160 LostTrailRunner Podcast

Music. Hey, this is Ron here, and I wanted to say I'm trying to do a catch-up podcast.

Since the last time I put out a Lost Trailrunner podcast, it looks like it was on December 22nd of 2024, so it was a while ago. And I'm going to try to catch up and the way I'm going to do it is I did two podcasts on my other feed, my Ron's update feed and I'm going to take some of the recordings from that and patch them together and give kind of an update to try to catch up to the current time. It won't be that current because I think the last podcast I did on Ron's update was May 26th.

So I'm going to patch those together and put out an episode of 160, The Lost Trail Runner. And then I have another recording that I'm patching together to catch up to the current time. Okay, so if you have listened to Ron's update, you can skip this. If not, go ahead and listen to it.

So here is Lost Trailrunner episode 160. Music. Don't know how far I'm walking today. I'm going to do at least a half hour, so I don't know if I'll record a half hour or not. We'll have to see. Anyway, on December 13th, I had surgery to remove some melanoma on the top of my head. I had gone to the dermatologist at the end of October, and he found it.

Said it looked suspicious and took a biopsy and then of course they called me and said yeah you got melanoma on top of your head which wasn't a good uh feeling you know because, i think that's the worst kind of skin cancer is melanoma hello hey how you doing, so when i went to the doctor on the 13th and got this thing cut off the top of my head And my doctor said, well, there's only like a 1% to 2% chance that you'd have any kind of complications,

because the melanoma wasn't deep into my scalp or anything. It was just in the first layer of skin. So I felt pretty good about the operation. And of course, I couldn't run for a while after that. And I had just started a training plan. I think I was doing an 80-20 at that time. And so I had to just kind of cancel all that. And I didn't know what to expect, you know, so I took it pretty easy. I just, I walked some, I didn't run at all.

And then probably maybe the end December, I started to run a little bit. I hear a park vehicle coming up behind me. I think they're collecting garbage. I guess I'll get this podcast done eventually. Park vehicle just came by on the path here. Anyway, as I was saying, I just started running again the first part of January. And about the middle of January, I get a call saying that, well, let me go back. I had gotten my stitches out, okay? And I thought everything was fine.

And I got a call from the dermatologist that I was going to have to come back in and they were going to have to redo everything. Because they had missed a spot and they needed to do a, they call it an excision. So I had, they had to do another one. So I was not impressed. In fact, I was depressed. So I got an appointment for February 3rd to get my second excision on the top of my head.

And I think the first time, the doctor said it was like a continuous stitch, because I'd ask her how many stitches it was, and she said it was a continuous stitch. But it would be considered in the range of about 20.

So it was a sizable amount of stitches and this kind of screwed up my plans i just started back, i had i set up a another training plan and i was just getting started back in starting feeling good not running fast of course i haven't run fast for a long time but You know, relatively speaking, when I say fast, we're talking 11 and 12-minute paces fast for me now when you're 83. So my training paces are like 13s and 14s. So that sort of thing.

And anyway, I had just felt like I was starting to get back together. And I got that news and that kind of, I can't say it crushed me, but, you know, when you're talking cancer and they're telling you they didn't get it all and they're going to have to go in and do it again. And it doesn't give you the warm, fuzzy feeling, you know what I'm saying? So anyway, I had the procedure again on the 3rd of February. And the doctor said, this won't feel as bad as it did the first time.

Well, she was totally wrong. It hurt worse. I mean, not during the surgery, but afterwards, like that night, you know, it was on a Monday, the 3rd. So Monday night, my head hurt. And of course, all I could take was Tylenol. And I hate Tylenol anyway. I prefer taking ibuprofen, but ibuprofen makes you bleed easier. So when they do surgery on you, they want you to take Tylenol because it won't make you bleed. But I have always heard that Tylenol can screw up your liver.

And I just have this hang up on screwing up my internal organs, you know. So anyway, I just took the Tylenol, like they said, and the throbbing on the top of my head was still there. I mean, not as bad, of course, but it still hurt. And I'm now a week into it like last Monday was when I got my second surgery. And this is Monday the week after and I'm just starting to feel like my head doesn't bother me as much as it did.

But anyway, the doctor told me that I could start running the Thursday after my surgery. So I went into Garmin Connect and set up a Galloway 10K training program with no time goal, Because he has two different kind of plans, you know, to finish a race and then a time goal. Well, I felt like I, since I'm starting over from scratch here, I'll just do a, to finish 10K. And then as I get in better shape, I'll switch it over.

Because I know when you do a time goal one, they start pushing you right off the bat to more interval training, more hill training, more all that kind of stuff, and I just wanted to get a base back in. So last Thursday, I went over to Mountain Park and did a benchmark run, which on my Galloway plan is only a nine-minute workout. It's a two-minute warm-up, five minutes of running, and then a two-minute cool-down just to give you a baseline, I guess.

Well, I think my baseline was a 12-minute pace, which isn't really great, but, you know, something anyway. So after that then i did an easy mile and a half afterwards so just to get started, so i got that in so i ended up running thursday friday saturday and sunday all four days i. I think on Friday I can't even remember what I ran.

I may have just walked, but I think I ran. And then on, Saturday was what was my first actual workout from my training plan after the benchmark because the Galloway training plans, the one I'm doing, you run three days a week.

And I hear the little park vehicle coming up behind me again. Okay, where was I? I was talking about... My first actual training run in was on Saturday and it was a 10-minute warm-up, two-and-a-half-mile run, and 10-minute cool-downs. So I got in a little under four miles, I believe, for that workout, and I felt pretty good.

I ran it down here at Lilburn Park and up through Old Town Lilburn, And so I had some elevation in it because the park's lower and Old Town, you're going uphill and then back downhill. So it was a good workout. And then yesterday was Sunday and I just went over to Mountain Park and ran for 40 minutes just to get a run in slow. So in the middle of all of that, oh great, now I've got a leaf blower. I can't win.

In the middle of all of this, on February 1st, two days before my surgery, my daughter Laura had talked me into registering for Stampede in the Park 5k which took place down here at Lilrin Park and ran out on the Greenway Trail and went out and back for 5k, and I went well I'll do the race I'm not in that good of shape but what the heck.

And I ran that of course there was no age group for me just 60 and over and I'm 83 so you know how that is and I did a 38 45 which nowadays if I'm doing under a 40 for a 5k in a race I feel like I'm doing good. So anyway, I got that done and I felt pretty good. And we went out to Waffle House afterward for breakfast and hung around for a while.

And now I've gotten other 5k that I had registered for before I ever knew I was going to have this second surgery, and it's the Run the Reagan, which I've run for, what, how many years? I don't know how many years. Enough. But it's on the 20th of February, so I don't know what kind of shape I'll be in, but I'll at least be in as decent a shape as I was for the Stampede in the Park 5K. It'll be a different course. It'll be hillier, but we'll see how that goes.

So I've had my Galloway program it was a three day a week run and basically it's two drill workouts and a long run so I had my run on Saturday and then just just a run on Sunday just to get some miles in or some time in. And what I plan on doing is I've got this 10K plan set up for running on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. And I plan on the other days of the week to do something else like walk, ride my bike, you know, just something. Active and stick with my training plan.

So with a 5K run coming up on the 20th, we'll see how I'm doing, if I'm doing any better than I was doing before I ran my race with Laura on the 1st of February.

And hopefully this will get me a start for my 10K training to do Peachtree this year since I wasn't able to do it last year. I had COVID and was wiped out, so we'll see what happens. Let's see how much i got in here i've got a mile i got 1.83 miles in, and of course i'm talking which means i'm walking slow but i don't care as long as i'm walking And I think on my last podcast I mentioned that, didn't I? I said that I can't walk and record at the same time and keep any speed up. And that's true.

We'll see how I have to edit this to make it into a podcast that's even reasonably coherent. Because I've been rambling on for a while now. And I've probably repeated myself two or three times. We'll have to see. It's an overcast day today. It's right at 60 degrees, so the temperature's not bad. It's just overcast and cloudy. I think it's supposed to rain tomorrow. And, of course, tomorrow's one of my scheduled workout days on my new training plan.

So I'll have to look and see what time of day it's not going to be raining. So that I can schedule my workout when it's not raining on me. I'm getting close to two miles, and I think that'll be it for the day, is two miles. Sounds like a good number to me.

1.98 right now. Well, I made it back to the parking lot, and I did right at two miles. Let's see what it says. 2.01 miles. 40 minutes and 57 seconds. That's a good walk. I'll have to take that. And I'll try to get this out as a podcast shortly, you know. See you later. When I registered for Peachtree, I figured, you know, I better get into 10K shape instead of trying to run 5Ks. So I have, I'm into my fourth week of RUNNA. R-U-N-N-A. I got a 10K plan on that app that I'm using.

It's intermediate plan and between it and Strava it indicates that I'm pretty slow right now, and I don't know when I'll get faster but whether I get faster or not by the time Peachtree gets here in July I ought to have the endurance to be able to run the race comfortably, and that's all I want to do I registered. First of I was going to say March, but it seems like it's about a month ago that I registered.

And I also volunteered for the starting line of Group A, which is the first group after the Elite Runners. And being up in that group, after Group A starts, I get to start too. So I'll be up front for the race, even though I'm slower now.

According to my registration if I hadn't volunteered I'd be in group H which is a long way from A. But anyway so hopefully things will work out last year I registered and volunteered for group A and then I got COVID about two weeks before the race I think and I, I felt like crap for about a month. But anyway, so this year, hopefully things will work out better. Anyway, and I have been pretty regular. My training program is four days a week. I'm running on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

And Thursday is usually my speed day, I guess you'd call it. That's the day I got intervals and stuff like that. Of course, this last Sunday, yesterday, my long run, which was only four and a half miles, was progressive miles. Like I warmed up for a mile and a half. And then I was supposed to, we're talking slow times here. My first mile of my progressives was going to be 1330.

The second one was going to be 13 15 and the next one was going to be 13 and i think i ran a 13, 9 or 10 for the first one a 13 9 or 10 for the second one and a 12 52 for the third one so I ran faster than I was supposed to run but I felt pretty good, so hopefully my training will be, staying on par this next week on Thursday I have a, one mile time trial I'm going to like warm up for a mile and then run a mile time trial and then cool down for a half mile for about two and a half mile run,

and that'll see where I'm at I guess. I mean, as old as I am, I'm not worried about running super quick. You know what I'm saying? I just want to get my miles in and feel comfortable and enjoy myself because I'm not competitive. I might be competitive in my own age group, which the past races that I've run in, which I haven't run in any this year. Well, I did run the Reagan 5K, and I think I might have come in second. My age group had about six. But other than that race, I haven't run any races.

And so Peachtree's going to be like the first race I run this year of any consequence. I ran, run the Reagan. Oh, wait a minute. I ran one with Laura, Stampede in the Park 5K, too. And I think both of those races were before my surgeries for melanoma. So I've run two 5K races this year, both of them mediocre. And then I'll have Peachtree, and we'll see how that goes. I've never really run Peachtree fast, even when I was a faster runner. I think the fastest I ever did Peachtree was like a 41.

And at the time, I was running 10K in the 39 range, 39 to 40. So 41 was a good race. I was in Group A back then, and I ran okay, but really slow compared to then. We're talking 1983, 1984. That was a long time ago, you know. So if I can run in the 70s, I'll be happy. It would be not a miracle, but it would be a pleasant surprise if I could run in the 70s. It would really be nice.

Of course, my speed is basically determined by how much I'm doing the run, walk, run, Galloway, and it really depends on how much of the walking I do. That's where I lose my speed is because the way I have my run, walk set up, I'm actually usually walking more than running. Now when I get to pastry I'll probably be doing something like a, run 30, walk 15 or 20, something like that, which is still not going to make me very fast.

When I actually do run, I can run at an 8- to 9-minute pace, but the walking part's slowing me down. But it's comfortable, and at my age, comfortable is what counts right now. We're not really worried about performance anymore. That's long gone. So now it's enjoyment and doing it and staying out there as long as possible. You hear all these people talking about wanting to run, you know, into their 80s. Well, I'm there. I want to run into my 90s if I can.

And hopefully, we'll see how it goes. Fairly decent health, except for the thing on the top of my head that I got cut off. I got my physical... This last month, and everything was good. I'm in good physical shape, so hopefully I can hang on and increase my fitness with my training plan. I think I can. I mean, I've been feeling good with the hard part is getting out the door. Once, like yesterday, I kind of put off going out and doing my run.

And I was going, ah, it's, you know, I got other things to do. I'll wait a little while. And then pretty soon I said, I need to just go do it, or I'm not going to do it at all. So I had to force myself out the door. But once I got out the door, I went over to Colley Park, which is a completely flat 5K course.

And what's weird is it's a trail in a park but it's one of these rubberized trails, that's kind of spongy the kind they put on tracks maybe or something and it just feels weird when you're running on it but anyway, that's a good place to run because it's pretty flat I bet my elevation gain was probably, I bet it wasn't 50 feet for the whole run, but I had a good run I mean and I ran faster than I thought it was going to I thought I was gonna when I got over there I was going 1345 or 1330 is what

it wants me to run for my first, progressive mile and. I didn't know what I was gonna do well I did a 13.09 or 10 which was faster than what I was supposed to run, And I was using Galloway, and I was using, I think I was running 30, walking 20, and just comfortable. I wasn't really pushing it that hard because I was trying to stay close to what my program said I was supposed to run. And I actually ran a little bit faster, which was okay with me.

But when I went on the app after I finished, it told me that I ran a little bit faster than I should have run and I should have slipped down some. But I was okay. So, well, and that program is a pretty good program. It's kind of interactive. So it's watching what you're doing and giving you feedback. It's not like somebody just download a program and do what the workout says. It actually kind of encourages you to do what you're supposed to be doing and gives you feedback.

And if you need any kind of help, you can actually go on the app and contact one of the coaches, and they'll respond to you, which is good.

So anyway, it's kind of a semi-update of what's been going on with me for a while here, and I want to try to get back to being consistent with, My update here, I don't know if I'm going to do shorter podcasts with just brief updates or try to, at one time. I don't know if it was the end of last year or what it was, where I would, each day when I would run, I would sit in the car after I ran and record a little section of how I ran and put all of them together into a podcast.

And I might try doing that again. And that was an easy way to do it because it's very hard for me to sit down and script out a podcast and actually do one that way. I got to just jabber, you know. My podcasts are just talk live. However, I come across at the moment, nothing's written down and scripted. So we'll see how it goes, and I'll cut this off for now and try to come out with another one in a week or two, let you know how my time trial went, and I'll see you later. Music Music Music.

Music. Hey, thanks for listening to today's podcast. We'll be here next time. Keep the emails coming in and be sure to subscribe. Music.