Dr. Update

I decided to go and to see a Dr. for my lower back pain. I thought to myself do I go to the guy who might check out the heart, cholesterol, prostate and all of the other things you get checked when you are a 50+ year old male. Nope I went to the guy who does training and chiropractic and I think I made the right choice.

He asked me what I thought was going on, I told him I had lower back pain and that I thought it was probably muscular more than anything else. He then put me through his process of evaluation and after doing so, he said my diagnosis was on track, matter of fact he paid me a huge complement. He said I win his prize for having the tightest hips he has seen in 2010. He also complemented my ankles for being tight as well as my hamstrings. I said to myself, sweet, I am finally first at something. My wife later said something like, you know that isn't a good thing. Based on the bending and stretching he put me through, I think he would agree.

So the plan will be to work on some stretching for the next week and hopefully I get a bit looser before Afton. If I don't well, it ain't going to be pretty. I ran today with Wayne in Hyland and the back was sore and I had to do more walking than I hope to do all of next weekend. The only thing that complicates it is that I get to sit in an airplane next week for a trip to San Jose. Not a good way to keep the back loose.

Oh a few other medical stats: Blood Pressure was 108/70, Pulse was 52 so no ill effects to worry about from FANS. As to that other Dr, I will go and see him but not until after Afton.

Time to do some stretching..........

Barefoot?

Based on the title you might think I was going to post about barefoot running, well you would be wrong. This is about barefoot driving.

I grew up driving barefoot, ok, I can almost hear some of the thoughts from those that know I am from southern Indiana (once a hillbilly, always a hillbilly). That doesn't have anything to do with it, I grew up in a small city, ok at least not much. Anyway, I started driving barefoot right after I got my license. I used to go water skiing and if you ever have wet and sandy feet, well shoes aren't really appropriate so I used to just drive without any shoes. The other problem I had was the clutch and break pedals on my old Datsun 510 were a bit smooth and if you had any moisture on your shoes, you foot would just slip off the pedal which would usually lead to a few other issues.

So, one of my favorite days in Minnesota is the first day I drive barefoot after a long cold dark snowy ugly winter, it is usually in late February or March (ok I have been known to rush it) and after that first time I tend to do it all spring/summer/fall long up until the first or second snow of the next winter. If I was tough enough I might do it all winter long but alas I am not. The way I do it is to wear my soccer slides to the car and I slip them off to drive. It does mean that I have to put shoes on in my car when I get to work as soccer slides and dress pants probably wouldn't meet our dress code. It does work ok for Kwik Trip though. It also might mean I occasionally wear strange shoes or socks at work as I have forgotten my work shoes once or twice (I always have my running stuff) but for the most part no one noticed or at least made any comments to me.

Now I used to think that it was illegal to drive barefoot but since I wasn't sure, I googled it and here is what I found on wikipedia:

Another common myth is that it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle while barefoot. Some people speculate that, because you use your feet while driving, there's more room for error and your feet could slip off of the pedals, resulting in an accident.^[7] In fact, in all 50 states and territories in the United States, as well as in Canada, and in the United Kingdom, it is perfectly legal to drive barefoot.^[7][8][9] However, in some jurisdictions, police officers may ticket you for other things if the fact that you were driving barefoot or in flip flops/high heeled shoes hindered your driving and/or resulted in an accident.^[10]

You can check out the references on wikipedia under barefoot

So if you get bored wearing shoes and aren't yet into barefoot running give barefoot driving a try, it may not be the smartest thing I do but I do know it makes driving more fun at least for me.

S Caps revisited

Karyn and I went for a run yesterday on the Lake Minnetonka Trail, a converted rails to trails with a crushed limestone surface that goes from Hopkins to Victoria. We picked it up in Excelsior with the thought of going to Victoria, returning to Excelsior, grabbing more fluids and then running a few miles towards Hopkins and then back to Excelsior.

The plan was to go for 19 as Karyn is back in marathon training mode. Turns out, she is a marathon away from qualifying to join Marathon Maniacs (Bronze Level - 3 Marathons within a 90 day time frame) . She did two in May, so she needs to get one more by the end of July. We are thinking of doing Okoboji in Iowa on July 17th, I tried to convince her to do the Afton 50k or 1/2 Voyageur but she is not sure that a conversion to trails is where she wants to go.

Back to the run and my hydration, at FANS, the good Doctor thought I took in too many S Caps (and I am sure he was right) so I didn't want to take in too many on this run. We had gotten a late start not getting there until around 4 PM. When we got there I was feeling a bit sloshy from drinking water on the way up so I took an S Cap. Hoping that it would help. Not wanting to overdo them again, I held off to take another one until after an hour even though it was a bit warm with temps near 80.

About 20 minutes into the run, I knew I was having a bit of low blood sugar. I have had this happen on a couple of runs and thankfully have learned that taking a Chocolate #9 or Clif Shot Bloks usually get me back in equilibrium fairly quickly. I took in a #9 and sure enough all was well within 10 to 15 minutes.

We ran the 7 miles into Victoria to where the trail ends. At times it seemed uphill but I don't think it had that much grade. We started back and I suggested we go into Carver Regional Park. Karyn wasn't too sure but agreed, our first venture into the park was at the Lake Steiger entrance, turned out to just be a boat launch. Shortly after that wrong turn we turned onto a paved bikepath that led it's way into the park. For this section we were pretty well exposed and the sun was hot. We looped a bit around in the park adding in 2 or 3 extra miles. During this section my back and shoulder blade started hurting again. I tried to stretch out but didn't seem to have too much success. We ended up stopping when we got back to Excelsior with 17 miles complete and both of us thinking stopping would be a good idea.

On the S Cap front, I ended up taking my second S cap at one hour and since I was still queasy I took another one 40 minutes later. Since I still didn't feel great, I thought that maybe I was taking in too many again and I wondered how much salt does HEED have and what about Perpetuem? It occurred to me that these are things I should know before I start a run. I held off taking any more S caps so total S cap consumption was 3 which works out to 1 every 80 minutes. Should I have taken another one, maybe or was I just getting dehydrated or was it both electrolytes and hydration?

What did this run tell me? Two things, I need to get the back tightness/pain resolved and I have no clue about maintaining my hydration and electrolyte consumption. So I guess I better get to work on both.

Steve Q theory - a test?

Steve Q. has written a lot of interesting posts through the years, in a recent post which he titled "Steve's Rule for Ultrarunning" he said he had come up with one good rule for ultrarunning:

"run 1/3 of the distance, with 1/2 of the climb in 1/4 of the time"

In his post, he explained it this way, say you want to run 100 miles at FANS 24, that means you need to run 33 miles in 6 hours. Seems reasonable, now this formula may or may not be scientific but when it comes to running longer distances, I think that is ok because the more running I do the more it seems I just need to have something that keeps me focused for training and believing that I can do the longer distances.

At FANS I wanted to run 50 miles in 12 hours, if I had used Steve's formula using the marathons I ran with my wife as a predictor, they had us going through ~17 miles in 3 hours 30 minutes. It would say that the 12 hour goal would be a stretch. Neither marathon was very hilly but both had a few more hills than FANS so I am not sure that we matched the "1/2 of the climb" requirement or not. In order to make the "1/4 of the time", we would have had to be a 1/2 hour faster, since it was a marathon not a 17 mile race, I can't be sure if we could have shaved the 1/2 hour or not but I think we could. If we had nailed his formula during the marathons, I think it would simply have given me a bit more cushion at FANS. I failed at FANS (at least in my mind) because of the combination of the back, the nausea and the hypothermia which all led to the medical tent issue but I was on pace for 50 miles having gone through 40 miles in 9 hours. I thought at the time that I could walk 10 miles in 3 hours and at that point I had no intention of walking it in. I like to think that take the back issue away and I would not have had to stop, I was working on the nausea and I wasn't planning on stopping because of that. Regardless, I know believe I can do 50 miles in 12 hours on a flat course. Yes I have to prove it and I may fail the next time I try but the reality is I now believe I can, which to me is an important step. Getting the mind to believe so the body will follow.

So for me, I want to eventually run a 100 mile race and I was thinking a 28 hour goal would be something to train for. Therefore using the formula that is 33 miles in 7 hours, why shoot for 28 hours, well it just seems like a reasonable goal to shoot for. Sure I would like to run it in 24 hours but let me think a bit on that, I have yet to run sub 12 for 50 miles so all I got to do is accomplish that and then double it, nope not likely to happen. I am not not sure the 28 hour goal is doable either but it does seem like something I can imagine doing.

So what does this mean? It means over the next couple of years, I would need to get my 50k times down to around 6:40 which is an hour faster than I am currently at. Can I get there, I think yes and it will become my goal over the next 12 to 18 months. If I can't train to do that then I question my commitment towards doing a 100 anyway.

My next race is Afton and I don't plan on trying to run that pace there but I would like to try to cut the deficit in half. So I am going to try and cut a half hour off which basically means a minute/mile faster which is doable. Of course, I do need to see what the weather is going to be and probably a few other things as if I learned anything from FANS, it is make sure you adjust to the day and then adjust even more as the day goes on.

Am I wise to follow Steve's formula, time will tell but it does give me something that I can use to shape my training towards, I kind of view it as the ultrarunning version of Yasso 800's.