I’m running again. Last year I tried it – June in anticipation of the Peachtree. Fail – by the second week fo July I had stopped. Then in March of this year everything changed. The Pandemic was beginning, I started eating. Too much. I let it get in my head and it was bad. In April 2020 I tried running, lasted 2 weeks and then, fail – down for the count for 2 weeks, more eating and depression. Then something clicked.
On May 19 I went for a 3 mile run. It took me 33 minutes at 10:41 pace. My heartbeat 159 times per minute on average. My Garmin watch told me I was running a tempo run – too fast for an average run. Not anywhere near what I wanted to run a 5K race at. I was sad and disappointed. My body was weak and the 180lbs I had in mass was pounding on my joints. Still – I thought this is how it begins. I do that sometimes – play an epic soundtrack in my head, try to make it dramatic – “And now it begins!” So I ran again the next day hard and fast – another 5K this time it took me 29:29 minutes or a 9:21 pace. My heart rate hit 162bpm average and peaked at 184bpm in the end.
This was bad. Looking at the chart I had hit 150bpm within the first two minutes just running up the hill out of our neighborhood (granted, its a bitch of a hill). If you drop this in Jack Daniel’s VDOT Running Calculator it would put me at 31.5, more on that later. It meant a long road ahead. Still, I didn’t listen and just kept running without a plan. At the same time I started to think differently about work, life and my frame of mind. I tried meditation – downloaded a few apps – needing to calm my mind. I couldn’t get there consistently. Work was getting really uncomfortable. NCR was hit hard at first but we regrouped and leadership made some hard decisions. I had to take a temporary salary reduction. I wasn’t selling enough already and deals stagnated. The pandemic and stay at home was in full lock down.
I took some time to hike, ran every day a bit too hard and still no weight loss and improvement. On June 10 I picked up my copy of Daniels’ Running Formula – a book I purchased about 6 years ago when Sophia (my daughter) was running CC in high school and they needed some help coaching. I was frustrated because another parent was pushing coach to follow the ancient Lydiard method – pushing super high milage training with nothing but obsession with statistics. I called my high school cross country coach – Earl Lauer who got the most out of me and asked him. It was amazing to talk to him after decades – after so many runners he remembered, offered his advice freely, still a wonderful person. He suggested Daniels Running Formula. I was familiar with Jack Daniels (not the bourbon – without the ‘s) and suggested it to the team. The other dad focused his daughter on high milage and a streak of running every day, I took the time with Sophia to help her balance with base, quality work and mechanics. It worked. She was amazing – not just the program, her commitment, her passion, her competitive spirit and how she knew the difference between real pain and lactate threshold – the pain runners thrive on.
So here I am in Mid June – finally running consistently for two weeks, trying to build a base. I did some hiking and running on and off. I took the Daniels formula seriously. I told myself to slow down and earn the right to run fast. I forced myself to follow the 5K program. This required 4 to 6 weeks of phase 1 base running. I started at 30 minute easy runs and increased this only when it was time. Still I was running too hard and injured myself – my Achilles felt like a spring loaded pen that stopped working. So I stopped for two weeks. And I missed it. The first week of July I woke up one morning and said – something has to change. I had lost a little weight – was down to 175 but that still sucked. It still hurt to run.
Stephanie to the rescue. She had been going to a personal trainer and was also taking an interest in fixing the impact this stay at home pandemic was having on our heads, hearts and health. She started a metabolic reset diet challenge with the trainer and I decided to join her. It was not much different than the Whole30 you hear about from time to time – cutting carbs, removing potential inflammatory foods like dairy. So I did it with her – 30 days of really uncomfortable elimination of comfort foods. It worked.
I lost 10 pounds in 30 days – making it a total of 15 pounds in 3 months. This created a circular positive effect – as the weight dropped I focused on running consistently. I signed up for the VdotO2 training website to make it real. By July 11 I was ready to log a VDOT challenge and figure out my VDOT level – 10K at 55:38 put me at a 35.3 which made me sad but gave me a goal. This meant that I had to run slow E runs at 10:37-11:49 – it felt like walking. I added dumbbell training 2-3 times a week. I stayed with it for the remainder of July and by August 1 I was ready to start phase 2
I ran a 5K hard, at race pace and clocked in at 23:56 putting my VDOT at 40.3 level 5. And I I began my program.