Anyone Feeling Sore Today?

I bet there are some readers out there feelings a little sore today.

I figure so, as it's the first day after the first day of high school cross country practice. Something reminded me of my first cross country practice as an eighth-grader 31 years ago. I got thrown into the varsity's hill repeat workout and could barely lift my legs by the afternoon. I was pretty sore the day after, too ... but showed up again for practice all the same.

I continue to do so, you could say.

Anyway ... The point is that things are getting underway again for a lot of runners. People are knocking the rust off. For the high schoolers it's cross country and for top American male marathoners it's the Olympic Marathon Trials scheduled for November 3 in New York City's Central Park.

Marty Rosendahl actually got me thinking about this whole topic.

I traded some e-mail with Minnesota State - Mankato alum about his first workout in preparation for the Trials. The distance, the speed, the level of ability may be higher for him than the young harriers getting underway -- or the once-young one 31 years ago -- but those first steps to something big in the future seems very much the same.

Here's Rosendahl's first workout story ...

"The workout was a 10 mile cut-down tempo," he told me. "Typically we do this one with the first 2 miles at 6 min/mile, then 5:50 for the next 2, then a mile in 5:40, one in 5:30, one in 5:20, one in 5:10, one at 5:00, and one at 4:50. When we're fit, this is a fun workout because it's not nearly as tough as a lot of the workouts we do."

"But a couple of us hadn't done anything hard since running Peachtree 10k on July 4, and the others since the Boilermaker 15k on July 8," the Michigan-based Hansons-Brooks runner explained. "Our coaches realized this and modified the workout so that we did 2 miles at the 5:40 pace, and then cutting 10 seconds every mile after that, so our fastest mile only got down to 5:00 pace. On paper, it didn't seem like it should have been really difficult, but it turned out to be pretty tough for a couple reasons."

"First, I wasn't used to running that pace," he admitted. "I hadn't done it for a month. Second, it was pretty muggy out there. When we started the workout at 8 am it was 77 degrees with 81% humidity. The third thing that made the workout tough was that we don't actually run the assigned paces like we're supposed to. The splits I had on my watch at the end of the workout read: 5:50, 6:00, 5:54, 5:44, 5:31, 5:35, 5:27, 5:17, 5:10, 4:59. So the third mile was the only mile we were slow at all by my watch."

"Afterwards the things that hurt the worst was first and foremost the dehydration," Rosendahl continued. "The whole body gets sore and sluggish after a workout like that when you're dehydrated. I thought I had brought enough fluids along for the workout. I drank a quart of water before the workout, I drank a quart of sports drink (no sponsorship so no name mentioned there!) And I drank another quart of water on my way home from the workout afterwards. I ran out of water halfway home and was still thirsty. I drank another 3 quarts of water throughout the day, so that's a gallon and a half of fluids that I drank that day, and that's not counting a cup of coffee, any milk, lemonade, juice, or whatever else I drank throughout the day. I should have brought at least another 16 ounces or more of sports drink to take down after the workout."

"So I wound up with a pretty general soreness through the rest of the morning," he said, "but when I got home I had a cup of coffee and before I left for work I took an anti-inflammatory. So that helped a bit with the general soreness the rest of the day."

And if that's not enough ...

"My toes were a little sore too," Rosendahl noted. "I had three toenails pulled on July 11, and they're still kind of healing. As long as I'm wearing something with a little bit of a wider toebox like my Brooks Radius I don't notice anything, but for this workout I wore the Brooks Burn which is about the best lightweight trainer that I've ever worn. But it does run a little more narrow in the toebox and the pinky toes on each foot were ones that got pulled and those toes got rubbed a little bit during the workout and were a bit swollen the rest of the day."

"I'm about 100 miles per week right now, and we're scheduled to go up to 120 a week in two weeks," Rosendahl said. "Midway through the buildup for the Trials I'll hopefully be hitting over 140, maybe even over 150."

"The next few workouts are pretty standard for one of our marathon buildups. We've got an 8 mile tempo run coming up that we usually do at 5 min/mile pace, there's a 3 x 3 mile, long runs that are 18 and 20 miles, and we'll probably do a few 22 milers during the course of the next 12 weeks."

"One of the changes (and one of the challenges) we get to face for this training segment is that we're trying to run more hills," Rosendahl allowed. "Our coaches set up a 3 mile loop that is pretty hilly and should make hitting pace pretty tough. But we're working on the hills so we can be better prepared for the hills of Central Park when we get there on November 3."

Rosendahl notes that marathon fans can earn a trip to NYC through some of his Hansons-Brooks sponsors.

"They can go to http://www.brooksrunning.com/ every day and click on the link to enter the contest to win a trip to NYC," he explained. "This is an all expense paid trip to NYC for 2 and includes round trip airfare within the continental U.S., three nights hotel, and VIP passes for our exclusive post-race party. Three trips will be given away, and at the post race party, one of the three winners will win the all new Saturn VUE XR Compact Sport Utility."

You can also keep up with Rosendahl's training HERE on this on-line training log.

"In the upcoming week we've got that 8 mile tempo and the 3 x 3 mile," he notes. "I'm hoping that the cut-down tempo was enough to kind of shock my body into remembering how to run those paces and that if the assigned pace winds up being 5:00/mile my body will be able to handle it. Sometimes that happens if I've had a bit of time away from faster pace work - that first workout is rough, but the body gets the idea about what's going on and makes the necessary adaptations."

"That adaptation curve in the early going is pretty steep, and I'm counting on that for these upcoming workouts, otherwise it's going to be a rough couple weeks."

For you and for a lot of people these days.