Running Times, Online

Monday AM 4 plus from Hotel and around Treptower park, 27:00, tot. 4+

10:30AM 30 minute deep tissue massage followed by 15min ice bath

5PM 4 plus from hotel and around Treptower park, 29:37 tot. 4+

XT stretching

Tuesday AM at Lichterfelde Staduim (official practice track), solid breeze but cool out, 3 warm up, 22:17, around practice fields near track, light drills, strides, 5k on track at goal mp- 15:59.3- bit too fast most likely but felt good other than a little heartburn, 2 mile cool down, 14:21 tot. 9

XT stretching, light drills

Wednesday Noon 44:32 from hotel around Treptower Park, tot.6+

XT stretch

Thursday Noon 40:30 from hotel aroud Treptower Park, stopped for strides at 32 minutes, rolled ankle pretty good. tot. 6

XT stretch, iced ankle for 10 minutes every hour till bed time, slept with ankle wrapped.

Friday 2PM with Dan Browne, 25 minutes easy, drills after tot. 4-

XT stretch, full drills

Saturday Race World championships marathon,  2 mile warm up some light drills and strides, hammy started to bother after 10k, couldn’t force it under 3:20 a K after 15K, fitness failed after 30k or so, horrible race 2:32, 63rd place.  tot. 28++

PM took ice bath

Sunday AM Home from Berlin, dump clean clothes and grab some clean ones, then drive to Camp Foss running camp in NH.

PM 3 shakeout with Melissa at Foss, 26:11 tot. 3

Summary 64 miles for week, one workout, 1 race.  Very very frustrated about the hamstring.  I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do.  Thanks to everyone who put up suggestions on the comments section of the last blog.  Unfortunatley I have either been cleared of all those diagnoses or tried all the treatments mentioned.  For anyone else with ideas feel free to post them, a lot of the treatments I have tried started with suggestions on the blog or from people I’d never met.   But to be clear it isn’t a pain issue, there is no pain, it is a loss of coordination and  control.  It seems to start with the hamstring or hip area but it affects the whole upper leg, a few times the lower leg.  Time off has been a disaster for it, it gets much much worse.  It only happens at HMP to about 5:40 mile pace, though this past winter it was going on long runs at much slower paces.  At times I have been unable to run more then 2 miles at marathon pace but I was able even then to run 10k at faster (race pace) paces without problems.  Very odd I know.  I have seen literally dozens of people, had a few promise they could fix it but other than it getting better when it isn’t bothered, i.e., when I don’t do any runs/workouts that cause it to go, it doesn’t seem to get better and as soon as I try a marathon workout etc.. it starts back up.  Though with the stretching I have been doing I do feel like it has improved, this winter it was useless, and I was able to do some marathon type workouts, though not the kind I want to do, and after how this race went believe I need to do in order to run well.  IE reps at marathon pace with a fast jog rest(only 20 seconds per mile slower then mp) and special blocks etc..

Monday 27mins aqua jog

Tuesday 5 at Foss shakeout, 42 mins, strides after

Wednesday 30mins aqua jog

Thursday 4 miles very slow, 40mins plus, with St. Charles Orphanage kids, tot. 4

Friday off

Saturday 5 shakeout in a cold rain with a couple of Camp Foss Campers, fun run tot. 5

Sunday off, but did a bunch of stretching

Summary 15 miles for week, some aqua jogging.  I won’t do much more this week, basically 5 and strides every other day, probably 10 on Sunday.  So it will be a pretty boring blog next week.  Then I’ll start back training.  I’m sorry for not replying to all the posts on my last blog, I was so far behind it was going to take forever.  I’ll get back on the response train this week.  I did respond to the idiot (s) with the PED accusations, in short, no I do not, nor have I ever cheated.

Quotes of the Weeks “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Teddy Roosevelt

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out where the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who knew niether victory or defeat.”  TR -again

Nate

Well, training and everything has been going great the rest of the week. I ran almost 94 miles, which is the most for me, ever! I feel good and no problems so I feel excited and ready to tackle another week of hard training and pushing my pain threshold. I had a workout yesterday and it went really well. Going into it I was a little nervous about how I would feel after the long run/climb on Wednesday and the mileage, yet I did great and felt fantastic. It was a 4×2 mile workout on the roads with 2 min rest. I ran 11:05, 10:58, 10:49, and 10:45. I felt strong and in control and very happy afterward to have it over with.

I tried GU Brew Recovery drink in Watermelon-Strawberry recently and it is sooo good! If you have never tried it I highly recommend it. It has some protein too, which is great because I am a vegetarian and I definitely have to get protein from various sources and after a workout I believe it’s crucial. When I am not at my apartment immediately after a run to make my protein shake, having the GU Brew is perfect. My favorite candy used to be Starburst yet I stopped eating them years ago due to the hydrogenated oil that’s in them. This flavor tastes just like a strawberry Starburst so it’s great! haha Now hopefully they will make it a flavor in their GU gels, which are the best in the world! Vanilla Bean and Chocolate Mint are delicious. Their GU Chomps are amazing as well. I eat them before every single race…Strawberry and Cranberry Apple are my favorite. I’m working on practicing with GU Electrolyte drink mix for Twin Cities in my special fluid bottles. So far so great with that! Great flavors and the perfect amount of sodium as well. Fuel Belt makes perfect little 8 or 10 oz. bottles to put just enough fluid in and attach a gel if needed.

I had an easier day of training today and just finished an ice bath so I am feeling ready and pumped for another week of working hard. A friend of mine raced in the Louisville Ironman race today and I tracked his race online all day. He is incredibly positive not only about his own training day in and day out, yet also supports me and my dreams wholeheartedly. He definitely inspires me to make every single day of training count and to make it valuable. Rather than look way down the road in my running career or worry about the end result and where things will end up, he has taught me to focus on TODAY and preparing for the next goal, not the next 5 or 10. So here’s to my friend Steve who raced AWESOME today, and another week of Brad’s boot camp!!

So I have been doing a great core and total body strength training routine consistently for about a year and a half. I usually do it every other day and before races taper off of it a few days out. The routine mostly consists of Pilates type strengthening, lunges, calf raises and lots of stuff with my exercise ball. I know it keeps me structurally strong and I notice a difference if I haven’t done it in a week or two and I start again; I feel sore in certain areas.

After some research and watching some videos on strength training that my massage therapist gave me, I had come up with a whopping 60 additional exercises I wanted to add in!!! I realized trying to do all of them in one day would probably take me about 4 hours. No thank you! I divided them up and now I’ll do about 10 per day, making my regular full strength training days a tad bit longer. Today was one of those days…

I bought a few at-home pieces of equipment to add to what I already use. I loved going to LA Fitness back in Arizona yet we don’t have one here in Eugene so I do my stuff at home. It’s great though..I get to choose my own music and don’t have to worry about someone using my equipment for 30 minutes when I need it! ha One thing I bought is a pull-up bar. Now, typically I am not a big pull-up person…yet when challenged to see how many I can do, I can at least manage 2-3 before collapsing. Today I did 4.5 and I was so happy!! My goal in the next month is to get up to 10! We’ll see if I can do it.

After my strength training session today lasted about an hour and a half I was spent. I laid on the floor and it actually felt fantastic to be breathing hard and feeling like my arms and legs were made of jell-o. I really considered myself to be a strong female athlete yet today showed me there is always something harder to try and do! Two runs and two other workouts today truly make me feel like a professional athlete! It’s 6:15 pm and I think I could go to bed now I’m absolutely loving this. The feeling of being ridiculously exhausted and doing new things I’ve never done before is exactly what I want right now. 5 weeks from right now I will be arriving at my hotel in St. Paul and all this work will be so worth it

As I sit here and write my first blog I can barely even sit comfortably.  My hips, glutes and hamstrings are really achy and definitely in need of some rest.  I have less than 6 weeks until my fall marathon on October 4th, Twin Cities, in Minnesota.  As my coach called it “boot camp”, I truly feel the pain and the hard work already..and it’s only day 3! I believe that to get to the next level in the marathon I have to do things I have never done before.  Training with Brad Hudson truly pushes me to so many levels I hadn’t thought possible.     My long run this morning went very well, yet I came close to stopping and crying and screaming all at once, haha.  Brad had me start a fartlek of 15×1 min on, 1 min off at an hour twenty into the run.  I probably ran the first 11+ miles too fast and my hips/glutes already hurt before the fartlek.  At 1 hour 50 I met up with Brad for the last 40 minutes of the run.  He follows me in his car with my fluids and gels UP fox hollow. When I say UP, I mean a climb that tests every possible strength you thought you had, both mentally and physically.  There are very little flat areas and most of the uphill is steep! It was the first time in my life I debated stopping in a workout and telling Brad “I can’t finish this”.  I have done this climb twice in the past two weeks yet with the fartlek and fast pace at the beginning of the run, I almost gave myself an anxiety attack the first mile or two because my hips/glutes were in so much pain.  Luckilly I stayed tough and finished.

A little over 22 miles averaging 6:50 and the last 40 min uphill..makes me feel happy but not until much later after the workout is over and maybe tomorrow when my hips aren’t screaming at me.  This whole hip/glute pain is likely due to my strength training yesterday when I incorporated new stuff and added some weights to the hip/glute exercises.  However I am pretty sure this climb up Fox Hollow would make anyone’s body scream in pain!  I know when I toe the line on October 4th I will likely have the strongest hips and booty out there! haha

My entire running career I have been a lower mileage runner, even before my marathons, topping out at about 3-4 weeks of 80-83 miles.  I have already surpassed that a couple weeks ago and this week likely will hit mid 90’s.  I hope I survive.  For now, this whole boot camp just needs to be taken one day at a time.  It makes me extremely happy to know I am truly working harder than I EVER have in my life.  Improvement in my marathon time will be a guarantee

The last couple weeks I have been staying close to home and been having a great time enjoying the local racing scene.

I ran the Bluemont 5K on a Tuesday night after work and Jennifer and the boys came to run it too. It was terrific. We all got to participate and race less than a mile from our home and we couldn’t have had more fun as it was a really low key but well-run event.

It was one of those no frills types of things that just makes me happy all over as a runner. Someone draws a line on the ground, sets up a cone, and says “go”. I love these type of events, they really connect you with the community and allow you to interact with all different kinds of people.

The next race I did was the Health Focus of Southwest Virginia Salem Distance Classic 10K in Salem, VA.

I have been involved in the Health Focus of Southwest Virginia Salem Distance Classic for more than four years and each year I enjoy the experience more than the year before. It is such an honor and privilege to have the Salem community accept me into the fold and support me the way the do.

I am so blessed and lucky to get to compete all over the country and world the last few years and each time I go back to Salem the people there tell me how they followed me in such and such a race and how it was interesting to them and I just love that sense of belonging that they embrace me with and I hope to be a part of their lives for years to come.

After the race in Salem, I ran the Leesburg 20K another home grown and feel good race. This is one of those races where everyone brings their dogs and kids and it is simple course you run out, turn around and run back. I enjoyed seeing all the local Metro DC runners on the W&OD [Washington & Old Dominion] trail where the race was held and it made me so happy to be a part of the event as I was able to cheer for them and they were able to cheer for me on the way back.

Finally, this past weekend I ran the NYC ½ marathon and the New York Road Runners did a fantastic job to bring in some big names like Ryan Hall, Paula Radcliff, Deena Kastor and others to mix it up in NYC.

I ended up 25th overall and had the distinct pleasure of being the first guy to get passed by a woman as Paula Radcliffe passed me in the last 400 meters, you can watch her catch and pass me here at around 1:07:20 if you like: http://www.nyrr.org/nychalf_live/

It was super cool to get to compete with all those big name athletes and made me hungry to keep pushing to get faster and stronger.

All is well here and my next longer race is the local Endurance Challenge by The North Face.

Hope all is well on your ends and you have been enjoying the World Championships. I thought I was going to get to see the 10K last night but they (Versus) tricked me as they only were showing the shorter events, which were still exciting but I like the longer stuff a little more; however, the steeplechase was really interesting, seems like a fun event.

Take care and hope your running is going well.

Best Regards,
Michael Wardian