Racing is Back!

2020 In-person Racing was a bust! 

I started writing this earlier this year but then got sidetracked by more important activities. So here is my race recap. Mostly just the stats with no witty recaps. 

It has been a while since many of us have toed the line at an in-person event. I had done a 5K in 2020 in March around Saint Patrick's day. Shortly after that, we locked down and all the 2020 races starting getting canceled. It was all very understandable and I simply deferred all my race entries to 2021. I crossed my fingers that we would be in a better place once those races came around. I spent the rest of 2020 doing virtual races which I talked about in my last blog post. 

Below is a recap of my 2021 races. I don't really have too much to report about each race but wanted to document it all here. 

Vaccination

As 2021 progressed, it seemed like race organizers had come up with satisfactory plans to return to racing with special COVID-19 precautions. Thankfully for me, I was able to get vaccinated through my work on March 22nd. And since it was the one shot J&J vaccine, that meant that by the time of my first scheduled race, I would be fully vaccinated. Sweet!

April 10 - First Race of the Season - Smithfield Sprint Triathlon

The first race of the season was the Smithfield Sprint Triathlon. Age group results below. 

Male 50 to 54
	Overall					------- Swim In -------		T1	------- Bike -------		T2	Total
Place	Place	Name	City	Bib No	USAT Age	Rnk	Time	Time	Rnk	Time	Time	Time
1	23	Christopher Ratchford	Midlothian VA	84	50	1	4:54.4	6:18.6	1	33:40.3	34:44.8	57:16.7
2	25	Gary Martin	Midlothian VA	204	52	4	6:02.3	7:15.9	2	34:53.4	36:02.4	57:33.6
3	62	David Lassiter	Williamsburg VA	81	53	10	7:24.0	8:54.6	3	36:49.9	37:55.5	1:02:13.2
4	65	Michael Spinos	Midlothian VA	132	50	5	6:05.5	7:37.3	6	37:51.8	39:24.0	1:02:40.8
5	66	Michael Fedryk	Virginia Beach VA	72	50	2	5:42.7	7:23.7	4	37:09.7	38:40.9	1:03:07.9
6	76	James Rosen	Richmond VA	226	53	7	6:51.6	9:04.2	5	39:08.9	40:36.1	1:04:08.0
7	114	Jeffery Shackelford	Smithfield VA	186	50	9	7:06.4	9:16.3	7	40:45.1	42:40.1	1:09:44.1
8	141	Scott Dixon	Henrico VA	232	54	13	7:44.9	9:12.8	9	41:36.8	42:30.2	1:14:17.4
9	148	Mark Gordon	Portsmouth VA	259	53	3	5:49.9	8:00.8	10	40:49.0	42:34.1	1:15:47.5
10	150	Evans Thomas	Appomattox VA	187	54	8	7:02.2	9:15.2	8	41:35.2	43:44.6	1:16:27.2
11	161	Hayden Richards	Newport News VA	58	53	14	11:09.6	13:53.7	11	48:58.8	50:56.1	1:18:48.0
12	167	Mark Konst	Newport News VA	274	53	6	6:47.0	9:43.2	13	46:17.0	48:07.2	1:19:50.4
13	181	Charles Corprew	Virginia Beach VA	236	50	12	7:39.9	10:37.4	12	46:36.3	49:58.3	1:24:53.5
14	199	Mike Araojo	Hampton VA	18	53	11	7:26.1	13:32.2	14	52:42.4	55:42.1	1:40:00.5

May 7th - Kinetic Triathlon Festival - Kinetic Half

May 8th - Kinetic Triathlon Festival - Kinetic Sprint

June 6, 2021 - Ironman 70.3 Virginia's Blue Ridge

July 4th, 2021 - Biffledinked 10 X 5K

And there you have it. I don't think I will do any more races this year as I focus on some family commitments. Who knows was 2022 will bring. Perhaps some more racing. We will see. Thanks for reading. 

2020 Recap

As we continue to see COVID-19 cases soar and the number of hospitalizations continue to rise, I continue to feel anxious, sad, mad, and at the same time thankful. I am anxious about all the potential for sickness and death. I am sad to see so many people suffer from the direct effects of the disease to the indirect effects the disease has had on people's livelihoods and their ability to provide for themselves and their families. I am angry that our country has not done a better job at containing the spread of the virus. And I am disgusted with the injustice people of color continue to endure at the hands of the white authority. I don't really feel like i have done much to try to counter this injustice but I have to mention it because I feel strongly about it and mentioning it is the absolute least I can do. 

The United States put a man on the moon over 5 decades ago. We have robots that can dance and AI assistants that can make dinner reservations for us. We can replace parts of the human body with artificial parts and have mastered a myriad of other medical technological innovations. And the list of amazing accomplishments goes on an on. However, when it comes to containing COVID-19, we have not done such a great job. Sure, it is not easy. I know that. But it seems like as a society full of super rich and super smart people, we could have done better. That is just how I feel about it.

And now onto the last emotion. Gratitude. I am thankful for so many things. I will list some of them here:

1. I am able to work from home 100 percent of the time. In fact, my productivity has gone up since moving to a WFH schedule.
2. My wife and I have both been very busy at work which helps keep our minds focused on positive things. 
3. I lost 10 pounds since the first lockdown in March.
4. I have gotten leaner as I have added weight lifting into my training regiment. 
5. I have added more Yoga, Pilates, and other types of training to supplement my running and biking (no swimming right now).
6. I get more sleep since I don't have to commute to and from work.
7. I walk more which seems to have many benefits. 
8. I have saved money on eating out as I eat at home the majority of the time. 
9. I drink more water than I ever have in my life I think. 
10. I took the first college class I have taken since the early 90s and found it challenging but also really fun. I am looking forward to next semester for the next class.
11. I completed all 34 Ironman Virtual Racing Club events and got recognized as an IMVR legend. HA! 
12. I am on my way to completing a 21 day IMVR Club challenge where the grand prize for doing all the events is a free entry into a 2021 IM event. Fingers crossed. 
13. My wife and I have started playing cards and other games while listening to our favorite tunes as an alternative to simply watching TV. This seems like a healthy way to spend more quality time together although we are still enjoying many quality shows (currently watching The Queens Gambit). 
14. My family has stayed healthy during this trying time.
15. At work, I have had time for leadership courses and other technical training which is helping me become a better manager and a better technician. 

As I close out the year, I am hopeful that there will be more vaccines available leading to the eradication of this virus so we can all go back to doing some of the things we love doing. In 2021, I am hoping to toe the line at least some of the races that were deferred from 2020. I am hoping to learn new things and add even more variety into my training with the hopes of becoming fitter and more well rounded physically and mentally. 

Thankfully my 2020 experience has been mostly positive in comparison to so many people in the world who are suffering and I feel quite privileged to be in this position. Who knows what 2021 will bring but I hope we start to move in the right direction. 

I may write another recap with some of my 2020 Strava Stats just for fun but until then, Happy New Year everyone. Peace and love to you all. 

COVID-19

At the beginning of March I finally finished up my November, 2019 RVA Marathon race report and was looking forward to ramping up my race season.  Everyone knows what happened then. A global pandemic was spreading fast across the globe and in order to mitigate the spread of disease, countries around the world instituted new social distancing and stay-at-home orders. The upshot of these new rules meant all the races I was planning on doing were canceled. 

One by one, events were canceled and athletes around the world voiced their varied opinions about how the race directors were successfully or unsuccessfully handling this monkey wrench. As someone who has been a race director for a small 5K, I could feel the organizers pain and understand where they were coming from. We were all just going to have to suck it up and be thankful that we were not in a worse situation. For instance, dead or worse, gravely ill. 

Personally, I got over it pretty quickly. I use races as a fun motivator and as a test of my fitness. I like to finish as high as I can in my age group so I am competitive but I do not stress about it too much. I am in this for the long haul. Racing helps me stay fit but overall health is my goal. If I have to modify how I get there due to circumstances beyond my control, I am intrinsically motivated enough to keep moving. 

Here is the list of events that I was planning to do. 

Date	Race	Location
Saturday, April 4th	Smithfield Sprint Triathlon	Smithfield VA
Saturday, May 9th	Kinetic Half Triathlon	Lake Anna, VA
Sunday, May 10th	Kinetic Sprint Triathlon	Lake Anna, VA
Saturday, May 16th	IM 70.3 VA Blue Ridge Training Camp  not a race	Roanoke VA
Sunday, June 7th	IM 70.3 VA Blue Ridge Triathlon	Roanoke, VA
Sunday, June 28th	Rev3 Williamsburg Olympic Triathlon	Williamsburg, VA

After resigning myself to the fact that I would not be racing, I started to alter my training schedule a little bit. Ever since the November, 2019 RVA Marathon, I had decided that I wanted to focus more energy on strength training and core work. In fact, I had started going to Pilates and Barre classes before the Ys and gyms all closed. As it turns out, all of these things could be done remotely with online classes. I dove in and started doing more pilates, more yoga, and some online barre classes. I also started my own regimen of weight lifting, push ups, pull-ups, and core work. I continued to run and bike but my volume went down a bit. As I get older, this kind of exercise is even more important so my pivot to more of these kinds of workouts was something I have wanted to do for a while. 

As I mentioned, I did not stop running and biking. In fact, in addition to adding more core and strength training, I joined the Ironman Virtual Club and started doing the Ironman Virtual Race Series. So far there have been 5 events and I have completed them all. Below you can see the events the events that I completed starting in early April. 

As you can see, I have been doing plenty of biking and running. This coming weekend is Ironman Virtual Race #6 and I am signed up for that one as well. The running and biking in addition to all the other exercises has kept me fit through this crisis. Plus I am eating way less and drinking a great deal more water than I used to. Together all of these things have led me to lose 5-6 pounds. That is less weight to carry out there on the run course. Also my fat percentage has dropped about 1 to 1.5 percent as measured by my scale. So I am getting stronger and staying fit. I really can't complain too much about anything since my health is good an I am continuing to work full time from home as my job in IT allows me to do everything remotely. In fact, I really don't ever need to go back into the office. I am sure I will have to one day. But until then I am enjoying the extra sleep and my new routine. I get stir crazy sometimes but writing and doing other creative things helps. I have some projects other than exercising to work on including converting an old laptop to a Linux webserver to host my John Rosen website and some other things. 

Thanks for reading. Stay safe. Stay home. 

Richmond Marathon Race Report +

Well, it has been 16 weeks since the running of the 2019 Richmond Marathon and I have been very delinquent in my blogging. Now that the spring season is getting ready to ramp up, I thought I better get this report out of the way. 

From my last blog entry, you know that I injured myself but decided to go ahead and give the marathon a try and see what would happen. I am not going to go into too many details on this post because frankly, that would be boring. I will try to focus on the particulars and anything else notable for the historical record.

Race day was cold and windy. I opted to wear tights under my running shorts to keep my legs warm which normally I would not have done but with the hamstring injury, I decided it would be better overall to keep my legs warm. 

As I mentioned previously, my goal was to simply finish in about 4 hours. When the gun went off, I started conservatively and ran the first mile in about 9 minutes. The first several miles went well and I was maintaining a pace that would easily put me under 4 hours. I did slow down on some of the more hilly parts of the course but I was able to pick things back up after those tougher miles. 

The wind was a killer. Not only was it physically difficult to run into the wind, it was also mentally tough to keep going with it blowing into my face. Crossing the Leigh bridge was especially tough. There was not much chatter around me as everyone seemed to be struggling. The Leigh bridge section is from about mile 15 to mile 16 on the RVA Marathon course and that is where I really started to struggle. You can see from my splits that mile 16 was the beginning of my fade. I did manage to pick it up again a little later. But that did not last long. Here are my splits for the entire race. 

Lap	Distance	Time	Pace	GAP	Elev	HR
1	1.00 mi	9:00	9:00 /mi	9:01 /mi	-8 ft	142 bpm
2	1.00 mi	8:50	8:50 /mi	8:45 /mi	22 ft	142 bpm
3	1.00 mi	8:43	8:43 /mi	8:42 /mi	4 ft	140 bpm
4	1.00 mi	8:38	8:38 /mi	8:36 /mi	7 ft	143 bpm
5	1.00 mi	8:42	8:42 /mi	8:39 /mi	7 ft	142 bpm
6	1.00 mi	8:54	8:54 /mi	8:41 /mi	26 ft	144 bpm
7	1.00 mi	8:38	8:38 /mi	9:01 /mi	-144 ft	136 bpm
8	1.00 mi	8:49	8:49 /mi	8:44 /mi	8 ft	138 bpm
9	1.00 mi	8:52	8:52 /mi	8:54 /mi	-20 ft	136 bpm
10	1.00 mi	9:00	9:00 /mi	8:49 /mi	20 ft	137 bpm
11	1.00 mi	9:16	9:16 /mi	8:56 /mi	33 ft	140 bpm
12	1.00 mi	9:13	9:13 /mi	8:58 /mi	31 ft	139 bpm
13	1.00 mi	9:22	9:22 /mi	9:16 /mi	7 ft	137 bpm
14	1.00 mi	8:51	8:51 /mi	8:52 /mi	-24 ft	140 bpm
15	1.00 mi	8:58	8:58 /mi	9:06 /mi	-55 ft	140 bpm
16	1.00 mi	9:46	9:46 /mi	9:32 /mi	34 ft	143 bpm
17	1.00 mi	9:44	9:44 /mi	9:29 /mi	38 ft	141 bpm
18	1.00 mi	8:54	8:54 /mi	8:47 /mi	32 ft	147 bpm
19	1.00 mi	11:07	11:07 /mi	11:10 /mi	-31 ft	131 bpm
20	1.00 mi	11:23	11:23 /mi	11:11 /mi	12 ft	132 bpm
21	1.00 mi	11:34	11:34 /mi	11:31 /mi	1 ft	128 bpm
22	1.00 mi	14:38	14:38 /mi	14:36 /mi	-5 ft	109 bpm
23	1.00 mi	11:42	11:42 /mi	11:39 /mi	0 ft	137 bpm
24	1.00 mi	12:11	12:11 /mi	12:17 /mi	-23 ft	139 bpm
25	1.00 mi	13:17	13:17 /mi	13:02 /mi	22 ft	143 bpm
26	1.00 mi	12:44	12:44 /mi	12:50 /mi	-38 ft	136 bpm
27	0.32 mi	3:22	10:23 /mi	11:29 /mi	-96 ft	142 bpm

As I ran north on Arthur Ashe Boulevard, it happened. My hamstring decided it had had enough. However, it was not my left hamstring that I had been rehabbing. Nope, it was the right one doing the same thing that the left one had done. I was forced to walk. I walked and hobbled for the next couple of miles. I looked at my watch and did the math. I could finish well within the cutoff if I simply walked the rest. But the thought of being out there in the cold for that much longer was not very appealing. I tried to stretch some but even that was difficult. I was finally able to start a little shuffle and did a shuffle/walk for the rest of the way. It was painful and down right miserable. However, I had been in this position before. During Ironman competitions, the last part of the marathon is always a death march. I knew I could just keep going and finish so I pushed through the misery and ended up finishing. 

Out of the three marathons I have run, this was the slowest. It was even slower than at least 3 or 4 of my Ironman marathons. But I managed to finish and did not really do any damage to my body. 

After the race, I went and got my bag of stuff that I had dropped off at the start earlier that morning. I took off all my wet clothes and put on dry clothes as quickly as possible. I then hobbled my way back to my office and used the bathroom and put on all my jackets and another hat. I also gobbled up some candy and had a Red Bull. 

I was following Melissa on the marathon tracker and estimated that if I hurried, I could catch her finishing. I made it back to the course in time to see her running up Franklin to the 5th street turn. I ran with her for about 25 yards before my legs demanded I stop. She continued on to the finish and I walked down to meet up with her. She had a fine race of course. She is the pacing queen and always knows how to stick to her goal and finish well. I am always impressed with her determination and accomplishments on and off the race course. 

And that was that. I had a nice build up to a potential PR and then blew it by getting injured. However, I learned some lessons that I will talk about in my next blog post. 

Since the RVA Marathon, I have done a few races. I did the Countdown to None 5K in Vienna, VA on New Years Eve and got 1st in my age group. 

Later in January, I ran the Frostbite 15K. I went out a little hot and struggled towards the end but managed to have an OK race. I got 13th out of 50 in my age group on what proved to be a challenging course. 

Yesterday, after a last minute entry the night before, I raced the Shamrock 5K here in Richmond. Considering I ran 12 miles the day before and did a short but high intensity trainer ride afterwards as well as a 1 hour trainer ride a few hours before the 5K, I was pleased with my result. My goal was to keep up with Justin and then try to out sprint him at the line. I was able to hang on to him and then towards the end step on the gas a little to put some distance between us and then finally sprint down the straight away at the finish. I ended up 3rd in my age group. Not too shabby for running on tired legs.

For the upcoming season, this is what I have on the calendar so far:

Date	Race	Location
Saturday, March 28th	Monument Ave 10K	RVA
Saturday, April 4th	Smithfield Sprint Triathlon	Smithfield VA
Saturday, May 9th	Kinetic Half Triathlon	Lake Anna, VA
Sunday, May 10th	Kinetic Sprint Triathlon	Lake Anna, VA
Saturday, May 16th	IM 70.3 VA Blue Ridge Training Camp  not a race	Roanoke VA
Sunday, June 7th	IM 70.3 VA Blue Ridge Triathlon	Roanoke, VA
Sunday, June 28th	Rev3 Williamsburg Olympic Triathlon	Williamsburg, VA

The Road to the RVA Marathon

After the Outer Banks triathlon, it was time to focus on the upcoming Richmond Marathon. OBX was on September 14th which gave me about 2 months of focused run training before the November 16th race. I had a pretty busy season thus far including some fairly long runs with MTT. I was feeling pretty tired and wanted to cut back on my weekly training hours. With a 21 miler the Sunday after OBX, and then another 20 miler the following weekend, I had plenty of run miles under my belt and felt pretty good about my chances of getting a marathon PR in November. 

My current Marathon PR was from 2017 at the NYC Marathon.

As a side note, unbeknownst to me, a movie was being filmed during the 2017 NYC Marathon and I made it into the movie. If you blink, you will miss me but a friend send along this screen grab. Also, you can see my race report for NYC here. http://jimsoccernut.blogspot.com/2017/11/2017-tcs-nyc-marathon-race-report.html

That is me in the red Gobble Wobble shirt

Sports Backers Marathon Training Team (MTT) runs out of Sports Backers Stadium in Richmond. The stadium is 1 mile from my house. When MTT started, I decided I would run from my house to the stadium, run with my MTT team, and then run home. I have always enjoyed doing that kind of thing and have run from my house to the Monument Ave 10K, run it, and run then back home. And I used to ride my mountain bike from my house in Henrico County to the downtown trails, ride all the trails, and then ride back home. There is something appealing about not having to drive, park, etc. So, for MTT, I always got 2 more miles than what was prescribed in the MTT training plan. Overachiever? Maybe. Sorta like this guy. 

This routine seemed to work out well for me. I would run 1 mile to the stadium and then have a little break including using the indoor bathroom at the stadium which is always a runner's dream. Then I would run the prescribed route with Team Limes which always included SAG stops where we could all refuel with water, PowerAid, gels, etc. Then I would take a little break when we got back to the Stadium before slogging that last mile home. 

With the extra mileage and all the hill work that I normally did not do, I really felt primed to run a good race. I made a decision that I would stop training for triathlon and just focus on running. I wanted to sleep more and thought that skipping the 5:30 AM pool sessions, and long bike rides on the weekend would give my body more rest. I also made a hard decision to stop training with my coach who I had been training regularly with for more than 5 years. It was tough to break up with him because I had learned so much from him enjoyed a great deal of success under his guidance. It was nice to simply complete workouts as prescribed and not really have to think about it much. But I was a bit burnt out and wanted to try going at it by myself for awhile. Plus, I could really use some new tires on my car and the cost savings would help with the tires and various other expenses. It took a while for my decision to sit well with me. I missed Dave. I threw myself into MTT. 

On October 17th, I was running track after a weekend 22 miler, and I was feeling fast. The weather had gotten cooler. It was really the first cool track workout I had. After a short warm up of 2 miles and some strides, I was ticking off some decent paces that felt relatively easy. Below you can see my laps. I pressed the lap button after one time around the track. I did one mile followed by some active rest and then a 2 miler. Again, it all felt very easy. I had one more 2 mile interval to do. Somewhere around 600 meters into it, my hamstring started to complain a bit. I pulled the plug and called it a day. 

          Lap #           Time             Cumulative Time      Distance            Pace              HR

Well, that sucked. I took the next two days off and did all I could to heal including compression, heat, stretching, and rest. On the following Sunday, I took off from my house a little slower than usual to let myself warm up. Of course it was relatively cold and rainy. Our first real bad weather run of the season. I was planning to see how I felt when I got to the stadium. When I got there, I felt pretty good. My hammy was fine and I was ready to resume business as usual. 

The route that day went through the Fan of Richmond and with all the rain and poor drainage around that area, there were flooded areas and I ended up running through some pretty cold puddles. Is it a still called a puddle if it comes up past your ankles? Oh well, I was soaked already so I shrugged it off and kept on trucking. Then, about 3.5 miles into the run, my hammy started to act up. I told the person I was running with that I was going to slow down and that she could keep going. We were discussing how slow I was going to go when suddenly a sharp pain shot through my hamstring which caused me to shout an expletive and then stop all together. It was like a snake bite. This was not good at all. I turned around and started walking home. I decided it would be less mileage to walk home than to walk back to the stadium and then back home. So, that is what I did. 

Mine was my left leg

I hobbled home. It was pretty miserable as far as walks go. It was cold and rainy and I could not move fast enough to keep warm. I would occasionally shuffle a bit more than a walk but that would not last long. It took me about 40 minutes to walk home. I took a quick hot shower and then got bundled up and drove my car back to Sports Backers Stadium so I could sign back in so the Team Limes coaches did not wonder what happened to me. 

So, now what? I consulted my physical therapy friend who always gives me guidance and she thought I should go see someone. I decided to try to get into see a professional ASAP. I called the VCU Sports Medicine hotline which was a perk of training with MTT. They were supposed to give MTT participants priority appointments. I managed to get into pretty quickly to see an NP at the VCU Sports Medicine clinic. She gave me a thorough exam and wrote me a prescription for physical therapy. I spent the next day trying to get in somewhere and finally landed at Richmond Physical Therapy near Willow Lawn shopping center which was not too far from my house. 

Richmond Physical Therapy (RPT) was great. The entire staff was pleasant, supportive, and knowledgeable. Mary Beth took good care of me and put me on the road to recovery. At this point, my marathon plans were on hold as I worked through the exercises, trying to heal and get stronger. 

Short video of my doing an exercise at RPT
https://www.facebook.com/richmondpt/videos/569002377185411/

While I was going to PT, I started to ride my bike some. Mary Beth said it would be fine to ride my trainer. So I would do some short rides before doing my exercises. Riding was not a problem for my hamstring so at least I had that going for me. 

I don't want to get into too many details but I do want to share this one tool that really played a bit part of my recovery. I call it the "Magic Ball". I put this ball under my hamstring while sitting at my desk at work or while driving my car. I can do active release as well as massage while multitasking. After a short session, my hamstring always feels better. 

The Magic Ball

I ended up being mostly out of commission for two weeks. I ran two of the long taper runs with Team Limes. I took it easy, took a few walk breaks, and mostly held it together. After my two taper runs, I decided I would go ahead and try the marathon but with adjusted goals. I knew it would be a bit of a struggle but I thought if I took it easy, I might be able to run around 4 hours. So that was the plan. I would try to run 9 minute miles and just hope that I did not blow up. There was always the possibility I would have to pull myself out of the race at some point so I went in to the race with that notion in the back of my mind. 

Next up will be my actual race report. I know, the suspense is killing you. Did I survive? Did I finish? Did my hamstring act up? What was the race swag like? Did I swear off running forever?