What ever it takes!

15 minutes on the elliptical, then 1 hour on the treadmill.  It hurt, and I was slow, but I'm glad I did it.  Now off to my Annual trip to China.  Nǐ hǎo

Oh, and LifeTime now has WiFi so I can stream Pandora, and XM.

45 minutes on the hotel gym elliptical to try and keep myself awake longer

Well, it's my birthday and I'm in China for the 4th year in a row.  I would have liked to run 39 miles today but 8.5 was about all I had in me.  Last year I followed a trail that just dead ended and I had to turn around.  This year I followed that trail but saw another runner on the other side of the road going somewhere new, so I crossed the road and followed him.  I knew there was a place called the Olympic Mountain Park but I never had figured out how to get in there, well this guys showed me the way so I had a nice little run around the gardens and then pretty much circled around the entire Olympic Venue here in Beijing.

It was a nice run, I get lots of weird looks from locals but I never feel threatened by any means.

Wow!  It took me 4 years to figure it out, but now this is one of my favorite placed to run. I went further into the Olympic Mountain park and there was a track base trail that ran the entire perimeter of the park.  Great park, with waterfalls flower gardens and streams. it even has dirt hiking trails that I'll have to explore later.  Anyway, great great run this morning, I'm very excited I found this.

I'm so excited I found this little oasis in an otherwise dread full place.  Great run this morning, minus the pain, but just being out running is so great.  I got yelled at by some little old Chinese lady that I was running the wrong way but it would have tacked on an extra 5K to turn around at that point.

I took a few pictures to show how great this place is.

dropbox.com/sh/qjx1hn8mtye0rnx/jSkcxqFzGk/mp1.jpg

dropbox.com/sh/rl5cx1euk30l5x2/n-8akmvTR6/mp2.jpg

Wow!  Sittin' in my hotel room looking out the window I can't even see across the street through the famous Beijing smog. We have been lucky so far but this morning is awful.  I really shouldn't run in that crud but I really can't conceive heading to the dungeon gym.

Maybe I should just sit in my room and watch the Masters.

A good rainstorm cleared out the smog so this morning was very nice for a run.  I ran 3 painful miles alone, looped back to the hotel and picked up Jeff my Co-Worker and took him to the Olympic Mountain Park.  By that time I was loosened up and started feeling really good, when we got to the park I asked how far he wanted to run, he said 3, well we had already gone 1 just getting there.  I looked at the map and saw a 3K loop, so we did that and back to the hotel for a total of 4 for him 7 for me.

Really nice run, I'm hoping to do the 10K loop tomorrow.

Best morning for a run since I got to China, perfect temperature, no smog and my leg felt relatively good.  I had done the 5K loop twice the 3K loop once and wanted to do the 10K loop today at Mountain Park.  I ran 2 miles waiting for the Park to open at 6, and then started.  There was a guy running pretty fast in front of me that I tried to keep with, he was running about 6:45 pace, I kept with him until the 10K path left the 5K at about 2, then I slowed way down.  This park has the trails marked extremely well, and has .5 K markers for all 3 loops.   The 10K took me across a freeway to a place I'd never seen before, the fact that there is a full 10K loop means that this park is at least as big as Central Park and I think a much better running route.  Not as many hills, but there are some.  

Very happy I found this place, now the thought of coming back here every year is not as depressing.  I doubt I will run tomorrow since we need to head to the airport at 6:00am, then I get to go run my 2nd favorite running trail.  Saywer Camp trail in San Mateo.

Pretty depressed today, I'm Jetlaged first of all, but I'm in San Mateo and close to my favorite running trail but this morning when I woke got up I was very tired and my Hip was hurting pretty bad from the long flight yesterday.  So I just went down and did the elliptical trainer.  

Maybe next year I'll be flying to Boston today.

7 miles on my favorite running trail in the world.  So amazing.

I'm glad I'm not doing Boston this year, if St. George was to hot for me, Boston would kill me.

4 painful miles on Sawyer camp trail before my flight home.

1 hour on the elliptical at LifeTime. 

I haven't had a full night sleep in over 2 weeks.  Anyone need to hire a Sr. Network Engineer??

Humm, somehow I missed a day.  O'Well, 8 miles on the treadmill, it hurt for 4 miles, didn't feel very good for the next 4 miles but then when it was done I felt great about it.

Going to get a cordizone shot today, I hope it helps.

#1 reason I think I'd be a pretty good ultra runner,  I'm a complete idiot.  No offense Ultra runners.

1 year ago I posted on my blog that I should go get a cordisone shot in my hip, well I finally got one yesterday.  He put in a local pain reliever shot first, and then the steroid.  He said if the pain reliever worked within 6 hours that meant the diagnosis was correct and then it was just a matter of whether or not he got the cordisone in the correct spot.  Almost miraculously about 3 hours later I was completely pain free, it was almost strange, the first time my hip hadn't hurt in over 1 year.  So I planed to go on a nice run this morning.  This morning I woke up waited for the first sign of light and slipped on my fancy new Minimus trail shoes and off I went. Hip was a little tender, but runnable for sure.

Got done with my run about 7:30 and then at 9:00 I headed down to the elementary school, my wife signed me up to volunteer for the school Try-athlon.  I got placed on the running course.  Perfect!!  I decided my job would be pacer/cheerleader/fallen kid med support for 30 different classes, Preschool - 6th grade.  The course was around the Baseball and Soccer field, I ran a lap and measured it at .14 miles per loop,  each class minus the Pre-School and Kindergarden ran for 10 minutes each, goal was to see how many laps they could do in the allotted time.  2 kids did 10 laps,  I added a special fasted 1st lap prize,  Fastest first lap was 37 seconds by a 6th grader, 42 seconds was the fastest girl time, she was in 5th.

I started out with every class, and was also the official timer, so I stopped somewhere in the final lap so I could pull the kids off the course and stop the clock, so I had about 2-3 minutes rest after every 4 loops average due to the 5 minutes on the smaller kids.  My goal at first was to run 30 laps for an extra 4 miles or so for the day, well I got a little over zealous and kind of went nuts. At lap 58 I took a 30 minute lunch break, went home and changed out of my jeans and into proper running clothes.  After lunch got to 100 laps, and then the very next class was my oldest kid, so I of course had to run with him,  Well then I was at 107 laps, did the math and realized 115 would give me about 16 miles, and a full marathon for the day.  So I of course had to do it.

Anyway, a very un-conventional 26 miles run, but excellent Ultra training, I was pretty much on my feet for 7 hours straight, mostly running. I have no way to actually know real time or pace since my Garmin Battery died at around 20 laps.  But 26.3 miles on 100% gravel or grass for the day.  I would almost put this in a catagory nuttier than my treadmill marathon, especially since I just started running normal again, well today!!!

7.5 very slow miles with Ryan before a busy day of soccer.   I'm sure Ryan is pretty sick of my slowness lately.  He puts up with me though.  Plan was 10, Changed to 8, settled for 7.5.

 1/2 of my weekly mileage I did yesterday.  That's sweet.

Not a great run, I didn't really hurt just didn't have much energy, and I ate way to much junk yesterday so I had stomach issues.  For me, any run is a good run though.

Someone put up a barbwire fence across my trail since last Friday so I had to do a little cross country running through rattle snake country to get around it.   Planned for 10 miles but I was behind schedule so I had to take a shortcut home.

Plan was 6 miles on the treadmill then 6 miles on the River trail when the light came out.  Got on the treadmill, made it about .02 miles and realized it was going to be 6 miles of pure torture, so I went and changed into a swimming suit and swam 32 laps instead.  Then I decided to stick to plan A.5 and ran the Rivertrail for 6.  Some girl came out of nowhere in front of me and made me feel slow, so I caught up to her.  Found out her name is Julie Gomez, and she is on the blog, I don't think I've ever talked to her on the blog before though.  It was fun talking to her for a bit then she was done and I went off alone.

I'm really in a state of confusion right now, basically I have no idea what the heck I'm doing.  It's foolish to think I can get ready for a 50 mile run in less than 8 weeks, any other distance race would just make me feel bad cause I'm so much slower than I used to be.  I travel to much to get into Biking.  So I'm basically just a lost sole.  When I started running my only goal was to loose weight and get in shape so I could play with my kids and they wouldn't be embarrased to be seen with me.  Well now I'm in great shape but I hurt so bad all the time I still can't play with them.  So seriously what am I doing?????

I dusted off the ol' bike last night, took it for a spin around the neighborhood to see if all the shifters still worked and the tires held air.  It all checked out so I threw in in my car.

I wanted to find the group of guys I rode with last year, went to the normal meeting spot at 5:45 thinking they met at 6:00, I looked through some old text messages and realized we used to meet at 5:30, so either I'd already missed them, or they don't meet anymore, so I just went off on my own.  I always forget how much I enjoy riding bikes, it seems so hard to get all the equipment ready compared to running but once I do it I love it.   Started up Big Cottonwood canyon and then took off through the neighborhood east of Wasatch Blvd, headed south and ended up back on Wasatch, headed up Little Cottonwood for a ways but the headwind was miserable so I took the turn at the Y and headed back to Wasatch,  followed that until I hit 10 miles, decided 20 was good enough for my first ride out and just backtracked back.  Felt really good, I've lost some fitness but the best part is, my Hip and Shin's don't hurt at all.  It felt great, beautiful morning for a ride.  I think I'll be on the bike a bit more the upcoming weeks.

I was planning on running today then last night I got a text from one of the guys in the cycling group saying they still meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I quickly changed my plans.    The group was small but we still had fun, we did almost the exact route I did yesterday with a few more additions, like climbing up Dimple Dell road back up to Wasatch, that one hurt, my legs were jelloy.  I was quite happy to see that I was still pretty much the strongest rider despite not being on a bike for almost a year, and these guys are pretty tough, they do LotoJa every year and are training or the Rockwell Relay right now so that made me feel good.  They probably hate me showing up on my cheap $900 bike and saying, well I can't run, I guess I'll ride this dumb bike, and then out ride them.

Tomorrow I run. Oh and I talked to my Doctor, he is going to refer me to someone who does Ultrasound guided injections for one last try at a cordizone shot.  If that doesn't work I heard them say they will send me off to a beautiful ranch in Montana where I can sit in a pasture and eat grass the rest of me life.

1 hour on the elliptical, 30 minutes of weights.

16.3 miles with Ryan on our normal West Lehi route, ran on lots of the Thanksgiving 1/2 route but I'm guessing we were about 15 minutes ahead of Jake.  A police officer asked if we were the first ones through at the mile 12 sign, I told him if we were we wouldn't be able to answer the question.

Felt really good, Ryan pushed me pretty hard compared to what I've been used to and my hip held up fine.  Other signs of low mileage started showing through but a pretty good run.  7:30 avg I think Ryan told me.  My watch died.

30 minutes on the elliptical trainer and then 6 miles on the JRP.  I felt pretty good this morning, very nice morning for a run.