Running Notes by HJL

Here’s a look at the past year’s weekly mileage (2006). Total miles for the year are roughly 1316, average of about 25 miles per week.

This hasn’t been a great running year for me. I’m still having chronic breathing problems, even after making the rounds over at the Palo Alto Clinic. The good news is that after pulmonary, cardiac, and CT exams, they’re pretty sure I don’t have any life threatening problems and my weight and blood pressure look great. The bad news is that while I’m technically “healthy”, my lung function is testing well below where I was a few years ago when I went in with allergy-related breathing problems. So I’ve been feeling relatively short of breath and sluggish all year, and there aren’t any obvious avenues of investigation to follow.

At the moment my easy/long workout pace is still around 10:00, and I’m starting to mix in some 9:00 pace as well to see how it works out. My legs turn over at higher paces without any problems, but I go anaerobic pretty quickly at anything above 7:30 now. This is generally discouraging since before this I was at 8:30 for easy workouts and 7:00 for weekly T runs. It looks like I may be stuck with these lower paces for the foreseeable future, though.

I ran Big Sur in April on my downward-adjusted target pace of around 10:00/mile, plus time for picture-taking stops. This was a “personal worst” for me, but I always enjoy the course and I got some nice photos.

For most of 2006 I’ve basically been in a holding pattern while investigating the mysterious breathing problem, just running enough to maintain a modest aerobic base and stay on a daily training routine. At least I’ve avoided gaining weight, despite the large reduction in weekly mileage since mid 2005. As of today I’m exactly flat for the year. I’m starting to rethink the plan for 2007 based on not seeing an improvement in my breathing and assuming that this may be a more or less permanent condition. Yuck.

In the past few days I’ve seen a few new faces at the gym and more people out running around the neighborhood. By next week the New Year’s effect should be in full swing and we’ll be seeing lots of resolution runners on the road. This is a good thing, although every year I see one or two on the road that have spectacularly bad running mechanics. Perhaps they’d be better off on an elliptical or stairclimber at the gym.