Wow! that was crazy. My wife was sick all through Christmas and I thought I was awesome for not catching it. Well we drove home from Wyoming last Friday, I was fine all day but that night it hit me hard, I have been pretty much completely out since Friday night Saturday and Sunday I couldn't even get out of bed. I actually went to the gym on Monday but called in sick to work and went back home. I felt considerably better today, but running still made my lungs burn so I just stuck to the elliptical.
One good thing that came out of it was I had a couple of nagging pains in my right heel and left hip that I was thinking I would have to deal with for the next 3 months but 5 days without running both of those pains seem to have gone completely away. Hopefully it stays that way when I start running again.
I have put together a 12 week training plan for Boston starting January 21st. That's not to say I wont be running until then but the main goal until then is loose weight, and stay as fit as I possibly can without injury.
Still feeling a little weak this morning, and I have some fluid in my lungs but I really wanted to run again. The trick was to find a pace that didn't require me to use my lungs so I wouldn't start coughing uncontrollably. Started out at 7mph, worked up to around 8mph for a total run of 8 miles in 1:04:37.
I'm actually getting real excited, I went and added a workout appointment into my Outlook Calender with specific workout goals for everyday starting Jan 21st so when I wake up I can just look at my phone and it will tell me what to do. I like it when my phone tells me what to do.
I have a long way to go, but that's part of the fun I suppose. At least I'm starting the year healthy, well with the exception of the flu.
Although I feel about 500% better than 3 days ago I'm still pretty drained of energy, I kept wanting to stop but some how dragged myself through 8 miles. At 1 point I considered going 10 but that urge went away pretty quickly.
My energy level is still just in the toilet. I feel fine sitting on the couch, but running really takes it out of me :)
Hopefully next week will be better.
I just signed up for the BigHorn 50 again, I'm not sure why, I'm pretty sure I hated every minute of it last year. It's Britt's fault, she got a hair brained idea that she wanted to run the 30K, she wanted me to run it with her, I told her I'd run the 50M and catch up with her so we can run the last few miles together. Now I have to catch her.
Had my running clothes on and about to walk out the door this morning when I was all of a sudden inspired to swim instead of run today, so I went and threw my swimsuit on and swam instead. Very happy with my decision except when I got to work and put swimming into my new loose weight app on my phone, swimming burns about 1/2 the calories as running does in the same time.
48 laps (1.5 miles) in about 55 minutes with a quick break every 10 laps. Followed by 30 minutes of weights, mostly legs.
Good little "workout" this morning. Everyone was making me feel guilty with their Boston training already so I decided I'd do some 1 mile repeats too. I was feeling really good this morning after swimming yesterday so what the heck. 6 mile progressive warm up in 42:18, took a quick water break and then 3x1 mile repeats with 1/2 mile jog in between. First mile in 5:53, would have been faster but the treadmill ramp up took a few extra seconds, second mile in 5:46, last mile in 5:37. That one hurt a bit, I was going to run a 2 mile cool down but I was too sick after the last mile and stopped.
I was pretty surprised how easy my legs found the pace, and pretty happy I was able to get through all of them, and even happier I was able to get faster each time.
Wow, what a crazy snow day. I'm glad I don't live in Davis County. I have the craziest driveway, our neighborhood didn't get a whole lot of snow, maybe a couple of inches it's hard to tell cause the wind just blows it away anyway, but for some reason there is a vortex that piles all of the snow from our entire neighborhood in a huge drift right in the middle of my driveway making it impossible to get my car out. So after I shoveled out seriously a 3' snow drift out of my driveway the roads were completely clear all the way to the gym. Pretty bad up by my office though.
Quick update, Riverton Paul is back and running pretty good again lately, I see him every morning cranking out a couple miles at a good pace so everyone go to Paul's blog page and try and get him active again. Consider it your home teaching assignment to get the non-active back on the blog.
Plan was 18 miles today but we have a kids soccer game at 8:00 and 6:30 pace wasn't in the cards, and I got a 5 minutes later than plan start so I had to cut it a bit short.
I decided to follow Jakes training advice and run in different shoes today. Well there is a reason I only run in the same shoes all the time, cause they work and don't hurt my feet. It's not like these were brand new shoes, I have over 400 miles in them but they really hurt, I got blisters, I felt like I had mud on my feet the whole run, it pretty much sucked. So from now on I guess I'll stick to what works, Nike Free's, I've seriously been through so many shoes but I keep going back to the Free's.
Kind of easy day, one thing about it, yes running on the treadmill is boring, but running slow on the treadmill is really boring. I go in telling myself I'll just run an even slow pace but always end up getting faster and faster just to make the time go by.
12 miles in 1:29:00 with 5 x 0.1 mile strides at the end at 13.1,13.2,13.3,13.4,13.5 mph.
Do these count as VO2 max when they are only around 30 seconds each. Not sure where they fall in, definately not easy miles.
Wednesday Swimday, I like swimday, I may incorporate it into real training as opposed to all the fake training I've been doing lately.
48 laps, in some amount of time slightly less than 1 hour followed by 45 minutes of weight lifting to get me that sculpted upper body I have always dreamed about.
My Garmin kind of bit the dust and I've been wanting a new one but don't want to fork out the money. This new device was a CES this year and is suppose to come out this summer as a competitor to the Garmin 910XT. Not sure if it's worth moving away from a trusted product like Garmin but it does have some pretty cool features a geeky computer nerd could really appreciate.
Also, I am somehow in charge of organizing my kids Elementary school 5K fundraiser this year. My wife is a teacher at the school and I once ran a marathon which obviously qualifies me to organize a 5K. Anyway, here is the link to the info/registration page, should be fun.
Speaking of geeky fun stuff. I just ordered 1 Kindle Fire HD, 1 Google Nexus 7, 1 Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, and 1 iPad Mini to compare. If anyone is in the market give me 2 weeks and I'll let you know which one is best.
I attempted the Justin Park Scott Keate workout today but quit halfway through the 3rd interval. I have a whole slew of excuses but really I just didn't have it in me today. Maybe I'll try again next week. Tried 11mph on 9 mph off, may have been a bit too aggressive but I had some other issues making that pace un-sustainable other than just not being in good enough shape.
10 miles in 1:11:??, I also was having treadmill issues today, it just died on me twice before I gave up and went to another one.
I sure hope I'm not getting sick again, but it sure seems that way. I got on the treadmill just couldn't bring myself to push the start button so I went to the elliptical for 15 minutes, went back to the treadmill ran for about 1 minute and went back to the elliptical.
I really don't get it, were there people that actually believed Lance Armstrong never used drugs??
First of all, why would you believe 1 person that had everything to loose by telling the truth, and not the hundreds of people that either saw him do it, saw the evidence of it, or heard him admit it that had nothing to loose either way.
Second, HE HAD CANCER. Where do you think these drugs come from? They didn't invent HGH, and EPO so people can go win the Tour De France. They get the money to develop these drugs from funds for things like cancer research. He was obviously taking drugs, people don't get over cancer naturally, that's why they spend Millions of dollars on cancer research, to make drugs that make the body do things it normally wouldn't do.
This brings up the final question. Why do we (you and me) need a hero so bad. Lance didn't start out wanting to be a hero. He wanted to not die from cancer and go win a bike race that no one in America even cared about. He didn't set out to defraud people, who cares if he's not a "nice guy" it's companies like Nike, and Trek that enable this to happen. They are the ones that try to create super humans that look and smell nice, and perform at a level above what a normal human is capable of.
Lance may be a very good liar, but it's not like he didn't know it. He tried to make the best of it and started a foundation to help millions of people to try and make up for it.
Felt pretty good today considering how crappy I felt yesterday, so I'm not sure what my problem was. I went and got a flu shot last night even though I already had the flu this year.
Started out slow cause I didn't know how it was going to go, planned on running 12 but felt really good and went for 15 cause that's all the time I had before soccer games.
12 weeks to go, I officially started my Boston training last night by starting to re-read Ryan Halls "Running with Joy"
Today didn't start off so great, first of all I forgot to set my alarm last night, luckily my internal alarm is only off by about 15 minutes. I charged my Garmin last night with the intent of tracking HR and every mile split, the stupid thing died on my after only 3 miles. And then I attempted to finish my workout by doing speed intervals, but on my second interval my left glute totally charley horsed on me, so I just finished my final 2 miles really slow. I'm guessing the risk of speed workouts isn't worth the risk of injury. I think for my goals speed isn't all that important, I mainly just need to get my general fitness back, so from now on (at least for a while) no speed work faster than around 1/2 marathon pace.
10 miles in 1:16:00
Average HR was around 150 for the first 3 miles at 7:30 pace. Pretty high actually.
Resting HR this morning 52. Also high, it used to be down around 40.
Wasn't sure I'd even be able to run today after my muscle cramp yesterday, I spent a lot of time on the roller and stretching though so this morning it felt OK. Had to start slow to warm it up but after 3 - 4 miles it was fine. I pulled out the ol' Garmin305, the things a bit clunky but much less temperamental than the 405. My HR is still crazy high, based on HR my whole run should have been catagorized as marathon pace, but I'm just feeling a bit off lately, so I'm going to give myself a week or so to get over what ever ailment I may have before adjusting pace goals.
Recovery day, I considered swimming but the thought of that initial jump into cold water scared me away. I wanted to run really slow so to satisfy my urge to push an up arrow button every mile I pushed the incline button instead of speed. My HR was getting higher than I wanted even with the slow speed so I had to go down in speed every 1% I went up.
Mile 1 at 1%, Mile 2 at 2%.....Mile 6 at 6%. Mile 7 and 8 flat. That's 1,100' of elevation if I do my math correctly. 6 miles X 5,280 X 3.5%. Nothing special but I do feel like it gave my legs a break while still getting a cardio workout.
Felt a little bit better this morning than I have this week. Good news I'm getting out of the cold and smog for 2 weeks, bad news it's in Vegas. Worst running city in the world, and the Palazzo gym doesn't open until like 7 or 8, to late either way to get in before work. So starting Sunday it's going to be endless 2.5 miles loops around the Wynn Golf course for me :(
Here is a question that is probably dumb, and I've probably read it but I don't know the answer so I'm putting it out there. 12 weeks out from the marathon, when I'm running at "marathon pace" should that be my current marathon pace based on effort and HR or do I run it at my goal marathon pace? HR for marathon pace based on calculations I made in much better shape are 151bpm - 168bpm. Currently my goal MP of < 6:20 puts me around 172bpm, which I still think something is wrong with me and that will go down. but way, way to high never the less.
Easiest run of the week to give my legs a rest for tomorrows long run with tempo. In December I took one week where I ran 18 miles everyday of the week, the purpose I thought was to make it so when I was doing official training long runs wouldn't scare me. Well it didn't work, cause I'm afraid of a dumb 17 miles run tomorrow with 8 mile marathon pace tempo. Strange.
Sometimes a good day comes along just when you need it. I was nervous about this run for some reason but I woke up feeling the best I've felt all week. Ran an 8 mile "warm up" I guess, the plan called for an 8 mile tempo at marathon pace but it was so (dare I say) "easy" I just went 9 to finish up the whole 17 miles. 6:10 pace was hard but sustaining goal marathon pace was definately doable. I've decided no matter how good I start feeling, or how well my training goes over the next 11 weeks I'm not going to change my goal time. I'm just going to work on making my goal time feel easy. I went after sub 2:40 for so long with nothing but failure so just getting a nice PR will make me the happiest boy on earth.
Flew to Vegas this morning and everything went eerily well, all of our DS3's came online, all of our equipment just worked. It's almost like we know what we're doing.
Anyway, we got done working nice and early so after dinner I decided to go down to the hotel gym. Ran an easy 4 in 33 minutes followed by some weights and stretching. Good news, I found out the gym now opens at 5:00am. I'm still going to try and get outside for some running but will probably do my main workouts on the treadmill for the next 2 weeks.
Guess what I did today? I ran outside, I know pretty unbelievable. My plan was to go run 2 Wynn Golf course loops 1 loop = exactly 2.5 miles and then go run a 5 mile LT tempo run on the hotel treadmill but once I got outside into almost perfect (47 degrees) running weather I couldn't really see myself going back to the treadmill. Ran the first 2 laps pretty easy, I actually enjoy my little loop, there is just one awful stretch that is always windy, uphill, and all the homeless people sleep along the sidewalk there, other than than the loop is really nice. After my second loop I stopped to stretch and decided to attempt my tempo run. Should have stuck to the treadmill plan for 2 reasons, 1 my first 2 loops were nice, no cars and I hit every light green but by the time my 3rd lap came it was later and lots more cars, and I seemed to hit every intersection red, not good for a tempo. 2nd reason, I went out to fast, pulled my left glute again and had a shooting pain go all up my left leg. So I scratched the LT pace idea and just tried to maintain a slightly 'uncomfortable' pace for 2 laps.
Came back to the hotel, filled up the tub with cold water and a pillowcase full of ice and sat in it for about 15 minutes. I haven't done that in a while either. The Palazzo has some really great rooms. Nice big tub, seperate shower, and a TV in the bathroom to watch while in the tub.
Distance
Time
Split Pace
Avg HR
1
7:13
7:13
143
2
14:42
7:29
153
3
22:28
7:46
153
4
29:57
7:29
151
5
37:26
7:29
156
6
44:00
6:34
160
7
50:50
6:50
167
8
57:35
6:45
167
9
1:04:18
6:43
167
10
1:10:37
6:19
168
Total
1:10:37
7:03 avg
158
PM, 5 miles on the hotel treadmill in 37:30. Ran next to my friend Jeff. I need to get him running again. He claims running hurts his knees. I tell him running hurts my everything, that probably doesnt help my cause.
Pretty rough run today, I think my treadmill legs just aren't used to running that far on pavement. 6 Golf Course loops today, any more than 4 gets tough. After my first loop today I had the brainiac idea to start running the opposite direction around my loop. That way I replace the aweful uphill, into the wind, in the ghetto with the nice side entrance to the Encore hotel. Now I could run fast through all the broken beer bottles and homeless people, and my slow section was more enjoyable. This turned out to be a great idea, there were quite a few shady people out this morning, I passed a guy twice that was just casually walking down the sidewalk at 5:00am with a big TV in his arms. He must have been looking for an outlet to plug it in.
Distance
Time
Split Time
Avg HR
1
7:46
7:46
145
2
15:38
7:52
143
3
23:18
7:40
146
4
30:48
7:30
149
5
38:33
7:45
153
6
45:52
7:19
151
7
53:14
7:21
157
8
1:00:56
7:42
154
9
1:08:19
7:23
155
10
1:15:51
7:32
158
11
1:23:17
7:25
152
12
1:30:53
7:36
155
13
1:38:40
7:46
154
14
1:46:17
7:38
152
15
1:54:07
7:50
155
Total
1:54:07
7:37 avg pace
151
This run definitely should have been run at a faster pace but I just didn't have it in me today.
My wife and I have always been very self sufficient and just try to do everything on our own, but yesterday we finally broke down and hired a Nanny to help my wife out. We have been looking for a while but just couldn't find anyone we trusted, but finally we found one that seems very good and reliable. I'm going to feel much better now while I'm traveling that there is someone helping out with the kids while my wife is working. The master plan wasn't for her to start working full time so soon but I guess if the opportunity is there you take it.
Very nice run this morning, 48 degrees, clear sky, no wind. Took it really easy, I think it's going to go a long way to making my legs feel better. 3 loops plus a little out and back along the strip to get an even 8 in 1:07:35. 8:27 avg pace.
P.M.
4 miles in 33:33. These after work runs are really hard, the motivation to want to go just isn't there at all, and then my stomach is completely jacked up from eating conference food all day. Just no good. I walked over to the mall to try and find dinner afterwards and my legs are pretty sore, I thought running slow would help. I'm fallin' apart! Hopefully a good night sleep will help.
I'm a bit of a wreck. I think I'm just not recovering because I'm walking around a big convention center all day instead of sitting in my cubicle writing comments on peoples running blogs. Today was suppose to be 12 miles, I wanted to try to average 7:00/mile pace but by hips just wouldn't release and I noticed my feet were kind of clompy. ended up slow and short.
10 miles in 1:22:00
I'm noticed something interesting about people in Las Vegas. In Utah if you come running up behind someone they usually jump and scream, and sometimes even pull out the pepper spray. In Las Vegas people don't even react when I run up behind them. They must be used to being surprised.
I may need to take tomorrow off of running if I'm going to get a quality run in on Saturday.
