Tag: Health & Fitness

Last weekend I completed my second “classic” marathon. That is to say, a plain 26.2 miles. It was in Derry, NH, and is known as the “Cheap Marathon.” They don’t spend a lot on frills, that’s for sure. Just water and Gatorade at the aid stations, and bananas and yogurt at the finish. For completing, no medals – just a ribbon that says “I ran 26.2 miles and all I got was this lousy ribbon.” It was worth it.

I shaved several minutes off my 2021 Baystate Marathon time. My time was 4:26, compared to 4:38 in 2021. However this does not factor in the 4+ minutes where I stopped to call 911 because a gent in front of me collapsed along the trail. Turns out he had a pacemaker that thought he was working a little too hard and he needed to be stopped. It was dramatic. Despite my Apple Watch Ultra failing me (which is a topic for another post), it came through for him. Within seconds I was on with a 911 operator, who dispatched EMTs to the scene. Once he was in good hands, I continued my run.

I am happy to report that my knee was fine the entire way – not so much as a twinge. So I am comfortable saying this has healed.

Now… what to run this fall…?

I’m now twice officially a runner. Why? Because statistically – I read somewhere – nearly 100% of runners suffer an injury. Last year I had a mild stress fracture. This year, I apparently had a torn meniscus. Hurray. So I’m double-officially a runner now.

It’s been five weeks. I’m in PT. It’s going great and I’m returning to running now.

On my last two 10k runs, I experimented with upping my cadence (steps per minute). My normal cadence has been in the 155-165 steps per minute, and my normal pace has usually been in the high 9 to low 10 minutes per mile. This is mainly because I haven’t really cared to address my speed, so I would just ramble on at whatever pace I felt like running at, unless I was in a hurry or with someone else.

While I had heard that my pace “should be 180 steps per minute,” it was never clear to me as to why this was important. Additionally, given my training in yoga and anatomy, in which a recurring theme was “ever body is different,” how could it be that these two guys should be expected to have the same cadence?

No, really. How can that make any sense? It should not be a surprise that there is some room for variation here, as with all things anatomy, and 180 is likely just an average. That said, I figured “what the heck? Why not give it a try.” After a little digging I found a website that suggested working your way up to 180 by starting with a playlist that runs around 10 bpm faster than your current average cadence. So I found a playlist on Apple Music that ran at 165 bpm, and I hit the road.

I immediately felt like I was moving faster – and I was. At first it was definitely more work, but after a while, I got into a rhythm. On a funny note, I found out after I finished my run that I had averaged 182 steps per minute! I knew that I was not keeping time with the beat of the music, but I didn’t realize it was because I was going too fast. Given that, I picked another playlist, this time running at 180 bpm. On my second attempt at keeping this cadence, I actually was a bit slower, coming down to the mid 170s on average. That said, it was still one of my fastest – if not the fastest – 10k I’ve done, coming in with an average of 8’59”.

In short, I’m sold. I’m going to try to keep up with the 180 steps per minute cadence. Supposedly this is universal, and applies to all forms of terrain. Time will tell as I experiment. Watch this space for an update!

Wow. Over a year between blog posts. I’m on a roll! I forgot to brag that, in March, I ran 13.1 miles. That’s the equivalent of running from Athens to Kifisia, Greece. For those of you who are cartographically-challenged, Kifisia is halfway between Athens and Maration, which is 26.2 miles away. Is it starting to make sense now?

In February, I started adding one mile to my runs. Every week, I would run two or three times, adding a mile each week. When I started this, I had been doing my semi-regular 5 miles per run. The first week, starting on February 2, I ran 7 miles three times. The next week I ran 8 miles twice. The next week was 9, twice, followed by a 10 miler (my first since 2019), then 11 miles, then 12, and then finally, on March 4 I hit 13.21 miles. My average pace was 10’23”, which is on my higher end of pavement running these days, so I am still pretty happy with the numbers.

Since then, I’ve done a couple of 8 mile runs, but pretty have much standardized on 6.25 (10k) every other day. The heat definitely affects me, and when it’s in the high 80s or more, I generally skip it or go trail riding. Trail riding has also cut into my running routine somewhat, but it’s also fun, good exercise, and gets me outside, so no foul!