Aramco Houston Half Marathon

Last Sunday I was relieved to run that left hook around Discovery Green and finally have the finish line on Avenida de las Americas directly ahead. Relief and excitement were combined in a strange cocktail, however, as it felt like my heartbeat was located on my shoulders as I touched down on those chip mats.

One might think I'd have a been-there-done-that feeling about Aramco Houston Half Marathon number six, but I don't. Oh, sure, I can never quite duplicate the experiential thrill of the first time back in '06 -- although I can sort of re-live it by watching my belly wobble over the finish line on the recording I made of the ten o'clock news that night. But there's satisfaction in being older and slower (**sigh**) and yet still deciding to show up and run.

Showing up was a bit tougher of a decision as we had some of the most challenging race weather I've ever seen. I think everyone involved had their eyeballs on the weather forecast all week long, and when Sunday a.m. arrived, we were lined up on La Branch and Crawford streets under cold showers and facing directly into a 17-mph head wind. I shivered some in the corral trying to keep warm in shorts, two long-sleeve layers and one of my venerable C9 wicking hats. After Ryan Hall fired the starting gun, one thought kept repeating in my head -- "I'll be OK if I can just get moving." I had that thought on fairly continuous repeat for half an hour, because that's how long it took for my "open corral" in the rear to finally make it to the starting arch.

And I was right. Once I started plodding forward, I felt much better. By mile 5, the rainfall eased and I was able to shed my outer layer and wrap it around my waist. I was in a fairly good groove, mostly sticking to the 10:1 intervals we were doing for many Saturdays beforehand. Then the challenge became one of covering the distance, From mile 10 onward, I pulled over multiple times to stretch out my complaining calf muscles. At the turn onto Allen Parkway, I unknowingly made a cameo appearance onto the KTRK-TV broadcast.

Once again, the organization of the Houston Marathon Committee shined through. Thankfully, the wait for the start was definitely the longest of the morning. Porta-potties, food, finish chute presented little in the way of bottlenecked lines. I didn't check in a gear bag, but I didn't see any significant lines there if I had. The spectators were still out in force supporting their runners, but I think the weather dampened the enthusiasm of the residents who have houses along the route.

Just for the sake of completeness, let's check the splits....

Mile 01 - 12:11
Mile 02 - 11:56
Mile 03 - 11:44
Mile 04 - 11:49
Mile 05 - 11:40
Mile 06 - 12:46
Mile 07 - 12:13
Mile 08 - 11:45
Mile 09 - 13:07
Mile 10 - 14:07
Mile 11 - 14:19
Mile 12 - 13:25
Mile 13 - 12:19
Last .27 - 2:57
Elapsed half marathon time - 2:46:18 per Garmin Forerunner 110
Elapsed half marathon time - 2:46:14 per timing chip

I'm pretty sure I've turned in slower times on this course only twice, I walked the 13.1 miles last year, and finished in something like 2:47 way back in 2006. So it feels like I'm back where I started.

And now, time to ponder my spring running. . . .

Remembering How It's Done

Normally, the sight of port-o-potties has a fairly neutral effect on my mood. But when I see a bunch of them bloom along the side of Memorial Drive, my heart beats a little faster....

Yes, marathon weekend is here again in Houston. I've made it through the training season and will be looking to take home another Aramco Half finisher medal in the morning. I tried to do the smart thing and take care of packet pickup yesterday. I allowed myself to splurge on a new pair of Asics Gel Kayano (which will be broken in after this race). But I actually went home with a net loss in the number of shoes I own, since I dropped off half a dozen pairs of retired running shoes at the Waste Management/SEARCH Homeless booth.

The last few weeks of training saw a cessation of running. Almost on cue, the onset of the holidays brought the onset of a cold that knocked me on my but for a couple of weeks, causing me to miss the last "long runs" of training. But this week I'm back, just in time to log a few dam miles and find my feet again before Sunday.

Here we go....

Peak Week and the Return of the Lost GPS

For most of the past week, I've been living every gadget-loving runner's worst nightmare: I couldn't find my Garmin Forerunner 110 after Monday night's run. Several days of fruitless searching later, I knew there was one surefire way it would turn up.

After visiting a local retail outlet, I walked through the front door last night, announcing, "I'm sure looking forward to wearing this brand new Forerunner 410 on tomorrow's long run."

Within the hour, the 110 was spotted next to my bed.

With a smug look on my face, I returned my purchase today. I knew the whole time that the 410 was never leaving its box.

So the 110 and I reunited in time to take on the longest long run of this half marathon training season -- a 14-miler into the heart of George Bush Park and back again. I started with my pace group but needed to let them go at the first available restroom break. Morning coffee gets all kinds of body systems going....

At least dawn had broken over the forest by the time I found myself solo. I felt just a twinge of regret about deciding to return the newer Forerunner, as the 110 is a basic model that doesn't include an interval-training function. I was doing on-the-run arithmetic to figure out when to take the next walk break. I finished off the 14th mile right at the end of the 3rd hour.

Once again, weather played a part in pacing as it was singlet-warm today. Most likely it will be cooler on race day and I can knock off 13.1 miles in significantly less than three hours. The starting gun in downtown Houston booms in 28 days and 16 hours.

Finally, I feel that I must share this trailside message of motivation that I saw this morning from Katy Students Run:

Trafigura Home Run 10K

This post is actually being written two weeks overdue, but through the cheater's magic of Blogger pre-dating, I'm labeling it with the actual race date to avoid any future confusion if I come looking for it....

For the second time, I came downtown to take part in the Trafigura Home Run benefiting Ronald McDonald House Houston. The course route was reconfigured this year so that the start/finish and postrace party were located on Allen Parkway in the shadow of the Interstate 45. The bulk of the mileage was still out-and-back on Allen Parkway, but at the far end, the 10K runners would visit the Montrose/Allen Parkway intersection three times in a cloverleaf  pattern. (Look up USATF course TX12195ETM for a visual,)

As entertaining as I find the art of course layout, the more pressing concern was actually weather. Early December can still mean warm and humid conditions and I had to take care not to let myself get sucked out of the start at too fast of a pace. As I was missing out on our usual training group run back home in dam country, I decided to practice run/walk intervals even if this was "only" 10K, and the results were quite positive:

Mile 1 - 9:46
Mile 2 - 10:00
Mile 3 - 10:16
Mile 4 - 11:15
Mile 5 - 11:10
Mile 6 - 11:31
Last .27 - 2:37
Elapsed 10K time - 1:06:35 per Garmin Forerunner 110, 1:06:36 per race chip timing

My memory may be a bit fuzzy, but I don't think I've clocked under 1:10 in a 10K in quite a while. So with a new tree ornament around my neck, I went home happy.

TXU Energy Turkey Trot 5K

So this "running thing" isn't getting any less popular. This morning I was sitting behind a long line of cars waiting to exit the 610 freeway. We were all heading into the TXU Energy Turkey Trot and bunches of runners started leaving their cars (I hope they were passengers) and running down the off-ramp towards the start corral on Post Oak Boulevard.

As I'd find out from the public address announcer later, this year's event in the Uptown district had 13,000 registered. That's a lot more than I remembered from just a few years ago.

Anyway, those hurried souls were likely trying to make it to the starting gun of the 10K race. Fortunately, I had a bit more time to spare, because I was out for the more leisurely 5K that would start 30 minutes later. After needing almost all of that extra half hour to find a parking spot, I took off with the back of the pack along the streets surrounding The Galleria:

Mile 1 -- 11:41
Mile 2 -- 10:50
Mile 3 -- 9:57
Last .14 -- 1:18
Elapsed 5K time -- 33:48 per Garmin Forerunner 110

You're just going to have to trust my Forerunner time, as I opted to save five bucks by not getting a timing chip. With this type of race, there was no way I was threatening a PR today! It took about 10 minutes after the gun for me to reach the start line and after much non-tangential pathfinding, I think I finally got ahead of the packs of walkers around \the 2.99-mile point.

Now it's time for some football and family time. Happy Thanksgiving, and if you're thinking of running this event next year, plan on arriving an hour early!

Winded

Speaking of tweaks: It's becoming clear during this half marathon training season that I'm unable to keep up with my current pace group on long runs. We've been going out at roughly 11:20-11:30/mile, which didn't feel too fast at first, but as our distance has increased, by mid-run I would find myself uncomfortable with speaking in sentences -- failing the classic litmus test of Long Slow Distance pace.

It became painfully obvious last weekend, when we headed out for our "cutback" run of seven miles and I was feeling ill by mile two. The resulting really-I-got-up-before-dawn-for-this funk of exhaustion clung with me for the rest of the day. I'm sure the chill of 38F air that morning did no favors to this non-acclimated body either. (We've got daytime temps back in the 80s Fahrenheit as I type this now.)

I was kind of hoping that as my mileage base has increased, I'd also adjust to this pace. A few years ago I was doing long runs solidly in the elevens, so I don't think I was being unrealistic. But the elevens aren't right again for me (yet). So the new plan is to try to find another pace group in the program that moves something closer to 11:50-12:00/mile, so my long runs suck less -- literally.

Tweaked

After a week of tweak after tweak, I think I'm now finally satisfied with the way Houston Running Calendar -- my "side blog" -- looks. The most significant change was finding additional code to tighten up a lot of wasted white space in the gutters. (If anyone else needs the CSS answer to reducing padding in Blogger's Simple template, I found it on another blog -- thanks, Simple Blogger!).

The resulting layout pushes the advertising slots much closer to the edge, making more room for what everyone really comes for -- the race listings. Those listings get a bump up in text size, which may be appreciated by a certain segment of visitors.

And web visitors continue to come. I think half a million total pageviews by the end of this year is possible. Not too shabby for a linkblog. As always, community contributions are a big help. If you know of an organized run event happening within 60 miles of downtown that could use more publicity, send a link to their webpage to list@houstonrunningcalendar.com.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all, and if you want to make a last-minute plan for an area Turkey Trot tomorrow morning, I know this online reference you can check.....

More Android smartphones belong in a museum

Last week, the Houston Museum of Natural Science released a nifty little smartphone app that gives us more background text and images to go with the vast new Paleontology Hall that opened in the summer. The next time I stroll those exhibits, I look forward to having this guide in my hand. I recommend that everyone install it before their next museum visit.

If you can, that is.

While reading the app's Google Play page, I took notice of the operating system requirement -- Android 4.0.3 or above, a.k.a. "Ice Cream Sandwich." That statement took me aback because AT&T had only released Ice Cream Sandwich for my phone model, the Motorola Atrix 2, just the previous week, and this was for a phone that was purchased new this year. Only recently had I joined a small minority of Android users that could install the app.

At first I thought it was a bittersweet oversight on the part of HMNS's part to go to the trouble of reaching out to a limited audience. But then I suppose this only underlines the laggard manner with which the wireless carriers have been taking in regards to OS updates. The cynic in me says that this is a ploy to get customers to buy new handsets on a frequent basis. But it's even worse, because there are STILL brand new handsets that are being sold with Android 2.3, a.k.a. "Gingerbread,"

And these new phones are being unboxed in an environment where there's no assurances that they're not already obsolete. It's a real waste to see one-year-old devices being left behind. Consumers should start taking note of which manufacturers and wireless providers are most guilty of this behavior and spend their dollars elsewhere.

Most expensive trip to Burger King, ever.

I think it was when we got passed by the KPRC-TV Houston news truck near Lake Pontchartrain that it was made evident that our original vacation plans were getting blown away. While we were en route to Louisiana, the forecast track of Hurricane Issac was changed from a Florida landfall to a line that would bring the storm to meet us.

Arriving last Sunday evening in New Orleans, the city was already in shutdown mode. After checking into our hotel, we checked the surrounding blocks in search of dinner. At one point we thought we had walked into a still-open place, only to be told by the hostess that the restaurant was also closing early to allow employees to start hurricane preparations.

Figuring that there was no point in staying longer than necessary, we would be checking out of the hotel and leaving town the next morning. After travelling all the way to New Orleans, the lone attraction we enjoyed there was the neighborhood Burger King that we found still serving dinner that night.

Originally, we were supposed to be in New Orleans for most of the week, but instead we fast-forwarded to our second destination city of Baton Rouge, where we rode out the storm. Unlike Ike in 2008, which rumbled through Houston in the space of hours, Issac arrived and departed Louisiana like a loaded drunk taking his time to find the exit of a French Quarter bar. After 3-1/2 days indoors in Hunker Down Mode we were finally able to emerge to do a little sightseeing in the downtown area and watched the LSU football game from high atop Tiger Stadium this weekend before returning home.

I know most everyone says they "need a vacation after a vacation," but in this case, it's very, very true.

Summer drips away like softened mint chocolate chip down the inverted incline of a waffle cone

So how has summer been working for you? After being scorched and burned last year, the dam area has just finished draining after a really wet July. I feel like it's time for another bullet-point post to recap random stuff.

• Pittsburgh-based Cello Fury made a tour stop in Houston at the end of July and we got to enjoy a free performance at Market Squre. A trio of cellists backed by a drummer, Cello Fury's expressive sound spans that gap between chamber music and Headbangers Ball that you didn't even ask to be bridged. Their YouTube channel is well worth the visit.
• Last weekend the summer Olympics left us for another four years. Requiring a cable or satellite TV subscription turned the online offerings into a non-starter for me, and made NBC look like the old legacy media company that I guess they are. So among the garbage I had to scrap for the worthwhile moments on the network broadcast -- especially Meb Kefleghizi's fourth-place finish in the men's marathon. My gut feeling told me that he was the USA's best shot at a medal, and I was correct.
• We took a tour of the Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting. As a contributing member of KUHF, I finally got to see exactly where my dollars go, including the studio where The Front Row is recorded and the workday desks of news staffers like Carrie Feibel.. Our guide was Eric Ladau, whose voice I've heard on evening traffic reports. 
• My running mileage is on the upswing. This morning I hung on pretty well during our group run of five miles. The Aramco half is now less than five months away.
• I've been surprised that site traffic on Houston Running Calendar has merely leveled off during the summer when I thought it would nosedive. On August 1, the Facebook "fanpage" reached 500 Likes, which I think is a happy metric for something that isn't being actively marketed; people are searching for this stuff.
• My "must-see TV" right now is Breaking Bad. The conclusion of season 4 was so decisive that it could have easily served as a series finale. But I suppose the fans now get one last season to see exactly where "ever after" takes the characters. As counterweights to that heavy drama I've discovered Portlandia and The Guild on Netflix; both are comedy gold.

Now, if you'll pardon me, there's a carton of Breyers waiting for me in the freezer....