The Importance of Slowing Down

I like going fast.

I'm a runner: it goes with the territory.

But this past week, I was forced to slow down for two reasons. The first is that I was increasing my mileage rather drastically over my average for the past few weeks (about 25% or so). That necessitated me slowing down, particularly on my long run Saturday. The second happened today. I took my car in for service. When I do that, I walk back and forth (forth and back?) to the service station, about a mile and a half total, over streets I run on a daily basis.

There are a number of indications that slowing down has beneficial effects for runners. Running about 80% easy and 20% fast seems to be a solid ratio. Matt Fitzgerald has a book on the subject: 80/20 Running. I don't feel any need to go into that here.

For me, slowing down on Saturday meant I felt more open to slowing my pace, and even stopping, so that I could take pictures. The slower pace also meant that I noticed more minute details to take pictures of. All of a sudden, I noticed deer prints all over the forest floor.

I paused to take a picture of the trail's end.

I spotted growths of some sort of mushroom, I think they may be oyster mushrooms or a similar variety. 

There had been a number of controlled burns in the area of Battle Creek Park, mostly burning downed trees. They were clearly recent, and had not been there the last time I ran in the area, but small flowers were already blooming in the burn scars. 

Later on, in Battle Creek Park proper, I saw a large number of columbines leaning over the path. 

As the run went on, my legs actually felt better. I ran more, and took fewer pictures. But I am glad I started off slowly. 

Today, walking along sidewalks I normally run. This was somewhat of a re-revelation to me. I realized again what a beautiful neighborhood I live in. I stopped and listened to the birds. I stopped and looked at the churches. I gloried in the bluebird skies and cool morning temperatures. 

I and I moved slowly home. 

GoSpring Trail 10k

Looks like I'm excited. I'm really more apprehensive. Photo credit Jamison Swift. 

Once again, I was standing at the start line of a race, with my legs still somewhat shot from the week before. Once again, this was the idea.

This time, though, I was on familiar ground. While I wouldn't say I know the Battle Creek trails like the back of my hand yet, I run them fairly often, and know their character if nothing else. The primary aspects of that character are 1) double track XC ski trails and 2) lots of short, steep uphills and downhills.

As always, I had a few goals for this race. I always want to negative split, and it rarely happens, particularly in trail races. This time,  I had an A goal of running splits of around 7 minutes or a bit under. My B goal was to finish in under 45 minutes (not generally a tall order for 10k for me, but this course creeps up on you). And, as always, my C goal was to finish.  As it turns out, I did all three, finishing in just under 43 minutes, at 6:54 pace.

My warmup jogs let me know that my legs were not exactly fresh. I'd done a typical amount of running the week leading up to this one, including hills and surges with a fair number of miles thrown in. I had also done a strength workout on Thursday. Not the best way to prep for a race, but I was hoping it was a good way to get the most training benefit out of it.

As is typical in Minnesota races (or so I've noticed) nobody wanted to start out at the front, but as the countdown started, a pack moved up and I got swept up in the lead group. I stuck with them for, oh, 400 meters before realizing that probably wasn't a good idea and I let them go. I let the chase pack catch me up, and proceeded to chat my way up the first (and as it turns out biggest) hill of the 5k loop.

On the second mile, I swapped the lead in the chase group with a couple other runners, usually losing ground on the uphill and gaining it back as I recklessly through myself into the downhills and coasted the flats (I've gotten to the point where I can call 6:30s "coasting!"). But as we entered the third mile and the biggest downhill of the course, I left them behind for the last time.

I made a mistake here: I had anticipated that the course would be the same as the course for the 5 and 10k races that take place in October. In those, there had been a huge, steep hill around mile 3. They changed the course this time, leaving that hill out. Had I known, I might have gone harder on the uphills. But given the later stages of this race, I think it's a good thing I assumed the hill was still coming.

Cruising down a nicely woodchipped hill. Photo credit Jamison Swift

I rolled through the lap at a tiny bit over 21 minutes, right where I was ideally hoping to be. The 5k runners gave a solid cheer as I passed by the start line (thanks!), and even better, I could see the runner in front of me.  He must have dropped the pace a lot to come back to me, so I thought I could focus on reeling him in for the remainder of the race.

My pace lagged a bit in the second mile of the second lap, but the guy in front of me was still visible for the most part. I was, however, beginning to feel the race in my legs. Keeping the tempo up started to be a struggle, and I occasionally glanced over my shoulder to see if anybody was catching up.

Nobody was.

Entering the final mile, I was hurting, breathing hard. But I still thought I could catch the runner in front of me. I focused again on reeling him in, letting that pull me through the last section.

I think, though, that I must have been breathing loudly by this point, because he resisted all my efforts to close the remaining 8 second difference. I came in at 42:50 for 7th place over all, and 3rd in my age group.

All in all, another solid, early season race for me. I think these short (ish) races are helping my mental toughness. In my opinion, the 10k is one of the most difficult race distances from a mental standpoint.  It's got nearly the speed of a 5k, but double the distance. All in all, a great test.

Embracing the Urban

After two full years, and a little more, trying to avoid the fact, I have this week decided to embrace that I am now an urban trail runner.

I cut my teeth running on trails in Duluth, Minnesota; Waterville, Maine: and Boulder, Colorado. Running trails in those smaller towns is easy. Duluth has literally hundreds of miles of trails in the city limits. Waterville is a town of 16,000 people, full of wilderness and trails to explore, and not too far from some of the best trails in New England. And Boulder is, well, Boulder. The trails their just begged you to run on them. They were steep, challenging, rocky, and majestic.

The trails around the Twin Cities, while respectable, tend to be a little more quirky and a little less continuous. Most days, the "trail" I run on is a path down the middle of Summit Avenue. It's only a trail in the sense that it is not paved.

My go-to weekend trails are the Mississippi River Gorge and Battle Creek Park.

The trails on the gorge are single track, very often technical, and periodically terrifying. They also tend to end with little or no warning. If you're lucky, they don't dead-end, and you can get back up to the bike path to continue on your run. The first time I ran these was in the dead of the coldest winter in recent memory, which made it easier and harder at the same time (easier because I could just run on the river if necessary, harder because, well, snow).

Battle Creek Park has a lot of double track, which is groomed for cross country skiing in the winter, and single track, which is maintained for mountain bikes. You can get more elevation gain there than you can just about anywhere else in the Cities, but the trails loop in small circles and it is easy to get disoriented. There are great views of the river and the St Paul skyline (such as it is) to be had from certain points in the run, but as anywhere in the Cities, it's hard to gain more than 125 feet at any one time.

Trails in the city: usually compact, often fairly arbitrary, generally quirky.

But they're fun. And you never know what you might see on them. So I'm going to start featuring some of the more interesting sights I see on my daily urban trails. Hopefully they will at least interest, and possibly even amuse.

My first selections come from this past Saturday:

Sometimes (yearly in this case) you run into a race. The guy in first seemed to be wondering if anybody was going to go with him. 

Luckily found a heron. It didn't catch anything while I was watching.

And geese.

A Reaction to Prince from a Minnesotan

I went for a run Friday.

This, by itself, is nothing unusual. In fact it would be far more unusual were I to not go for a run on a Friday. But of course it was an unusual Friday.

I had "Purple Rain" stuck in my head.

This is no surprise either: Prince had died the day before. Along with several thousand others, my fiancee and I had gone down to First Ave for The Current's impromptu tribute concert featuring local artists performing covers of their favorite Prince songs. Basically, it was the "Purple Rain" album plus a couple other tracks.

I noticed a lot of purple flowers. In fact, I was literally running through fields of purple flowers.

This is not unusual either. It's spring in the Twin Cities, and many, many spring flowers just so happen to be purple. This is true from the flowers planted in gardens to the ones that spring up of their own accord in lawns and parkland.

I will admit to being surprised, in fact stunned, by how much Prince's unexpected death affected me. Neither my parents nor my siblings were Prince fans. Sometimes we thought of him as a bit of a joke (particularly during his Symbol phase, though we did not know the why of it at the time).

But I do remember the first time I really, truly, heard Prince. My friend's sister, truthfully my friend herself, as she was only a year older, put on "Seven" and walked into the room singing it along with the CD. I was floored. I'd never heard anything quite like it.

It wasn't until I had left Minnesota for a decade or so and subsequently moved back that I really appreciated Prince. Living in the Cities, you always had this sense that Prince might just magically appear wherever you happened to be. You had this sense because it happened. He'd show up at Record Store Day, or at a club, or a show. He threw regular concerts at Paisley Park.

We always had plans to go to one of those, but it had not worked out so far.

When it comes down to it, that's the essence of why Prince's death had such an effect on us: Prince was unabashedly, proudly Minnesotan. In a state that is so often considered "flyover country," where the celebrities we produce so often flee, Prince came back and lived here. He supported the community in more ways than I probably know. He made donations, anonymously or semi-anonymously, to local organizations. He debuted his music on The Current, and was a member of the station himself.

He was present.

And in Minnesota, that means something.

So as I ran through the purple flowers, I thought "thank you, Prince. Thank you for the music. Thank you for the community. But most of all, thank you for being a Minnesotan."

We will miss you.

Trail Mix 25k

I signed up for this race when I realized that, unfortunately, I had missed the window to sign up for the Zumbro 17 and it had filled up.  I had heard the Trail Mix was a good, fast race. With the strength work I've been doing due to "Training for the New Alpinism" and our Parkour process, I found my pace increasing in my workouts and was curious what I could do for a 25k.

This was not any sort of goal race for me, so I trained straight through it. Tuesday, I ran a hill workout and did Parkour. Wednesday, I ran 7 miles, did a strength workout, and went to Parkour. I ran shorter the next couple days in the lead up to the race, but still wasn't exactly rested by the time race day arrived. A 50 hour workweek and a difficult week in other ways didn't help anything.

I did, though, have a plan for the race itself. I figured I could run around 7:40 pace for the first 12.5k lap, then speed up gradually through the second lap and see if I couldn't finish in under two hours. I chose 7:40 because that's about what I've been running on my easy runs down Summit lately. I knew this was going to be a difficult run for me, because I hadn't done many long runs to this point, and I hadn't even run the full distance yet (something I like to do before a run this short).

The race itself went pretty well.

After the initial blast off the start line, I quickly settled in to a slightly faster pace than I had anticipated. I fell in with a couple high-schoolers out for a long run, and talked for a few miles until they fell off the pace. 3.5 miles in, I hit the second aid station, having run 7:33 pace for the first section.

The second aid station was also the high point of the lap, and I took up with a group of runners at a slightly faster pace (7:20 or so) for this section. I still felt really strong and smooth, so I decided to go with it. It started to get hot by this point (I'd already taken my shirt off in the first 3 miles), and I was dousing myself in water at each aid station once I'd had a little (flat) coke and water.

I ran by the half-way aid station at a little over 58 minutes.

As you recall, my plan was to up the pace a little bit the second half of the race, but I started faster than I planned. I opted to try and push the pace just a bit, but not as much as I had originally planned, then hit it hard from the second aid station. For the first 3.5 miles of the second lap, I managed exactly 1 second per mile faster than the first time through this section.

I attempted to go hard from the second aid station again, managing the low-7s and high-6s for a short while. But once I got to about 12 miles, I started to really feel the training earlier in the week and the fact that I'd been running pretty hard for an hour and a half. At that point, it became a matter of just maintaining speed and trying not to fall off too much.

I pulled in to the finish in 1:56:23, for a significant PR and a slight negative split (or so the pace on my watch said).

All told, I'm pretty happy with it. For a start of the season test, off a relatively hard week of training, it went remarkably well. I made my goal of negative splits for each lap (again, barely), and I PRed in the 25k by something like 20 minutes.

I wish I'd had a little more time to hang out after the race, as I met some interesting other runners there that I would have liked to chat with more. But the day was just beginning, so I was off and on my way within 10 minutes of finishing.

Between that, and testing for Parkour the next day (yesterday as I write this), I'm beat.

Epic Phone Fail

Last week, G and I decided to take a last-minute trip up the Shore to get a relaxing weekend in.  The family was busy, so we opted to stay in a lodge/resort a little north of Two Harbors and really treat ourselves for once. With the forecast calling for highs in the 50s-60s, I figured it would be a good weekend to get a few miles in on the Superior Hiking Trail.

Despite warnings of ice and deep snow over the ridge, I figured I'd be all right with some screws in my shoes. I always had been before. So Saturday morning, I packed up my water, phone, and a couple snacks in my UD AK Race Vest, drove the mile or so up the road to Gooseberry (start of the Superior 100), and took off up the trail.

I realized early on that this was not going to be a fast run, and that there was no avoiding picking my way around the ice patches that covered the trail. But it was a gorgeous blue-bird day in March in Minnesota, I was getting warm in my long sleeves and capris, and there was no way I was going to turn around even if my pace was hovering around the 12 minute mile area.

A mile or so in, I reached an area where the meltwater had completely covered the trail, which was cambered sideways towards the river, and had frozen the night before.

I grabbed on to a small tree on the uphill side of the trail, planning to pick my way from tree to tree across the short stretch of ice. But the second tree was just inches out of my reach. I decided to go for it, only to have the second tree move, landing my flat on my back.

That second "tree" was actually a tree branch that had improbably fallen at a straight vertical angle, flush to the ice. When I grabbed for it, it swung out of the way, leaving me sliding down the ice on my back before I knew what was happening. It was one of those "wait, the sky's not supposed to be there" moments of utter confusion.

Picking myself up, and checking my elbow to be sure there wasn't any significant injury, I continued up the trail to the Upper Falls.

The Falls were beautiful, but the light wasn't right for a picture.

Which, as it turns out, I would not have been able to take any way. Another mile up the road, I opened my pack to take out my phone, planning to take a picture of the Lake, and it crunched, audibly.

The screen on my 3-week-old phone was, in a word, powdered.

That sucked the joy and the wind out of my run. I opted to head back down to the main falls area and finish the run, which ended up being about 3 miles.

The rest of the day was fantastic: we walked the breakwater in Two Harbors, got a massage, toured Castle Danger Brewery, and ended out with a fire, which we somehow managed to light in the middle of a two-inch deep puddle.

The phone itself was a complete loss, but Apple replaced it for 40% of the cost of a new phone, which is better than it could be.

Still, it set the record for my most expensive run ever.

An Average, Everyday Run

This morning, while getting ready to go out for yet another base mileage run, I realized something: while I often write about my big runs, the long runs and the races, I have never written about an average, everyday base run unless something extraordinary happens. These runs make up probably three-quarters of my daily runs, but I have never written about one from start to finish, with all the little quirks and nuances that go with them. On thinking of this, I realized that this would fit my general goal for the year of practicing mindfulness, being present and aware in the moment. So I set out this morning with the goal of doing just that.

The irony, of course, is that by focusing so much on what I might write in this post I was probably more distracted and less mindful on this run that usual. I hope it was worth it.



Today was like many days, running-wise. I had a little more trouble waking up than usual. My training has again kicked up (it seems like that's always the case), and I have stayed up later than usual several times in the last week. After my normal morning rituals of meditation, writing, and catching up on the morning work details, my thoughts turn to my run.

With the additional mileage, the strength workouts, and the addition of Parkour to my workout routine, I am carrying some residual fatigue this morning. I've already run a hill workout and a longer base miles run this week, and my legs can feel it, so I leave the length of this run open-ended. It's about 30 degrees out and gloomy, chilly but not too cold, and typical for March in Minnesota. Almost two decades of running has my clothing dialed in. Tights, wool socks, a single, light layer on top, gloves, a thin hat, and the most recent addition: arm warmers. I have had one too many runs where my arms end up numb to leave these behind any more.

The ritual begins: start the GPS on my watch, grab the key, tie the shoes. Head out the back door and out the gate onto the streets.

From my house, the first mile or so of my run is always on sidewalks. Wherever I live, this is always the case. I use these minutes as a warm up, though they are actually one of the fastest-paced portions of my run. However tired my legs may be, within 5 minutes or so they start to loosen up as I take a route I've run half a thousand times before. Turn on to Summit, where the houses are massive. Past the Governor's mansion ("Does he actually live there?" I wonder for the hundredth time), and, finally, on to the path.

The ice patch in the lilacs. 

The "path" is in reality the strip of grass and trees that runs down the center of Summit. It's my bread-and-butter route, and the first section is my favorite: dual rows of lilac trees, a bane of mine when they bloom, but now bare, line the way, occasionally forcing me to duck a branch as I run between them. In the winter, cardinals use this as a roosting spot, and the flash of their red feathers lends a spark of color in an otherwise drab winter world.

Today, the path between the trees is icy, and I have to pick my way down the trail. I could wear my winter shoes, which have sheet metal screws in their soles for traction, but I know from yesterday that this is the only section of ice on the run. That, and a winter's worth of running has worn the screws to the point of irrelevance.

Only one cardinal today.

On down the center of Summit, and up a shallow hill beneath some evergreen trees. The stoplights on this road come exactly every half mile, a fact I use to my advantage when I am doing interval workouts, but today is an irritant. My pace, which sits between 7:20 and 7:40 on the pavement, has dropped to around 8 minutes per mile, a comfortable, natural pace that I can sustain for hours.

I check worriedly for my house key.  It feel out of my pocket a few months ago, on a cold, rainy run on this same route. Ever since then, I have been somewhat paranoid. Whew, it's there. But my drawstring has come untied. Fix that, without breaking stride. Continue running.

Summit is one of the most popular running routes in the Cities, and I can count on one hand the runs that I have not seen another runner. I wonder, though, why so many run on the sidewalks when this strip in the center is so much more pleasant. This is especially pronounced in the winter, where I will often find my footprints from the day before undisturbed in the snow. Today, though, the first runner I see (older, wearing a yellow windbreaker and flannel pajama pants) comes towards me on the same center path.

"Morning."

And on we go.

I have had people ask me, more than a few times, "do you run with music?"

It seems a silly question to me. I presume they are asking "do you run while listening to music, on headphones?" The answer to that is unequivocally "No." But why should that mean I don't run with music. I always have a song going through my head when I run. Today, it's "Bouncin Round the Room," by Phish. It's a song I haven't listened to since college, and I have no clue where it came from today. But there it is: the never-ending round running through my head.

Another stoplight, and then it's on with my run. The path takes a downhill slant, past the college where my parents and my brother went to school. Where my parents got married. Where I almost went. Not for the first time, I wonder if I made the right decision.

I decide to turn around at the next stoplight. No matter if my run is an out-and-back, I always make a tiny loop when I turn around. Sometimes it's around a tree, others a post. Even a man-hole cover will suffice if there's no other landmark. Here, there's a young evergreen that provides a nice looping point to head back up the hill.

Going back the other way, I see differently than I do on the way out. I notice different things. The hill seems a lot steeper on the way back up, though it would not even qualify as a hill in Colorado. I run in a slightly different track, just to mix things up.

I pass my favorite tree. I only really notice it on the way back. It's a big evergreen, with conveniently-large, and sparse, branches poking out at all angles. Some days, I'll stop and do a mini strength workout. I'll do pull-ups on one branch, rows on another, or if I'm ambitious, I'll scramble up as high as I can go. In this tree, I can make it 25 feet or so before the branches start to taper to questionable thickness. Today, though, I already have a strength workout planned for later, so I keep running.

Back towards the lilacs, I decide to skip the ice, and run between the trees and the street.  It's off-camber, but preferable to slipping and possible injury. At yet another stoplight, I jump, grab a crossbar, and do pull-ups until the light turns green. I never used to do this, but it has recently become a ritual for me. It gets some odd looks, but I get a lot of those.

On the sidewalks again, I turn off Summit sooner than I need to. I don't know why I started doing this. I probably just did so one day, to avoid an obstruction on the sidewalk, and I got stuck. I simply jog over one block and back onto the same heading.

In the last mile, I decide to throw in some surges. Form intervals. For 15-30 seconds, I drop the pace to a near-sprint, stretching out my legs and covering ground. These are not to get a workout, just to work on my running efficiency and keep the spring in my legs. Three to four of those, and I'm almost home.

I have a rock stuck in the treads of my shoe. Every other step is accompanied by a small, sharp grating sound. I last a half-block before I have to stop and dig it out. Stubborn little thing requires a stick to pry it out of there. But I am back.

Stop the GPS, walk through the gate, and move on with the day.





And, that's an average, every day run. Stylistically, that's a lot like how my mind works during a run. Sometimes, it goes on long, abstract ramblings. Other times, it's short at to the point.

I hope you enjoyed it, or at least found it interesting.