What ever it takes!

Epic Failure,  I'm embarrassed to even be typing this and pretty much feel like I've wasted the last 2.5 years of my life.  I might feel a little better after the deliria is gone but I'm in pretty bad shape at this time.

Here is the worst of it, I felt great at the start line, never had stomach issues, never had cramping, in fact at mile 15 I remember thinking to myself how great my legs felt and I could go forever.  Well I couldn't, as soon as the sun hit me I instantly fell apart, by mile 18 I couldn't even run in a straight line, or think straight.  I fell in to a vicious cycle of trying to stay hydrated and fueled and keeping it all down. Every time I drank or ate anything it was on the side of the road within 5 minutes.  To tell the truth I really don't even remember how I eventually got to the finish line, I would have got in the sag wagon at any minute but it never came so I just kept going.  Not even joking, this was probably the closest near death experience I have ever experienced, it really wasn't even safe for me to keep going.  Absolutely miserable ride home, my wife had to quickly pull off to the side of the road a number of time for me to throw up on the side of the road. 

I hope this wasn't to over dramatic, maybe I should have waited a day to write something.

I may do real splits someday, but for now I'll put what I remember

5K - 17:55

10 Mile - 1:00:00 flat ( I was very happy about that one.)

1/2 way - 1:20:20 (On track, just need to negative split)

20 Mile - 2:03:?? (Still on track for a 2:40 but fading fast)

26.2 - 3:02:57 (almost 1 hour to go 6.2 miles)

I really do think I'm going to take a good long break, especially from the Marathon,  maybe 1/2's are more up my ally.

Post Marathon identity crisis day 1. 

45 minutes on the elliptical followed by 30 minutes of aimlessly wondering around the gym doing random exercises.

I'm not really sore at all, which is nice but pretty lame.  I mean really, who walks normal 2 days after a downhill marathon?

7 miles in 50 minutes 7:15 avg pace.

Progressive run 9 miles in 57:25  6:22 avg pace.

No, I'm not an electrician, and no I don't work for a moving company but somehow between just my wife and I we moved an 800 lb hot tub into our backyard, ran electrical to it and had it to temperature and ready for a nice relaxing soak by 9:00pm last night.  This winter just got that much better already.

8 speedy miles in 49:30 6:11 avg pace

Now off to a crazy long work week in the wonderful city of Salt Lake.  I'm staying at the Salt Lake Downtown Marriott all week, 20 minutes away from my house.

Hope I'm not coming down with something, went to bed at 8:00 slept in till 5:30 and still felt like it was just an elliptical trainer day.

30 minutes on the hotel elliptical 15 minutes of weights now off to work.

I've stayed in a lot of cities and I'd have to say Salt Lake is one of the stranger ones.  I went walking around looking for dinner at 7:00 last night and the place is a ghost town, I don't even see how businesses stay open here. 

12 miles in 1:17:54 avg pace 6:29.

Had a mini St. George like crash at around mile 10 and had to slow down, that must mean I'm not as recovered as I thought I was.

now another busy work day, I work to much.

5 miles in 32:30, I was going to do a 5 mile tempo run but junk food all day yesterday limited it to 2.

9 miles in 57:55 on the hotel treadmill  6:26 avg pace. 

 I tried to go home last night but people kept calling me so I had to stay at the hotel again.

Crappy day at work yesterday, crappy night sleep last night, crappy 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer in the hotel gym. 

I was just peddling along on the elliptical trainer at 5:00 am, when all of a sudden I had an "Ah Hah" moment, ran upstairs took a quick shower, got dressed, ran over to the Salt Palace and fixed all lifes problems before the day even got started.  Hopefully today goes much better.

9 mile progressive in 58:12  6:28 avg pace.

The point of these runs is to get faster, but I seem to end up just doing the same run every morning.  I  get to that 6:00 pace and start feeling sick and can't force myself to go any faster.  I need to eat better and get a job with less stress I think.  

A bit more aggressive progressive run than normal.  Started at 7:00 pace and bumped it up .2 mph every 1/2 mile, ended at 5:20 pace for the final 1/2.  Funny how the Wendys frosty from last night seems to know exactly when I hit 6:00 pace.

 7 miles in 43:10  6:09 avg.

8 miles in 54:42 6:50 avg pace,  Ran slow until some guy decided to come and race me on the treadmill next to me.  I'm pretty sure I won.

Guess what I did this morning?  Yep, a 9 mile progressive run.  Started at 6:40 pace instead of 7:00 bumped it up .1 mph every 1/2, finished at 5:30 pace.  When I hit 9 miles right at 55 minutes I thought to myself, "all I need to do it run 1 mile in 5 to go 10 in 1 hour" then I thought "nah, that ain't happening" and pushed the big red button.

9 miles in 55:00 6:06 avg pace.

The finish line for the SoJo marathon was setting up right across the street from Lifetime this morning.  I thought, boy that would have been nice, I could have finished the race and came across the street and took a shower and sat in the hot tub.  I'm pretty upset I didn't just run the SoJo with Kurt today instead of St. George but instead I'm sitting at the airport waiting for a plane to fly me to San Francisco.  On the plus side this is my bi-annual trip where I get to run on my favorite trail.  Sawyer Camp trail, so I'm pretty excited about that.  Last time I ran it I had a stress fracture and didn't enjoy it at all.

10 miles on my favorite trail in the United States,  Sawyer Camp trail it's in the hills between SFO airport and Half Moon bay and runs through a game preserve.  Perfect temperature 60 degrees with a cool mist coming off the lake.

It's a bit spooky early in the morning, like Halloween spooky.  The weird thing is the deer aren't afraid of people, so you'll be running along and all of a sudden there will be a deer standing 5 feet away and not even move.  Kind of freaks you out.

Great run, it makes my least favorite job just a little bit easier.

10 miles in 1:06:40  6:40 avg pace.  Slow in the dark going out and then I kind of turned on the after burners for a few mile coming back.

Late night working last night, early morning this morning so I didn't have time to make it to my trail, which meant a really hot miserable quick run on the stuffy hotel treadmill.  Blah!!

6 miles in 37:05 6:10 avg pace

9 miles on the Sawyer camp trail before finally going home, Dragged my co-worker Jeff out of bed to go with me. I ran 2 slow with him and then went off ahead. ran out to the 4.5 mile marker and turned around. I really would have liked to go the entire length but was short on time.

It was a perfect morning once again, actually had to dodge around a deer that was just standing in the middle of the trail and had no intention of getting out of my way. Geez, share the trail deer.

9 miles in 1:03:? 7:04 avg pace.

Ahhh! I needed that. I've worked the last 16 days straight, no days off, so this morning I slept in till 6:00, went hot tubing with my wife, waited for it to get light outside and went for a nice slow run on my original 10 mile route from back when 10 miles was my long run. The entire route is under construction so I had to deal with a few big trucks but the hard packed road base was a perfect running surface.

Nice cool morning, beautiful views of the mountains and the leaves. Now this is running weather.

The only other thing I have planned today is to go read Piggy Pie to my 4 year olds pre-school class, other than that I'm going to do a whole lot of sittin' around.

Had a really hard time getting into it this morning, just felt tired and blah! After 7 miles I decided to shake the lead out and do some intervals. Did 10 X 0.1 miles sprints with .1 rest. Started at 13.1mph 13.2.... up to 14 mph for the last one.

Felt a little better after that and some stretching.

9 mile progressive run in 54:56 avg pace 6:06. 

Started at 6:40 pace ended at 5:28 pace.

So the plan this morning was to go on a nice little family outing, packed up the car with bikes and stroller and drove down to Willow Park with the whole family, Britt pushed Zach in the stroller, Ethan's furthest bike ride was 2 miles before today so he stayed with Britt and Zach and Bradin and I went off ahead.  We headed South on the trail, Bradin and I went out to the Lake and turned around, on the way back I had him pace me at a just sub 6:00 pace for about 2 miles, it was very cold this morning so things were a little bit tight and achy.  When we got back to Willow Park Britt and the kids were already in the car trying to warm up, Bradin wimped out on me and got in the car too.  They asked if they should meet me at Maverik and I told them no I'd just run home.  I forgot how far home it was, and how big of a hill I live on so the last 4 miles of the run were pretty brutal.  My easy 12 mile run with the family turned into a pretty hard 15 miler, felt more like 22 honestly, with all the short fast runs I've done lately 15 felt like eternity.

Pretty happy to get it done, I'm really quite sore in places I didn't know I was sore, the cold and the hills really brought it out.

15 miles in 1:47:30  7:10 avg pace.

This was a really fun week of running, never felt like I over did it, I'm not following a schedule or anything, I just kind of did what my body felt like doing every morning.  That's probably how most of you already are but it's kind of a new concept to me.

I wanted to do a really hard run today, I was up late last night and couldn't sleep so when I got to the gym my mind just twasent in the game. I did a 2 mile slow warm up then I accidentally pulled the emergency stop magnet and staled the treadmill.  When I started back up I decided to just go for it,  I put the treadmill at 1.5% decline and speed at 10.5 mph,  bumped the speed up every 1/2 mile but by the time I got to 5:30 pace I was feeling pretty pukey.  Slowed it back down to 5:40 pace which seemed sustainable, not comfortable, just sustainable.  Ran 6 like this then did a 1 mile cool down.

6 miles in 34:04 5:40 avg pace

So the reason I was up late is cause Walter got me a spot as a 1:40 pacer for the Halloween 1/2 this weekend.  I'm very excited about it,  I was up late coming up with a pacing plan, and putting a list of Halloween jokes to tell at each mile.  So if you're running the Halloween 1/2 and want to do it in 1:35, you should slow down a bit and run with my group cause it's going to be fun.  I've never paced before so I'm not sure how it will go, but I plan on doing a really good job :)  It should be a lot of fun to run a race at a pace I know I wont crash at.

Decided to give my legs a break.  32 laps in the pool, 30 minutes of weights.

For some reason it felt like I was swimming in a big pool of honey, to bad it didn't taste like it.

Just great! yesterday afternoon I started feeling a head cold coming on, you know that feeling when you know its coming and it's coming fast and there is nothing you can do about it except start drinking Emergen-C by the gallon.  So all night I had a hard time sleeping with a stuffy head, got up went to the gym and just decided to ignore it and try and sweat it out. Probably not a great idea but seriously, is anything I do in my training a good idea?  I run most of my miles at close to marathon pace in a pair of holy shoes with over 1500 miles on them and then I go sit in the hot tub after every run.  Running hard with a head cold is the least of my worries.  Anyway I think It actually worked, I feel much better now.  Now lets see how the rest of the day goes.

 9 miles in 57:50 6:25 avg pace.

Hummm??  Well that was weird.  The first time in years I can remember that I un-intentionally slept in to the point where I just didn't have time to do anything except get ready for work.  Some how my alarm got turned off and I just slept the morning away.  Usually I don't need an alarm anyway, Oh Well, I don't feel to bad about it, it's the first decent night sleep I've had in days so my body must be telling me something.  I still have a bit of a cold, but not even as bad as yesterday morning.

This stupid cold is kickin' my butt.  I hope it doesn't take away from having a good time tomorrow, I'm not worried about running my pace, but I am worried about people being able to hear my jokes.  After my run this morning I went up to a couple to ask if they were running the Halloween Half tomorrow, they were the first people I had talked to all morning so when I tried to speak I realized nothing was coming out of my mouth.  They looked at me really stupid, and said "What?"  I've never talked to them before so it was kind of embarrassing.  I apologized for my lack of communication skills and went off to do some stretching on my own.

 8 miles in 56:18  7:02 avg pace.

So about a week ago I saw that Walter Brown was organizing the pace groups for the Halloween Half, I just commented that it sounded fun, he responded back and told me there was a 1:40 spot available if I was interested.  I was very excited about it, it’s been a life long dream of mine to be a pacer in a race.  Well maybe not a life long dream but once I thought it would be pretty cool to be able to run fast enough that one day someone would ask me to run slower. 

My wife was pretty adamant I not run this race so when the opportunity came up to run it for free I couldn’t pass it up, not that it changed her decision but I did it anyway.

I called Walter one night and asked if he thought it would be better to pace it at a flat 7:38/mile pace or run it course appropriate, since the first 5 miles are so steep.  I thought it was a fair question to ask and before I knew it I was in charge of setting up the pacing chart for all of the pacers.  Lucky for me I had just spent oodles of time making up race pace templates for the St George marathon and had some experience in the subject.  I came up with what I thought was a pretty good formula for the course, plugged in the times from 1:30 – 3:00 pace and they all seemed to be pretty reasonable.  That was the easier part, he then asked if I knew where to get wrist bands, I told him I’d figure that out as well.  I found a local place that sold waterproof, tear resistant paper (not easy) and found some great double sided sticky tape (too great according to Allie) had my kids wear them for 2 days straight and taking baths with them to make sure they could handle the harsh conditions of a ½ marathon.

I’m not going to get into all the craziness and drama of the actual race politics, and packet pickup.  I’m sure you will hear about all that in other peoples reports.

Slept in the basement last night so my wife wouldn’t keep me awake, and vis-versa, woke up at 4:00am, drove to the finish line, instead of the University Mall where the bus pickup was and parked there.  I jogged the 2.5 miles to the Mall, it was quite pleasant to get a nice cool run in.  Got on the second to first bus and went for a really long bus ride to the start line.  Again I wont go into details but the bus ended up going all the way to the top of the Alpine loop to turn around so we were on the bus for 2 hours.  Actually quite nice, sitting on a nice warm tour bus instead of a cold stuffy tent.

Race started pretty on time, about 9:10.  I figured it would much later with the bus issues, I lined up with my other 1:40 pacers, forgot the full names, sorry, Andy and someone rallied our troops and off we went.  Pretty congested at the start, I thought hitting mile 1 on pace would be hard, but we ended up pretty good.  I warned everyone that I was going to tell a Halloween Joke every mile so they could decide if they wanted to run with me or not.

First number is my actual split, second is what my pace calculator said to do it in.

Mile 1=  7:19   7:21

Why don't monsters eat clowns?

Because they taste funny.

Mile 2=  7:11   7:20

What happens when a ghost gets lost in the fog?

He is mist.

Mile 3=  6:57   7:09

What kind of street does a ghost like to run on?

A dead end.

Mile 4= 7:10   7:06

Why didn't the skeleton go to the halloween party?

Because he had no body to go with.

Mile 5= 7:29   7:25

Who does a ghost fall in love with?

His ghoul friend.

Mile 6= 7:56   8:01

Who are some of the werewolves cousins?

The whatwolves and the whenwolves.

Mile 7=   7:57   8:08

How does a witch tell time?

She looks at her witch watch.

Mile 8=   7:51   7:51

Where can you see a real ugly monster?

In the mirror.

Mile 9=   7:35   7:36

What do they teach in witching school?

Spelling.

Mile 10=   7:41   7:52

How do mummies hide?

They wear masking tape.

Mile 11=   7:50   7:45

What is in a ghost's nose?

Boogers

Mile 12=   7:55   7:50

Why did the ghost go into the bar?

For the Boos.

Mile 13= 8:41   7:48

What did Dracula say after hearing all these jokes?

They suck!

Mile 13.1= :57   :47

Total 1:40:21

At mile 12 we realized we were about 1 minute off pace,  we told everyone still in our group to sprint ahead and go for it, we then slowed we down and tried to motivate people behind us to hurry up and beat us and they could still beat 1:40.  When I hit the 13 mile mark my watch already said 1:40, I couldn't figure out how that happened and sped up to try and get in within the 1:40 mark.  (Markers were a bit off the whole way but no big deal)

This was truly one of the best running experiences I have ever had, I think I learned a lot about me, and just running in general.  It was very interesting to run a race course correctly.  I will totally do this again someday if I get the chance.  Thanks Walter for the opportunity, I made some great new friends today.

Apparently that hill is really steep no matter how fast or slow you go down it.  My legs really hurt this morning.  I hope they get better by Saturday.

30 minutes on the elliptical, 10 minutes of talking to Riverton Paul in his super cool 70's soccer player outfit and then 30 minutes on the treadmill.  I was going to get pictures of Paul working out but figured he should post his own pictures.