Decided to switch it up a bit today, instead of running Central Park I ran down 45th to the Hudson river where the Intrepid Aircraft Carrier is parked and ran (South) I think to where the Ellis Island ferry is. There is a Bike Path and a run/walking path that goes all the way down, the Bike path is a nice straight shot, the running path is twisty turny sometimes joins the bike bath sometime just ends up nowhere. I tried to follow it and eventually gave up and ran the Bike Path, I noticed that seemed to be a common thing for most the runners. I had never gone that far South before so it was pretty neat, lots of nice parks. On the way back it started to drizzle rain which felt nice, then about a mile later it started to downpour, which felt nice but I considered logging the last 2 miles as swim miles.
Very enjoyable run this morning for some reason, it was really humid and when I was done my shirt was just as wet as yesterday when it rained on me but it didn't bother me to much today. Kept my pace pretty quick 7:15ish, and only got passed once. Ran 1 big Central Park Loop and one Medium Loop, second loop I ran to the Reservoir and ran the soft dirt running trail. Lots and lots of people out this morning.
Good run with Ryan this morning, we haven't had a run together in months so it was nice to go on our old familiar route again. He claims I was keeping the pace up, I was feeling great and not breathing hard at all at 7:00 pace, and no leg pain. He actually started falling apart towards the end of the run, which has never happened, ever. I'm always the one that falls apart. So thanks Ryan for going on Vacation and making me feel good about myself.
4 mile early morning walk with my dog, my knee was bugging me a bit so I decided to just walk. Very nice morning.
A couple thoughts about the Olympics,
1. I think to call Micheal Phelps the greatest Olympian of all time just because he has more metals than anyone else is dumb. He just happens to be in a sport that gives out more metals than any other sport. If they can have the Backstroke, Breaststroke, Freestyle, and Butterfly in all the same distances they should have, Running, Skipping, Hopping, Lunge walking and Running backwards all in the 100M track event. To say he is the greatest Olympic swimmer would be more accurate.
2. If equestrian is an Olympic sport then so should Frisbee Dogs, and Obsticle course dogs.
I just bought this bike, It has the new DI2 electronic shifting, I should get it this week and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. I may just turn into a cyclist full time and start running as a recovery.
I remembered how to get my speed back, it's going to take some time but I think I have it in me, all it takes is a treadmill and really loud music. 8 mile progressive run, started slow but increased speed every .5 miles. Last mile in 6:15. Then I did a 1 mile recovery followed by 5 X 100's, last one almost as fast as Usains 100 but not quite, but only cause the gym's treadmill doesn't go to 28 mph.
It's amazing to be running "normal" again. Fitness isn't completely back by any means but just being able to run pain free and almost effortlessly again is awesome. I'm really glad I ran Des News, I think that was the turning point, it reminded my body how to run steady at a faster pace. Goal is to just get back to where I can run 6:30 pace easy again, all without getting hurt. I hope my bike shows up soon.
My new bike is awesome, I love the new electronic shifting. 25 miles with my old bike group. I'm amazed they still let me ride with them since I always ditch them for months on end and then just show up expecting to go for a ride. We had a lot of fun, fairly easy ride but with lots of hills, I need to get my bike legs back.
Well that sucked, 5 minutes after passing Carina and her running group and making fun of her socks I wrecked my new bike, and me too. I hit an uneven patch of asphalt where they were re-paving, blew a tire and wrecked pretty hard. Then I had to get yelled at by my wife for wrecking my new bike. Not a good day.
Now what do we talk about that the Olympics are over? I'm glad they're over, I was wasting to much time on the couch.
I'm still pretty beat up from my wreck on Saturday so I just wimped out and did the elliptical trainer today. Perhaps I'll give my bike another try tomorrow.
I just learned why Sketchers used a dumb dog as their advertising mascot instead of Meb, It's the same reason every Nike sponsored person with yellow shoes never mentioned their shoes, and there were no adds talking about them. Apparently if they use the Olympics as part of their advertising they have to pay the IOC tons of money. Lame!!
20 mile Zoo loop bike ride with an old High school friend, I haven't gone on a bike ride with him in like 20 years. Awesome thing about it was back in high school I was the least in shape of all my friends, today was a day for pay backs. :)
Longer Zoo loop than yesterday's loop. Next week I go to San Francisco for pretty much a whole month so the running will continue then. I just wanted to take advantage of the nice mornings while in town to enjoy my new bike. I have now been on more rides without crashing my new bike than with.
I could probably use a whole body suit, not just the invisible helmet.
I noticed signs at LifeTime that they have a running club that meets Tuesday and Thursdays at 5:30 am, well last week I decided to go run with them and when I showed up at 5:30 I was told that they left at 5:00. So today I decided to try again, I showed up at 5:00 and there were a group of runners getting ready to head out so I just went with them, turns out they weren't the official Lifetime running group so I'm not really sure if there actually is a real running club at Lifetime. Anyway, the group I did go with was heading up Bingham High school to run on the track which sounded OK but I wasn't wanting to do sprints or anything, lucky for me I was the fastest one there so even if they were doing sprints I didn't have to kill myself. We did all sorts of weird things running groups do at tracks, ladders on the football field, walking squats, run a lap and then do the bleacher stairs, you know those kind of things. There was a girl who was trying to run a 6:30 mile so I paced her 4 laps, my Garmin is buggered so I had to go on feel, and lap splits,were pretty close to 100 for the first 3, on the last one I told here we would need to pick it up a bit to get 6:30, I think I went a bit fast but she stayed with me for 1200 meters then started slowing down, with 200 to go she stopped, I think she was confused on where we started and thought we were done but I'm sure we would have broke 6:30 if she'd finished. Anyway, it was a fun morning, I'm not used to running with people, I now understand the appeal of group runs on a track, people of all different abilities can still basically run together and make it a social event instead of groups just breaking off.
My wife, who hasn't worked in 10 years but went back to school and just Graduated with her teaching degree in June, just found out she is the new 2nd grade teacher at the Elementary school all 3 of my kids go to. She has been very busy getting her room ready so it's pretty crazy around the Rohde house, I have no idea how she is going to be a full time mom, primary president, soccer coach, and now have a full time job with me being out of town the rest of the year. Crazy, crazy women.
That was a little bit different morning than usual. I have been wanting to bike commute to work all week but it never worked out, so today I decided to make it happen since it's my last day in the office for the next month. I woke up at 4:30 and decided to go for a jog while I was waiting for it to get light, well my wife, who is not a morning person AT ALL was wide awake and said she was too stressed out to sleep, at the risk of getting yelled at I asked if she would like to go for a run with me anyway, to my surprise she said yes, so for the first time ever I went jogging with my wife at 5:00 in the morning, we took the pup and just had a nice easy little jog down and back for a total of 3 miles.
When we got back it was still dark, but I changed into my cycling clothes and went anyway, it was a bit warm but not horrible, I'm sure the ride home this afternoon will be much worse. It was actually a much easier ride than I had remembered, the hill up to Wasatch is still a butt kicker but not bad. Made it to work in 1:12:00 3:24 avg pace :) my watch is still in run mode, 17.6mph avg. Pretty good I think, it's not an easy ride.
Oh, and one more thing. My son was bugging me that he wanted to track his running miles too, so I helped set him up with a fastrunning blog account, say hi to Bradin.
P.M. Rode my bike home from work in almost exactly the same time as it took to get there, but I had a great tail wind coming over the point of the mountain.
Blah! Went OK at first, but at mile 11 my knee started hurting, my stomach started churning, and by 13 I was a wreck. Cut the run short and then Ryan went and finished off his 20 miler without me. I felt bad about bailing but only running once this week didn't work out so great. The next month in San Francisco should get me back into running shape.
I was wondering where all my motivation to run had gone, today I think I figured it out. It's been way to hot, and smoky to really want to put in hard workouts. Perfect temperature here in San Francisco, at least for running, a cool misty morning out to the Golden Gate bridge and back. I love it out there, it's so surreal, the fog, the fog horn on the bridge and absolutely nobody but me. It's pretty amazing, this is where I first found out I could run fast 4 years ago, I think this next 4 weeks will be the kickstart I needed to get back into it.
6 Miles out to the Golden Gate bridge then a feeble attempt at a tempo run coming back. 5 mile tempo in 32:00 flat. My goal was just to keep a 6:30 pace so I should be pretty happy about 6:24, even with Mason Fort Hill in the middle. I'm sure I've ran that same 5 miles in under 30 before but those where better days.
16 hour work day yesterday, so I opted for sleep over running this morning. Went to the hotel gym for a quick 30 minutes on the elliptical. Hopefully a long run across the GG Bridge if I can get off a a decent time tonight.
Woke up very early to get in a longer run, I wanted to run across the Golden Gate bridge which I thought was 18 miles round trip, ended up being short but that's OK, I would have been late for work. Pretty chilly morning, very foggy and windy on the bridge but I loved it, it is so awesome being the first person on the bridge in the morning.
I knew the bridge didn't open until 5:00am from experience, so I waited until 4:10 to leave the hotel, about 7 miles to the gate, I got there at 5:01 so perfect timing. On the way back they were getting ready for the Escape from Alcatraz Tri-athlon, so there were lots of people running around in wet suits on the pier, pretty exciting. They are also doing the America's Cup trials in the bay this week so all the cool boats are sitting on the beach.
Another long day at work, glad I got a semi long run in.
Today really could have gone either way, sleep in? / run? I woke up a little late and decided I might as well get the blood flowing or I'd be dragin' at work today. 10 easy miles on the first non-foggy morning since I got to San Fran. A very nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Mason.
Just tried to keep my effort a bit above normal the whole run, 3 things helped me, 1 at the top of Fort Mason I had a little confrontation with a skunk, him being nocturnal and me having no light gave him the upper hand, so I just kind of sprinted past him which got my speed up, then when I got to Crissy park something in the bushes growled at me giving me a scare, not sure if it was a bum, a bear, or a dog but it got my pace up to sub 6:00 for a few 100 yards, then on the way back at Fishermans Warf there was a guy on the other side of the street running a pretty good clip so I decided to catch up to him, when I passed him he immediately sped up and passed me, this continued for about 1 mile at one point we were running about 5:40 pace. So overall a pretty good run.
Great, I'm coming down with a cold, woke up with a really sore throat. I decided to run anyway and maybe that would make me feel better. It did, but I was definately more fatigued at the end then normal. I'm pretty sure I always get sick in San Francisco, I should have been taking my Emergen-c.
Yesterday our network got brought to it's knees by non-other than the late Steve Job's back from the dead to wreak havoc on my network. Turns out 9,000 iPhone's broadcasting Bonjour packets can produce a whole lot of traffic.
I was excited when I heard that VM World had a 5K this morning, I wasn't excited when I found out they wanted $110 to run it. I decided it would be a funner run to just run the same 12 miles I've done for the last week, which actually follows about 1/2 of the 5K route I found out this morning. No runners were there yet just the setup people but at least I felt like I was running a race in slow motion.
I had considered going 15 today, but this cold is kickin' my trash so I just ran the usual 12 mile out and back. I wonder if running with a cold is as good as training as a long run without nutrition cause is sure feels the same.
It's been a long time since I was on the first page of the mileage board.
Good run today, my legs felt very peppy despite still having a nagging cold. I didn't really try to run hard but I did have a higher than normal average pace just due to feeling good.
Went to the Bon Jovi concert last night, it was very disappointing, he's basically turned into a cover band.
Traditionally I run all the way across the GG bridge on my last morning in San Francisco but this morning I felt like trash and truthfully 12 was probably way over doing it but I had to keep my 12 streak going on.
We gotta finish up some stuff and then hurry to the airport to get the heck out of dodge.
