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.