Aug 31 2012

New toys, views from runs

Last night, I sort of had a reasonable plan on doing some sort of a workout, then the FedEx guy showed up. Received my new bicycle, to help foster my next psychotic dream of doing a Triathlon, possibly in November.

Paid a whopping $197 for this puppy, but it is a Schwinn so not like a total POS, just their most basic road bike. I just couldn’t see pulling the trigger on a fancy bike like my boss bought @$1,800 when I just need to get from A to B right now. If I ever start winning races (NOT) then maybe we will see about a nicer ride.

I took it out last night for a quit spin and other than needing to adjust the brakes a bit, was pretty easy to get moving, easy to shift with the paddle shifters and seemed very stable, given it was raining and winds at 20 MPH at the time. I have some quick release shoes, so will have to look at getting some new peddles, but I am fine with the toe clips for now. Can’t wait to start going for rides since Fall is basically about 24 hours from showing up here in Wyoming.

Speaking of which, I took a couple of pictures of my run the other night, simply to show anyone of my tens of readers what the views are like at nearly 7,000 feet.

The sun is setting over Utah which is three miles away from where we live. The mountain range in the distance there is the Wasatch Front, about 60 miles away, which is where Salt Lake City sits behind.

Looking North, overtop of I-80 about 100 feet below, the mountains in the distance are along the Wyoming/Utah/Idaho border about 30 miles away. When I run my 8 mile/Africa route, I cut across this valley for about 4 miles.

This is my big hill, about 100 feet in 0.25 miles topping out at 6,970 feet. You know it is high because my company has a cell tower just off to the right that covers the entire town of Evanston and can see 45 miles north to the next tower.

Next time I go on my longer out and back route I will take a couple of snaps, as it is a very long, open, lonely road. My last 11 mile run, I saw 8 hawks/raptors who seemed to be either following me around or just waiting for me to crash. I love seeing the wildlife on my runs and have seen deer, rabbits, antelope, eagles and hawks along with a ton of road kill, which I can do without.

Anyway, 24 hours from now I should be just topping my 3 mile hill and heading down for the finish.

Happy Friday!

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Aug 30 2012

Try 3…1 more day and a wake up

Loving technology…not. Seems word press doesn’t work well some days = third attempt to upload this.

So just 1 day and a wake up to the aptly named Only Half Crazy Half Marathon, my first ever, and over the past few days, I tried to think if I had done enough training, put in enough miles, have the right mental attitude going in…then realize the time for worrying ended when I registered. Reality is simply I am where I am and nothing can adjust that now anyway, so let’s just go run.

MY LAST RUN

Tuesday night, I didn’t have anything specific to do on the ‘training plan’

Instead, I just wanted to get some miles done and stretch out my legs after the 11 mile run on Sunday.

I decided to run my normal 5k hill route backwards, as this would make the hills longer and steeper going up. I also decided to run the first mile harder than normal so I would be pretty tired going into the hills.

The first 0.75 downhill piece went really well. I was focusing on form and not over striding while pushing the pace and turn over.

Then come the hills. The first mile tick’d off at 8’46”, which was pretty decent given that 1/4 is uphill. I continued to push hard until I got to the top of the hill at the end of mile 2, which the pace was more in line then with my goal pace of 10’00′” for the half.

Reality looking back, all of my runs of lengths longer than 6 miles usually comes in at above 10’00” pace, minus my 10k race which was an amazing 8’37”. I attribute that to competitive nature and adrenaline and hope this carries over to Saturday.

So I ended this run with about 9’34” pace and it felt actually pretty good, given one day in between a really nasty 11 miles. I took yesterday off and plan tonight to do a bit of X Training work and then tomorrow night a quick 2-3 miles of jogging to quell the nerves and hopefully allow me to get some sleep. 5 AM is pretty early to get moving, plus the Starbucks nearby doesn’t open until 6…bummer.

My expectations are low, my hope is to simply finish on my feet. The best part of your first race at a length is no matter how you finish, it will be a PR. I don’t plan on using my GPS to track my pace, only my HR to ensure I am being safe and I will be using my iPod for music so no splits form the iPhone.

I just need to remind myself that…

Good luck in your weekend endeavors, I may post how nervous I am Friday night and will try and recap with some pics. Happy (upcoming) Labor Day! Here’s to the end of a very productive running summer and to a Fall hopefully full of some even better runs.

Cheers!

Aug 26 2012

Long run, long day

In looking ahead to this Saturday’s half marathon, I realized a couple of things…

1. I hadn’t ever run 2 hours or more
2. My training had been focused on hills, not miles
3. I had no idea what to expect beyond ten miles

So I formulated a plan…run 2 hours today, even though I should be resting up more than putting in a lot of miles. Mainly, my goal was to take on the mental aspect of the half marathon and hope my legs were strong enough from the hill training.

So since I was about time and not miles or pace, I simply took off in my flatter out and back route. This still has about 275 feet of elevation overall, but gradual miles and nothing steep.

So the first five miles were slower than normal, with the hope of saving energy for the entire run. This doesn’t work for me as I don’t do well slowing up my pace. I typically do this more by shortening my stride rather than slower turn over and this simply hurts my hips and knees. By mile 6 it got to a point where I simply had to walk.

I used the opportunity to try some energy jelly beans…blah. So the next two miles were ok, just started to hurt again around mile 7.5 and I realized my water was low, so an emergency call to the wife and her and my son came one rescue mission, according to Logan. I met them around mile 8.5 completely out of my 40 oz of water, took on about 35 more and tried to get back.

The hip pain wasn’t walking off as well, so I simply fell into some strides.

You can see from the pace above and the HR chart where the breaks came in, but I simply wasn’t worried, I felt ok strength wise and I know I will be able to use the other runners to motivate myself.

I ended up cutting the distance down about 0.3 from a compete out and back as I had already passed my 2 hour time goal. It was somewhere around 10.6-9 miles, depending on the iPhone or the gps watch.

The splits showed my breaks, waiting on water and me trying just to finish. For me, the fact I now know more of what to expect, had a crappy go, teaches me more than if this was a smooth run. I know I can run 11 ish miles, I know I can be on the road 2+ hours. Now I just need to rest, stretch out the hips and maybe work on strengthening my hip flexors for the downhill segments.

I also watched a couple of running movies yesterday, mainly for motivation. Spirit of the Marathon was well done and really showed the mental side of 26.2 miles. Hopefully I can remember some of the lessons in the movie and keep thinking of those who struggle more, who have a reason they cannot run and those we have lost over the past few years, to keep me motivated during this craziness I took on.

So with that, my hopes are high, my legs are tired and I am ready to just take an easy week of recovery hoping I still have some time to repair the legs for this downhill jog.

Aug 24 2012

Long week, tired legs, new plan

Aug 22 2012

Quick hill run

So tonight I did what I promised I wouldn’t do until snow flies…ran on Bertha our treadmill. I really didn’t have a plan, other than the damn hill coming up was pestering me.

I am not really concerned about the elevation gain, nor the altitude as it starts at 5,000 feet or 1,800 feet below where we live. It’s the length. At 2.5 ish miles, this is just below a 5k run uphill, after running 5 miles down.

I can feel the quads on fire prior to the hill, to which my hamstrings will be scorched for another downhill stretch. Joy.

So tonight I wanted to run a long hill, which doesn’t really exist, so I made one by running at 2.5% for two miles at a 9’30″ pace, followed by intervals of 0.5 mile @8’30″, 0.25 mile @ 8’00″ and another 0.25 mile at 7’30″ paces. I felt I needed to put some speed into the run after the hill to simulate going back down hill.

The legs held up pretty well and my HR never got above 170 bpm, so I felt pretty solid. Not sure this helped or hurt my cause, but it was a good change from the normal runs, so will take it.

Another note, be of my favorite bands, especially live, Cowboy Mouth, had this meme on Facebook. This is Fred, the lead singer/drummer who in live shows gives these speeches about living life. If you have never heard them, very motivational so see if they ever come to your town. Like Sunday mass with cold beer I always felt.

Aug 21 2012

Gallery

Miles and more miles, rooting on Dixon Running

http://dixonrunning.wordpress.com/author/dixonrunning/

So my plan last week was to run while traveling…hehe. Well, I got one run in and the next day ate half of a 7 pound buritto at Jack and Grill.

Talk about carb’ing up. This thing was huge and actually quite tasty, I wish I could go back and just eat a couple of normal ones.

Two of us gave it a good go, I think I ate around 40-50%, so around 3 pounds. Yikes, there went the diet huh.

The day before I put in a 10k trying to run at my goal pace for the upcoming half.

The route was ok, just a loop around the hotel I was staying at near the Denver Airport. The weather was a bit warm, as it was already 10 AM when I took off, but it was nice running a bit lower in elevation and nearer to where my half marathon will be.

I was very happy with the pace, keeping the miles at 9’30″ +/- 20 seconds and running the last mile around the same pace at mile 2 and mile 4. I felt really great when the 6 miles ended and knowing I was two weeks out from the half, it was reassuring to have a good solid run.

Since then, there was a lot of hotel time, museums and walking but no runs until tonight. I really wanted to get one more longer run in, even though I am 10 days from the half. I just want to have solid strength in my legs and then take it a bit easier over the next few runs, focusing on pace rather than distance/time.

So I set out to run 7.5 miles and ran my Africa route. You can see why in the map.

This is my hills run, where I am typically running up hill or downhill, with very little flat.

The first 5k was really about pushing myself and then when I hit mile 4 I ate a Cliff Razz (gu) and wanted to take it easy, trying to keep the pace around 10’00″ – 10’30″. This is really my overall hope for the run, as I run downhill for 5 miles, which I am pretty sure I can run at a sub 9’00″ while keep energy in reserve, so I then have to get past the 2.5 mile uphill for the final push again downhill. If I can keep the uphill at 10’00″ pace, I am pretty sure I can do this at my ‘goal’ of 10’00″ or 2 hours 11 minutes.

So I am in the final push and what is keeping my hopes alive is reading about Dixon Runner

Continue reading →

Aug 14 2012

Different day, different results

Yesterday is history, tomorrow never comes, today is now.

I typically try to live my life this way much the the chagrin of my wife, who plans to make plans. For me this means having a short memory on bad days and focus on the now, not how tomorrow might go.

So even though Sunday was a crappy run, I ran. I got in some decent miles over the weekend after a lousy week.

Today I really wanted to get some quality miles and not just miles, given we have another upcoming trip this weekend.

So after dinner I set out for a 5 miler in nasty smokey air. Nothing I can do with that except enjoy the sunset that looked like the sun was blaze red.

So the route was intended again to be hilly given my upcoming race. This route is either up or down, with maybe 1 mile in there that is flat continuously.

The first couple of miles I kept the pace fast to challenge myself for the last mile which would be mainly uphill. I wanted to be tired for that part to make sure I have legs ready for the later uphill in the half. This is the route I created in mapmyrun.com

That category 4 hill is what is keeping me up at night as it is basically an uphill 5k with 400 feet elevation gain, not happy about that really.

So while my pace did dip below 10’00″ miles for mile 4 and 5, that basically is my race goal pace given that I will be much lower in elevation. So for my upcoming long run that is my goal, run 10-11 miles at 10’00″ pace on a relatively flat course, the use the last two weeks as more hill training on shorter runs.

If you think I am nuts please let me know.

Aug 13 2012

Planes, pains and lame

So last week was not the best for my training cycle. I managed two runs for about 15 miles total. Worked had me at a user group, which translated means all day meetings followed by dinner then all night chatting over beers about the industry. It just is not the right venue to get a nice run in, which was a shame because I was once again at sea level. Shameful.

When I got back, my first run was decent but I had major malfunctions on the phone apps, so no GPS, no music, just extra weight and my safety mechanism. I managed about 5.5 miles in around 55 minutes so it was a decent return back to elevation.

Then yesterday instead of electronic issues, I had physical issues. My left ankle, which I broke twice in six months playing basketball 20 years ago, swelled up a bit, but in the most peculiar location. Instead of the sides or back, this is in the front, almost on my shin. It doesn’t hurt to walk or run, just to flex my foot extremely up. While it didn’t slow me up, just something on my run.

I have no clue on where I should be for my half about three weeks away as my 10k last weekend followed by travel, sort of just winging it. My wife and daughter had a mani/pedi apt abut 2 hours after I finally got my shoes on, so I decided with my vast knowledge that I shall run hurler and 20 minutes, hoping to get somewhere between 7-8 miles in. Given I started around 10:00 am, the heat was already up to 75 so my goal was run easy not anything goofy.

The first three miles were awesome. I felt like e weekend prior, getting up the hills and down them (my upcoming half is downhill for 5 miles, uphill for 3 miles follows by downhill again for 5 miles) with little effort. At mile 3 to 4 I decided to really slow it down for two reasons;

1. I wasn’t worried about distance, only time
2. My pinky toe was tearing up it’s neighbor

I usually notice this walking and keep the toe nails cut close, but I just didn’t realize that nail had become a razor blade.

I made it to 6.2 miles and was pretty miserable about the toe, so again my wisdom applied itself and I determined that instead of slow runs I should interval my way home. Not sure why this seemed like a great plan, but for the next 1.3 miles I did 2 min runs with 1 min walks.

In all, other than a bloody toe, I felt pretty good and figure I will focus my week on the pace and tempo for this run with the only goal of finishing. Since I have another half six weeks later, that be is my true goal race with the first really being a measure and test.

I was happy that mile 3 was my fastest, it tells me that I can pick up the pace and go hard when I want too. We will see how e week goes, but my plan now is to try and get one more double digit run in this weekend, but travel may get in my way again. Sigh…

Aug 4 2012

4th place sucks…

I sit here watching the Olympics and see these people finishing forth and saying, damn right that sucks. More on finishing places later.

Today was my first 10k and going in my goal was to finish and maybe get under 1 hour.

I didn’t stop my GPS watch for about 30 seconds after I finished and my chip time was 53:26. WTH?

A couple of things to note. First, I didn’t run with my iPhone with the Nike + app, instead I just used my iPod so I would get time splits if any kind. All I wanted was my music, no coach in my ear. Second, who put that hill at mile 3? They called it the heartbreaker…more like the air sucker. Third, I ran with my heart rate monitor, which you can see in red. I was impressed it never went above 170 bpm even up hill.

The first three miles were great. The weather was perfect, cool with no wind. There was a little uphill in the first half which quickly changed back downhill towards the start, where the 5k people joined in for about a mile or so. This really messed with some 10k people who started running too fast, where I really kept to the outside and just put my head down till we split apart again.

The hill came at a little past 3 miles and man, this hill took forever. It was 1.5 mile long and over 250 foot vertical gain in two stages. At the peak I walked about 20 yards to get my lungs back and to hydrate for the upcoming downhill. You could see forever which was awesome, but I wasn’t looking forward to this pounding.

You give up the elevation in about a half a mile, which then turned into the end of the lap at the beginning. I really tried to save some for the final 400 meters.

As always my gps had the run shorter than the advertised distance, but hey who cares, right?

I ran the McMillan and this pace would put me at right at 2 hours for my upcoming half marathon. Ha!!!! My goal is to finish that, not worry about time, but if this race is any indicator, I just might shock myself.

Oh and for some reason, the race organizers put 10 years in my age bracket of 35-44 in which I finished 4th. If they had a fat guy/Clydesdale group, maybe I would have won that, but all the other 3 guys were all under 40. Don’t they know there is age discrimination for over 40, not 35…sheesh. I did get a door prize of $5 gift card for some wings. Winner!

Aug 3 2012

Day before my first 10k

So tomorrow is my first race longer than a 5k. I am actually pretty excited for the run, however this week was anything but stellar on getting some miles in.

After my 10 mile run on Sunday, I traveled out of town Tuesday, where I got a quick run in around the North Platte River that meanders around Casper, Wyoming. Casper is a old oil town, yet it has this great trail system along the river that really makes up for many other failings. It is the second largest city in Wyoming, but as I asked others, why would anyone want to live there? The answer I typically get is because they have a Starbucks and On the Border…sigh.

My first run was one where I decided to run at a pretty fast pace, focus on speed versus distance and see how far I could go.

The run went pretty smooth, minus the head wind that really made me thirsty. I think that and the fact I was tired from a four hour drive made the run last only a little more than a 5k.

When I stopped to catch my breath and check on the pace, the splits really showed me that even though I was feeling like I was struggling, my speed was pretty decent for just two days after my longest run ever. I also loved the fact my third mile was the fastest, which was also mostly into the wind.

After my 5k, I stopped and stretched out the kinks then jogged back to my hotel. This was a bit around 1 mile away so it was a nice easy run.

Even while I was purposely running as easy as my body was telling me, I kept the pace around my goal for the 10k run.

Since Tuesday however I haven’t run a bit. Wednesday was a long board meeting followed by getting home at nearly 8 pm and yesterday was a divorce prevention evening spent watching shows with the wife.

My plan for this evening is an easy run on the treadmill to get the kinks out of the legs and then off for my 10k at 8 am. The Wasatach Wellness Run looks to be a relatively flat run and almost 2,500 feet below my home.

I really don’t have any goal time, as any time will be my PR. In the back of my head I just keep the 60 minute barrier there, which is just at 6.2 MPH or around a 9’50″ pace. Given most of my long runs up to 6 miles have all been below this and that is running at elevation, I think I will be ok.

So here’s to hoping my iPhone doesn’t die, water on the course and not gatoraide only and the Wasatch Winds wait until around noon (if ever) to show up.

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Monthly Archives: August 2012