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Monthly Summary – March 2014

 Riding the Big Shot at the Stratosphere in Vegas with a couple co-workers. And yes, I really was that scared!

March was a good month.

As is probably obvious to anyone who reads this blog, I do best when I get into a routine and can stick to it. In 2013 and the first half of 2014, that routine was all about my regular running schedule. When my running routine got upended after Badwater, I struggled a bit (or more) to find my footing (literally, in running and figuratively, in many other aspects of life). Over the past few months, I’ve been getting into a rhythm with the swimming and something approaching it for running, but then, each month, something physical came up and interrupted my training. In March, I finally had a month where I was able to consistently train, including running. Given the difficulties I’ve had getting back into running over the last eight months, I’m not about to proclaim that I’m “healed” or that all those issues are behind me. Instead, I’m just thinking about how fortunate I was to have that success in March and enjoying it for as long as it continues.

One other thing I’ve struggled with during my time away from running is maintaining  friendships and ties with the running and ultrarunning community. So much of those relationships – especially beyond a core group of people – is based on group runs or participating in things like facebook threads. Since I haven’t been running, I haven’t been to group runs and the facebook threads just aren’t as appealing. In February, I went out and spectated at the Sean O’Brien race and in March, I spectated and did a little running around the LA Marathon. It was great to see a ton of friends running the race and the fact I wasn’t running meant that Elizabeth and I could go out early and watch the pros go flying by (mile 12 is right near our house). We even dragged the dogs out to help us cheer people on. After watching the pros go by, I ran roughly parallel to the course to about mile 16 where I stopped and took a bunch more photos and videos. It felt great to see friends and feel like part of the running community.

For the last few months, I’ve been looking at the below six goals each month and then evaluating how I’ve done. The red is my evaluation of how I feel I did in March:

1. Eat better. I nailed this one. Pretty much 100%. Just a very, very little bit of sweets as the occasional treat. That’s how it should be. And I even managed self-control during the few days I spent in Vegas. Elizabeth and I did a lot of cooking in March, including a great (and super easy) roasted veggie taco recipe I found online. 
2. Focus on getting better sleep. For me, I slept really well. I’m back in a rhythm of getting to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up nice and early. Not as early as I did last year when I was regularly running at 5:30 or 6am on the West Side, but still early enough to be up and out well before the sunrise most days. 
3. Continue swimming, yoga and strength training on a regular basis. Another really big swimming month. I hit over 50,000 meters; which makes it another “biggest month ever”. Early in the month I did another 1,000 yard time trial and swam it in 14:44, a 49 second improvement from January. I finished strong and for sure I could have gone faster. And I feel like I’ve gotten stronger in the pool since that test. I’ll try again mid/late-April I think. I also did a 5,500 yard swim the other day (not all at once, in sets). I’m building up my maximum swim day as well and would like to try a 75 x 100 soon and then a 100 x 100 at some point. No yoga in March, but I started regularly doing a strength training routine that I got from Sally McRae at the beginning of the month. It’s a great series of core and lower body strengthening and stretching. I did it at least 2-3 times per week throughout the month and as I’ve gotten comfortable with it, I’ve added reps or sets or exercises to keep myself challenged, but not pushed too hard. I definitely wish I’d been doing something like this last year in between Brazil and Badwater. Oh well, live and learn.
4. Run easy. Maybe hit the trails for some easy training. March was the first month since last summer when I was able to sustain a full month of running without any setbacks. I’m being super careful with distance, intensity, frequency and hills and I’m certain that the strength training routine is helping too. I ran a 7 mile loop at Griffith Park the last two Sundays, but other than that every run was 3-5 miles on the road around home.
5. Be positive. Yes! Mostly a good month for positive thinking!
6. Read at least one book, hopefully two. I tried. I gave A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James, every reasonable chance, but finally I just had to call it quits. I was literally struggling to read every page, had barely any idea about what was going on and reading it felt like a chore. People seem to love the book, but I couldn’t do it. A little over half-way through, I quit. And felt relieved. I also read What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, by Randall Munroe, who publishes the webcomic/blog xkcd.com.  “What If” is a fun, super smart read that answers “absurd” scientific questions using real science in a way that even I could mostly understand (for example, What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light? or Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns?). Some of the chapters were much better than others, but when they’re all pretty short and if I wasn’t into one, I just skipped it. My favorite chapter was an explanation of genetics using Dungeons and Dragons abilities as the genes. It made more sense than anything I’ve ever read about genetics. (Does that say something about him or me?) I looked and I don’t think the chapter is available online. The other book I read in March was The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League, but Jeff Hobbs. This was a really great book that left me pretty conflicted about the question of free will vs. destiny. It’s really well written and overwhelmingly tragic. Connect with me on Goodreads!

Here’s March by the numbers:

Swim: 50,731 meters
Cycling (outdoors): 0 miles
Run: 57.6 miles
Total Run Elevation Gain: 3,656 feet
Strength Training/Yoga: 10 sessions
Approximate monthly total training time: 31.75 hours
Weight: ?? (I haven’t been on a scale in a while, but I’m guessing it’s still right around 163)