Some Motivation Required

Tip for running long during the summer: For 9 miles or longer on a warm day, I’ve taken to sometimes stopping for a brief break a little after half way at some random convenience store and having an ice cream bar.

Picks you right the hell up, cools you off and it’s tastier than energy gels.

Scott Jurek runs 165.70 miles in 24 hours. New US Road & All Surface record. No American has run further in 24 hours! Takes Silver Medal at 2010 24-Hour World Championships and Leads US Men to Bronze.

Pretty amazing stuff, and huge congrats to Jurek, but this caught my eye in the article and really stood out:

On paper, Arbona and McCarthy were in over their heads, but they hung on heroically during the final 12 hours to keep the Yanks in the team medals. When they needed reinforcements, up from the middle of the pack came Michael Henze, who only a few years ago was a 300lb. non-runner. The Americans lost the team silver medal to the Italians in the final 15 minutes, but Henze’s late charge (from 30th to 12th place) and Arbona’s pure grit saved the bronze. It was the first time in history three U.S. men had run over 150 miles in the same race.

I did a little bit of googling on the guy and found the page for the World Championship 24 Hour Run USA Team:

Michael Henze, 40, Neenah, WI. Henze is the Plant Controller for a packing company, and is relatively new to ultrarunning. He once weighed over 300 pounds before taking up running and dropping over athird of his body weight. Since taking up long distances he has never finished worse than second in an ultramarathon race. In June, 2009, he won and broke the course record at the FANS 24-Hour with 147.41 miles.

Holy.  Shit.  And people have the gall to tell me I’m pushing sanity with my change.  Yet more reason for me to keep pushing to marathon distances and beyond, if only for the eventual possibility to meet this guy and have a few minutes to talk to him and trade stories.  To be clear, this guy went from being over 300 pounds some time in his late 30’s (I started last year at 288 at age 26) as a non runner to running 147.41 miles at a 9:46/mile pace over the course of a few years.

A little over a year from where I started, I have trouble breaking that average for an 8.5 mile run on a really good day.

I can see I have my work cut out for me.

13.5 miles, 2 hours, 35 minutes, last long run before my first official half marathon next week.  The sick part is, that run actually felt almost leisurely.  I think something’s broken in my head.

Also, WTF sight of today’s run, passed a Hybrid left idling, with no driver in it or in sight.  Chew on that little environmental irony for a while.

During my run today, I was trucking it pretty hard up one of the final hills back to my apartment, when I looked to my left, and saw a biker struggling to keep pace with me.

After a block or two of both of us absolutely unloading into the hill, I turned and called out to her, “Come on, keep it up, you can’t let a runner beat you to the top of that hill!”

She laughed and called back, “I was thinking the exact same thing!”

I ended up beating her to the top by a block and a half.

In my last post, I mentioned ice massage, but didn’t really go into a lot of details about it.  Ice massage was first suggested to me by my mom, who’s a wicked awesome runner in her own class and a teacher of Chi Running.  She gives wicked awesome advice, as she was running marathons before I could walk, and still runs trail ultramarathons in her late 50’s.  So we’d all do well to listen up.

All you need for ice massage is a pack of 3oz paper cups and some space in your freezer.

Fill a few of these bad boys up with water and line them up on a shelf in your freezer for future use:

Later on, go out running, or whatever you do that ends up in sore muscles in need of some icing and some work afterward.  After your post workout stretch (don’t static stretch cold, bad times), pull one of these out freezer, peeling back most of the paper:

There will be some paper left stuck to the ice cube, providing an anchor for a handle so that you don’t freeze your fingertips.  Elevate foot and work the edge of that ice into tight/inflamed muscles and tendons.  Keep a towel handy if you want to keep your couch dry.

Do this a few times over 10-15 minute sessions, letting the skin return to room temperature before repeating.  This is good for post workout therapy, but don’t do it on chronic injuries before a workout.  During a workout, you want good blood flow and warm muscles, workout out cold/constricted muscles can lead to nasty things like tears.

Also don’t forget to listen to your body and if you see signs of frostbite, take the ice OFF.

A guy and his buddy running at a good clip, with the guy running with a full sized keg over his shoulder and his buddy timing him with a stopwatch.  From what I could overhear, he’d been running like that for an hour.

And people call me crazy.