Loggerheads

Lager Heads is the appropriate name of a brewery / barbecue restaurant that is halfway through my eleven-mile country roads course. 

Loggerheads means to strongly disagree with someone or some group, as in, they are at loggerheads.

Loggerhead means being a blockhead or a type of sea turtle.

It's a little after six, the sun is just beginning to rise, and I'm running by Lager Heads. You could say that I'm also at loggerheads with myself, between the self that tells me that I ought to be able to run faster and better and my other self. My other self is more practical, however. That self understands that I just ran a half-marathon two days ago, and followed that up with the hilly nine-mile run at Hinckley yesterday. That self cuts me some slack.

Finally, I'm running about as fast as a turtle. As true as this statement may be, it's a little bit of a stretch to try to bring in the final meaning of the word, loggerhead. Unless you wanted to also call me a blockhead. That's not a stretch at all.

Today's run does go painfully slow, but I do manage to get through it on this beautiful and thankfully quiet Memorial Day.

2023 Medina Half Marathon Race Report

My tribe puts this race on, so I may be a tiny bit biased, but I think it's great. The 2023 Medina Half Marathon Race went off without a hitch, and it appeared that all my friends, everyone in fact, even including yours truly, had a wonderful time. Just how wonderful was my time, you ask?

Okay, I'll cut right to the chase: 1:57. That's pretty decent, especially considering last week's Cleveland Marathon. It wasn't until yesterday that I finally began feeling less sore and tired from that effort. Today's fine weather definitely helped, as did the fine volunteers and organizers (oops, there I go being biased once again). ((Also - I received a Major Award for winning my age group. It's a pretty cool piece of slate.))

This seems to be about where I was at late last summer, before the fall marathons. I think I'm on the upswing (again). Let's hope so.

Just the Half

Notice my use of the 'J' word. It's a required qualifier for any reference to such a distance. Don't ask me why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that if you wear the shirt that you just acquired for a race during that race, this makes you the nerdiest, most unsophisticated newbie runner ever. Or maybe it's the problem that if you're a man who gets beaten (in a race, that is) by a woman, it's fine, unless you're the first man, and you're beaten by a woman because in this case, you've been chicked. 

The just Half that I'm doing is tomorrow's Medina Half Marathon. Since the Cleveland Marathon (no qualifier here) is only five brief days in my past, this Half may be slightly more of a challenge than it would've otherwise been. Because of this, I'm not looking to set the world on fire. But a nice, solid effort would be nice.

Wouldn't it?

2023 Cleveland Marathon Race Report

"Did you hear about the controversy regarding the Cleveland Marathon," asks Debbie? She is watching the local news, and they've been talking about the 60+ turns at this year's Cleveland Marathon. I hadn't heard, but I had indeed noticed from the course map that there was a bunch.

The start at the south end of Public Square was pretty nice, and despite all the turns in the first half, I manage to go past 13.1 miles in 2:02. That's better than expected, I think. I've done times like this for half a thon, then gone on to break four hours I think. Was that possible today? Nah. 

The second half is entirely on the West Side. We're running by a bunch of Cleveland landmarks, and that's pretty cool. The weather's nice too. There are plenty more turns. I keep thinking about the opportunities to cheat. Not that I, personally, would consider such a thing. But others would. In fact, I saw a couple guys cutting the course early on. There were timing mats to prevent such shenanigans, but not nearly enough of them. 

My own lack of fitness catches up with me in the second half. At some point, I mostly just try to keep the mile spits under ten minutes. In this endeavor, I'm successful some of the time.

My finish time is 4:12. I learn that I'm second in my ever more ancient age group. I'd hoped for better (in both time and place) but I suppose this is the best I could hope for on this day of turns and decent temperatures.

I just looked at the course map in detail and counted 76 turns. That's three per mile. But who's complaining?

Unprepared, I am

I can't remember the last time I went into a marathon as unprepared as I am today. Cleveland is only two days away, and I feel that my training has been woefully inadequate.  It may help if I look back on how I got here.

In the second half of 2022, my training and racing began to improve. By the end of the year, I was back to about where I'd started before the pandemic and my Achilles surgery. All's well that ended well. 2023 began about where 2022 left off, with a solid marathon coming in February. March didn't go so well, but I had begun to come back once again in April. But then came two weeks of almost no running, just when I should have been running the most.

Now that I've been back for ten days or so, I have yet to find my fitness groove. Maybe if I had another couple of weeks, I'd be okay.

But I don't.

Tale of two tremulous trots

I wanted to call them two tremendous trots. But unfortunately, they weren't.

After jogging nearly not at all for two weeks, I wanted to hit the ground running, and so I did Monday morning. It helped that Michelle Wolff had messaged me just as I landed a few hours earlier on Sunday evening. Good going, think I. How about a nice long run to make up for that lack of training during the trip, think I. How hard can eighteen miles be, think I.

That run didn't go quite as planned. Sore and tired, I struggled through the final miles. Good thing Michelle was there with me; she helped me at least get to my long run threshold of eighteen miles. It's just that they weren't very pretty.

Fast forward a few days of slogging, and it's time to try it again. Once again, it's on the Lester Rail Trail, but this time Michelle and Andy Wolff are with me for the early start. That goes okay. I then run the second five-plus by myself as it's getting light, and that goes okay. Shannon Barnes shows up for my final six, and (as I might have predicted), the pace gets faster.

Until it doesn't. I struggle mightily during my last mile, and I can't even call it a long run, as the total on my Garmin shows only 17 and a quarter. Overall, though, this run was better than Monday's.

Things can only continue to get better right? I still have time to get in shape for next weekend's Cleveland Marathon. Right? RIGHT??

Running with the monkeys

Here in Kenya's Amboseli National Park, you have to shoo monkeys out of your way whenever you walk or run anywhere. That's new for me. So is spotting a hippo just beyond the camp's swimming pool. So is having Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance, but large enough to take up a good portion of the sky.

I didn't run outside of the camp/resort area. Therefore, I only get in a mile or two. It was the same story in Ngorongoro and Serengeti, the last two places we stayed. No more than two-ish miles, due to a) lack of time, b) fear of getting eaten, and c) no place to go. Besides, I don't have the energy to get any kind of pace going. Even if I did, I'd trip over the big, flat stones that make up the roadways.

I decide to leave my old, worn running shoes as we depart our final location. The housekeeping staff runs inside to make sure we didn't forget anything when they spot the shoes. I am told that I have to sign a statement to the effect that I left them on purpose.

The Africa adventure was just that, but not so much with regard to the running.

Running in Amboseli National Park