6/18 - 6/24

Tuesday  – PM – 6 miles: ~00:50

Legs were pretty wasted from yesterday still.  Pretty certain I didn’t eat or sleep enough following that run.  The eating part hit me pretty early on because all I wanted to do was find some food from mile one.  But eventually the legs shook out, and once I hit the dirt trails a mile out from home, I picked up the pace a little bit.  Was wearing the Newtons.  I’ve been running in them since January, and it’s finally looking like they might be near the end of their lives.  We’ll see how many more short distance road miles I can get out of them.  But managed not to get attacked by the blackbird by the Yahara River bridge.  That counts for something.

An aside: Started reading Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac today.  Found the following pretty true to how I consider things lately: “The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even to turn off the tap.  Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.”

Wednesday – PM – 4 miles, ~00:33

Geez.  What a surprisingly rough run.  My left knee just felt like it wanted to hyperextend to hell or something.  It kind of felt like that all day even at work.  So, I didn’t feel comfortable putting any speed on, even though I typically would have with a run this short.  I did some browsing through the workout catalog and found I’d managed to skip my hip abductor exercises for like a week and a half.  So, I did those after the run, and the knee is already feeling more secure.  Geez.  Those strength training exercises will come back to bite you if you skip them, apparently.  I’ll probably make sure I stick with those daily for the next week or so till I’m confident everything’s cool.  

But I got my Ultimate Direction AK Vest today.  Going to happily make use of that to more easily cash in on some midweek Arb runs after work.  The vest should allow me to stash the valuables that I’ve rather inconveniently been hiding in obscure pockets of my bike panniers while I ran.  No more!  And hopefully since this will allow me to carry my phone more easily on Arb runs, this log might see some photos from the trails!

I also found myself reading about hydration and hyponatremia today.  I recently found that during even relatively short runs (~8 miles) my feet and hands would swell so much that blistering toes were becoming a legit problem.  That’s when I started taking S!Caps during runs longer than 1.5 hours.  That seemed to work well for me.  So, I went back and did a log of my daily sodium intake and found that with my diet’s emphasis on vegetarian and unprocessed foods I consume about as much sodium as an elderly man with a heart problem (at least I presume), meaning the S!Caps kind of made sense for me given my absence of a sodium backlog.  But presumably, sodium tablets aren’t a hyponatremic necessity for most people on a typical western diet.  Anyways, it’s interesting.  Maybe I’ll take a look at the book at the focus of this discussion: Waterlogged.

Thursday – PM – ~6.5 miles: ~00:55

Rode to the Arb after work. It was a pretty hot day, but I seem to have acclimated to the heat well enough by now and wasn't feeling too bad. Plus I had my new vest on, which gave me two full bottles and all the snacks I wanted for a short 6 mile run. Upon pulling into the lot I typically start from, I discovered the pole behind some bushes I usually lock my bike to had been taken by some snazzy, much shinier looking bikes; the horror! Anyways, so I set out from the visitor's center, where there were bikes racks, for the first time ever. Pretty much all the trails that had been closed so far this year were finally open thanks to the rain finally stopping this week. I got so excited to run trails I haven't been on since last fall that I stupidly dove into the Greene Prairie with its super tall grass and mostly over grown paths and left itching like crazy. When I got home, I instantly jumped in the shower and scrubbed until those legs were clean.

But otherwise, a pretty great day of running at the Arb. The AK vest took some getting used to. I suspect I should have gone down to the S/M size, as all the straps on my M/L were pretty close to as tight as they'd go. For anyone interested in the vest, I'm like a 5'10", 155-160 lb. guy. But then I came across a huge group of runners running opposite of me. I was very surprised to see so many, but I think it was some training group. But they all looked like they were hurting and not enjoying much of their runs, which seemed scandalous on such a lovely day. I tried giving them some smiles and waves, but they were pretty much not having it. Started my bike ride to the Arb with blood sugar ~150 and ate a 14 g carb nut bar; had a GU during the run, and then finished my bike ride back home with blood sugar of 72 and a bowl of cheerios. Boom.

Friday - Monday - Off
Wedding planning, family time, and lot of thunderstorms ended up taking time out of running this weekend. Fortunately the training schedule was for an easy weekend, so it hopefully hasn't done too much damage. I'm considering it as a time off due to illness and know these minor breaks haven't negatively affected me in the past. Regardless, I've got a 50 mile week starting tomorrow and a softball game tonight.

View from inside the Greene Prairie looking onto the Grady Oak Savanna

A sweet painted turtle maybe the size of a foot

The carnival aspect of this video is pretty summer feels.

6/10 - 6/17

Monday – PM – Softball and bike

Got a bike ride to the softball field and subsequent softball game in. As a rest/cross-training day, this was fine. I then rode to the bar after the game and home. Something like 12 miles on the bike. Had a decent game in spite of being defeated again to continue our winless record. We also lost at bar trivia. Meh.

Tuesday – PM – 7 miles: 00:56

On the road in the Newtons. Blood sugar was in the low 200s when I started due to overcorrecting an earlier low, but I safety-pinned a GU to the inside of my shorts just in case. Went without a bottle figuring I could stop at water fountains around town. For the most part, it wasn't a very interesting run. Quads were either sore from the weekend still or from some softball exertion from yesterday. I tried keeping my pace easy by forcing myself to breathe calmly only through my nose. That worked until at mile 4 my path intersected with a bro of this variety:

His pace was close to mine, so I felt it my duty to speed up and pass him. That turned my casual 8:05 pace into a 7:30 pace for the first time in like two months. Eventually I heard him behind breathing insanely hard trying to keep up. So, that turned the 7:30 pace into a 7:00 pace seeing if he'd keep coming. He did. Eventually he stopped somewhere and was gone. But I felt pretty good about the moment, especially just to run fast again. Training for an ultra kind of eliminates the need for that and increases injury risk, so I usually don't. But I circled back towards home, ran on the dirt paths around the lake to come in right at an 8:00 pace for the whole run. Blood sugar was 72 when I got home, so I downed a few gulps of Coke. The plantar fascias weren't happy, in addition to the already unhappy quads, so I fought with a foam roller before bed.

Wednesday - Off

Keeping with the string of recent storms on Wednesdays, a crazy lightning storm came up in the evening and delayed my plan to do 5 miles.  Moved to a later day.

Thursday - PM - 7 miles: 1:01

Rode bike to the Arboretum after work.  Mosquitos are still pretty bad.  Other than new mud everywhere from Wednesday night’s rain, not too spectacular.  Saw the cranes for the first time.  Ran in my New Balance MT110 ES's

Friday - AM - 5 miles: 00:40

A little over twelve hours after my previous run.  I was a little tired, a little dehydrated, and a little hungry.  Decided not to push it given I knew that I had a heavy run this weekend. Was building some foot strength with my NB MR00's.

Saturday - PM - 5 miles: 00:39

Another mostly unremarkable run.  Similar to Tuesday, I found myself running with someone else at nearly the same pace.  This time it wasn’t a bro, but rather a tall lady who had pretty solid biomechanics.  After about a mile of accidentally running together, I decided I was feeling awkward given the fact that we were like 5 feet away from each other and not talking.  So, I sped up to a 7:30 pace for a mile-ish.  She didn’t fall for the trick, but did ultimately keep up to a degree until I turned towards home.  I should find people to run with more often...intentionally.

Sunday - Off

Was planning to wake up and do my 22 miles at the Arb, but my blood sugar was high, and after eating breakfast, it went higher.  I changed out my infusion site and got it down, but by then it was 4 pm, and if I were to head to the Arb, it’d be dark by the time I finished the run.  So, I opted for a dawn run the following morning.  That itself was almost wrecked when I checked my blood sugar before bed to discover my blood sugar was 400!  Knowing I had not consumed in anyway enough carbs to constitute that blood sugar, I figured I had, yet again, another bad infusion site.  So, I switched that out again and got my blood sugar down to 125 before going to sleep.  Geez.

Monday - AM - 22 miles-ish:  ~3:20

Laced up my glued together NB MT110 AK's.The GPS was all over the place this morning (off by a third of a mile in the first two miles).  I accidentally turned it off for at least a mile.  So, while the GPS says I only ran 20 miles, I’m calling shenanigans and calling it 22.  But made it to the Arb by a little after 6.  Set up the car as an aid station and got running.  At mile 3 in the Noe Woods, I ran into two white-tail does.  Obviously there were turkeys all over the place in the Leopold Pines and around the Greene Prairie.  They were cool with me today, though I did see one sporting all of its tail feathers from a distance while another darted towards him (her?).  I didn’t see the cranes today, unfortunately, but the Arb’s facebook page posted a video of them:

And then in the Teal Wetlands, I spotted a majestic as fuck turtle.  I stopped and admired him for a bit.  And then I ran off.  Otherwise, it was super muddy, and after a few trips down the wrong trails in the first 7 miles, I figured out what trails to hang around to avoid losing my shoes in the mud. Regardless, my shoes and legs were pretty mud-caked by the end of the day.

Nutrition and diabetes wise, I started off with my blood sugar ~250.  I didn’t bother with a correction bolus because I was still carrying around insulin from my oatmeal breakfast, but did go with a 50% basal rate for the day.  Not doing a correction bolus turned out to be a good idea, as I was bonking by mile 3.  Ate two GU’s in rapid succession and made it back to the car at mile 8 after refilling my bottle midway through that section.  Blood sugar was ~110.  Ate a Larabar, gave myself 0.5 units and an S!Cap and headed back out.  Ate another GU, finished a bottle and a half, gave myself 1.0 units, made it back to the car at mile 17.25.  Blood sugar was 106.  Ate a banana and S!Cap, ran off, felt a bonk coming on and had a GU.  The legs were starting to feel shaky, and I was beginning to hallucinate logs as animals.  This was when I accidentally turned off my GPS and didn’t turn it back on for a while.  Eventually, I opted to just run back home and call it a day at mile 20 according to the GPS given my legs felt like 22 miles had happened.  Blood sugar was 156.  Turned my basal back to full and had some chocolate milk when I got home.

Monday - PM - Bike and Softball

Pretty good game. I can't throw the ball accurately from 3rd to 1st, but otherwise, it was a fun game. Now I can finally sleep.

Cumulative running: ~46 miles, ~7 hours

A Not-Quite-Valient Return

This is meant to serve as some resurrection of this blog. I managed to let it fall by the wayside once I got injured a bit over a year ago. I don't know if this means it will stay this time. But I do know that in the intervening year, I've developed as a runner, vegetarian, and diabetic. That doesn't necessarily make any of this more fun to read, but we'll see how it goes.

My plan is to begin updating once a week with summaries of my previous training week. I'm not even going to speculate whether that will be interesting in any way. But hopefully, it will include some photos here and there from the many hours I spend running and maybe some other interesting items.

But I guess I should begin with where I've been in the past year and kind of reintroduce myself.

I'm Nick. Of interest to this blog, I've been a type 1 diabetic since the age of 10. Since that diagnosis, I grew up. I started running distance events in track in middle school and briefly into high school. There was a brief spell of football in the mix, followed by several years of sedentary laziness until I graduated high school, at which point I discovered road cycling. I rarely raced, except for a wildly mediocre stint in college, but did complete a coast-to-coast ride the summer after I graduated college. After college, where I earned a physics degree, I moved to Madison, WI, in order to obtain advanced degrees in astronomy, where I am now as a Ph.D. candidate. While I've been here, I've discovered bicycle commuting and the bicycle as a tool for travel. Coincident with this, I've begun to eschew the racing culture of bicycles I so wholeheartedly embraced in college. A byproduct of this shift away from cycling as a sport was taking up running as a sport again – the first sport I really cared about.

I don't run on the track anymore, though. I tried running on roads for a while but found it disagreeable for a variety of reasons. That's when I discovered trail running. It fit much more easily into what I want to achieve with my running, which isn't a whole lot specifically. But it allows me to run in the absence of cars, on surfaces soft enough that my body can handle heavy mileage, and to just enjoy the aesthetic nature of the experience.

As I've done this, I've developed a set of rules for running that work extremely well for me. But I've also learned that much of running and what works for you is an experiment of one. Rarely, do I expect what works for me to work for others. But I've taken a lot of others' advice to develop the rules that work for me. If this works like it actually should, those rules should become evident over time.

Now, for the pressing concern of the immediate future, I should explain that with my failed attempt to complete a marathon a year (see every previous post), I took a month or two off from running, traveled around the world a bit, and slowly built my body back up which resulted in my shift to trail running. Granted, I still run a fair amount of mileage on the road, but I try to limit that to runs less than 8-ish miles, as I've found my body just doesn't handle the repetitive stresses of the road well.

But as I built my body back up, it got stronger, and I like to think I did it in a smarter way than previously. And at some I got faster. That culminated in a top 10 performance in a small (heavy emphasis on the small) 10K trail race last fall. Then, I decided to just start running longer and longer on the trails, just to see how far I could run. After a base building period in the (very long) winter, I started beefing up my mileage to where I'm all of a sudden running 40-50 miles a week with long runs regularly coming in at the 20 mile range.

And now I've decided to skip the marathon thing and go straight to a 50 mile ultra. This is usually met with incredulity. But it's happening. And my immediately forthcoming training summaries will center on building for that race in the fall. We'll see how it goes and see if I manage to develop a style. I find it highly unlikely, but someone other than my fiancé should probably have to put up this. At least you have the option to read or not. I don't really expect you to though.