The Walking Dead and The Running Dead

Today marks the release of the 100th issue of the zombie apocalypse comic series The Walking Dead and I am pretty excited about it. It's long been one of my favorite books to read month in and month out, and I can't wait to pick up my copy this Saturday.

But this is a running blog (right? sure it is!) so I'll tie all this comic nerdiness in to running by highlighting a growing sub-segment of trail races: the zombie race. I first heard about these maybe a year or so ago. They're produced by the same people who brought you the Warrior Dash and other "themed" races that take a basic 5K trail race and dress it up in mud, obstacles, or some theme. The 10 mile Tough Mudder series is also of this ilk, although geared towards an even smaller sub-set of runners. Here I'll focus only on the zombie run.

Basically, the gist is that you run through the woods and attempt to complete an obstacle course, all the while being chased by flesh-eating "zombies," who are other runners dressed up as the undead. Each runner wears a flag belt, representing your health, and the zombies will try to grab those flags. If they grab them all, you "die" and can't be considered for any prizes. There are also health packs you can grab on the course that will keep you alive. There are also numerous paths to take to the finish line, some 5K, others longer, so you have to think as well as run for your life.

It's a novel idea that capitalizes on the recent zombie zeitgeist. The Baltimore race is scheduled for the final Saturday in October, but actually takes place in Darlington, MD, which is an hour north of Baltimore and within spitting distance of the PA border. That's sort of like putting a race in western New Jersey and saying it's being held in New York.

However, the geographic misnomer is the least of my misgivings about this whole class of races. The biggest impediment has to be the cost, and the obvious cash-grab going on.

A sensible cost for a 5K is anywhere up to $40, IMHO. Anything beyond that and you should calculate the $ per mile and $ per minute you'll be spending. Some higher costs are worthier than others. For instance, the Baltimore Running Festival's 5K entry fee is $40 until August 1, then $45 thereafter. But that's a big deal running festival (~20K runners or something) where you're paying for, in theory, insurance, closing the course (busy city streets), paying for police presence (it's Baltimore, come on now), your Under Armour shirt, the post race party, support on the course, etc. So, you could at least present an argument that you're getting $40 of value. Personally, I don't want to pay more than $30 for a 5K and that's pushing it...$25 is more like it, but I realize that's becoming less reasonable. To each their own.

The EARLY registration option for the Baltimore Run for Your Lives 5K is $77!! Yeah, that's right: 7-7. If you register after 09/12/12, the fee goes up to $87. That's just slightly less than A and I paid for our entry fee to the Freedom's Run Half Marathon combined. That works out to $3.44 per mile for the half and a whopping $24.84 per mile for the 5K! Even with differences in insurance and facilities costs (although honestly, I'd assume running through a national battlefield isn't cheap either), the value dispersion is striking.

However, the most egregious money grab of the zombie run is that they charge for spectator tickets. That's right, you pay $77 to run the damn thing and your friend/spouse/misguided co-worker has to pay $32 just to watch the whole thing unfold, but from The Safe Zone. Oh, and no free beer. And nobody gets free food. So, two people cost basically $100, plus food and drinks and souvenirs beyond your medal and t-shirt, assuming only one is running.

In conclusion, these sorts of races are only fun if you're not really going for the running and don't think about how much money you've plopped down to run for 30 minutes. They're all about entertainment and profit margins. And there's nothing wrong with that, I suppose, especially if someone is willing to pay $80 to complete an obstacle course. A fool and his money are easily parted, so good on the race organizers for finding a niche to exploit at the junction between the growing crowd of recreational runners and pop culture. I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone produces a Vampire Scamper or Werewolf Twilight Trot or something like that.

As I said, to each their own. But you've been warned. Don't become a zombie to faddish "races" that are out to make a buck! Be like Rick Grimes and stay away from the hordes crowding these events!

*If you insist on spending money to be chased by fit actors pretending to be zombies, go to the event's website. They run these things all over the country...a cash cow!

Running in the Jungle

Another steamy weekend here on the East Coast has come and gone. We stayed inside most of the time, and the AC labored all weekend to keep up with the oven-like heat.

Running was even more onerous. Saturday we woke up and it was already 85 degrees outside (heat index 97!) at 7:30 AM, so A took Teddy, our dog, for his walk but cut it short and carried him home the final few blocks.. I was contemplating my 3 mile run outside, but the heat worried me, so I decided to head indoors and did my run on the treadmill at the gym.

The rest of the day I spent catching up on reading one of my new favorite comics, The Manhattan Projects (MP). Yes, I read comics. No, I'm not 14. Yes, I read the classic books (namely Batman and Justice League). No, I'm not one of those crazed fanboys you see wearing Storm Trooper outfits at conventions. Although I will be going to Baltimore's Comic-Con in September, but in shorts and a t-shirt. Comics are a nice distraction from my dry day job; it spices up my reading and the stories, when you find a good writer, are engaging.

Anyway, I'll post more comic-related stuff at some other time. Suffice to say I've really gotten into MP and I was able to score a first print, issue #1 off eBay for $8 to complete my series thus far (I came into it on issue #3). A hazy, hot and humid afternoon sitting in the air conditioning was a perfect time to catch up.

Sunday we woke up early again and I took Tedward for his walk. He did much better, as the temps were a little lower. He made it the whole way (about a mile round trip on his usual route) and was zonked the rest of the day. After I got him back, I changed and headed out for my 4 mile "long" run. No gym for me, thank goodness. I headed south, towards the Inner Harbor, around the waterfront, turned around at the Rusty Scupper restaurant (food: meh) and headed back up St. Paul St all the way back into Mt. Vernon. Here's a map of my route.

The run back from the harbor was tougher, being uphill, than the trip down. But overall, it wasn't that bad and much better overall than last Sunday, when I flamed out about three blocks from the end.

Today was a rest day. Tomorrow is another 3 miler that should be much more comfortable.

Weekend Training Schedule: July 7-8, 2012

Since I ran yesterday, and am committed to not over-training in the early days of the Second Age of Morning Running, I did not run this morning. But to make up for that, I want to run both Saturday and Sunday.

The forecast for this weekend hasn’t changed all that much. All three days are supposed to see triple digit highs with high humidity. As a result, my running this weekend will take place early in the mornings, which is not conducive for sleeping in, but very conducive for avoiding heat stroke.

I plan on getting three miles in tomorrow morning around 7AM, followed by a “long” run of 3.5 to 4 miles Sunday morning around the same time. I put long in quotation marks because obviously that’s not long in the “My long run this weekend will be my final 20 miler before the marathon,” sense of long. But hey, I’m recently back to running and don’t wish to try to crank out 6 miles and shatter my knee.

And I need to get up and out the door early because my 3.5 mile run last Sunday morning devolved into a death march right around mile three. I waited until after 9AM to head out, which may sound early chronologically speaking, but climatologically speaking it really wasn’t. It was already well above 80 and humid by the time I got going and by the time I staggered home, it was nearly 90.

And with that, I’m off for lunch out in the fetid oven that is downtown Baltimore in July.

Running in Geologic Time

Nobody reading this blog, whether on purpose, after losing a bet, or through the black-box algorithms of a misguided Google search, will be surprised to learn that running in the early morning or late at night during the summer is the way to go. Baltimore and Washington in the summer tend to become roiling concrete kilns with oppressive humidity mixed in for good measure. Of course, folks living in Florida or Arizona or elsewhere in the Deep South or Southwest will say, "You think you're hot? Just try living in Orlando/New Orleans/Jackson/Flagstaff in July!" To which I say, you're probably right that it's worse there than here on any given day from June through mid-September. But that's the point, right? Many of us have to deal with the heat and running in some fashion. Really, when the temperature goes above 85 (arbitrary number), you're dying on your run whether it's in Boston or Birmingham.

To that end, I present this screenshot of the Weather Channel's forecast for Baltimore for the next five days:

For Baltimore, that's absurd. The 108 high on Saturday is particularly crazy, because the tropical humidity has arrived, which could make the heat index go somewhere around 115. 

All this is by way of saying that running early in the morning is a must for me these days. There was a time, a brief time, an Age of Lunch Running (in the geological meaning...as in shorter than an epoch, period, era or eon), when I thought running during my lunch hour would work great for my schedule. Wrong! Turns out it takes more than an hour to change into running clothes, get outside of a skyscraper, run, cool down, come back to the gym in the office, change, shower, put work clothes back on and get back to my desk. Which didn't work.

Moreover, while lunch running is fine for winter months, once you hit May, it's terrible until late September around here. Much of Baltimore, you'll be shocked to learn, lacks decent tree cover, especially downtown. So you're in the direct sun at the hottest part of the day. At first, it was a bit of a badge of honor to run in such hot conditions. Nobody else was out running and it felt like the summer corrollary to running in a snow storm in January or a downpour in April: you're a hard ass! Right?!

Wrong. Stupid. And wrong.

The hottest day I ever ran in reached 97 degrees (gross of the heat index); it took me a day to rehydrate and my body was sluggish for two days. Terrible idea and it was the beginning of the end of the Age of Lunch Running.

Now, I prefer to run before work for both climatological and scheduling reasons. I prefer to be done with my exercise early so I don't have to motivate myself at 5:30 PM after working all day to do it. The Age of Evening Running was even shorter than the Age of Lunch Running and never really got off the ground. I much prefer the quiet, largely car- and pedestrian-free streets of Baltimore at 6AM, in addition to the cooler temperatures.

Currently, I am in the early years of the Second Age of Morning Running. If I can maintain consistent running, I think I have a real chance to get it to an epoch eventually. 108 degree days will certainly help me keep motivated to wake up at 6AM when it's a cool 80 degrees, as it was this morning.

Reset Button

So the whole idea of being better about posting? Apparently that was just talk, because as you can tell, I haven't posted a SINGLE THING since last June. Not even a pitiful, "I'm super busy so can't post!" post. Just awful. While I haven't been sitting around watching paint dry these past twelve months, I did take a complete hiatus from running for the last six (or so).

I continued to run off and on without much in the way of consistency throughout last summer and into the winter. But it really wasn't substantial and I never got my endurance (and thus distance) back up much beyond 5K range. A (the wife) actually got more in to running than I did (probably write a separate post about that later). We ran the Cincinnati Thanksgiving Day Race in November since we were visiting the in-laws for that holiday, but that was my last race, really. I ran intermittently throughout the holidays and into early January.

But then I started studying for Level II of the Chartered Financial Analyst exam and quickly became consumed by that effort. Not having ANY business or financial background when I came in to the industry a few years back, the CFA curriculum has been a whole new world for me. As a result, it's required a lot more time than many other candidates. Level II, as any candidate or charterholder will tell you, is probably the most difficult level of the three. Why that is, is not actually very interesting. Suffice to say that I was studying every night after work and eventually all day every day every weekend.

That, combined with the dark, coldness of early winter mornings helped ease me out of running into sedentariness (is that a word?). Once I stopped running in early February, I never started back up. But I did tell myself I would start up again after the exam, which was back in early June. And, within a week of being done with that test, I was back huffing and puffing on the roads.

So, after about 3.5 weeks of pretty good consistency, I think I should start posting again on a somewhat regular basis. When I posted regularly, it was a good motivator. And since A and I have signed up for a 6 miler at the end of August and a half marathon in mid-October (aggressive!), I'm going to need all the motivation I can get!

To that end, consider this a reset of the blog. A fresh start, with a few changes. Of course, the main topics of the blog will be running and all that. But I'm going to try to stick with consistency here as well when it comes to posting. So I'll likely integrate additional topics into my posts that are not running related. Why? Because it's my blog, that's why! I'm envisioning something like 75% running/exercise and 25% other stuff. We'll see how that goes.

Finally, in terms of frequency of posting, don't expect me to suddenly go from zero posts to 20 per week. Frankly, I don't think I have enough to talk about to make that happen. But some days will have one post, some none, some might have several shorter posts. Again, I'll play it by ear.

Playing (Slightly) Hurt

One of the most common early running momentum crushers is injury. I should know, as several of my past efforts to get back to running consistently have been cut short by an overuse injury that turned into another several month long layoff from running. The worst was in 2009 when I strung together a few good weeks of running 2 miles at a time, with a day of rest in between to allow my body to start to re-adapt. Then I got stupid and went out and tried to run 5 miles on the NCR Trail. Unsurprisingly, I woke up the next morning with a sharp pain just below my kneecap that lingered for a week. I went to a sports medicine doctor and she quickly diagnosed runner’s knee. That kept me off the roads for several weeks. I’ve also had this happen with shin splints.


So, this time, I’ve been determined not to repeat the past, all the while accepting the fact that until my body really gets used to running consistently again, there will be aches and pains here and there. Earlier in the week, I felt my ever-tight right hamstring was slightly overtaxed. But it felt fine after a day. However, yesterday, after I walked to work (it’s about 1.5 miles each way), my right adductor muscle (along the inside of the thigh) tightened up and has been slightly achy ever since. Nothing horrible, but enough that I know it’s not 100%. My hamstrings and adductor muscles have been constant aches for some time now, despite stretching regimens. But suffice to say I will be increasing the intensity of those stretches from now on.

I was tender again last night after walking home (more uphill than the trip to work) thanks to the hills of Baltimore, but foolishly did not ice it down. I let it be and went to sleep, hoping it would resolve itself like my hamstring seemed to earlier this week. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, although thankfully it did not get worse. But it was pretty tight when I got out of bed this morning to go run (I took yesterday off). But it didn’t hurt badly enough that I thought I wouldn’t be able to get in my very short 1.5 mile run. I spent some extra time this morning stretching to try to warm it up enough to prevent a catastrophic injury and that seemed to work.

The combination of the short distance and short warm-up helped. I didn’t feel any discomfort during the run and hasn’t felt worse since then. I spent about 20 minutes icing the area and that also seemed to help. I wish I could have iced it while at work, but I think that would have been awkward. I’ll ice it again for 20 minutes when I get home tonight. I’m doing strength training tomorrow morning, so I won’t run on it until Sunday morning. I’m hopeful that will be enough time to help it feel better (with icing throughout that time).

But this morning’s run was most interesting to me because my minor injury didn’t get worse despite running on it, albeit very carefully. I was always aware of how it was feeling and whether there was any discomfort there that would tell me I was risking a more serious injury if I kept going. Increasing my stretching and icing routines will also help long term, as adductor injuries can take weeks to heal properly, longer if you keep running/playing with it and re-aggravate it every few days. The strain is a very minor one, to be sure, and I would likely not have run on it if, for example, it had hurt to walk or go up stairs. As it stands, the muscle just feels tight when I walk (mostly after having been sitting at my desk for some time) or climb stairs and loosens up considerably when I walk any distance. So, the situation is not serious to begin with. But I’m heartened that I made it through the run today without any problems. As I increase my mileage in the coming few weeks up to 5K distance, I can hopefully get these “re-acclimation” injuries out of the way and strengthen my body for when I move into the next stage of building my mileage.

Lazarus Moment

After more than a year since my last post and even longer since a quality post, I've decided to try to get this blog back on its feet. I'm back to running mostly consistently and found a new committment to running in general. I feel better about it now than I have in over a year, so I think it's time to get back to blogging and to become a more active member of the running online community.

So, over the next few days (ideally), I'll update the blog, get rid of the outdated stuff like the former countdown and now count-up on the right. 418 days and counting...yikes! I'm also going to expand the posting topics, as I think one of the reasons for the lack of posting was that I was only writing about my runs and training, which gets boring. And if I'm bored by it, anyone who would read the post would certainly be bored by it too. So, look for posts about all sorts of things running-related (and some topics not so running related).