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The 53 x 400 Meter Nonrelay

Part 2 of My First Half-Marathon (Read Part 1: A Man Can Outrun a Horse in a Race)

Okay, so I’ve already gone over how my (probably irrational) contempt of horses is a motivator for me to run distance events with this non-distance running body. We ma…

Part 2 of My First Half-Marathon (Read Part 1: A Man Can Outrun a Horse in a Race | Read Part 3: Running my First Half Marathon)

Okay, so I’ve already gone over how my (probably irrational) contempt of horses is a motivator for me to run distance events with this non-distance running body. We may be ‘born to run’, but maybe 400 meters is enough running for some of us.

But I’m signed up for this half-marathon now. The money is paid. No turning back. Or walking.

Well, because I’m frequently not smart when it comes to my 40-year-old body, I began half-marathon training before googling ‘half-marathon training’. The sensible thing to me was that if I had to run a half-marathon, I should just start running as far as I could go. I had only two requirements of my training: 1) it couldn’t interfere with my semiweekly pick-up basketball schedule, and 2) it couldn’t injure me in a way that prevented me from playing basketball.

So my plan was simple. I put on my mocs, opened the door, and started running.

The first thing I learned was this: a half-marathon is actually a 13.1 mile race. There is something misleading about calling a 13.1 mile race a ‘half’ anything. I realized this at about mile six of my second official training run, which happened to be in Barcelona while I was traveling on business. I had a tentative goal of running 10 miles. My first official training run – and by official I mean I had paid my money – went for just under five miles two days prior. Apparently, my idea was just to increase my mileage geometrically.

Mile 4: Stones end at the Mediterranean in Barcelona

Mile 4: Stones end at the Mediterranean in Barcelona

So mile 6 . . . I can’t say there was anything really wrong with me. My feet hurt, running on all that wonderful Barcelona stone. My ankles hurt. And that is my one pertinent preexisting condition: I have bone spurs or something that start to bug me. I blame it on my old obesely padded running gear that I would occasionally use (this is years ago) for little two mile runs, but especially on a pair of very classy-looking Clarks I wore a few years ago. I was living in Dublin, Ireland at the time and did a fast cobblestone walk everyday to catch my morning commuter train to my factory job. Those walks were killing my ankles by the end of my trip.

(A couple years ago, after discovering minimalist footwear and re-discovering that I could run again, I went to my orthopedist to see if he could do something about my ankles. I thought maybe I had bone spurs caused by my poor choice in footwear; he could remove them, and with my new kicks they would not redevelop. We did an MRI (or maybe it was an X-ray) and he did find a bone spur on the inside of one ankle. But I had also complained of pain on the outside of both ankles. He then looked at my feet, said they looked flat (which stunned me and my wife, since my arches are twice the size of hers), and referred me to his “good friend” the podiatrist. It was too bad. This was the man who once cut me open like Christmas turkey to repair the torn labrum in my shoulder. Salvaged my basketball life. But the very last thing I wanted was specialized shoes to ‘correct’ me. Doomed our relationship. Later, I realized the pain on the outside of my ankles has mostly gone away in my Mocs.)

Where am I? Oh yes – Mile 6.

My feet hurt a bit. It’s about here that the tenor of the ankle pain gets a little screechy. It’s not excruciating or anything, but it’s a little more than annoying. And my brain is starting to bother me now. Psychological. Mathematical. Six miles is not even half of a half-marathon. And I’m already feeling abused. And it feels like I’ve been running for a long time. But it’s only six miles! Suddenly, I become preoccupied by my pace, which I can see on the Runmeter app on my iPhone.

10-minute miles. Times 13.1 miles. 132 minutes. Holy crap! That’s two hours and twelve minutes! Of running! Chariots of Fire is only 124 minutes.

For the next mile and a half I multiply the numbers together using different paces. Like: How fast do I have to run to finish in an hour? Finally, I can see my hotel a few blocks away and decide I should walk. You know, to ‘cool down’. But even walking hurts. The fundamental problem, I realize, is that the race is 13.1 miles long.

So I stopped calling it a half-marathon. It needed a more truthful name. The 84 x 400 meter non-relay. The two-hour run. Slow death. Or just the 13.1 miler.

Back in the States, after several more long (for me) runs of around 6-7 miles, and (finally, but brutally) a 10 miler, I looked up some training plans on the internet. (The baseline plan I’m using is Hal Higdon’s Half Marathon Training Program.) I was happy to discover that I’d been overdoing it. Not enough rest. Too many long runs per week. But I was unhappy to discover that basketball was explicitly listed as bad cross-training choice. Well, Body, that’s just too freakin’ bad.

Ahhh...Back in Oregon. Mud that I love.

Ahhh…Back in Oregon. Mud that I love.

I’ve been training now, officially, for about a month and I haven’t had any issues with the basketball-related injuries the training plans warn about. Maybe because I have a long history of playing consistently. To the contrary, the distance running has allowed me to run people into the ground on the court. My endurance is much higher than it had been, to the dismay of these other thirty and forty-somethings. (Though my shooting accuracy is still, alas, no cause for anyone’s concern. Except maybe my teammates.) And running in these minimalist shoes—if you’ve done it, you know it’s quite the calf work out. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to jump. All my quick-twitch muscles getting strangled in their sleep by all these creeping slow-twitch muscles. If anything, though, I’m going a smidge higher.

That’s right, not only is my half—er, I mean my 13.1 miler—not only is it not violating my two rules against interfering with my pickup game, it’s improved it! Now I just need to set some kind of pace goals for this race . . . and something to listen to that will last the whole race. Maybe the audiobook of War and Peace.


Note from Justin — the following is one in a series of posts from Jay Holavarri, who happens to be married to one of the Chief Elves at Soft Star Shoes. Jay is going to be writing a series of posts about training for a half marathon, culminating in a write-up of his race! Jay will, of course, be running the race in his minimalist footwear of choice — Soft Star Shoes. Join me in welcoming him to BirthdayShoes!

By Jay

I am a mechanical engineer by day and a silent Elf, er partner, in [url=http://www.softstarshoes.com]SoftStarShoes[/url]. I self-identify as a sprinter (and for us the sea change to minimalist footwear looks a lot like wearing your track shoes out on the trail) but I enjoy trail running with minimal shoes (or no shoes) even though I suck at distance running. I occasionally play basketball in minimalist shoes (and often with minimalist skill). I can be reached at the contact link on [url=http://www.softstarshoes.com]softstarshoes.com[/url].

6 replies on “The 53 x 400 Meter Nonrelay”

I LOVE SS!
I wear Dashes for road races & original RunAmoc for trails & poor road conditions.
What models do you wear & for what? 99% of my off time is spent in Grippy Roos.
My goal next summer is to do a half, or two. How far is your farthest race up to this point? Racing is odd, the support volunteers & refueling stations are awesome(if I could only have a few strategically placed on training runs, that would be great!) and other people make you run faster. But it’s also really claustrophobic and artificial. I run for fun normally. I still haven’t figured out why I race exactly;)

@JC- For pickup games I still wear regular basketball kicks. It’s mostly cowardice. I’m not worried about getting hurt, but I do worry a little that I wouldn’t be able to play the same way. I do practice in them regularly, and the main thing I don’t like is they are slippier than my normal shoes. (These are Dash’s that take on the court.) Doing a quick lateral move, like a cross-over, is where I really notice it. The second thing is that jumping (and landing) feels a lot different. I’d have to get used to it. On the positive side, I like my dribble and my balance better in the mocs. But first I’d need a grippier sole.

@Jamie- My Elfwife at SS feels your love!

I wear Dashes for my everyday shoe. That saddle shoe design makes it one of the most normal-looking minimal shoes you can get. (Unless you’re like my kid who gets them in all sparkle red.) My brown-and-tans go nice with casual business attire.

The Dash is my primary running shoe also. I have one of those unfortunate diamond-shape kind of feet with the big toe pointing in. (I still don’t know when this happened to me. Someone suggested high school track & field.) And my foot is wide, too. This makes fitting me difficult. The laces on the Dash take care of that problem.

I have a Dash pair with the trail sole and one with a street sole but a rock plate insert they are testing. I really like both of them. I use the trail sole if I think I need some extra grip.

I also have Moc3’s and I love ’em, especially on trails not covered with sharp rocks. Oh, they’re wonderful on the dirt and pine needle trails in Oregon! Ridiculously comfortable. But if I run up a hill in the Moc3’s, I run right out of them. It was funny the first few times …

So it’s pretty much the Dash for me all the time!

You said your wife’s horse is a “Thoroughbred” in your first post. Do you mean it is of the Thoroughbred breed? Or do you mean it’s bloodlines are pure? The photo looked a bit more like a Trakehner, but I don’t know anything about horses. I’m just goggling all of this.

I spent time researching humans racing against horses after reading “Born to Run.” The best horses from the best distance running breeds will constantly, though not inevitably, beat humans even in a long race. But, because they’ve been bred to specific purposes, the horse performance distribution is *vastly* broader then the human one. If you’re facing down an Arabian (the best distance breed from what I’ve read), you’re probably gonna get beat. But Trackehners are jumpers and Thoroughbred’s are sprinters so maybe you’ve got a good chance against them.

There’s also your wife’s distance racing skills to consider. Has she ever done that before? Is this a man-against-horse race where she’ll have veterinary supervision? If not on both counts, I can’t imagine she’ll be willing to push Snowy Ridge. As you say, a horse is a profoundly fragile critter. All that breeding again.

Anyhow, I’ll be following your posts with great interest. Good luck!

Crumjd:

Ridge is a Thoroughbred, capital T. He actually spent some time on the track. He should suck at distance as badly as I do. And you are right about the wide diversity of breeds — I mean, how good is a Clydesdale going to do in a 100 mile desert race? And within breeds, just like people, there is a great range of performance.

My take-away from BTR wasn’t that the best man would beat the best horse, but that the best man wouldn’t finish last against a field of horses. I think that’s remarkable.

If I trained such that I could actually complete a 50 or 100 miler, I think I’d beat Ridge. He’s the wrong breed (sprinter). He’s got the wrong temperament (kinda crazy). And he’s old and decrepit now. (Human’s age slower. Take that, Mr. Ed.)

And if my wife was the rider … Well, there’s no way — NO WAY — she’d last more than a few hours before telling me how stupid it was and quitting. 🙂

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