Little News

The last few days here up in Michigan have really felt Nebraskaish. Meaning: its been windy. One of the hardest things for me to do is find the motivation to get out there on the bike when its windy. Definitely the thing I miss the least about Nebraska... :)
Welcome back, (and welcome anew, to all you newcomers)! There's really not much for me to update. I had a real good week of training, slowly building up my running miles, while putting in some solid hours in on the bike. Then the weekend hit and, with it, cooler, more blistery weather. I've still been slowly working back into my running, putting in what I consider less than solid, but at least consistently building upward, mileage. Biking, on the other hand, has been put back on the back burner, at least until things get less busy at work. Scientifically speaking, life has really picked up, with what feels like a million things to do in the lab. Its good to be busy, don't get me wrong, but I do wish the workload was a little more consistent versus the sudden increase in duties that I've picked up lately. Its also nice having experiments work for a change... but that's a tail for another day.
Well, I guess that's really all I've got for now. Hopefully soon I'll be able to start telling you about workouts and the such, but until then, blaze on! :)

Phoenix Rising

"The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise." ~ Miguel de Cervantes, The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts & Strange Stories (2008) by Varla Ventura

Hello followers, wayward travelers, and those who have otherwise stumbled upon the online journal of the adventures of me, Kyle Johnson. I have finally returned after a long hiatus from the online world (deciding instead to pursue this thing called "life") to give you all an update on my life.

First off, my life these last few months, which, due to my online AWOLiness, you have not been privy to, has been anything but smooth. This summer, I honestly felt awful. Running in the heat has never been good for me, and when you add in the fact that I have been recovering from anemia, and just overall, not feeling great, was a huge ordeal for me. But, as it always does, summer has come and gone, and fall is finally hear. Actually, surprising to me, I have actually put in some decent performances, running three 8k races in under 27 minutes, which, even not that long ago, was a major accomplishment for me. That being said, I am nowhere near where I want to be (isn't that the theme for pretty much every runner, except maybe olympic champions/world record holders?).

After briefly making a return to the world of okay running, I have decided to take a hiatus. Well, actually, my foot decided for me. While not too serious, my right ankle has felt just kind of off the last month. While I could easily run through it, I decided to back off, taking two weeks completely off from running and just biking. Tomorrow is actually the end of the two weeks, so I'm planning on a three mile run to see how it feels. In the mean time, I have been biking, which is hopefully maintaining my fitness.

So it appears that, once again, I am on the comeback. So I would like to invite you to follow along, as I, like the legendary phoenix, will reemerge from the fire (of anemia, heartburn, and injury), brush off the ashes of what now lay behind me, so that I can once again take wing and blaze again!

Cheers!

 

You know what the hardest part about blogging is? Coming up with the first sentence. Alright, now that that's out of the way, here's an update:
Things have been steadily improving. I still haven't figured out what was/is causing my anemic problems, but thanks to gratuitous red meat consumption, and vitamin B12/folate supplementation (at least, that's what I'm attributing it to), I have steadily been feeling better. It probably doesn't hurt that the last couple days have been fairly mild as far as the temperature is concerned. So, yeah, running is going better. Last week, I put in almost 75 miles, and  did a single, spontaneous workout (I was feeling good on the run, for the first time in a long time). This run consisted of me starting out somewhere in the mid to low six minutes (probably around 6:20, I don't remember off hand) for the first couple of miles, then dropping down to low sixes for the middle. For the last 3.5 miles, I did 5:52 pace for two miles, then finished running at 5:15 pace. So overall, I was pumped to finally have a good run, where I managed to average 6:03 for almost 11 miles.
Though I put in a good run, I can't say that it has all been clear sailing. On multiple occasions, I've had my achilles flare up on me. It hasn't been anything serious, and has gone away without me doing much besides icing and taking a little Aleve. Also, the day before the spontaneous workout, I just kind of struggled through an easy run. In spite of these minor obstacles, I feel that I'm making progress, and I believe I am way ahead of where I was at this time last year.
Other things: I officially am living on my own for the next couple of weeks. Scott Schmick, my roommate for the past 13.5 months, has officially moved on to bigger and better things, as he starts his job with 3M today. So good luck to you Scott. It's been a fun past year.
Well, I feel like that's a good enough update for now. Until next time...

Calling it a season

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since my last post, and since I realize that, to many of my readers, this is the highlight of the week (oh, happy delusions), I apologize for that. A lot has happened since my last post, so lets get started.

Lets start with running. When last we left our hero, he was struggling with why running had been progressively getting worse this spring. I had just finished the one of the worst races of my life in the Hillsdale Gina Relay 5k (the upside, and I mean only upside: I did break 16, which if you rewind to a year ago, would have been a PR, so what I guess this means that I’ve made a lot of progress to consider what I was doing a year ago as poor now). Frustrated, I turned to doctors to see if there was any explanation to the fatigue I was feeling. There was. Turns out, I have macrocytic anemia, meaning my red blood cells are large, but few in number. So what does this mean? Well, for one, it does NOT mean that I am iron deficient: iron deficiency anemia typically presents with microcytic (meaning smaller than normal) RBCs. Rather, it suggested that 1) I’m an alcoholic, 2) that I have a B12 deficiency, 3) that I have a folic acid deficiency, or 4) something else. I’m still trying to figure all of this out, so I’ll be sure to update everyone as to what is going on.

In light of this medical discovery, I’ve decided to call it a season. My logic: while I may be running to my potential from a year ago, further workouts/races will most likely lead to disappointment and frustration. The plan is to get everything figured out while building a base this summer for the fall season. I also am planning on improving my diet (including taking care of heartburn issues that have plagued me for years) and starting a consistent routine for doing core work.

So that’s about it as far as running. As far as my scientific career is concerned, I recently got some exciting news: I received a 2 year predoctoral fellowship to fund my research from the American Heart Association! To receive this award, I had to apply, which included writing a research plan about what I have been doing and what I plan to do with my research. It’s a competitive award, as 132 applications were received, and only 33 applicants received it. Most exciting about this was how high I scored: I received a 1.32, which puts me in the 4.4% rank.

            Well, I think that I’ve bored you enough with my life for now. Until next time, blaze on! 

Gina Relays

After nearly a month off from racing, I traveled to Hillsdale last Friday to race the 5k at the Gina relays. I had high hopes going into this race, as it was to be my first 5k on the track (I’m not going to count the one’s I ran while hurt and out-of-shape). Going into the race, I felt pretty good and ready to go. And the weather was nearly perfect (there was a slight breeze).

But things got ugly fast. There were somewhere near 25 people on the starting line, and it was clear that the start was going to be messy. I was only able to make it in to the third lane on the opening curve, and was pushed out a time or too. Coming around the first 200, I looked at the clock. This was where things started to go bad. Now, coming into the race, I intentionally did not where a watch so that I could just run by feel. But when I saw a 38 point for the first 200, I thought, “Oh, crap, Kyle, you better get moving.” I made a strong move into second place, and came through the 400 with the clock reading 72 or 73. Now, this is where I made my mistake. It turned out that the clock was about 5 seconds or so off, and I was actually running somewhere between 67-70 seconds (depending on the report), and was going out way too hard. My first mile ended up being around 4:43, then I steadily fell way off pace, finishing in 15:57. I was really feeling the latic acid in the middle of the race, and by the time the last mile came around, I knew that I wasn’t going to be even close to my goal (I really thought I was ready to break 15), and I gave up mentally. It was actually an accomplishment that I didn’t step off the track. This race is among the worst races of my life.

And we didn’t end up running the 4x8. During the women’s elite 1500, the lights in the stadium suddenly went out. It was still light enough for the men’s 1500 and women’s steeple to go off, but they then had to delay the meet before the men’s steeple, as it was just getting too dark to run. Just as we were about to call it a night, and leave, the lights in the stadium turn back on! Despite this, the meet was already delayed an hour, and we didn’t want to wait until 11 pm or so to run the relay, so we called it.

All in all, it wasn’t a good day (for Playmakers, it wasn’t really a good weekend. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think that anyone really felt good about their race this weekend). I’m not sure what’s going on right now, and why I am having such a hard time with workouts/races (okay, so this was my first legitimately bad race of the Spring, but I was hoping for much more coming into the season). I hope I can figure this out soon, cause if things don’t start going better, my race plan for June is going out the window (I’m not going to run in high level meets if I’m not going to be running at a high level).

...At least I'm still awesome. :)

In other news, congrats to my old teammates Bryan Felker (now of Team Nebraska) and Zane Grabau, who both finished top 10 in the Lincoln marathon last weekend. Bryan’s time was a 10 minute PR (I’m pretty sure Zane’s 2:39 is a PR, but I don’t know by how much. Solid run for him, regardless).

Well folks, that’s about it for this week. I'm not quite sure what's up for me next. U of M this weekend? 

Happy Easter!

Hope everyone is having a hoppy Easter! :) I miss the days I could be with my family on Easter, instead of stuck inside of a building, feeding cells and making figures for a paper...
It appears that Mother Nature decided to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ by locking forcing Jack Frost to call it a season away and finally letting Spring, in all its glory, flourish. It seriously seemed like winter was just not willing to call it quits this year. After coming back from DC, I actually had to pull my plants back inside, as there was snow on the ground Monday morning. But while this week started out cold, rainy and gloomy, the end of the week was much more appealing. It was actually warm enough to run without a shirt on these last couple of days! The one disadvantage of spring: the red-winged black birds have returned. While they haven't felt that they needed to dive bomb at my head just quite yet, I have a feeling that this docile nature that they are displaying is just a temporary disposition, and that they will return to their aggressive, pain-in-the-a** ways once they start laying eggs...
Training-wise, things are going okay, but not great. Since it was cold and windy last Friday, with a chance of storms, I decided to forgo running the 5k at Eastern. This is because 1) I didn't want to get to the meet and end up having driven all that way to find out that the meet was canceled due to the threat of storms, and 2) if I'm going to run a 5k on the track, I want it to be fast. I didn't feel like the forecasted conditions Friday night looked promising for a fast time. Despite these worries, I think the weather out in Ypsilanti ended up being more or less okay, as Damon and Adam ran close to their PRs... In lieu of running the race, I did a fartlek the next day. I can't really say that it was a very high quality workout; I've been feeling kind of tired lately, and haven't been sleeping the best (this has improved the last couple nights), so I was finding it kind of hard to get geared up to do a quality workout. Its frustrating not having done a workout in weeks that shows me that I'm in good shape. Outside of a couple of good hill workouts, I feel like below average workouts has been the theme of this spring. Its not all doom and gloom, however, as my normal training runs have steadily been getting faster, and, for the most part, I've been killing it on long runs. Part of me wonders if I'm working too hard on my easy days, leaving me taxed for workouts and races (although I've set a couple of PRs this spring, I don't think that those races were necessarily representative of the shape I'm in. I think I'm capable of much more). The thing is, I don't feel like I'm pushing my easy days. Heck, even  some of my long runs in which I average under six-minute-mile pace, I feel like I'm just out for a jog. Today, for instance, I went out for my long run, sans Garmin, with the intention of just logging the miles. I ended up running 5:58 pace for 16.76 miles without knowing what kind of pace I was running the entire time. I did push it the last ten minutes, but for this to really make a difference, I would already have to be pretty close to six minute pace for the rest of the run... I guess if anyone has any thoughts on the matter, your advice would be appreciated. I really would like to have a decent workout this week...
Speaking of this week, its Gina Relays time! The last couple of years I've been a honorary Hillsdale alum, running a leg on their alumni 4x8 team. :) However, it appears that this year I'm going to break away from this tradition. Instead, I'm planning/hoping to crank out a solid 5k before running a leg on a Playmakers 4x8 team (currently consisting of me, Jake, Jason Bigelow, and Damon). So that's the plan...

BAck from DC!!! Part II (of III): A training update (Scott, this one's for you; you can ignore part III) :)

Alright, a quick recap of DC. First run: I got lost, ended up running 14.85 miles (didn't realize it was this far at the time). Second run: Met up with the Georgetown Running Company Racing Team. Great group of guys. Did a long (16 miles) run with them, over hills; the last 5-6 miles was done at a faster clip with a guy named Paul. Had breakfast with them. Again, fun to run with them.
So now that you're caught up, I'll give you a little more of an update about the rest of the trip. First off, after what was essentially two days of long runs in a row, I did one more run of about 9.5 miles. After this, my right ankle began to feel a little funky (a la last fall, when I had my stress reaction... although it was presenting a little differently; specifically, I didn't get the hollow feeling that I did before, and there was soreness in my calf/Achilles, but the pain was mostly localized to the same area). While I don't think that having two long runs in a row was exactly helpful for the condition, I don't think it was the direct cause. More likely, it was the excessive walking in crappy dress shoes. Take note: DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, book a hotel a mile away from where you need to be most of the time, especially if you have to walk back and forth from it several times one your ankle is already sore. While I could blame this situation on my roommate for EB (a guy named John, from the Medical College or Georgia, or whatever it's called now), who was responsible for booking the room (he said that the hotel looked a lot closer on the map), I also can blame EB for even suggesting a hotel that was so far away from the events... and I should take a little blame myself, because I had a chance to speak up and change the reservations well ahead of time if I so chose. But I didn't. Lesson learned, moving on.
With the sore ankle, I was a little spooked/paranoid, because the last serious injury had presented itself in such a way. So I decided to take the next few days off. Which would have been okay had I just decided that this was what I was going to do, but it can drive you crazy going back and forth in your head about whether you should run or not. Between the indecisiveness and sore ankle, I started to get in a bad mood the last day and a half of the meeting (although, as I'll discuss in part III, the scientific/social aspect of the meeting was awesome). This added stress made me do something that I am not proud of and is not awesome: I lapsed on my Lenten sugar goal. :( This was quite a disappointment to myself, especially because the lapse wasn't for something that was a special occasion or anything like that. You see, the hotel gave me a chocolate chip cookie when I checked into the room. Instead of throwing it out, giving it away, or telling the clerk "no thanks," I held onto the cookie (I had hoped that my roommate would eat it; I also had planned to give it away to someone else if he wouldn't eat it). But the cookie sat in my room. For three days. Untouched. Finally, do mainly to the stress of worrying that something serious was wrong with my foot, I lapsed and consumed the cookie. So major fail. This lapse will not go without punishment, however. While I plan to likely indulge on Easter, the fast will continue for another week as a consequence of my actions...
Sorry Scott, that wasn't exactly about training. If you're still reading, here's the rest that is training related: after taking two days off, I have gotten back into the rhythm of things, and training has been going well. My foot, while not a 100%, is moving back in that direction. I missed a few workouts, and feel like I'm slightly behind, but nothing that a few weeks of training won't take care of. My weight was slightly elevated after DC, which was not a surprise given the cookie (just kidding; but I did eat a lot of good food in DC, which I'll probably talk about in part III), but it has steadily declined back to normal levels after a week. Finally, I will be running at the EMU twilight this Friday, hoping to set a PR in the 5k (and drop below 15, if everything goes according to plan), so wish me luck.

Note to others: Scott, my roommate, is mentioned several times in this blog. If you are wondering, he doesn't care about a lot of the "fluff" that I put into this blog, and is more interested into an insight into my training/racing/thoughts about training (maybe I'm giving myself too much credit by suggesting that Scott actually cares about my thoughts). Anyways, that is what several of the comments are about. :) Oh, and blaze on!

P.S. Sorry about any typos/writing errors in this post. I don't really feel like proofreading at this time, although I'll probably come back to fix tehm ltaer, if me gots thi chants...