2015 Running Report

Situation: You're 6.02 miles short of a nice round number of total miles for the year, and it's December 30th. The weather forecast for the 30th is 27 degrees, windchill of 23 with light snow. The 31st calls for 21 degrees with a wind chill of 11. Do you:

A) Run 6.1 miles on the 30th.
B) Run 6.1 miles on the 31st.
C) Run a total of 6.1 miles between those 2 days.
D) Find access to a treadmill somewhere.
E) Give up and end the year 6 miles short of a nice round number.


Correct answer:
Option A. I don't know if I'll go running on the 31st or not - I've got some new cold weather gear I want to try out that should come in the mail today, but also, it'll be cold. But whether I run or not, it won't make much difference to the year end running summary post, which is what this is, if you haven't figured that out yet.

There really isn't much to say. I didn't get injured, which is good, and let me run a lot after we escaped the polar vortexes early in the year. I'm happy that I managed 8 consecutive months over 70 miles to end the year. My previous best was 3 consecutive months over 70, and that was way back in 2010.

Miles: 800.1 (+198.9 over 2014) (Oh no! So close to a different nice round number.)
Runs: 150 (+31 over 2014)
Average Distance: 5.33 miles (+0.28)
Total Time: 101:32:19 (+22:22:45)
Average Pace: 7:37/mile (-0:17)

Races:
Moonlight (Half) Marathon. 1:57:14, 1st in age group
Prairie State (Half) Marathon. 1:30:59, 2nd in age group
The Turkey and the Fox. 4 miles, 24:52, 2nd in age group

Next Year:
My loose goal for next year is 900 miles on 175 runs, though seeing that I beat 2014 by 200 miles this year makes me wonder if that goal ought to be 1000 miles. I've tried setting monthly goals to add up to 900, and I'm struggling to see how I'm going to do it. There is a practical upper limit where I start to run out of time and days with decent weather - I'm not exaggerating when I say that over 99% of my miles are done outside. I don't have any hard and fast speed goals for next year. An official 5k under 20 minutes would be nice (my 4 mile race is a defacto PR of 19:16, is under 19 possible? My 3 fastest miles from that race were at a 19:05 pace . . .). A half marathon under 1:30 should be doable, as that's only 5 seconds per mile. And of course dealing with the pressure of a running buddy who thinks I can do a half in 1:25 and a full in 2:59. Keep telling him he's crazy.

3 races last year is a new record for me. It's hard to find races on Saturdays, and lots of races can get expensive in a hurry, so I try to keep them to a minimum. But, I've got my eye on a few races:
Sly Fox Half Marathon (prices go up on the 31st, so I really should decide soon)
Moonlight Half Marathon (this was a lot of fun, and would be even better if I can get friends to go along)
Prairie State Marathon (a very nice race. Friends will be doing it. I'm leaning towards doing the half again.)
Chicago Ragnar (I've always wanted to do a Ragnar, though I'd prefer one out in Utah where there is topography. People from church sound like they're going to put together a team, but boy are they expensive!)

A Major Award

Here's the free stuff from my last race, The Fox & the Turkey. I'm not going to say its a color I was looking to add to my wardrobe, but my medal came in the mail today, so I figured I'd throw a picture up. Shannon is super impressed when I wear these things around the house.

Christmas Ornament #12: Wise Guys

Each year, we add a Christmas ornament to our tree, and last year I covered the first eleven ornaments.

Many years, we pick something that seems to describe our year a little bit. It might be moving to new places, or new babies, or going on new adventures. This year: nothing. Same job, same address, same kids, same everything. About the only thing new is our tree - it's 50% taller than our old tree - and now we have room for all of our ornaments. So, in celebration, we added not 1 new ornament for the year, but three: The Wise Guys

The girls insisted on putting them as far apart from each other as possible on the tree ("they're playing hide and seek"). I guess they've split up to better search for the baby Jesus - no word on how they'll radio in their position if they do find him. My pictures are a bit fuzzy, but there they are. They are about 3 inches tall and just painted wood, but they're just classy enough (i.e. not classy at all) to be a good fit for our tree.

Oh, and I guess because I can, here's a picture of the tree:

The Fox & The Turkey

In a stunning development, I ran another race! Partly, this is a jest - what else do I blog about? - but partly, I'm serious. I run a fair bit (sounds like an upcoming blog post) but people generally think that I run more races than I do. (Three this year, after zero last year.) On Thanksgiving I ran The Fox & The Turkey in Batavia. It's close to home, and reasonably cheap, so why not? As an added bonus, I convinced my friend Wes to do it as well. (It's always better when you know someone is expecting you to show up, particularly when it might be cold.)

Training:
As required by law (Murphy's), I got sick the week before the race. I was all geared up for a really good race off some good training, but that all went out the window when the sore throat and headache moved in. I didn't run at all from 10 to 3 days before the race, and then got in 2 reasonable runs the week of the race. Based on my recent half marathon time (1:30:59), the internet thinks that I should be capable of 4 miles at 6:23/mi, which sounded crazy to me, particularly after a week of being sick. (This is actually revisionist history, I only checked this after the race, but the point is that . . . ) To me 6:40/mi seemed reasonable, so that was my goal. Really, anything under 27:00 minutes would be fine, though I was hoping closer to 26:30.

Race Day:
I drove down to the race, parked just across the river and walked over. Surprisingly, over 2000 people signed up for the race. I logged the temperature at 51 °F, with more wind that I would have liked (10-15mph). I didn't feel nearly as bouncy and energetic as I did before but the half marathon, but I did a half mile warm-up and went and found Wes. I think this was his second race ever (and longest!) so I gave him all my sound advice ("Run fast, but don't die.") before inserting myself into the growing mess of a starting line. 2000 people is a lot of people, and they all packed pretty tightly in, leaving little room for me to wriggle up to the start line. (Maybe once we achieve world peace we can work on the tougher problem of getting middle of the pack finishers off the starting line?) I managed to get about 5 rows off the starting line; any closer would have required me to start throwing elbows. We all stood there waiting for a few minutes when suddenly, and without any warning, a horn sounded and off we went.

Race!
I took off quickly from the starting line and started weaving through the traffic in front of me. I was concerned that with only 4 miles, getting off to a slow start doesn't leave much room to catch up later. There is a significant uphill right off the bat, and then everyone settled in with no one running more than 1 or 2 abreast. I was tempted to ask some people with their fancy watches how fast we were going, but I didn't. Then we hit the 1 mile mark at 6:04. Six minutes and four seconds. SIX OH FOUR!!!

I don't time myself on single miles. Occasionally on normal morning runs I'll make note of the time on my watch when I'm nearing home and then go back and see what my pace was at the end. About a year ago I did the final 0.84 miles of a 6 mile run at 6:19. (The first 5.25 miles were at a 7:57 pace, so that was very much a sprint at the end of a slow run.) That's the fastest timed distance of any sort in my log over the last 5 years and 497 runs. 6:04. That was not the intended pace, and no one ever suggests that you go out and run the first mile 30 seconds faster than you intended to. That is a very good way to have a very miserable last mile or two. (And this is why I included the earlier ahistorical bit about the calculated 6:23 pace.) But, once you've run that ridiculously fast mile, you can't undo it. You can only keep running. So, knowing full well that this might end badly, I kept going.

A few people passed me in the first mile or two, and I passed a few people. The course was mostly flat and through neighborhoods. Mile 2 came in at 6:10. Ok, I hadn't fallen apart completely yet. Nothing to do but keep running. Somewhere around the end of mile 3, I uttered my only words during the race when I passed someone I'd been running behind for quite some time and said, "this hurts". Because it did. I've heard short races described as being a test of how far you can retreat into your "pain cave". That is, if done right, it's going to hurt and the race is all about how well you can deal with that pain. I don't know if I did all that good a job, as mile 3 took 6:26.

Thankfully, the race wasn't any longer, because there is no way I would have been able to remember any more mile times. I'd banked up over a minute of time on my goal in the first two miles, so I knew I should be in the bag and anything else I could squeeze out was just an extra bonus. Keep running. The downhill back to the start/finish line was nice, though almost too steep to run effectively on such tired legs. The last mile came in at 6:12 for a total time (on my watch) of 24:52! Somehow, I smashed by best expectations by over a minute and a half. I guess that's what happens when you don't run a race shorter than a half marathon for two and a half years. The official results put me at 24:56 for both chip time and gun time, implying that I instantly crossed the starting line, which I didn't. (As I look through the results, I see that every single person I checked in the first 300 finishers has the same chip and gun time, which just can't be possible. All this is to say that my watch is probably more accurate than their official time.) I do take their word that I placed 30/2254 over all, 28/994 among males and 4/90 in my age group. Guys in my age group finished 1st and 3rd overall, so they should be ineligible for age group awards and there should be a 2nd place award somewhere with my name on it. (I didn't stick around long enough to see any awards given out after the race.)

Post Race:
I hung around to catch my breath, get some hot chocolate, see Wes finish and get some more hot chocolate. (In that order.) My post-sickness lungs felt pretty trashed, and then as the day went on my calves were sore. For at least 3 days they were sore - though interestingly not sore to run on. All-in-all it was a good race and a good day. (Any day that ends with pie is a good day, right?) Now some pictures. I'm very nicely giving a thumbs up to the camera every time. (Without even looking at the camera!) I guess I run with my left thumb up. Who knew?

Tell the Driver to have her home by lunch

While the girls ride the bus to school every day with all the other neighborhood kids, we have Ella brought home in her private 24 foot limo right to our curb at the end of her school day. Because that's how we roll. Just her and the driver, who makes sure she gets home for lunch. Lest you think I'm exaggerating, here's the proof:

 

Ok, maybe it's a school bus and not a limo, but since she is the only kid on the bus route, it's still a private ride home from school each day. She's one of only 4 half day kindergarteners at school and I guess she's the only one who rides the bus. (I hope there isn't a different bus just for one of the other three kids, though that does sound very much like something they would do in Illinois.) We'll finally concede to fork over the dough to send her full day once the new year begins; I guess we'll be putting someone out of a job, though, ironically, we'll be paying extra to do it.

Seeing only one kid on the bus when it pulls up reminds me a bit of the last day of my junior year in high school, when I was the only kid on the bus going to school that day. I wasn't totally shocked to be the only one waiting for the bus - there were usually only 5 or 6 of us anyway, but when I stepped on to the bus and saw all those empty seats it really sunk in how lame I was. Of course, I just had to remind myself that this was just the easiest way to meet up with my friends that morning so we could go hang out all day.

(For extra credit, you can speculate on whether the cost of busing one kid home each day is actually greater than the cost of sending that kid to the rest of the day of kindergarten. Yes, I know that only comes into play because she's the only one, but it still feels pretty ridiculous.)

I'm not moving

That's actually a pretty big announcement for us. At 2 years and 2 months, Shannon and I have hit a new record for the longest stay at a single address in the last 11 years. We don't have any plans to move, either, so this is really uncharted territory for us. As it turns out the total times I've moved in life isn't totally unusual. I'm never quite sure how to count the college years (Does moving home for the summer count? Moving back into the same apartment, but different bedroom, the next year? That week between the end of one contract and the start of the next one?) Nor do I know what to do with time as a missionary. (MTC? Each missionary apartment? But all my mail went to the same place for 22 months . . . ) So, my total number of residences could be anywhere from 12 to 17 (and counting residences and not moves eliminates the college/home issues).

But, until we moved to Illinois a couple of years ago, I had never lived on the Eastern side of a time zone. And let me tell you, it stinks! What is so different? The sun comes up way too early. Sunrise tomorrow is at 7:21am, and that is the latest sunrise of the year. (Thanks, daylight saving time!) In June, the sun comes up as early at 5:15. The downsides to all of this are several. First, young children wake up with the sun, regardless of what the clock says. (I had to unfortunately remind a very tired co-worker with two very young children that he would not be getting any extra sleep this weekend when the clocks change.) Second, I like to sleep in and stay up late (to a small, not-quite-Brian, degree), and it's nice when the sun matches that a little better. Third, the sun goes down so blasted early in the winter - 4:19pm at its earliest. Even leaving work at a very reasonable time still means driving home after sunset in December.

Finally, there is actually one time that I want to be up before sunrise: running is best just before sunrise. I don't know why, but it is. If you're going to be up before the sun, you might as well actually be outdoors to enjoy the sunrise. I run pretty regularly (121 times so far this year), and these last two weeks are about the only time that I am able to get myself out the door before the sun comes up. The only redeeming factor here is that these are also the two weeks where the leaves are at their peak, and I know just where to go running to see them. A few days ago I found some gorgeous leaves in the pre-dawn light, along with 3 deer. I don't run with a camera on me, but I did send Shannon out to go see for herself, and she took a few pictures, which everyone needs to appreciate. So, here you go. Maybe the best reason to run all year is so that when the planets align and you get to go running on a morning that looks like this, you are in good enough shape that you can enjoy it.

All Aboard the Calling Carousel

It's been about two years since I was called to be the choir accompanist in my ward, which made the 5th ward in a row where I held that calling. At the time, I estimated that I had accompanied 2,229 songs at church meetings over the years, which is a very conservative guess.

Well, for the first time in nearly a decade, I was released from playing for the choir without moving out of the ward. (I think they forgot to actually release me. But they called someone else, and that's what really counts.) Within a week or two of that release, I was also released from my other calling as EQ secretary.

Obviously, it was time to hit me up with some new callings. First, I was called to be the choir director. We'd been without one for a few months after the last one moved away. I wasn't thrilled. I'm still not thrilled. We finally had our first choir practice last week, and let me tell you, I was nervous. I would rather do nearly anything than lead the choir. I would rather speak in church every single week. I would rather teach any class. I would rather sit on the stand and conduct sacrament meeting. (The three hours at church as the bishop wouldn't be all that scary. The other 165 hours of the week as bishop are another matter entirely.)

A week or so later, I was called to teach the 12 and 13-year-old Sunday School class, which I think would be a lot of fun. What with General and Stake conferences, it was going to be a few weeks before I got to actually teach the class, but I was already looking up who was in the class and mulling over upcoming lessons.

Oh wait! Never mind! I got released from that calling last week. Yup, released from teaching a class that I never even got to teach. They offered me the customary "vote of thanks" on Sunday, though I'm not sure what anyone could be thanking me for. I never even got around to getting set apart for the calling.

And so, after a break that technically only lasted a couple of weeks, I'm back to twiddling my fingers at church, now as the Primary Pianist. So, that accompaniment total isn't going to stop going up any time soon. I'm reasonably excited for the calling. Primary can leave you feeling a little bit isolated from the ward, and I'm mostly hiding behind the piano (*ahem* electric device that looks like a real piano but most certainly isn't). But the kids (even my own) seem excited to have me there, perhaps based on me subbing as the primary chorister two times a few months back.

So, that's the story of getting 3 callings over the course of about 5 Sundays. Maybe I'll report back in a few weeks to let you know if they've moved me around again.

Prairie State Half Marathon Race Report

I generally try hard to not go on and on about running to non-runners who generally just don't care. Now is not one of those times. So, right up front, here's your tl;dr: I ran a half marathon, it was good.

For those of you who are still with me, here's more than you want to know. Just be glad that I'm not embedding any spreadsheets.

Training:
Training was good. I follow the official "run as often as you can get your rear end out of bed in the morning and as far as you feel like at a pace that won't kill you" plan. I got in about 90 miles per month for the last 3 or 4 months, which is as good as I could have expected. When Trent convinced me to run this race, We talked generally about trying to run it at a 7:30 pace (1:38:15), which didn't seem totally ludicrous. I did the Moonlight Half Marathon in May at about 8:35/mi, but that was at night, after a whole day of touristing, and there were hills. Oh, were there hills. Leading up to this race, based on training runs I was thinking that 7:20 would be doable (1:36:04). And then last Saturday I went out and ran 14 miles at 7:15 (1:35). I figured with other runners to chase, fans to cheer me and the excitement of a race, I should be good for even a little bit faster than that, so I set my target at somewhere in the 1:32 (7:01/mi) to 1:34 (7:10/mi) range. The plan was to go out at 7:10, pray that it went well, and then maybe push a little harder in the last few miles.

Pre-Race:
The race was in Libertyville which is about an hour away. My alarm was set for 5am, but I had trouble sleeping past 3:30. I finally got up, checked the weather a few more times and had my bagel and banana. 3 other guys that I know were also doing the race, so we all met at my house at 5:45am and drove up together. The parking lot is a few miles away from the start line so we parked and rode school buses over to the starting line. By the time we waited through the port-a-potty line there was just enough time to do a very quick warm up and head for the start line. I'm not even sure the warm-up was necessary, as I felt good and loose. I tried to wedge myself as close to the starting line as possible. There were about 1000 people doing the race (half and full started together) and I was probably behind about 100 of them.

First half:
I don't have a fancy watch that records all my mile intervals, so you won't have to suffer through that list. The start line was only about 10 feet wide, so it was a little bit congested to get through, but not too bad. I hadn't pushed forward enough and so was passing people pretty consistently for the first mile or two. I'm always interested to try to size people up at the starting line - do calf sleeves mean someone is really fast, or do they just spend too much on accessories? Is that guy in my age group? What about the guy in the Brazilian soccer jersey? (That's me.) Anyway, off we went. It was about 44° at the starting line and would rise to the low to mid 50s during the race. Pretty darn good weather for running. About a half mile in I caught up to Trent, who had apparently managed to slide in closer to the start line than I had. I checked with him that he was at a 7:17 pace and after a brief chat, I pushed on ahead to try and find 7:10. I didn't. I hit the first mile right at 7:00, and the second at about 13:57 or something. There were signs at each mile which lined up pretty well with all the beeps from other people's GPS watches. After the first two miles I had passed most of the people I was going to pass for the race.

We had a little group of 4 or 5 of us form for a mile or two, but for some reason, I ran away from them as I kept throwing down remarkably consistent 7 minute miles. Around mile 4 I hooked up with a guy who was doing the marathon and we ran together until the half marathon turn around point. I told him that I was about 30 seconds ahead of schedule. He said, "that's awesome" and I replied, "or ominous." (See, I'm still witty in the first third of the race.) I was 15 seconds per mile ahead of my best long run and 5 to 10 seconds per mile ahead of my goal - things like are either great news (you're faster than you thought!) or terrible news (you're going to die in the last few miles!). Having never attempted a run this far at this pace before, I was in uncharted territory here. At about the 5.5 mile mark, half marathoners started passing us on their way back. I counted that I was in 27th place. There was a timing mat at the 10k point (basically half way) which put me at 26th. I finished the first 10k at 6:56/mi (42:59.0, which is actually a 9 second PR at that distance!).

Second half:
I had a plan for the second half of the race: don't die. For the first half of the second half, there were lots of runners coming back the other way - I saw Trent 1 minute after I made the turn, and the rest of our group at later points. I continued to very slowly pick off runners in front of me, perhaps one per mile. It's a very slow process to reel in someone you can see one or two hundred yards in front of you over the course of several minutes. The race course was mostly on a crushed limestone path through fields and woods and vaguely along the Des Plaines River. There were some small ups and downs but nothing all that dramatic; it's a lovely course. Add in leaves that were just starting to change colors and the last wisps of fog from the night and it would have been a great trail to walk along and enjoy. Sadly, no enjoyment allowed during a race.

All of a sudden in the last 3 miles, it got very lonely. All of the slower runners had already passed, and at times I couldn't see anyone in front of me, or hear anyone behind me. In the last 3 miles, I passed 1 (maybe 2) people. In the entire second half no one passed me (I'm not sure that anyone passed me in the last 10 miles, actually). With everyone so spread out, it was a little hard to keep pushing toward the finish. Over the last mile or two I could see someone out in front of me, but I was closing on him so slowly that there was little hope of ever catching up. The race was nice enough to give us an uphill finish over the last 200 yards. There weren't tons of spectators at the end, but my personal cheering section was there with signs and pom-poms. I'd be curious to know what my last couple of miles were like time-wise, but we'll all have to live without knowing. I didn't even notice the official clock as I crossed the finish line. I stopped my watch at 1:31:03 - a full minute ahead of my best expectations.

Results:
My official time came in at 1:30:59.5 (6:57/mi). That put me 21/808 overall, 19/355 among the men and 3/35 in my age group. As the overall winner came from my age group, that left me with the second place award in the group. We were hanging out waiting for everyone in our group to finish, and not paying attention to the awards, so I missed hearing my name, but luckily I wandered over to see if by chance I had placed, and found my name on the list.

Overall I'm quite pleased with how the race went. As far as I was able to figure and remember, my splits were remarkably even (averaged 6:56/mi on the first half, and therefore 6:58/mi on the second half.) I think at this point I've written more than enough, so how about some pictures?

Yards per Play by Down and Distance

Let's get right in to the charts. Here's how well your average offense does on any given down and distance.

I've removed points that had fewer than 10 attempts. (1 attempt on 4th and 27 last year going for -10 yards probably really tell us anything about football in general.) First and 1 is really tough! But think about how you get first and 1 - you're probably on the 1 yard line - and those goal line plunges tend to lose yardage on average. If one team loses 3 yards on first and 1 and two teams score touchdowns, that still comes out to -0.33 yards per play. Similar logic applies for the other 1st and short distances. 2nd and 3rd downs are pretty consistent, so if teams are throwing deep on 2nd and 2, they aren't connecting often enough to make an impact on the average.

And to wrap up (I hope) this general topic, here are some box plots. In these, the box spans the 25th to 75th percentile of outcomes for passes and rushes for each down and distance. The line across the box is the median, the crosshairs are the mean. I don't know that these provide any particular insight, but I took the time to make the plots, so I might as well post them, dang it! (You can click on them to enlarge them.)