I had this idea of getting my first marathon done and out of the way, so that I could start training for a triathlon, which was something I was looking forward to because, among other things, I was tired of constantly getting running injuries every time I twisted up a notch the training intensity.

So I did my first marathon two days ago. I was expecting finishing somewhere between 4:00 and 4:30, knowing in the back of my mind the upper limit was more realistic. So the actual 4:12 that I did felt really good. Like planned, I tried never to look at the time and just concentrate on my running. That worked perfectly all over, except on the last 4 miles or so, when the end felt so close that all my concentration and will broke down and I just put the chrono mode on and saw 4:00. So I thought to myself, I’m doing great, my legs are killing me, the goal is gonna be accomplished, so I can walk now. For the next time I won’t be even starting the chrono, and I’ll have someone to scramble the day time, so that I’m only left with the pace indicator to look at. Forget about recording stats and other useless shit.

The race started at 6 am sharp, with around 250 participants.  Good level overall, and a nice change from those typical over-crowded races. I committed my first mistake the day before with a lasagna overdose.  I had planned to run very easy on the first half hour, and feeling so bloated helped me to act conservatively and follow the plan. Half an hour later I was feeling great. I forgot about the bloat, pumped up the pace and started passing people.

The first 10 miles had a slight upward slope, I’d say like 1%. Then the course turned back the same way, and I profited the now downward slope to considerably augment the pace. That momentum lasted me for 5 miles. I felt tired but good. But that took its toll on my quads, and the pain that started building up was the hardest thing to support later on.

Almost all the course was shared with the “ciclovía”, which is the closing of some streets during Sundays to let cyclists, skaters, runners and walkers enjoy a sporty day. This is a common practice all over Colombia. As time passed the road started getting more and more crowded so we had to be very careful. And the crowd didn’t had the slightest idea about the marathon, so the already zero-cheering situation was not going to change.  About this time water ran out as well. Thankfully, there was this lady popping up all over the course ready with supplies and moral support for her guy, and she helped me out with some water.
I need to get a woman like this for myself!

Training is just a matter of discipline. I realize now that if you’ve done your homework, and the miles are in the bank, the game on race day becomes 100% mental. I did a good job of really concentrating on my form and pace until the final few miles.  Tried hard to filter out any other thoughts, specially those concerning mileage and time.  Around the last quarter the thoughts about stopping started arising. And I started questioning why I was  doing this. And thinking how easy it is to set goals and think you’re ready to overcome suffering. But suffering is something that just can’t be imagined. It can only be felt. I could carry on with this inner battle in my head until we started entering this village where the race was supposed to end. I couldn’t bear that overwhelming thought and lost all concentration.

Nevertheless, it was a honorable battle, and I am proud. Things that worked: good taper, good starting slow for the first 30 mins, good to pace up when I feel I can, good to take small but frequent sips of liquid.
I need to come up with a way to not loose it when I feel the end is close. I’ll experiment in training. I also need to pace up my Sunday long runs.

After this first marathon I’m having my doubts now about pursuing the triathlon training. Right now I just wanna run harder and farther. But I’ll definitely will continue cycling once or twice per week, because I enjoy it so much and it’s such a great cross-training alternative for running. I’ve already signed up for the Chicago Marathon in October, and will be running for charity using pulpTunes (see link in the sidebar) to raise money — more about this in a future post. In the meantime I gotta find another marathon in about three months. Any suggestions?

“Nenikékamen!”
(We have won!)  Pheidippides, Athens, 490 BC

I’ve been running for years now, racing only for 10K and half-marathons. I had aimed at running my first marathon like 5 months ago, but I had to keep on pushing back because of many injuries. The last one I had planned was for Miami in January, but after having done my first few 20 miles training sessions my knees were very sore. So I canceled that one too, and I’m now finally going to loose my marathon virginity in Medellín on March 22nd. I just needed a couple of weeks for my knees to heal, and now I have many 20 milers in the bank, each one easier than the previous one. Two weeks ago I did my first 100K week, and on Monday last week I did the final 20, which ended up being like 22, with lots of fuel left in the tank. So having pushed back my first marathon has definitely made me more ready. Also I think the sand track I’m training on for the last couple of months has served me well to avoid injuries, and also the biking, which I’m loving it. But after that last long run I think I overdid on the bike the next day, and ended up with a mild annoyance on my right upper quad. Now I just need to have an IT band syndrome and hamstring problems to have experienced every conceivable running injury known to mankind! So I continued running very slow last week, and took the weekend off.

Today (Monday) I was supposed to do the last hard session by running a 10K, but I started too fast and couldn’t complete the distance. Usual mistake, and great reminder for the big event. Quad ache is back a little bit, but since the real taper starts now it should have plenty of time to heal completely, so I’m not worried.

The “Maratón del Valle de Aburrá” is no piece of cake. It can get pretty hot and humid, and it has some nasty hills. From my experience, all I need is to run smart the first half hour. I don’t have the slightest idea what time I could be making. I’m thinking I won’t be even looking at the time in my watch and just leave the pacer mode to dose things appropriately and avoid doing stupid things.

I had planned this move for over a year, and finally did a few weeks ago.

I had been living in Medellin for about 3 years in a pretty nice, but hilly, neighborhood (Castropol). So every day I had to climb down a bit to a not so pretty, but flat, neighborhood (Colombia). And then I had to do this before 5:30 am to avoid the traffic and the stray savage dogs, one of whom had bit me already, obliging me to carry mace gas and a knife on every run from that day on. Fortunately I didn’t had to use them.

A triathlete friend living in Bogotá talked to me about the Simon Bolivar park, and its 2.2 miles (3.5 km) sand track. Bogotá is your typical 3rd world chaotic unplanned city, specially offensive towards the poorer, which is the vast majority (in fact I’ve just describe the whole country). But things have been changing a little over the past few years thanks to a couple of great mayors (Mockus and Peñalosa), and public free facilities like this park are a sign of it.

So I visited the park and decided to go live next to it. Well, a 5 minutes warming-up-run away from it.

It’s a gathering place for runners and all kind of athletes (just the other day I saw a professional football team training there), it’s generally uncrowded (except on Sundays), cool weather (ranging from 59F (15C) to  77F (25C)), clean air, high altitude (8660 ft (2640 m)), flat, and my knees are already thankful for the softer surface. What else can I ask for?

I’ve been getting some love for pulpTunes, so I decided to pursue the project more seriously. About the running log website I mentioned before, I think I’ll pass that because it seems there are already very good alternatives out there.

So, there’s a new website just for pulpTunes at http://www.pulptunes.com . I’m also moving the project (source code, forums, lists, wiki) to Sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pulptunes .

This blog will remain for my running “adventures” only.

Without realizing it, I have been sinking little by little into the over-training mistake. Thinking that if I don’t feel exquisitely exhausted after each work out, then I’m wasting my time, and getting farther from doing a marathon performance that my ego would get satisfied with, in this oh so little time I have left of youth. Pfftf.

This has served me well to improve my 10Ks, but the half marathon is far worse than what it should be. A lot of cross-training has help avoiding injuries, but I have this recurring little ache deep inside my left left bone. Can’t even tell if it’s above or below the knee, but it’s around that area. Another thing is the runner’s knee symptoms I was having, but I think I’ve been able to manage that through quad strengthening exercises after every weekday workout.

Many times I’ve tried to follow some training programs, but without a coach it’s hard to keep up with all the intricacies of intervals, repetitions, tempos, threshold training, etc. So after a lot of search around I think I found a great plan, not so complex but not minimalistic either, in the “Complete Book of Running” , from Rodale, the same company that produces the Runner’s World mag.  I’m picking up their “intermediate” program, Which starts at 26 miles per week and peaks at 51. Lucky me, the program is 18 weeks long, which is about the time I have left before the marathon I was planning on assisting. You can see the plan here.  I calculated the paces based on goal of a 4 hour marathon, which is pretty conservative, so I might twist it up a notch if things go well.

Finally!

pulpTunes is a software program I created to be able to access and share the music you have in iTunes, through the web by just using a web browser. You can grab the program from here. For more information and instructions, go here.

This runs on both Windows and Mac. Just make sure you have the latest Java installed. Also, this will only serve the files you have in mp3 format (not acc at the moment I’m afraid, which is the default iTunes format).

Although fully functional, this still is a beta release. So please report back any problem you encounter, or drop me a line if you need any help.

2:00:29 secs to be more precise. I did want to give the extra effort at the end to break the 2 hours barrier, but I just couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe for the last 5 K. My legs felt good, the shin-splint aches I was having before didn’t bother at all, but it looks like my cardiovascular condition is the one to blame this time. I still haven’t had that perfect half-marathon, but this was 17 minutes better than last year. So gotta be patient, “stay the course”, and be mindful of not over-training.

The doctor confirmed my fears. I’ve got shin splints on my left shin bone, with a little edema on the lower part. I had that two years ago on the other leg, which kinda burst badly on a half-marathon, resulting in a three month incapacity. This time it doesn’t hurt that much, and I still can run. The doctor prescribed some anti-inflammatory pills which seemed to have helped.  She’s the best sports doctor I’ve known, so if any of my readers around Medellin (yea right) need a good doctor let me give you her coordinates. She’s the kind that doesn’t rush, and takes the time to explain you all the biomechanics that gave you the injury and that kind of stuff.

So, I had to cut one day off my schedule, but I still could do today’s (Sunday) long run, and I barely felt anything, so I’m good. It also felt very refreshing to run long at an easy pace, with a nice hot weather. Medellin’s Half is two weeks away, so I’m trying to take it very easily now, and see if I can finally do that PR I’ve been dreaming about.

pulpTunes progress

Let’s say you’ve got a huge music collection in your iTunes at home. Wouldn’t it be great if you could access that music from the office, at a friend’s party, or let other people hear it from anywhere in the world?

iWunes is a piece of software I wrote that does exactly that. You can download it from the link to the right. It has the limitation though, that it only works for PCs. So I’m finishing rewriting it to have it work on Macs as well. I’m also changing the name to “pulpTunes”.

The rewrite is progressing well, and have the motivation to get it over with to start as soon as possible with my next new shiny project:

Website/online application to track your training

This combines my two biggest passions in life, running and programming, so I’m really looking forward to start with it.

The core will be a simple running log application, where you can track info about your training session like mileage, routes, comments, and that kind of basic stuff. Then I’ll start building on top of that, adding goodies like routes maps and ability to sync with devices. It also has to follow the social application model, letting you add friends and share as much information as possible.

If I make this a Facebook app I would get a jump start on all the “social” functionality. But I hate Facebook. So much clutter, and most apps there are garbage. I want something really focused.

I remember reading something about the Google Social Graph API, revolving around the concept of having your contact list and interactions be independent of the application where you have them, so that you can carry them over to other apps. I certainly won’t have to deal with something this advanced during the early stages of the project, but it makes the case against having to tie up the app to something like Facebook.

I’m starting this for fun and to satisfy my own needs, and I’m not worried about monetizing it right just yet. I know this will relieve a lot of pressure and let me keep the motivation for the long term. That doesn’t mean that I don’t wanna hear about what you’d like the app to do for you, because I really really much do!!

I’ve left Newedge, where I worked as the lead dev/architect for more than three years, and I’m joining a European startup. It still is kinda in stealth mode, so I’ll be giving more details later. For now all I can say is that it’s a social website/online app revolving around open source communities. I get to build it from scratch, which is such a blessing :) And we’ve got two terrific graphical designers on board already, so I can concentrate on purely technical stuff. What else can I ask for?

It’ll be a PHP app, built on top of the Zend Framework, using as much as possible the facilities provided by the framework: its MVC framework, authentication and authorization libraries, etc. The only thing I’m having second thoughts about is Zend_View, the template engine, because it’s too basic, and we’ll be needing something with caching out of the box. I’m not sure Smarty will be a good alternative. On the client side, we’ll be using YUI’s libraries. We chose YUI because it’s well documented, it provides all the javascript widgets you can think of, even some nice CSS facilities, and all its parts were designed to fit nicely together.

We’re also thinking about providing some rich-client and offline capabilities in the desktop through C# Mono apps.

So, if you’re familiar with any of the technologies mentioned above, and are looking for an exciting new job, drop me a line!

You can get it here.

Since the ongoing project is to replace the iWunes Server with a better cross-platform version written in Java called “pulpTunes”, I dropped the iwunes.com domain name. But iWunes was communicating with a script in that domain to retrieve the server’s IP, so this caused an error right after the server is started. This release should fix that problem.

Please comment if you’re having trouble and need some help.

I’m hoping this is the last release before launching pulpTunes.