What ever it takes!

I'm sure I'll get a lot of sympathy from y'all but after my extra day in Brazil laying out by the pool I'm sunburned worse than I've ever been.  Ouch! and then I had to sit on an airplane for 18 hours with a sun burn.  

8 progressive miles this morning, and then 4 easy for a cool down, then I had to head to Layton to clean up after Katrina 2.  My poor parents house is a complete disaster.  10 trees total completely blown down, the roof is a mess and needs to be completely re-done.  I'm pretty over whelmed with it all, not sure I'll be able to run tomorrow cause I'll be cleaning up again.

6 miles in 45 minutes on the treadmill, then 11 trees cut up and taken to the dump in 8 hours.  which is the better workout?

12 mile progressive run in 1:18:10  6:30 avg pace.

Then I noticed some super fast pregnant women and went and ran 3.3 miles with her.  She was running at a 6:30 pace, craziness.

15 miles in 1:45:00, 7:00 avg pace

On my way to Prague today so I'm not sure how my running is going to turn out the next week and a half.  I'm taking warm running clothes cause I'm really hoping to find some cool running routes, but I'm also taking clothes in case I'm stuck on a hotel treadmill the whole time.  I don't have a big enough suitecase.

Pretty pathetic excuse for a workout but I wanted to just go get moving to keep from going to sleep and hopefully get over Jetlag as soon as possible.  Very long flight, hit the hotel gym as soon as I checked into my room, managed 3 miles and then just couldn't do it anymore, I then went to the elliptical trainer, couldn't figure out what was wrong with it then I figured out they had installed the handles backwards so they felt all weird, so I gave up on that too.  I think I can manage to stay awake for another 4 hours now.

On the drive it we drove past a river that looks like it has a nice bike path next to it for a ways, tomorrow hopefully I can get out and explore a bit.  It's really wet here, I asked if it is always raining and they told me no, usually its snow.

After walking around to find dinner last night I learned 2 things about Prague, 

1- it is the coolest city I think I've ever been to, pretty much exactly what you would expect from an old Gothic European city.  I never really gave much thought to Prague and never really thought of visiting but it really is an amazing place, and being here right before Christmas is really neat too.   

2- it would be very easy to get lost here.  The problem with wanting to go for a 10 mile run in a new city is 5 -6 miles away from the hotel can get you extremely lost, especially when you've never seen the place in the light.

So I chickened out and went to the hotel gym this morning,  Actually got a very good night sleep last night, only woke up once and then I slept in past my alarm.  It felt really good to get a good run in this morning.

16 km (10 Miles) in 1:14:40  ~7:30 avg pace

I haven't mentioned it before cause I was trying to pretend it wasn't real but after my little 140 mpw, ending with a treadmill marathon stunt my right shin has been causing me grief.  I've just been running through it and eventually it goes away after about 10 minutes but this morning I decided it was to much and I succumbed to the pain and did the Arc Trainer at the hotel gym instead.

45 minutes on the Arc with backwards handles followed by 20 minutes of weights and stretching.  Hopefully I can get done with work early today and get an afternoon workout in.

Well, I finally did it.  Last night I studied a public transit map of Prague and saw that there were bike paths all along the river so I decided to go for it this morning and try running outside.  Started from the hotel and went down the cobble stone streets of Old Prague "the touristy part" and out across some famous bridge that I don't know the name of.  I couldn't find any signs of a bike path and once I got to the bridge as tradition would have it some drunk guy in a suit decided to run after me.  It seems to be an international tradition, every where I go some drunk guy tries to run with me. (Oh, except in Paris it was 2 drunk women in high heels, quite impressive).  I take comfort in knowing I can out run 99% of everyone out there and probably 100% of everyone stumbling out of a bar at 5:00am.   Anyway, I ran through a bunch of narrow cobble stone streets trying to stay close to the river and eventually found the bike path,  it was a great path and seemed to go on forever, problem was it was dark, I had no idea where I was headed and frankly it got kind of spooky so I decided to turn around and head back to civilization.  I ran aimlessly around the streets of Prague for a while and decided I wasn't having much fun so I headed back to the hotel.

I would love to go follow that river trail in day light further, I'm pretty happy with my run and was actually surprised I went 7 miles.  Leg felt OK the whole time but due to being lost most of the way I never really pushed the pace.  I'll try and get a little more in after work today.

1 hour on the elliptical trainer.

 Ready to come home for the holidays, I feel like I'm missing Christmas.

13.2 km in 60 minutes (8.2 miles) progressive run, I hope this treadmill is off and not the one at Life Time cause 6:30 pace seemed really hard.

16.1 km (10 miles) in 1:14:00. 7:24 avg pace.

I'm sure having to work a lot longer hours here than I was led on to believe.  I'm suppose to be on vacation this week, not working.

I've decided to try and run the Big Horn 50M this year, work and wife permitting.  It's in Britt's home town so that should be an easier sale.  I suspect I'm a better ultra runner than marathoner but I wont know that until I do one.   :)

10 miles in 1:11:45  7:10 avg pace.  Now I'm really sweaty, stuffy hotel gyms are the worst.

I calculated that I flew over 108,000 miles this year, that's 4 times around the earth and then a quick trip to Paris and back.

I'll run over 2,500 miles, that's a quick trip from Los Angeles to New York, I'm guessing that number could have been about 1,000 more if it weren't for that 3 months off for a pesky stress fracture.

Some days I can deal with pain better than others,  this morning I just couldn't muster up the strength to get through the first 10 minutes of agony so I went to the Arc trainer.  Stupid leg. 

1/2 way through I was messing with my iPhone and dropped it,  I jumped off the trainer without it stopping completely to pick up my iPhone and the peddles wacked me in my non-hurt side ankle, and it hurt like a ........  Now I have 2 bad legs, and no spares.

10 miles in 1:08:40  6:52 avg pace.   First sub 7 avg run I've done in a while, my leg felt pretty good this morning, even the one I wacked with the Arc peddle yesterday. 

Today is the last day of the conference, so ready to go home, not so ready to sit on a plane for 18 hours again.  Yuck!  Next year is looking even worse for travel. So far I have 3 trips to China, 1 trip to Brazil, 1 trip to Barcelona, and maybe Abu Dabi.  If I go there I'm so going to Ferrari World.

20 km (12.4 miles) in 1:29:05  7:11 avg pace.

Coming home today,  tomorrow for y'all who have been living in the past for the last 10 days.  So ready to be done and home, I wish I could close my eyes and click my heels together, but instead I have to sit on a plane watch 10 movies and eat really bad food.

Should be home in 22 hours 39 minutes from now.

Ahh!  Home at last.  This morning I was wide awake at 3:00am and decided I might as well just go to the gym.  I have a crazy friend that is at the gym at 2:30 every morning (he claims he only sleeps 3 - 4 hours a night and just walks 2 - 3 hours every day so I got on the treadmill next to him and just jogged at an easy pace while talking to him.  He left after 50 minutes, then I was alone.  I tell him to start jogging and he'd be able to start doing ultras, but he's not interested.  He also claims he used to run 26 miles a day 13 miles in the morning 13 miles at night at a 10:00 pace but was loosing to much weight so he started walking instead.  Go figure, he has never ran on the road ever, only treadmill.  I'll turn him into an Ultra runner before you know it.

I've decided perhaps I'll take advantage of Jet lag and Vacation this week and try to put up another high mileage week.  Nuthin' crazy like 140 but 90 - 100.  We'll see how it all works out with my leg, and holiday travel plans, but that's the idea.

15 miles in 2:00:00  8:00 avg pace.

20 miles in 2:26:30 7:19 avg pace.

Yes it was all on a treadmill, Yes I am nuts, No I don't know what I'm doing or why I would even want to run 20 miles on a Tuesday at 3:30 am.

16 miles in 1:50:20 6:53 avg pace.  Was kind of planning on doing 18 but I was feeling a bit wrecked, so I stopped.  Oddly at mile 3.5 my leg pain just went away and never returned.  Still feels good now.

Weights and stretching, and then a quick dip in the cold pool after.

Driving up to Wyoming tomorrow morning, I hope the storm doesn't hit to hard.

We were planning on leaving for Wyoming at 5:00 am this morning, but we checked the Wyoming road conditions and found that 1-80 was closed in a number of places along with the road from Rawlins to Casper.  We waited to see if they would open and decided what to do, around 7:00 the roads opened and we decided to just go for it and take it easy.  What a nightmare.  600 miles of solid ice, what is normally a 8.5 - 9 hour drive turned into 12 hours of white knuckle driving.  A double long Fed-Ex truck jack knifed between Rock Springs and Rawlins closing the freeway so we sat in a parking lot for 1 hour waiting for that mess to clean up.  No Christmas presents for those people.

Anyway, we finally made it and I went directly to bed at 7:30 pm.

12 miles in 1:21:30. 6:47 avg pace at the Sheridan YMCA, It's actually very beautiful up here, perfectly clean air, blue sky's but very chilly.  -5 degrees according to the car thermometer when I went to the gym at 5:00.

So much for my 90 mile week, Oh well, who's counting, besides me?

Now let the excessive cookie and fudge eating begin.

7.25 miles with my brother in-laws dog.  He was jumping around driving everyone crazy so I decided to go wear him out.  It seemed to work OK.

This may be my last run for a while, my shin is in pretty bad shape and not getting better. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

90 minutes on the Elliptical at the Sheridan YMCA, then 30 minutes of weights. 

I'm going to not run all week and see how things feel.  If I don't feel any better, well, I guess I'll not run even longer.  I have a couple of work trips to places I really like to run coming up so I need to start feeling better before then.  San Francisco, and Anaheim.

60 Minutes on the elliptical trainer, a little faster than normal trying to keep my HR at 140.  Then I did something I've never done before, the rowing machine, can't say it's my favorite cross training machine, 6400 meters in 30 minutes, I'll have to check Fritz's blog to see if that's good or not, my shoulders are going to be sore tomorrow.

I can run faster than that so given a choice between rowing somewhere or running I pick running, unless I have a stress fracture, or I'm going to an island.  Plus, what kind of sport do you go backwards to go forward?  Seems odd!

It's a bummer I can't run, the weather has been great up here in Wyoming and I have a whole lot of spare time. I've been taking lots of naps.

My dear wife woke up at 5:00 with me and went to the gym.  She's not much of a 2 hour worker outer so this mornings workout was cut a bit short.

45 minutes on the elliptical while she ran, then 45 minutes of circuit weight training.  I probably really could use some good weight training in my down time to strengthen things up.  I noticed on some of the machines I was doing the same weight as my wife. 

Wimpy runners.

I went to the Sport Stop in Sheridan yesterday and started talking to the Lady that owns the shop and is in charge of the Big Horn Ultra in June,  she got me excited to do it and I've been telling all the in-laws that I'm doing it, so unless I hurt myself majorly I guess I'll do it.  She even let me sign up for early registration since my wife is a local.   Guess I better start hitting some trails and get off the treadmill.

90 minutes on the elliptical, 30 minutes on the stationary bike, 15 minutes of weights.  A whole rest of the day of nothin'.

Wow!  10 miles for the week, a new record I think.

Went to the gym and did 1 hour on the elliptical followed my 15 minutes of weights, I then drove and met Jake, Andrea, Allie, James, Adam, Emily, and Devra.  Ran 10 miles on the JRP trail on a nice morning.

James asked me why I was running when I suspected having a stress fracture, I told him "cause I'm an idiot" which is partially true. but driving home I thought more about it.  So, here is my real reason.

Every day it seems I am either on the treadmill at LT at 4:30 or on some random Hotel treadmill in some foreign place, or if I'm lucky running outside in some random City.  What ever the case I'm almost always running alone.  Very seldom do the planets align to where I can actually go on a fun run with company.  Because of this, I have actually been looking forward to a New Years group run for quite some time now.  I wasn't real picky about who, or where I just knew I wanted to do it.  I took the entire week off of running to try and feel better and when Jake and Andrea posted that they were planning a run I was excited to go.

I'm no going to win a marathon any time soon, I'm not going to qualify for the Olympic trials so pretty much all I have to look forward to is a nice run every once in a while.  And that James is why I ran with a suspected stress fracture, because todays run meant more to me than running with an injury.