Weekend Update

Wow – time really seems to fly when you have your nose to the grindstone.  Sorry I haven’t posted in what seems like forever – and now it seems like every post is a series of excuses for not posting.  Vicious cycle

Anyway – a couple of catch-up items on this weekend’s runs, starting with Saturday.  I have to try to do my runs as early as possible so I can help with the kids etc on the weekend, so I headed out on Saturday at around 5:45.  Seemed like reasonably cool weather and not terribly humid (a welcome change in August in Indiana) so I was feeling decent.  Had 12 miles on the docket, so any positive is welcome.  However, during the first 2 ½ miles, I kept trying to decide if I was getting rained on – by the time I figured out that I really was, I was soaked and figured the hell with it and headed back home.  No way was I going to cover 12 in the rain (wimpy, I know) so I called it a day.  As it turns out, if I had left the house about an hour later, I would have been set, as the rain ended about 30 minutes after I got out of the shower. 

Sunday was a different story – had a big project (deck staining) slated for the day, so didn’t think I was going to get out and run at all, but my wife talked me into going (basically, she said “Are you running today?” and out the door I went).  However, I have bursitis in my right knee and it had flared up over the last week.  I'm coaching my son’s soccer team and my lateral movement isn’t what it once was and my knee makes sure I don’t forget it.  So, I spent at least 2 miles getting it loose before I started feel decent.  However, I had already mentally prepared myself to do a specific course – and said course wasn’t going to get me to 12 miles.  It was a little warmer than the day before, but overall very pleasant and the course was new to me (on foot at least) so it was a good time.  Run Keeper on my iPhone apparently thinks I can teleport however, and mapped me as covering about 3 miles with no time elapsed (neat trick) and ended up shorting me on the distance.  However, the trusty Garmin kept me on track and clocked the full distance at 9.03.  Stupid knee is still stiff today, so we will see how the week plays out.  Supposed to do 13 on Saturday, but I'm also shuffling the schedule a bit and am planning on a Half on Labor Day weekend, so not sure if it’s going to happen this week or not.

Final Weekend run numbers:

8/21       4.81 Miles            Pace: 9:35

8/22       9.03 Miles            Pace: 10:26

Catching up after a hectic week

Reasonable approximation of what is outside my window

Well, I have several updates to pass along, but not a lot of real news.  I spent the better part of this week getting my oldest son off to school (he started kindergarten this year) as well as organizing a quarterly meeting with one of my key vendor customers, so I've been swamped and haven’t had time to post.  Long excuse, I know, but there it is.  Plus, we were on a short vacation at the end of last week and rolled back into town on Saturday afternoon.  So, my long run got pushed to Sunday.  I had 10 miles in front of me without having run for the previous 4 days, which made me a little nervous, but it came off fairly well. 

Courtesy of central Indiana weather this week though, the remainder of my runs have been indoors on the dreaded treadmill – outdoors , the thermometer has been topping out in the mid-90’s with a heat index of well over 100.  No thanks.  So, that meant a 3-mile recovery on Monday, and then fear.  I've dealt with a recurring (my wife claims chronic) calf strain that sabotaged my Mini this year when it cropped up at mile 4.  I felt a twinge after sitting at my desk Monday afternoon, so I purposely held off even attempting to run on Tuesday and Wednesday – leaving me with some catching up to do at the end of the week.  A 5-miler, interrupted by a couple random “emergency” emails that had to be dealt with.  Friday was an easy 3 and no recurrence of the calf, so fingers-crossed for tomorrow.  A step-back weekend of 7 miles will hopefully be done before 8 AM and I can complain about it by Monday.

Times for the week:

Sunday – 10.8M; 1:46:46

Monday – 3.11M; 30:00

Thursday – 5.11M; 50:00

Friday – 3.11M; 30:10 (Damn, didn’t realize I missed the previous by :10)

8-2 Loop Run

So, this week’s training is going to be totally screwed up for a number of reasons, including the fact that I'm going on a mini-vacation with the family at the end of the week (which is nice) and I have to go to court in the middle of the week (which is not).  As a result, I'm trying to juggle my training to make sure I at least come close to outing in the miles this week – and decided to go out for a run around 11:30 this AM, figuring I would have some time before things starting to legitimately heat up outside.  According to Google, it was a tolerable 78, so I figured I would be fine. 

I think this crack is from the heat

Not so much – 78 or not, it felt like about 128 and the loop that I can run here at work has roughly 2 trees providing shade so, except for the semi trucks that blow by you, you are on asphalt with no relief for the distance.  That said, not a bad outing, just not a particularly good one either.   What I did do was try Run Keeper for the first time (Nike+ can go hang) on my iPhone and I'll be giving MapMyRun a shoot the next time I'm out so I can get an idea of what I like.  If anyone reads this at some point, id love some feedback on what you prefer

Restarting this thing

OK, so this is the first post in this series and it comes about 4 weeks late, since I’m in week #4 right now. I’ve been meaning to really start blogging about something, but never had the “theme” that would keep me coming back to post regular updates. Now I do – I decided to regale everyone with my training story as I prep for my first “real” marathon. I say “real” because I did complete a marathon last year – I'll get into the details in a bit – but I don’t really count for reasons I'll soon explain.

First, a little background – I'm 40 (h/t to Mike Gundy – “I'm 40! I'm a man!”) and I've been running on and off for about 7 years now. I live entirely too far away from my office, which puts a crimp in morning runs; meaning afternoon runs are either done on a treadmill or on a 4-mile loop in an industrial park – good times! I'm training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon in November and I'm working on Week 5 of the training plan. My goal is to finish in under 4:30, but as my long run during training was only 9 miles, I have no idea where I'm really tracking. Prior to turning 40, I “ran” the AF marathon at Wright-Patt. Ran is in quotation marks, because I was working to complete the distance without training for it – my youngest had been born only a few weeks beforehand and any thoughts I had of distance training (and there weren’t many) went out the window when he rolled in. Let’s leave the gory details alone for now and just say that it was ugly and I want to improve.

My intent for this little exercise is to post updates on my runs – simple as that – along with my various triumphs and travails as I go through the process. My hope is to update 3-4 times per week, but actual results may vary as they say. I hope this little intro serves to pique the interest of anyone who stumbles across this little slice of the internet – look for more soon