May 30 2012

Not enjoying technology tonight

There is irony in that post title, being that I am a technologist by day, running by evening and blogger in the night, so it seems anyway.This week is becoming the epitome of deja vu, meets anarchy of ironic failures. It must be some planetary alignment, so I propose to the tens of readers. I digress.

My run today was intended to be a 30 minute easy run, per my active.com training program. I fully intended to make this happen and was well on my way. First, I had to move my nike shoe pod from my older pair of running shoes to the new buddies. Simple right? So I dig the old one out and place properly in the pocket, and…wallah! Nothing. I try resetting the silly little bugger, and wallah! Nothing…sigh. So I head back upstairs to gather my other shoe pod from my not so older pair of nike running shoes, and wallah! Success. Finally. Ten minutes later, I am finally running with a wee bit of stress going on. No problem.

I start out at a 6.5 mph, or roughly a 9’15″ pace. When I check on the phone 5 minutes in, it has me at a 11’05″ pace. Huh? Oh yeah, I forget. It seems that moving a nike pod requires some calibration, and since this pod was last calibrated with a GPS, surely it has to be accurate…nope. Not to fear, I am running on the trusty TM, surely I can’t screw up my distance and will re-calibrate once I am finished. Not a trouble in the world.

Similar to my picture…

Back to staring at the picture and thinking about my upcoming trip, missing my family, etc..etc…

So around 16:00 minutes in, I decide to hit the power button on the iPhone to check how far the distance/pace is off at this point, and Wallah! I hit an oddly placed button the control panel of the TM, sending it into a new routine, basically setting me to stop and asking if I want to run in Death Canyon 10k…NO! Alas, since I am wise with technology, I quickly pause the run on the iPhone, hit manual on the TM and set the pace back to 6.5 mph. No harm, no foul.

Yet, something is off. In the mere 30 or so seconds I was not running, my body/brain connection shattered. I struggle over the next few minutes and determine this is not going to happen the way I planned. Plan B.

Since I wasn’t able to do my Cross Training yesterday, which was on the books for 20 minutes, and I am only 1 minute from that goal, my alternate plan was to finish up the current run and then hit the rowing machine as punishment.

I wrap up the run and quickly try to do the math on where I was at 16:08 ish when I hit the dreaded button and then where I got to in the following 3:50 ish time to finish. I figure the pace was roughly a 9:15 and I was around 1.75 miles when I hit the button, so I assume I was around the 2.15 mile point. Sigh. Epic Fail. Crap.

So I hit the treadmill and determine I shall be punished with a 10 minute or 250 stroke row, whichever comes first. Our rowing machine is a castoff piece of training equipment that I believe came, by the way of a friend, from a phsycial therapy office. It is not anything fancy but very smooth.

It is something similar to this, just probably two or three times higher on the quality scale. I love the squeak one gets as a reward for the full pull on the left handle, but let me tell you, this is a workout.

As my punishment wraps up, I am left to wonder…how will this impact my training cycle? Will I still be adding stamina to my running or am I just causing self inflected wounds in order to prevent myself, subconsciously or consciously with malice (too many cop dramas lately)??? Then I take a breath and realize, why would that matter? If I don’t ever run a half marathon, so what? The point of my running is to challenge myself, but not at the expensive of adding stress to my already stressful day job.

So I put this in the learning category of don’t press buttons when you don’t have to Kevin…tomorrow shall now be a 30 minute run and I am going to take the time to actually enjoy myself…so I plan on it.

Question of the post…what do you do when technology fails you, such as your iPod dying, treadmill fail or GPS crapping out?

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May 28 2012

Sorta Guilty…Sorta Not Guilty

I spent this weekend sort of beating myself up. I was supposed to run on Saturday. It was nasty weather and we actually went to the city after cleaning the garage to meet up with the wife and then do a little bowling with the family. Cleaning the garage was a major/minor undertaking, but since I was along with the little monster, we focused on that instead of my 45 minute run.

I truly did plan on running later in the evening, however once we bowled and got home around 7:30 pm, the concept of running no longer interested me. I had run the day before, so why push a long run on a day so crappy and where so much actually happened physical, such as cleaning and bowling. Bowling is a cardio workout, right?

Guilty…maybe a bit?

So Sunday then came around and we already had a day planned to take Logan to the “Day Out With Thomas” in nearby Heber. It was a cold, rainy morning, along with wind, so an A.M run was not in the cards and again I just planned on hitting the TM when I got home later. Well, after an IKEA trip after the train ride, spending 30 minutes trying to figure out how to wrangle the desk into the Acadia and still allow passengers (wish I had a video of loading), by the time we got home, got the new office desk together, (which looks awesome btw) it was already too late. Plus the wife wanted to watch the recording of Duets…epic fail on that one.

Guilty…a bit more perhaps?

Long Run #1

So in my half training program, the Saturday run is my long run of the week, but since I had a guilt filled weekend of excuses to procrastinate, I ended up with this on a Monday…today comes around and the sun is out, but a bit breezy. By Wyoming terms, this means a 10-15 mph wind, which by all accounts is normally a shut down day, but damn…I wanted to run this 45 minutes and get going again. I had even bought a new pair of shoes in my weekend travels, so I had to try them out.

I wanted to get a bit more of an aggressive shoe, but not lose the cushioning I need, being a bigger guy than what normal high end shoes are designed for. I did a lot of research and came down to some Asics Gel Nimbus 13 and Nike LunarGlide+3. I went with the Nike for two reasons.

Cost
Nike

I think you can see from many other blog entries that I am a bit of a Nike fan. This goes all the way back to high school for me, back before the Air Jordans and fundamentally back to when I couldn’t afford these shoes. while the Asics felt decent, it wasn’t enough to get me to trade out my Nike’s at this time. My new shoes…

Shop Nike for Shoes, Clothing & Gear. Start shopping now at www.nike.com
Check out the
Nike LunarGlide+ 3 Men’s Running Shoe

The run

My goal for the run today was to try and keep an even tempo. I think I suffer from what a lot of other competitive people who run suffer from, and that is trying to beat something or someone. If your not getting better, why do something right? Well, this fundamentally causes me issues mentally and my hurdle is to make this stay as positive as possible.

My goal pace was a solid 6.5 mph and make sure I exceeded 4.5 miles.

Given the wind, this didn’t make my job any easier. The good news was that my first half mile was down hill, into the wind. The two seemed to balance each other out as my first mile clocked in at 9:02.

I found myself in a pretty solid mindset going farther along my run. Was it the extra days of rest? Was it getting outside for the first time in a week? Was it that extra coffee that morning? Not really sure, but when I cross mile two at 9:13, I was damn proud of myself. Not only was a clocking in decent times against the wind, but I was keeping my pace pretty steady. I got all the way to 2.41 miles at my halfway point, so I was stoked that I was well above a 4.5 mile pace and now I had the wind helping.

As I turned around, it was nice to feel the breeze pushing me instead of trying to pull my hat off. I could feel my legs starting to get a bit tired, but I haven’t really gone much past a 5k in a while. So when I hit my 3 mile right around 28 minutes, I realized that I was cruising a bit more than I had expected, but was still below a 10:00 minute mile. That usually is my demon when I run longer distances, I start decent but then fall off and start running 10:00-30 minute miles, giving up all the time I might have gained by starting out too fast.

I figured that when I hit mile 4 with almost the same pace as mile 3, only gaining 4 seconds from a 9:43 to a 9:47, I felt I had made a major milestone in my effort to stay under a 1 hour 10k and that was 67% of the race below 10 minute miles on average. Then came my finishing hill.

I was really starting to feel the legs at this point and I decided I was going to simply get up the hill at a pace that was more realistic yet kept my goals in site. As long as I could get a 10 minute mile now, uphill, I was really improving. I hit mile 4 at 37:52 and then mile 4.5 at 42:51…Ha! I had kept it to a 9:58 pace. Wahoo!!!

I came up about 0.1 miles short of running the same pace back as the pace out, but that was not my goal. Hitting 4.71 miles was awesome, don’t get me wrong, but what I was after was a more consistent run. Here is the pace chart in a cleaner graph.

While I would rather see a flatter graph, I am still pretty excited about the run and what this shows me on all of the miles so far this year. I have gotten much stronger and learned to pace myself much better. I feel 100% better about taking on this half now, but time will tell on how my body holds up to running longer and longer distances.

So in the end, I don’t feel any guilt for passing up a couple of days for family time and for a guy who clocks in a 6’2″ and 225 pounds, I will take this and just hope my health holds up and the weather cooperates. We will just have to keep beating up pavement until then.

May 25 2012

No more allergies = no more excuses

So this past few days something wonderful has happened…my eyes have stopped itching and I can breath again. Well, most of the time anyway. Pretty stoked about this as I embark on this half crazy idea of running a half marathon by the end of summer.

Today was a very long work day, made so by having to sit in training all morning then trying to get everything ready for the long weekend. Nothing worse than 25 engineers who all want to get out early for the holiday, only to be disappointed by the fact the boss was stuck, therefore they must all suffer.

The weather wasn’t any brighter, with rain, hail and wind, all forcing me to the TM for my easy run. While I don’t hate running on the TM as much as hills, I don’t really enjoy staring at this for long periods.

I added that picture to give something to focus and it does seem to work…sometimes. Others, I just wonder if I would be happy running in such a remote area…then I remember, I do…I live in Wyoming!!! Add a mountain in the background and that is what my typical running route looks like.

Do you have anything to help break up the view of your TreadMill?

My run tonight was a easy 25 minute run. This really is more about tomorrow, I believe, which has my first long run at 45 minutes. That really doesn’t worry me as I have run an hour plus in the past few weeks, just worried about the weather and forcing me to do this on the TM again.

The wierd thing is that my foot pod is all jacked up from getting the calibration from the GPS, which should make it more accurate. My only assumption is that I run drastically different stride length on the TM from when I run on the road. I am going to stop using the GPS calibrate and stick to just manually adjusting on the phone.

I ran this for the first two miles at 6.7 mph and then shifted to my pace for tomorrow (goal anyway) which will be around 6.2 mph. I don’t plan on using my watch because I want this about time and not pace, so my phone on my bicep will be perfect. GPS but no real ability to check every minute what my pace is, plus since I won’t have my glasses, I couldn’t read the screen if I wanted. Damn getting old!

I am also trying to figure out my races for the next few months. My work has me traveling as well as my 25 year high school reunion back home in Iowa. It also is what my school calls an All Class reunion, so that means not only my class, but everyone. My home town of 4,500 is going to be busting at the seems for a week.

My thinking is another 5k in June, a 10k in July and maybe another in August with my half sometime before October. Due to the lack of races on Sunday in Utah, my choices of days is pretty slim with the travel, so it might end up something different.

How far out do you plan your races?

Here’s hoping lack of wind tomorrow…ha, forgot I live in Wyoming.

May 23 2012

A running we will go…

So a basic day today, after giving up a bit on yesterday. My Active.com training program had me running yesterday, but a PBS show on cell tower deaths captured my attention. Seems odd, but that is my day job and I had to see how the media portrayed carriers and our crews. Not well btw, however my company does not contract out our work, so we are liable for any mistakes, hence our rules…ooops wrong blog for that.

So I moved yesterday’s run to today and all is well. I am trying to blog from my iPad for the first time so forgive any typos

My run was a simple 30 minutes on the training and 3 miles on the build up. Perfect, that way I could take it easy and still get both done.

I set the treadmill up again at 6.5 mph and quickly realized two things

1) I forgot the fan…mistake
2) I was dragging, no energy

I guess it was possibly too much caffeine during the day or just a lack of sleep the night before. Either way it wasn’t a fun start, middle or finish. The temp in the room was a bit much, but I just tried to take in water more often, using smaller drinks.

So this is the training card from trainer.active.com and I like several things on the website. Suzanne and I both have used this in the past and while I know she loved the organization, I do like the tools it offers.

First, you can see your miles, calories and time easily. Second, I love how on a PC you can drag and drop workouts from one day to the next instead of have to manually shift things. Third, you can import workouts from Nike and other services. It also has a social feed as well to brag on your workouts.

Personally, I am not OCD enough to ‘need’ these features, but I am heading to uncharted waters on this silly half marathon thing, so might as well use the $30 plan, right?

What do you use to help track your runs?

Tomorrow is now an easy 25 minute run, so hopefully I can manage to get that done outside. The weather has been crazy windy, so I have been stuck on the TM, not my favorite.

My main goal is to work on easing up on my pace, so I can find the happy place for distance over pace for time. Any suggestions?

May 21 2012

Change of plans…

So when I started my running, I really had no goals beyond finishing a 5k. I have done that a few times now in races and many, many times in my daily training runs. I realized that I wasn’t really challenging myself, other than to get faster in my times. What I also realized was that even at 43, I can complete something more. A 10k? A 10 miler? How about a half marathon? Am I really crazy enough to do a marathon?

I do have to be realistic, simply put I have no knees as most people know them. A degenerative disease and 4 knee surgeries have basically left me with no meniscus and no cartilage behind my knee cap. Ultimately this means I have bone on bone and some days I know this more than most, especially as a weather front moves through.

Worse, I suffer from a heart condition called cardiac arrhythmic syncope, or fast fainting. This is a neurocardiogenic syndrome, common after exercise or getting too hot (shower, sauna, hot tub) so basically I have to be careful to not get too hot or get my heart rate up too much. This will make this a bit of a challenge, but hell, if I am working out, I might as well push my limits, right?

Staged approach

While I would love to just snap my fingers and make myself run a marathon, give my underlying health limitations, I decided to do what any geek would do…google it. Actually, I bing’d it, as an old habit of working at bing for too long. I also restarted a training plan on Active.com that I had signed up for and put today as the start date. This beginner half-marathon training program is usually something like $29.95, but a promotion last fall got it for free, so you can’t beat that. I think if you sign up for the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award PALA, it is still free. This is a 51 day training program, so about 7 weeks with the longest run coming around day 44 at 2 hours 15 minutes, not to exceed 11 miles.

The bing’er found me a mileage buildup plan on marathontraining.com that looks promising. It is broken up into two phases. Phase 1 looks like right up my alley for now, a 19 week program that will build me up over time to a 10 mile run. This is much slower than the other training program, so I am going to keep an eye on both and see how I feel.

If I can keep up with the Active.com program, sometime in August I should be able to complete a half-marathon. With the buildup plan, this would put me out to around November, which doesn’t do me much good, but I do like the conservative approach. As an engineer, I typically like to do take things on in parallel, so this gives me two plans to work with, doubling my chances for success (think like an engineer).

Today

So my run today per active was supposed to be 20 minutes and on the buildup yesterday was supposed to be 4 miles. I sort of split that in two and ran 30 minutes for 3.3 miles. Even though I never changed the treadmill pace from 6.5 mph for the entire 30 minutes, except for 2 minutes in the middle where a Maroon 5 song was just the wrong pace so I bumped up to 6.7, it is interesting to see how my stride got slower/shorted per the shoe pod.

Short term goals

While I love the idea of doing a half marathon, my wife will tell you I am not good at planning out 7-8 weeks out for anything. I am one of those next week is way too far out, so I need to set closer goals.

So around the end of July, there is a 10k that I will be finishing. Which one, I am not quite sure of yet, I will post my sign up here for that and possibly then another 10k or if I can find one close by, a 10 miler.

The big race I am looking at now is either the Jackson Hole half-marathon in Sept. I cannot think of running in any more beautiful location, minus the altitude. It is actually lower than home, by about 500-600 feet, but it would be nice to run something at sea level. I do have a business trip to L.A. scheduled for October, so maybe I can hook up with a couple of former Iowans that have started up running and see if there is anything happening that weekend at sea level.

Am I nuts?

I think many have an answer for this already, but I just want a challenge that also helps me with my health goals at the same time, that doesn’t take me away from the family. I could try to get my golf game to scratch again, but that is hours at the course and more hours and the range, and I just don’t see how that can push my health forward. We will see at the end of the summer how I do, but personally I know I do better when I have a challenge in front of me, in which I can achieve it and feel good about it.

Do you need a challenge in order to push yourself?

May 19 2012

Running with foxes, oh and freezing

My travels for work took me down south, well relatively, to Colorado. My boss volunteered me to speak at the local economic development forum…thanks boss. Fortunately, a few years of teaching experience ensured I had no public speaking fears, hence why he volunteered me, however he also decided to come along to heckle. You can see the highlights here, I am just glad he didn’t include the photographs.

That morning, my boss also unintentionally screwed me on my run. I woke up early, to make sure all of my road trip demons from riding shotgun with his driving (think how a NASCAR driver would be on a dirt road in rural Wyoming). I had looked at the weather on the iPhone and saw 37 degrees, which I had of course not packed for. As I went down to the one treadmill in the hotel, I saw him happily walking along.

I won’t blame him, as I know he still has six screws in his ankle, so any exercise is good for him. It did suck that now if I wanted to run, it had to be outside and another glance at my phone showed it was going to be chilly, now a balmy 38 degrees. Worse, due the high mountains that make the awesome skiing for the area, the sun wouldn’t be up for another hour at least and we had agreed to meet in 45 minutes.

As I took off, I was greeted immediately by a small fox. I started laughing and thinking about the last time I was in the Yampa River Valley of Steamboat, and that was two years ago at winter survival, where I made friends with a fox by feeding it some left overs. I figured she knew I was back in town and was looking for some breakfast, but she took off before I could take her picture.

I had formulated a plan for a run if the weather had been warmer, along the Yampa River Core Trails. I see this every time I drive through, as it is right along Hwy 40 and meanders along the Yampa River. The weather was simply cold. The type of run where your eyes are watering and nose is numb, and fingers start to lose their ability to hold onto your iPhone.

The trail was nice and flat in most places, along amazing views that kept having me stop for a photo opportunity. I didn’t mind and it kept me from pushing too hard and keeping my run to an easy 30 minutes. I would have rather run a bit longer, but I did have to get back and shower to meet up with my boss.

Is that sunlight I see on top of the mountain to the west? Yep, but not going to be hitting me anytime soon and alas, I am stuck running in May while seeing my breath. The views keep me going along with U2 “Beautiful Day”.

As I got to my 15 minute point of my run, I tried to get a bit closer to the river, however the trail took me in a way that was actually behind a railroad track, so I turned around a decided I would focus on getting back a bit faster than I ran out, i.e. fewer pictures.

Well, one more. This shows me the sun will come out exactly as I wrap up my run. Still 38 degrees and my eyes are seriously streaming water.

I didn’t have any goals setup for this run going in, I just don’t think that well at 6:00 am. I knew that I just wanted an easy run, so nothing about pace and stopping once and a while to take a picture really helped with that. I also had a time goal and not distance, which I think helped me focus on a slower pace versus getting a specific distance done as quickly as possible.

So in the end, minus freezing my ears off and not getting a solid picture of the fox, it was a great run and I even pulled off the speaking event without making a fool of myself. Not a bad day.

Technorati Tags: running,training,steamboat springs,yampa

May 15 2012

Running with Asthma

Understand your own limits, but know how to break through them and establish new ones.

A limit is merely a measure of what you have done, not what you are fully capable, that is only limited by your imagination.

These and many others like them were preached to me while in the military. So what does one do when that limit is a physical ailment that keeps you from providing enough oxygen to your muscles?

I was first diagnosed with Asthma about 10 years ago. I was over 40 pounds overweight, smoked and drank more than one should. I chalked this up to a bad time in the military and quite honestly being fat. This really lasted for the next 7 years, until my wife got pregnant to which I quit smoking. I didn’t quit eating though and gained even more weight. We both got somewhat serious about our weight about 1 year after our son was born, but it wasn’t until a family tragedy where we got serious about our health.

For me, it was simple. Get back to how I was when I was on active duty. Run, ride a bike, walk more and return to the athlete I used to be. A few months of spin classes, a few hundred miles on our treadmill and many hikes later in the mountains near our home, and we both had actually gotten down to a solid goal weight.

Unfortunately, my asthma didn’t go away. In fact some days, it was worse than ever. Right before we moved to Wyoming from Seattle, my doctor had actually diagnosed me with a mild form of COPD, like there is a mild form of not being able to breath.

So this week, with the plants and trees all going nuts with Spring in the mountains, my world has been miserable.

So today, I knew I wanted to try two things; my old inhaler and some new allergy meds. I took some allegra D and then my Proventil inhaler for two doses. While my breathing was decent, it didn’t help my itching eyes, so later I tried Claritan to the same affect. Tomorrow is Zyrtec.

I did do a run after taking these, in the hopes of trying to keep a decent pace and focus on breathing. I figured if I couldn’t get rid of the issue, I might as well learn to control the breathing as compared to my pace. As long as I am getting enough oxygen to the muscles, I figured I can do a decent time and simply not pass out.

My goal was to try and keep a 7.0-7.5 mph pace and hopefully keep my breathing pace at something reasonable as well.

So while the speed did vary from time to time, I actually felt pretty good. I know there were a few moments, mostly uphill, where my breathing got away from me, but I was able to push on with some timely music and just a bit more effort.

So did I do a PR run? nope, not even close. But what I did do was show myself that even with my asthma and mild COPD, and even when those are flaring up, I can run at a pace that pushes me and I can handle it. I even feel like I could have pushed a bit more, however when you have woken up with a broken nose, eye socket and with a road rash that takes six weeks to heal, you don’t push more than what you KNOW you can handle.

Now I just have to figure out what happens when using an expired inhaler…

May 14 2012

What was I thinking

So when looking at races to run in the month of May, I noticed the Komen Race for the Cure. As I commented in my last post, I support most everything I related to the finding of a cure for cancer (hate it more than I hate hills). So I thought it was a no brainer to run in a race that supported what I also cared about. I guess I should have done a bit more research.

The first thing I noticed when walking up to the registration was pure chaos. Thousands of people were mulling around, all trying to find a purpose, their friends, family and sunshine. It was a bit chilly in the shade, so everyone was congregating around any sliver of sunlight. After receiving a bib with the 2012 number and noticing everyone else had the same number, I realized this was going to be an un-timed event. That truly doesn’t matter to me, however one would have thought that would have been mentioned anywhere.

Second thing I noticed was that there were many, many sponsor tents. What I didn’t understand was that with hundreds of volunteers, even ones walking around with signs like “Ask Me”, why didn’t they put all the sponsor SWAG into bags instead of basically have people form lines at various sponsors? I mean, I am a guy who loves chaos (from chaos one finds order) but I despise crowds with no purpose. My worst nightmare was the wonderful day I spent with my family at Disney Animal Kingdom (I did walk a 10k per my GPS watch). I did surf the human wave and picked up a couple of things but it got to the point where my frustration was surpassing the enjoyment, so we started walking towards the start line.

So this was actually pretty well organized, and was the 1 mile set to start 15 minutes prior to the 5k. I was impressed at the support and people who really cared about being there to support the race and supporting those who were participating. Most of my runs are quite small, so this was a bit of a change as the only race of this size I had previously done was my first 5k last year, which was the Utah Valley Marathon.

Once those folks took off I headed towards the 5k line. This was still pretty organized but man the crowd was impressive.

Then all hell broke lose. I had planned on getting towards the front, as I felt it would be easier to get passed by a massive crowd, versus getting caught up in the masses and further pressing my frustration. As I stood at the tape towards the middle, a kid with a bull horn decided to yell to the crowd “Time to go folks, get out of here”. Well, the starters were simply trying to get the volunteers out of the way, but his comment set off everyone. It was too late to control things, and the race started sort of like a leak in a damn. A few started, more followed them and then finally a gush happened and it was just pure chaos at its finest. I think I laughed for two blocks at the the memory of the lady with the clipboard doing her best Kevin Bacon from Animal House “all is well” line trying to get people to stop and return.

The race

My start was pretty good and even though it was chaos, I had already started my iPod and my GPS watch was all ready to go. I did look down after about a quarter mile and was shocked at the pace. I was seeing 9.25 mph, but was feeling pretty decent, so I let myself stride it out while keeping my breathing as the focus over pace. I think this was a mistake.

About the time I hit the 1 mile point, I was actually realizing that my breathing was getting bad and bad fast. I wasn’t tired, but I was noticing the smell of the flowering trees and it dawned on me…asthma and allergies. This was nothing I had thought about, as my asthma is very mild…except when certain plants are in bloom and then it triggers my COPD. This is my demon from a time spent breathing in noxious fumes while in the military while smoking at the same time. I don’t really treat this well enough, as it is a rare situation that actually triggers my shortage of breath.

So I had two choices; push on or just pack it in. I actually recall those thoughts of “dude, what are you thinking, you are wheezing while running” but I was also thinking of my father whispering his argument over Thanksgiving because he had lost his voice due to radiation treatment. If the patients of cancer could do their thing, well damn it, I could run with a bit of an asthma attack.

So what happened was simple…I slowed down to where I could actually catch my breath, which was bit faster than I actually anticipated. As you can see from this pace chart, my speeds were all over the place.

Around 2.6 miles I actually took a moment to get a bit more fluids in me than normal, as when you are breathing too hard, you simply lose fluids faster and I didn’t want to have an issue after the race, but this also allowed me to get a bit more balanced on my breath. It really allowed me to give a solid push to the end, however my wife did comment how I looked pretty bad coming in.

So in the end of the day, it was a pretty messy race, on the part of the organizers and myself. I did learn a valuable lesson and that is to make sure I have some allergy meds and an inhaler in the spring time, while checking the allergy tables of the websites.

I also remembered why I am running, not for a time, not for my weight and not for the bibs. I run because I want to be healthy, fighting issues I have no control over by making the healthiest life decisions as possible. I run because I can, and I push myself to do a bit more because I can. I try to be faster because I know I can and do things I think are hard because by doing so I show those around me that they can as well. In the end, ultimately I run for these guys, my biggest fans.

May 10 2012

Maybe a mistake…we’ll see

So this week I was trying to get a bit more speed in my runs, so I read up online to see some suggestions. Everyone said pretty much the same thing…run shorter burst at the a little faster than your race pace you want to run and take micro breaks, i.e. 16×400 meters with 30 second breaks, 8×800 meters with 60 second breaks and 4×1600 meters with 120 second breaks. Well, I am absolutely not OCD enough to actually do these, so I modified a bit. My thought was to see how fast I could run 2 miles on Tuesday and then how fast I could run a 5k on Thursday, with little breaks every now and then as needed, especially for my lungs. That damn 6,800 foot lack of oxygen I have to deal with.

Tuesday.

The run happened a bit late, so instead of running outside, I ran on my treadmill. This was actually good because I could set the speed and focus on rhythm for the pace I wanted. Since my goal race time is sub 26:00 minutes, I decided my ‘ideal’ pace would be at 7.5 mph. That is an 8:00 minute mile, which is actually around 25:00 race pace. Perfect!

Since there isn’t GPS, this is what the Nike+ looks like with the foot pod. At around 1.0 miles, I just had to bring the pace down, so I dropped to 7.0 and then made it another half a mile. Then I walked for 30 seconds and finished with another 7.5 stretch. The foot pod takes into account stride length, so even though the treadmill was running at 7.5, my strides were getting shorter, which makes it look slower (my theory anyway). So I finished this at 8’14” pace, so right in the window of a 26:00 minute race. It felt pretty good, however I would have rather done all 2 miles with no break, but with the paces that were suggested, I hoped only to have helped for Thursday.

Thursday

So tonight, I was able to get outside and run, although there was a bit of a breeze. In Wyoming terms, a breeze is anything less than 15 mph, and it was around 10 mph, but hey, you run outside when you can. I felt pretty good for the first mile, but then the breeze seemed to be taking the wind out of me, or I was just tired. That seems to be the issue with running for me after a long day of sitting on my ass. sigh…while it didn’t seem to slow me down for the first mile, I started to cramp a bit around 1.5 miles, so I took a 1 minute pause and backtracked a bit.

You can see in the run the big dip in pace, but then I was able to get back to my run and felt a bit better. Fortunately the side cramps were gone and I was able to get back to my 8:00 pace until…the hill. Because of where the cramp happened and where I turned back, I decided I was going to go a bit farther up my dreaded hill, to help me in case there will be a hill Saturday, more to make sure I got in my 3.1 miles. I brought my pace down to around 6.5 mph, which I had hoped my first mile would make up for any lost pace.

Ultimately my 1 minute walk in the middle did me in. I missed my pace by a mere 28 seconds, however given that this run was at 6,800 feet, I do feel pretty confident that if I can keep air in my lungs on Saturday, I might make my goal of sub 26 minutes.

My main concern is did I push too much two days before the race? As I right this, about 2 hours after running, my legs feel pretty good, but my side still is sore from my cramps. I hope the lack of air was simply the wind and/or being tired from a long couple of days, but I know for sure tomorrow will be nothing but a walk day for me to try and get my legs a bit of rest.

So I hope my mistake wasn’t waiting until two days prior to push my pace up, however nothing we can do now but wait, learn and see.

May 9 2012

Here we go again

So I put up the post about running in the Komen Race for the Cure this weekend. I had a goal in mind to run a 5k every weekend in May, however last weekend got away from me. Wasn’t feeling good and had no logistics on signing up the day of the race, waiting too long to register online. To make up for that fact, I decided it would be an awesome idea to run 6 miles on Sunday. You know, run two 5k’s to make up for a lack of running the one on Saturday.

So the run was starting out awesome. I actually ran my fastest mile without really pushing. Being this is downhill, it wasn’t earth shattering, but was a good feeling getting done in 7:49 and still being able to continue at my standard running pace of 9:00 minute miles.

My thought was to run a 5k at a decent pace, take a 3 minute break and then run back doing 1 mile runs. It was an amazing morning, about 45 degrees and no wind. I am sure a few people wonder on the 45 degrees, however that is typical for this time of year in Wyoming. So here is my track from Nike+

That wasn’t too bad, but instead of looping back on my run, I did a strait out run so I would have to do the same coming back. The run back wasn’t any fun at all, but I tried to keep it around a 10:00 mile average. You can see in my pace below that I did take two breaks and slowed WAY down up the hill in the end. Have I mentioned how I hate, hate, hate hills????

I am still trying to figure out where the 0.1 miles went to. I started where I stopped and stopped where I started. Maybe it is a worm hole hidden out there somewhere.

Two things stood out for me.

First, I have 1 decent mile in me at this point, to which we will see how I do on my next run (next post), which happened yesterday. Don’t want too much in one post, have to keep you guessing.

Second, I have a decent shot at getting in the 26:00’s for my next race, being that it is again about 3,000 feet lower in elevation. The track seems very flat around downtown Salt Lake City.

So about the race. For me, Breast Cancer was always a fear in our house. My mom seemed to have gone in 10 times when I was a kid and it was always a bit freaking weird. Cancer was a horrible thing, more so then than now given the new treatments, but still it hung around. Fortunately, never on any of these occasions was there Cancer found. Then this past year my father went through radiation for throat cancer. Fortunately they think they have nailed it, and he has a 95% chance it is all behind him. To these both, I can honestly say I hate Cancer worse than hills.

So this past fall, when my father was diagnosed, I went onto Stand Up 2 Cancer website and donated a bit and continue to wear my wrist band every moment of every day. It helps me think about why I work out, why I eat better, why I drink less and spend as much quality time with my family. Life is a blessing and at any moment something crappy can happen.

Here is the Star I created for my Father back then.

So I am happy to spend a few bucks on this race, support a great cause of getting rid of Breast Cancer and hopefully motivate others to do the same thing. So that is why you see this quote on my blog if you enter via an iPad.

“I run because I can. When I get tired, I remember those who can’t run, what they would give to have this simple gift I take for granted, and I run harder for them.

I know they would do the same for me.”

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Monthly Archives: May 2012