Running – Page 42 – My Thought Spot

Marathon Results

There are not many details of the marathon today in the newspaper, but here are the important details. Front runners

First and second place were men from Kenya and third place was a Mexican man. First place was Reuben Chesang with a time of 2:22’11”. Second place was Mark Chepses Kipkosgei. His time, as well as the third place time by Ranulfo Sánchez, was not reported in the newspaper. The race for first and second place was decided in the final sprint. With just 30 meters to go the winner pulled ahead of second place.

A lady from Mexico City won the women’s race. Penélope Lona Guerrero also won this event in 1990 and 1991. The fastest local female runner, Carmen Méndez, had a time of 3:13’01”, which is a new record by more than 3.5 minutes.

The fastest local man was Jorge Joel González Pérez with a time of 2:38’16”. That is about 10 minutes slower than the current record.

The attendance was down according to the newspaper article as well. There were only 217 participants in the marathon, which is down from the previous year’s 314. Race Start

According to the newspaper article, the runners were not very well attended by the police and volunteers. Apparently there were several intersections where runners had to navigate the traffic on their own. Some runners had to run on busy stretches of road without volunteer or police intervention for the traffic. I did not experience that in the 5K. We were well attended. But it is much easier to cover the shorter distance when all of the runners will be within 30 minutes of one another. For a marathon distance you have runners on the roads for 5+ hours. To cover every intersection and provide escort to 200 runners would be difficult. Though I have experienced intersection crossings where the police were clueless and stopped the runners to let traffic pass. But not in this race.

I leave you with the quote from the winner:

“I am very excited to win this marathon for the second time. It was very difficult yet at the same time exciting in the final sprint when I had the good fortune to overtake my compatriot Mark Chepses. The time on the clock is high, but this is due to the weather in the area [it was 72 at race start] as well as the fact that there was not much pressure given by the other runners.”

[Estoy muy emocionado por ganar por segunda ocasión este maratón. Fue muy difícil y a la vez emocionante, sobre todo en el momento del sprint final, cuando tuve la fortuna de superar a mi compatriota Mark Chepses. El tiempo que cronometré es alto, pero eso se debe al clima de la región, además de que no hubo mucha presión de los demás corredores.]

Marathon today. I ran!

Yes, that’s right. There was the annual city marathon today. It commemorates the founding of our city. Mérida, Yucatán, México was founded 465 years ago in 1542.

Now that that is out of the way, I have to admit that I ran just the 5K race and not the marathon. I am not marathon ready yet. Though people think that because I run several times a week and that other people run marathons, that must mean that I can run a marathon. These are obviously not runners and they have no clue that marathon training is something that takes many more miles a week than what I am currently putting in.

Besides the fact that I am not ready for the distance, I am not able to participate in a Sunday marathon. Why do all the races around here have to be on a Sunday? The runners took off at 6:00 this morning. I needed to be in church by 10:30. That does not take into account the 30 minutes I need to pick people up on the way to church. Nor the fact that I need recovery time after any running before I am ready to head out the door. I usually have to be done with a race by 9:00, or 9:30 at the latest, to be ready for church. That would mean that I need to run a 3 hour marathon. Not likely since my 2 half marathon finishes were in the 2:30 (hour:minute) range.

Instead, I ran a 5K race today. Actually, 5.2K. My time was not that great. I did not push myself too hard. Final time was 29:32 for a pace of 9:08 min/mile. Not a PR, but not a horrible run either.

I did get a medal in this one. The first 300 people across the finish line got one. They had fruit and drinks afterwards too. Because the race started so early, I was able to stick around for a few minutes. Normally a 5K starts at 8:00 am around here. Today we started at 6:45. I think that was to be able to have our race finished before the marathoners started arriving.

When I was driving home, I saw the first several runners from the marathon coming down the road. The first 2 places were African looking men. After that there were several Mexican men and a few Africans.

I arrived home and walked to the end of the block and cheered several people as they came by. They passed within 1/2 block from my house. It was cool to walk down and see them running. My house was about the 19th mile of the 26.2 mile event. I had to leave before seeing the mortals (3:30+ marathoners) come by.

I will post results of the race tomorrow if I can remember to buy a paper.

Short run…real short

I was going for a 3 mile fast run today. I wanted to be somewhere around 27 minutes.

The problem was the last 2 days leading up to this run. I did a lot of ladder work. No that is not some kind of special workout. I was just going up and down a ladder a lot. I spent several hours of Tuesday and Wednesday on a ladder. There were two different projects involved. One was putting up a frame to hang a banner on at the church, which hopefully I will get a picture of this weekend and put on here. The other was climbing to the top of my very tall house a few times to see if I could pinpoint a water leak we seem to be having.

Both of these projects left my calves a bit tight and sore the last two nights. This morning I felt pretty good and stretched out a little before my run.

I took off ready to set a quick pace. About 2 blocks into the run I knew that was a bad idea. I then cranked the pace back quite a bit and found that I was still quite sore. So, I made the block and took a nice easy pace back home and called it quits. I have a race this weekend that I want to be ready for, so I did not want to blow it on a run today.

.66 miles in 5:39 for a pace of 8:34 per mile.

First four miles of 2007

Today marked my first running day for 2007. I was listening to Adam at Burning 20 for his first 4 mile run of the year too. He ran his yesterday.

This was an easy run that ended at a 9:58 min/mile pace. I am pleased that my running speed really has picked up. That was an easy run for me. I remember when an easy run meant 12 min/mile.

I have a 5K race that I am running this weekend. I will probably do a faster pace run on Thursday and a nice slow one Friday getting ready for the weekend race.

Running year in review

Today finished my year in running. I did a very easy 5K today.

I was not planning to run today, but as an unmedicated ADDer, I was needing something to bring life back into focus. I have found over the last 2 years of being an exerciser that doing something physical seems to help me not feel as though my life is falling apart at the seams. I have not been to exercise class in two weeks and took the last week off from running. I have had an impending feeling of my house of cards about to come crashing down.

The run must have helped. The feeling is gone and though I left all of my notes at home for my three sermons today, I was able to make my way through them and solidify my strongly held belief that preparation is worthless. 🙂

I started casually running in December of last year. I did probably 3 runs of about 30 minutes each. I did not know at the time that you are not supposed to run that long when you start out. You should ease your way into running. So my first runs were about 3 miles long with long runs up to 6 miles. My regular running started in January when my brother mentioned that he was running a half marathon in May. I decided to train with him, even though we live in different countries.

Though I could figure out how many days this year I have been running and, on average, how many miles per run I have done, I will just sum up with some highlights.

Year mileage is a PR since this is my first year to run. That is a good start. Adam at Burning 20 mentioned in a recent episode that he is going to run 1000 miles for the year of 2007. I have yet to set a firm number, but I would think that 1000 miles would be about where I should be looking. That is just under 20 miles a week. For many weeks I averaged 17 miles a week. So pushing it up to 20 would not be that much more. I will have to think on that for a while.

I ran in 2 pairs of shoes. The first was my everyday shoes which were New Balance 435. I put 300 running miles on them. (Who knows how many non-running miles they had). I was not convinced that they were worn out until I ran a few days in my new shoes and tried the old ones again. I was instantly convinced. The new pair are Nike Air Copius. They have 282 miles on them. I would like to get another pair to start running in while these have some mileage on them. But, buying shoes here is almost an impossibility. They just don’t make them big enough in this country. And then the price…

I started the year with my first road race being an 8K at 49:42 for a pace of 9:56 per mile. My most recent race was a 5K at 27:29 for a pace of 8:38 per mile. I ran 2 half marathons this year. Both of them are what I call a personal race. I ran alone, but one was while my brother was running the Indy Mini half. The other was the Phedippidations World Wide Half marathon.

My endurance has increased tremendously. My speed has as well. A casual run for me now is under 10 minutes per mile where that used to be my race pace.

I am excited to see what this next year will bring. I am going to see what I can do to get my 5K time down. I don’t know if it is possible to improve this quickly, but I am going to make an effort to get to around a 22 minute 5K. That will be a pace of 7:04 per mile. That is a big jump, but I think with some focused speed sessions I can get really close. Currently I am not even running a single mile at that pace, but I have not given an honest effort of getting the mile time down.

Let’s see what this next year in running will bring.