Dallen

I'm moving my blog from blogger to fastrunningblog. Back in 1997-2000 I lived in Provo and trained with Sasha. Now I am living in Chicago finishing my residency training in radiology. I have been blogging for over 2 years. Sasha tried to convert me to this site long ago. I declined. Now I am ready to make the move.

I might give the longer version later, but here is the short running version. I worked down to a 2:39:46 marathon in 1999. In 2000 I unwisely took 4 years off from running during medical school. Started back up about 3 years ago. Ran a 2:42 marathon in Chicago last year and just recently managed to barely survive the infamous 2007 Chicago Marathon. If you are interested you can read about it here.

6 relatively easy miles today. I threw in 6x100 meter strides and finished with the 18 flights of stairs to my apartment.

I have been tryint to figure out how to lengthen my stride. It is very short. With easy running my cadence is about 190 and at higher speeds it is over 200 steps a minute. I have several theories on how to accomplish this:

- consciously try to run with a longer stride

- run faster on slow days

- form drills

I don't know if any of this will work, or even if it is a good idea to try to lengthen my stride. Maybe my short stride is the most efficient way for me to run. I think it does limit me at speeds faster than about 5:20/mile. 

I response to Lybi's question, I will be in Chicago until June 2009. After that I will be doing a 1 year fellowship, possibly in Utah, then I will most likely move to the Boise area.

It looks like I took one for the team.

At the recent marathon I was part of the team competition with my running club. Cross country style scoring. There were 12 of us on the team, top six count in the scoring. Only 6 of us finished, I was #6. The rest didn't start, or dropped out. We ended up getting 2nd place. We only lost be a few points, so we would have won if I had gone a little faster. However, if I had dropped out (like I should have), we would have only had 5 finishers and been disqualified.  Makes me glad that I hung in there.

11 days later, I'm still not feeling completely back to normal. I'm not sore, but I just don't have a lot of energy in my legs.

5 mile run to the park. A little over an hour of ultimate frisbee. 5 miles back home. I'm going to call it 14 miles total. It was definately a good workout.

That gives me 34 miles for the week. About 20 mles last week (excluding the marathon). This will probabably conclude my post-marathon recovery period. I should be able to resume some real running next week.

4 easy miles.

Felt some soreness form yesterdays running, but it was definately a new soreness rather than a return of the soreness from the marathon. That should mean that I am officially recovered. Now I am just left with the loss of fitness from a big taper and recovery. No big deal. The season is essentially over and the next important races will be in the spring.

6 easy miles in the morning.

4 easy miles in the evening doubling as a trip to Blockbuster.

I have a cold. I have no desire to push things this week, so I am not. Maybe next week.

This evening I was feeling lazy and planning on taking the day off. Then I got bored and decided to go down to the treadmill and put in a few miles (raining outside, which does not mix well with already being sick.)

I ended up feeling really good and couldn't help but push the pace. Put in a 6 minute mile and averaged 6:34.

I'm calling it 8 miles, which mostly involved playing a lot of ultimate frisbee. While we played the runners for a 50 miler/50K/marathon came by.

This race was just for fun. I ran wearing a gargoyle costume. My time would have got 2nd place in the race last year. This year word got out that tre is a 100/50/25 prize structure, the the fast guys came out ihn force. I was somewhere around 10-15th.

8 easy miles in the morning before work. I was a fairly worn out by the end of my run. My body does not really like running in the mornings, but it really needs to learn.

6 miles with 4 x 30 seconds and 4 x 60 seconds. I was originallty planning on a more formal interval session, but I didn't feel up to it. I still have a little chest congestion from the recent cold and a little residual soreness from the race this weekend. I finished the run with a trip up  the stairs to my 19th floor apartment (1:35).

6 easy miles in the morning before work. Uneventful. I may do some more this evening.