which aren't of the minimal/barefoot variety and therefore of less interest to your humble correspondent.)  But the MT101s were allegedly made with input from him and the brothers Skaggs, which works great as a marketing tool.  As you can see.  From my purchase.

This model is a couple of years old, though, and is being outshone by all of the new trail-running gear out there.  And the thing is, it's not minimalist, really, but more minimalizzle.  It has a whopping (at least it's whopping for me, although most non-min running shoes apparently have 18mm of drop) 10mm heel-toe drop, so it's not-flat, and more of a transition to zero-drop from a standard running shoe.  But there's a nice, roomy toe-box:

And the aggressive, lugged outsole that I wanted to run trails, but wouldn't trap pebbles in the sipes:

There've been a number of very positive reviews of the shoe, but then again, there were a number of positive reviews of the Trail Glove;  the reason I settled on the MT101s was because as an older shoe they had an established track record (no pun intended - that woulda been an established trail record), and as an older shoe, the price:  $60!  Awesome!

Final point of clarification:  I by no means settled for my wife like I settled for my MT101s - she's my zero-drop rugged upper Vibram soled perfection!

What, you don't find running-shoe metaphors romantic?

Merrells Versus Achilles - Achilles Wins (because the Merrells went back to the store)

4.69 mi.  39 min:04 sec.  8:20 pace.

Across Country Running

I woke up in a strange city today (not cuz of drugs - I'm in town for the annual meeting of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine. Which, I suppose, is more like an equipment rather than a drug manufacturer). It used to be that I'd ask about the good places to eat or drink in town, but lately it's become a question of where I should go for a run.

Easily answered! Rather than looking at Yelp or Citysearch, I just fired up the computer and looked up the mapmyrun website. Quick address entry and a bunch of local routes showed up, sorted by mileage. Here's the curious low-tech/high-tech part: I wrote turn-by-turn directions on an index card, fired up the GPS watch (you can download routes onto the watch but the process is more cumbersome than it's worth), and went for a quick five-miler in an unfamiliar neighborhood - magic!

What we need now is a Yelp that reviews run routes... million dollar idea!

Merrell Trail Glove Update
I wrote that review after one six mile run; now, having logged a couple of more miles on them, a few more observations:
•It's possible to cinch the shoes on too tight in the midfoot, causing some pain on the toe extensors.
•My right foot is almost half a size smaller than my left foot, which usually results in a loose fit and blistering, particularly on my midsole where I've had successive generations of blisters and skin-sloughing. Out of this fear, I've been really cranking down on the laces, but I've discovered that tying the shies too tightly means the shoe's collar digs into the Achilles tendon, with the resultant pain, inflammation, and yes, blistering. What works, however, is to trust the shoes' fit and tying them with some moderation, rather than performing the equivalent of garroting your ankles.

Perfect Running Weather Through the Jersey 'Burbs (44F and Drizzly)
5.08 mi. 45 min.: 22.59 sec. 8:55 pace.