What ever it takes!

I suspect if I'm ever to be eaten alive by either Werewolfs or Vampires this is the place it will happen.  Prague is an extremely spooky town, especially at 5:30 am.  

The gym at the Marriott didn't open until 8:00 this morning, my co-worker is staying about 1/2 a mile away at the Hilton and thought that gym was open 24 hours so he gave me his room key to get in.  Well I woke up, bundled up and jogged over to the Hilton and found it didn't open until 7:00 on Saturday, I ran outside last year and wasn't real pleased with the outcome so I was skeptical to do it again, I asked the front desk where I could run and they told be to just follow the river.  So I ran down to the river and turned right, cause I always turn right, ran about 1/2 a mile and it became really dark and spooky so I turned around and started running the other way along the river.  There was a bike path for most of it so I just ran along aimlessly for about 40 minutes then turned around and came back.  Not a bad run, I was way over dressed because I was planning on running on a treadmill and taking off my winter clothes when I got there, I ran pretty slow incase I did have to out run a Werewolf.  My Garmins wrist strap broke so I didn't have a watch and when I tried to map my run on mapmyrun :) I got just as lost as if I were actually running it.  So based on time and effort I'm giving it an 8 (miles that is).

Pretty sad week of running, but I really didn't expect much and it's probably better I not kill myself with all the travel and work I've been doing.  That's when I tend to get injured anyway. 

Jetlag is kickin' my butt this trip, I attribute it to the fact that I haven't been able to get on a good workout schedule due to the un-runnability of this city and the late hours the hotel gyms open so I was very much looking forward to a treadmill run this morning more than ever before.  16.1 KM progressive run in 1:11:42.  Nothing real impressive but it felt good to finally get moving normal again.  

Yesterday was a very busy work day, now the conference is going it should be easy the rest of the week then I can come home and enjoy the Christmas season.  I do like Prague this time of year but I forgot how homesick I got last year. 

4:30 average pace today, hey who am I to argue with what the treadmill said.

16.1 KM in 1:11:30, 10 seconds faster than yesterday, it seemed much harder.  I am very ready to go home, just about the time I get on the correct time zone I'll fly home and be all messed up again. 

Something is up with these treadmills, I have a difficult time doing the kilo - mile conversion in my head, but I have run on enough treadmills to know that was much harder than 7:00 average pace.  I'm putting down 3.5 marathon paced miles cause it felt like I was about to die.

13.5 km in 1:00:00 

It's good I'm leaving soon cause I can no longer continue my relationship with this hotel treadmill.  I insist it lies to me, and it refuses to speak to me in English.

16.1 kilometers (10 miles) in 1:09:30, according to the lieing treadmill.  There is no way that was 6:56 min/mile pace.

I've been sitting next to my English counterpart from Liverpool all week, The language barrier is far to great.  I can sit and listen to him talk all day and realize I don't understand 1/2 of what he just said.  Cisco Rooters, Zed instead of Z, Biskets and Pudding.

It's time for me to go home.

Ran 2 miles back from dinner to the hotel late last night,  I decided it would be much quicker to run than wait for a cab.  I was right.

I was out late at a celebratory dinner so this morning I just didn't feel motivated to run.  So I ellipticaled for 30 minutes, lifted weights for 30 minutes and came to work for all day.

I wont run for 3 days now since I'll be sitting on Airplanes for a lot of that time.

Lifetime is a jetlags best friend.  I was wide awake at 2:00am forced myself to lay in bed until 3:00 with about 1 million things going through my head and finally just gave up and went to the gym with the idea of clearing my mind.  Plan on the drive to the gym was to just run 20 miles easy, but as I always do I got carried away and kept progressing and ended up doing mile 13 - 17 at 6:15 pace, decided I was pretty worn out after that and just ran a slow recovery mile and went and did some stretching and rolling out.

18 miles in 2:07:00

I had a chat with my wife yesterday about social media.  She is totally against it and thinks it's the root of all things evil.  I don't totally agree but there is a lot of negativity on Facebook and Twitter.  I was thinking about it and realized how much I like Fastrunningblog, it's nice that it has, for the most part a very positive feel around it, and a very positive theme.  It's really quite amazing that this site was around long before any of those other sites, and that it has such a loyal fan base.

Thanks Sasha!!

Oh! one other thing I was thinking about.  If I can manage to stay injury free, and figure out how to stop eating so much junk so I can loose 20lbs I think 2013 is going to be a very good year for me.   By the way, I'm feeling very good today, despite only sleeping 4 hours. 

Despite staying up late to watch Brady lay it down on the Texans (I love to watch pure excellence) I was still wide awake at 3:30am, I actually was up at 1:30 but managed to get back to sleep for a bit.

Did a good job of just running easy this morning until the last mile I went and ran in 5:40, pretty much just stupidity and I about puked all over the treadmill when I was done, but 1 good thing came out of it.  I found out I can run a 5:40 mile at the end of an 18 miler. 

18 miles in 2:10:30 

Very warm and very windy outside this morning.  I'm not sure why I'm telling you this cause I ran inside on the treadmill.

18 miles in 2:15:00 7:30 flat pace the whole time. 

How's that for mixing things up?

Basically 2 1 hour progressive runs, followed by a 3 mile cool down.

8.25 miles in 60 minutes

8.75 miles in 60 minutes

3 miles in 22 minutes.

20 miles in 2:22:00

I was thinking, as I sometimes do on the treadmill.  I could easier run 50 miles at 7:00 pace than I could 10 miles at 6:00 pace.  What does that mean exactly?  It seems like being able to run 50 miles would suggest I'm in pretty good shape so why is it so hard for me to run 1 min/mile faster.  I think it means I'm getting old, strange how the older you get the slower you get but you seem to have more endurance.  I'm sure there is a book on this somewhere. 

As much as I would love to go run another 20 miles on the treadmill again tomorrow I think I'll take a break and swim or something crazy.  I would really like to go run with the big group on Saturday, not that I could keep up with them anyway, but I'll have a much better chance if I take it easy tomorrow. 

Plan was to only swim today, but I am dealing with a horrible case of insomnia lately, just to much on my mind and I don't think I every got over Jet Lag.  I've been probably only averaging 4 hours of sleep per night this week.  So anyway, got to the gym at 4:00 and didn't want to swim for a full 2 hours so I just ran a slow 10 before hitting the pool.  

When I wrecked on my bike this summer I tore my shoulder up pretty good, it doesn't bother me for most things but swimming made it really hurt.  The extending over my head was very uncomfortable, so I cut the swim short too.

10 miles in 1:21:30 on the treadmill

24 lap in the pool in about 40 minutes. 

Interesting,  After this week I was thinking, I sure do run a lot of miles on treadmills, so I decided to find out exactly how many.  I went and added a treadmill shoe to my profile and went back through the entire year and added treadmill miles in.  It was pretty cool to re-visit my entire year in 30 minutes.  Anyway, Turns out that of the almost 2,500 miles I have run this year, only 705 were on treadmills.  It feels like more, especially after this week.

This is why I workout at 4:00 in the morning, if I wait until the family wakes up there are just way to many other things I should be doing rather than running.  The snow didn't have a whole lot to do with me not going, I like to do crazy things, but the snow did influence how my wife thought the day should go, and the things I should be doing instead of running.

I'm not sure if the big group actually got together this morning, but I'm pretty upset I didn't just go to the gym at get a run in. 

I felt really guilty for not running yesterday so this morning when I got up I looked outside and saw that the reflection off of the snow made it almost daylight outside.  Threw on my winter running clothes that were still sitting out from yesterday and did a really nice easy run in about 1" of fresh power out along the Murdock Trail and back.

Came back and sat in the hot tub for a bit, now I feel like a million bucks.  

I'm going to try for another big week, but different.  We are headed up to Wyoming this week when school gets out, I'm not sure if that will help or hinder the running.  As long as it's not -20 it should be good for running. 

Pretty aggressive progressive tempo run this morning.  I decided the 18 miles/day wasn't a real good idea, my hip has a slight twinge to it which is scaring me a bit.

Started out at 7:00 pace bumping it up each mile, hit maximum velocity around 5:50 pace. 

12 miles in  1:16:30  6:22 avg pace.  

8 mile avg was closer to 6:10 pace, but figuring out that math with the progression is way to difficult.

I'm looking to buy a roof top carrier for our trip to Wyoming.  Any feedback on Thule vs. Yakima? 

My wife is a teacher at the Elementary school, so the school shooting has been a main topic the last few days, she has to go through trainings of what to do in the situation.  She says she would totally stand between the gunman and her students, which I believe cause she's like that.  I told my two older kids if that ever happens at their school to just start running as fast as they can home.  Not sure if that's what the school would want them to do but it's what I want them to do.

My hip was probably runnable, and probably would have loosened up after a mile or so but I didn't think there was really any reason to risk it.

I remember the specific workout that hurt my hip the first time, I was doing 1 mile repeats and the next day it was really bothering me, I kept running on it and it turned into an almost 1 year long of misery.  I don't want to go through that again.  It's really frustrating that the first good speed workout I have in a while and I get hurt again, I thought that progressive tempos would be saver than repeats cause I was working into them.   I must have a running form problem at faster speeds I should probably get evaluated on.  

We opened up our bigger Christmas presents (as in size) last night so we wouldn't have to pack them up to Wyoming.  My wife got me a stationary bike trainer.  The kind where I just put my road bike on it and ride.  I was pretty excited about it and just planned to workout downstairs this morning.  Somehow even though it's on the other side of the house from the bedroom my wife said it was really loud and woke her up so that's annoying.  I guess if I want to workout at home I'll have to go out in the Garage.

Anyway, I actually got a really good workout, judging by the amount of sweat on my shirt when I got done.  about 1 hour 10 minutes on the trainer, now I have to pack up the car for our road trip.  I've never had to do that before, usually I work and my wife packs, there is no way I'm going to get it right. 

Felt really good to run again after taking 3 days off.  We got to the in-laws house at 1:00 am Thursday morning and I was just way too tired from driving to run yesterday.  

I dug up my Temporary YMCA punch pass and still had 1 punch on it so I woke up early and went to the Y.  12 miles on the treadmill in 1:22.  I'm pretty sure the entire cardio room is slanted on a negative downhill cause it seems exceptionally easy, even putting the treadmill at 1% incline.  Oh well, that's OK it makes up for the treadmills in Prague. 

My wife decided she wants to run the 30K Bighorn ultra in June (not that 30K is an ultra) so I guess that means I'm going to sign up for the 50M again.  She wanted me to run the 30K with her but I told her I couldn't run that slow for 18 miles and would just run the 50 and catch up with her :)  I'm almost positive I can beat my last years time as long as I can keep from falling and bruising my ribs every 5 miles. 

9 very slow, very cold miles running around Sheridan this morning, the bank said 10 degrees.  I'm not sure why some Gyms think they don't need to open until 7:00am on Saturdays. People have needs at 5:00 am, don't they know?

We may go run the Jingle run down main street this morning if I can pry the iPods out of my kids hands. 

*****Jingle Bell 5K*****

Very strange, un-organized run but fun.  The registration fee  was a Toy for Toys for Santa so we decided to have the whole family run, including Grandma.  The run was advertised as a 2 mile run so we figured even Zach (5) could run it with Grandma.  We got to the Foot of the Bighorn shop, where the Bighorn Ultra is organized from in June and there were quite a few Highschool kids from the cross country team there, the Cross Country coach showed up and offered to make it a timed event, and also make it a 5K for those who wanted to run 5K instead of just 2.  I decided to go for 5K and let the rest of my family just do the 2 mile, the 5K was just the 2 mile loop with a smaller loop added on.  I went out with the Highschoolers, it was a bit crazy cause there were no traffic cops, we had to stop for red lights, or at least jump over and around cars, I thought for sure someone was going to die.  At the first left turn I was in 4th place, I don't know the street names of Sheridan enough to know the course exactly, but I knew enough to know they didn't turn where they were suppose to, I yelled at them but they didn't listen, so I followed them anyway cause I thought it would be unfair to get ahead of them.  We went out and finally looped back to catch the correct course, it was about .2 miles long and when we got back on track we were just barely in front of my 5 year old and Mother in law, but still in the lead cause apparently everyone followed us, except my mother in law who lives in Sheridan and knew the correct course :)  The fastest of the high school kids took off at that point, I was still in 4th, then at the next left turn the kid right in front of me missed the turn again and kept running straight, which was odd cause I could see the second place kid still and he went the correct way so I'm not sure why he kept going, we looped around up main street, I was now in 3rd, when we passed the 2 mile finish the kid in front of me stopped, apparently he only wanted to run 2 miles.  Now I was in second but could no longer see the first place kid.  They yelled out 12:45 for my time with I thought was slow but with the extra .2 added probably not bad.  The second time around I took the correct route, was running all by myself but actually started feeling better than I did the first loop.  Ran as fast as I could came in 2nd place for the 5K 3.32 miles in 19:55.  I came in behind most my family, Bradin and Ethan had almost the same time 18:55 for 2 miles but apparently Bradin took the extended route, and Ethan ran the correct route.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, Zach and Grandma finished in 22:?? with an awesome sprint finish.  What a cool kid! 

Truthfully, probably my best 5K effort I've ever done in a non-treadmill 5K.  To bad is was long and crazy. 

12 mile run on the YMCA downhill slanted treadmill this morning before making my apparently famous omelets for the entire family.  Last night my wifes brother made a surprise visit.  They had told everyone that they were just going to stay home this Christmas but surprised everyone by driving 3 days all the way from Houston Texas to surprise everyone, so everyone is real excited, especially my kids cause now they have cousins to play with.

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone! 

Nice way to get out the Christmas Blah!  Too much Fudge and Prime Rib yesterday.  

The thermometer in the car said 1 this morning, I wasn't planning on running outside anyway but that helped me be happy I didn't.

12 miles in 1:20:50,  last mile in 5:50.  Followed by 30 minutes of weights.

The YMCA has a big hamster cage for kids to play in, we decided it would be good to the kids away from all their Christmas presents for a while and let them play in a real life environment.  There is a run/walking track at the Y that goes around the basketball courts and hamster cage so I decided to jog while they played.  21 laps = 1 mile :)  At first I was the only one on there and would switch directions every 21 laps but then lots of elderly men started walking the track and my switching directions was obviously very confusing for them.  Initially I was planning on running 8 miles but congestion made me cut it short.

126 laps, in about 45ish minutes. 

Well, it looks like we are trapped in Wyoming. We were going to drive home today but got about 12" of snow last night and I don't want to make the trek across Wyoming in a blizzard. Pretty sure if I did my history that has been attempted and failed many times throughout history.

You know what's annoying? When you are on the treadmill minding your business, running a nice easy recovery run and someone jumps on the treadmill next to you and obviously starts racing. Maybe it's only annoying to someone like me with no self control, hence, 2 marathon paced miles at the end of my run.

12 miles in 1:26:15