The Running Thread - 2021

[Jules76126]

Just be aware that some babies hate strollers. I could never get past 0.25mi with my first child. Thankfully I didn't buy a jogging stroller with him. But with my second, I ended up buying a Thule Urban Glide when it was on sale. Luckily I can run 6-8 miles and it's held up great - even 4 years later. It was hard to find a BOB on sale but my friend got a Duallie on Craigslist for a song. I love the Thule's canopy and it's really easy to open and close. I tried my friend's Duallie and it's a breeze to push! The Thule can be tough to push especially with a 30+ lb child in it. But people have stopped me many times to tell me my wheels are flat, so that might be it too.

Thanks for the info. We know someone with a Thule and they love it. I think we need to go back to the store and try them out again. We plan to take it on the beach and other uneven surfaces so I heard jogging strollers are better for that. Ultimately, I am not sure how much we will run with it so that is something to keep in mind.

 

[azrivest]

You should turn your GPS on if outdoors. It will track GPS if it is on, or by your arm movement if not. So by leaving GPS off and keeping your arm stationary, it has no way to register your movement.

How does it track nb of steps with GPS? With my Garmin (vivoactive 4), unless I'm moving my arm, it doesn't count steps. GPS or not...

 

[C.beara]

You should turn your GPS on if outdoors. It will track GPS if it is on, or by your arm movement if not. So by leaving GPS off and keeping your arm stationary, it has no way to register your movement.

How does it track nb of steps with GPS? With my Garmin (vivoactive 4), unless I'm moving my arm, it doesn't count steps. GPS or not...

Thanks! This is what I wasn’t sure of, if it tracks steps with gps on. I was trying to avoid gps since I’m walking very slowly and going very short distances still lol

 

[LdyStormy76]

I can't comment on dog spray, and I can't compare my dog to yours, but I also have a dog who is territorial/dog-unfriendly. In the past, he has gotten so worked up at other dogs that he turns around and snaps at me if I have tried to pull him away I have had skin broken on more than one occasion. We even got kicked out of dog school when he was young when this happened! We have also been approached by rando, unleashed dogs which has not gone well (stitches in his ear, on one occasion).

My dog is a Lab mix, and is food-obsessed. So what I have ultimately trained him to do is get a treat reward by paying attention to me and my command of "leave it" when we see dogs. It has gotten to the point that if he sees a dog while out on walks, he looks at me--waiting for the treat.

Buddy is nearly 15 now, and he will never be a dog-friendly guy. So I will add that I also adjusted my behavior--I have accepted that my dog will never be good on-leash with other dogs (weirdly, he has been to dog parks in the past with no issue--neutral territory, I guess) and so I try to make sure we don't encounter those situations.

Good luck with your efforts. I hope you can help your pup's behavior.

I like your use of using a key word to focus on you; will come up with a different word as I am using that in conjunction with “drop” to address the non-dog friendly road food and things that she kills on our walks. In her defense the chipmunk ran right in front of her. Our first rescue dog was a social butterfly, so adapting to Lolly’s “I hate anything with fur” mentality has been hard.

I am ordering spray from Sabrered today. Hopefully we will never need it, but DH would rather have it just in case.

 

[The Expert]

How does it track nb of steps with GPS? With my Garmin (vivoactive 4), unless I'm moving my arm, it doesn't count steps. GPS or not...

Thanks! This is what I wasn’t sure of, if it tracks steps with gps on. I was trying to avoid gps since I’m walking very slowly and going very short distances still lol

I was just thinking in terms of distance. It tracks your starting point and your ending point and calculates your speed based on the time between. But I'm not sure about the steps.

 

[cburnett11]

Taking a page from @opusone as I didn't post March either and I'm late to the party here for April. Work has been tough and while I have been catching up reading every week or so, I have not posted since March.

I was fortunate enough to do a half marathon with my wife on April 25th as part of the Kentucky Derby Festivities. I have done the KDF miniMarathon for several years, but it was cancelled in 2020. This year it was a different course (easier to "close off") and took place with rolling starts over the course of 4 days. It wasn't quite the same as the normal event, but they did a great job and everyone I've spoken to was more than glad to have a live race in some fashion. It was fun because we were in the first group and then some of my faster friends that started 15 minutes later began passing us so we had plenty of entertainment/company. And since it was an out and back, we got to see all these familiar faces again when they turned around.

Also found out this week that I missed the October Boston Marathon cutoff by 22 seconds. The silver lining is that my qualifying race will also be eligible to go back in the hat for the scheduled April 2022 race. Fingers crossed that maybe I fare better in the next opportunity. At any rate I was already signed up for Chicago Marathon on October 10th, so I will be running that if it goes off and have decided to do Virtual Boston at Chicago in a "run 1 race, get 2 medals fashion". I've never done a virtual before, but this one seemed to make sense for me.

April Training Summary
Running Miles: 190.2 miles
Running Time: 30:08:32
Average Pace: 9:31/mi
Average HR: 135/min

March Training Summary
Running Miles: 178.2 miles
Running Time: 28:16:31
Average Pace: 9:31/mi
Average HR: 131/min

 

[RunDopey]

As @camaker said, time on your feet and learning to run far on tired legs are key to having a successful ultra. My training plans for my 50-miler and for my Comrades runs included several weeks of 3-5 hours on Saturday and 2-4 hours on Sunday. Most of those runs were done at my normal marathon training pace, but some were at my expected pace during the race which was 1-2 min/mile slower. Running slower than your usual pace is not always easy or comfortable, and can take some getting used to before race day. Some more helpful advice: run when you can, walk when you must, and always keep moving forward. Make any breaks as short as possible and no longer than absolutely required. The volunteers at the aid stations at most ultras will kick you out after a minute or two because they know the longer you stop, the harder it is to get and keep going again.

Good advice all around and I will share my experience. I share @camaker opinion that a break may be difficult to start from again. In my last 100 mile race in February, my longest stop was 5 minutes to change my socks. I found in previous races that once I slowed down to 5 minutes over my target pace, I struggled to get back to an effective pace. And I agree with @FFigawi regarding the value of back-to-back runs on the weekend. There is a lot to be said for getting used to running on tired legs. Previously I ran up to 60 miles in a weekend. I found that I was way over-trained and have since moved to ~70 miles a week with the longest run being 20-25 miles. I would also add in a couple of night runs to get acclimated to running in the dark if needed. For races now, I do a 25min run/5 min "walk with purpose" interval for the first half and whatever feels good for the second half. I would suggest a 50k as a test run before the full run. I will say that for me, a solo run is much different from a race. I ran a 100k and 100 mile solo virtual race last summer and they were more difficult but ultimately more rewarding. Happy to answer any questions.

 

[SheHulk]

I ran an in-person race yesterday!
The Mother's Day 10k/10 miler in Washington Crossing, PA. I ran the 10-miler.
The race was put on by runBucks, the same group and basically the same course that I ran a half marathon in, in November. I was chatting with some women before the race and all of us agreed we kept coming back even though many of us (including me) live up to an hour away. It's been basically the only set of races running, until recently. They are very serious about covid mitigation so I can see why they have been allowed to operate. Also it's a beautiful state park to run in.
Weather was perfect, about 50F at the start. This was a tiny race: 50 runners in the 10 miler and even fewer in the 10k. We all lined up in the same line to start. I had trained with a DopeyBadger plan and got my last-minute pep talk from Billy and was ready to go. My C goal was to get any proof of time-worthy finish time for runDisney corral purposes, which would be about 1:45:00 for the marathon. My B goal was to get a sub-1:40:00 My previous PR for the distance was 1:46:34 from May 2018 and I felt I had made a lot of fitness progress since then. My A goal was to get a C corral-worthy proof of time, which was really a stretch here: about 1:35:30.
There isn't much play-by-play to give about the race itself, it's basically a towpath along a canal along a river, so almost perfectly flat with regular terrain. I finished in 1:36:55, a nearly 9-minute PR for me, but missed that C corral cutoff. As a surprise, because the field was so tiny, I got my first age-group award! 3rd place in my age group. This is the one time anything like this will happen to me for sure so I'm going to milk it and display the plaque prominently in my office I felt good about race strategy for once: Didn't go out too fast and even ran a negative split.
Can't wait to get back to normal racing, but this was pretty good!

 

[michigandergirl]

I ran an in-person race yesterday!
The Mother's Day 10k/10 miler in Washington Crossing, PA. I ran the 10-miler.
The race was put on by runBucks, the same group and basically the same course that I ran a half marathon in, in November. I was chatting with some women before the race and all of us agreed we kept coming back even though many of us (including me) live up to an hour away. It's been basically the only set of races running, until recently. They are very serious about covid mitigation so I can see why they have been allowed to operate. Also it's a beautiful state park to run in.
Weather was perfect, about 50F at the start. This was a tiny race: 50 runners in the 10 miler and even fewer in the 10k. We all lined up in the same line to start. I had trained with a DopeyBadger plan and got my last-minute pep talk from Billy and was ready to go. My C goal was to get any proof of time-worthy finish time for runDisney corral purposes, which would be about 1:45:00 for the marathon. My B goal was to get a sub-1:40:00 My previous PR for the distance was 1:46:34 from May 2018 and I felt I had made a lot of fitness progress since then. My A goal was to get a C corral-worthy proof of time, which was really a stretch here: about 1:35:30.
There isn't much play-by-play to give about the race itself, it's basically a towpath along a canal along a river, so almost perfectly flat with regular terrain. I finished in 1:36:55, a nearly 9-minute PR for me, but missed that C corral cutoff. As a surprise, because the field was so tiny, I got my first age-group award! 3rd place in my age group. This is the one time anything like this will happen to me for sure so I'm going to milk it and display the plaque prominently in my office I felt good about race strategy for once: Didn't go out too fast and even ran a negative split.
Can't wait to get back to normal racing, but this was pretty good!

Way to go on the PR, age group award, and negative split!!

 

[steph0808]

It took me a while but here are my April stats!

April Running
Miles: 77.45
Time: 10:48:00
Avg Pace: 10:17
Avg HR: 144

Feeling good! Glad for the warmer weather. Now, if it would only stop raining!

 

[avondale]

I ran an in-person race yesterday!
The Mother's Day 10k/10 miler in Washington Crossing, PA. I ran the 10-miler.
The race was put on by runBucks, the same group and basically the same course that I ran a half marathon in, in November. I was chatting with some women before the race and all of us agreed we kept coming back even though many of us (including me) live up to an hour away. It's been basically the only set of races running, until recently. They are very serious about covid mitigation so I can see why they have been allowed to operate. Also it's a beautiful state park to run in.
Weather was perfect, about 50F at the start. This was a tiny race: 50 runners in the 10 miler and even fewer in the 10k. We all lined up in the same line to start. I had trained with a DopeyBadger plan and got my last-minute pep talk from Billy and was ready to go. My C goal was to get any proof of time-worthy finish time for runDisney corral purposes, which would be about 1:45:00 for the marathon. My B goal was to get a sub-1:40:00 My previous PR for the distance was 1:46:34 from May 2018 and I felt I had made a lot of fitness progress since then. My A goal was to get a C corral-worthy proof of time, which was really a stretch here: about 1:35:30.
There isn't much play-by-play to give about the race itself, it's basically a towpath along a canal along a river, so almost perfectly flat with regular terrain. I finished in 1:36:55, a nearly 9-minute PR for me, but missed that C corral cutoff. As a surprise, because the field was so tiny, I got my first age-group award! 3rd place in my age group. This is the one time anything like this will happen to me for sure so I'm going to milk it and display the plaque prominently in my office I felt good about race strategy for once: Didn't go out too fast and even ran a negative split.
Can't wait to get back to normal racing, but this was pretty good!

Congratulations! That's awesome!

 

[Rogue224]

I ran an in-person race yesterday!
The Mother's Day 10k/10 miler in Washington Crossing, PA. I ran the 10-miler.
The race was put on by runBucks, the same group and basically the same course that I ran a half marathon in, in November. I was chatting with some women before the race and all of us agreed we kept coming back even though many of us (including me) live up to an hour away. It's been basically the only set of races running, until recently. They are very serious about covid mitigation so I can see why they have been allowed to operate. Also it's a beautiful state park to run in.
Weather was perfect, about 50F at the start. This was a tiny race: 50 runners in the 10 miler and even fewer in the 10k. We all lined up in the same line to start. I had trained with a DopeyBadger plan and got my last-minute pep talk from Billy and was ready to go. My C goal was to get any proof of time-worthy finish time for runDisney corral purposes, which would be about 1:45:00 for the marathon. My B goal was to get a sub-1:40:00 My previous PR for the distance was 1:46:34 from May 2018 and I felt I had made a lot of fitness progress since then. My A goal was to get a C corral-worthy proof of time, which was really a stretch here: about 1:35:30.
There isn't much play-by-play to give about the race itself, it's basically a towpath along a canal along a river, so almost perfectly flat with regular terrain. I finished in 1:36:55, a nearly 9-minute PR for me, but missed that C corral cutoff. As a surprise, because the field was so tiny, I got my first age-group award! 3rd place in my age group. This is the one time anything like this will happen to me for sure so I'm going to milk it and display the plaque prominently in my office I felt good about race strategy for once: Didn't go out too fast and even ran a negative split.
Can't wait to get back to normal racing, but this was pretty good!

CONGRATS!!! Awesome job!

 

[KSellers88]

Been enjoying reading about everyone's races. Races were finally cleared to start in MA this month which will be nice to see.

April Running miles: 0
Walking miles: 40

I had high hopes for 2021 in terms of getting in more mileage and hopefully be able to run an in person race. However, right after New Years, I found I was pregnant. I was major respect for anyone who ran while pregnant, but that is not for me. My plan is to keep up my walking throughout the summer and then hopefully ease back into running this Fall once the baby is here. Now I am just trying to convince my husband that we really need a Bob's stroller.

Congrats! I have the BOB revolution and love it, the little guy seems to enjoy it too so far!

 

[KSellers88]

Late to the party which seems to be the story of my life lately

April Totals:
101 Miles
Average HR: 144
Average Pace: 9:24

Currently on day 121 of my run streak, because I don't have enough going on right now. Little guy will be 7 months old tomorrow and we are working on getting some more stroller runs in, thankfully he seems to enjoy them so far!

 

[The Expert]

Well this is interesting! For the beer lovers, Michelob Ultra is literally asking you to run for beer.
ULTRABeerRun.com

 

[FFigawi]

Well this is interesting! For the beer lovers, Michelob Ultra is literally asking you to run for beer.
ULTRABeerRun.com

Ultra isn’t really beer, more like water with some light beer flavoring.

 

[Bree]

Ultra isn’t really beer, more like water with some light beer flavoring.

I like my beer flavored water

I tried a six pack of the organic ultra a few weeks ago. Five of them are still in my beverage fridge. It tastes different and not in a good way.

 

[PrincessV]

Ultra isn’t really beer, more like water with some light beer flavoring.

Agreed - which is what makes it perfect in the heat of FL summer!

I tried a six pack of the organic ultra a few weeks ago. Five of them are still in my beverage fridge. It tastes different and not in a good way.

Thank you for taking one for the team here - I've been wondering if it was worth the extra $1 for a six-pack, but I'll now avoid it. Interestingly, my last six-pack of regular ULTRA lacked carbonation. It had teeny bit of bubble, but nothing like it should. Tasted fine otherwise, but felt all wrong!

 

[Novatrix]

In case anyone's interested, the Nike Alphafly and Vaporfly shoes are back in stock.

I admit, I've been curious for a long time so I'm finally pulling the trigger on a pair of Vaporflys. Between this and broadway shows going back on sale Monday and Tuesday, it has been a splurge month...

 

[Princess_Nikki]

Hey y'all!! Popping in for the first time in forever...like over a year. LOL.

Maybe I'm grumpy because there have been no live races at Disney. LOL. But, I've done a ton of virtuals. Also so excited to move back to Florida in a few months! Hope y'all have been good!!