What ever it takes!

1 hour on the elliptical, 30 minutes of weights.  Probably the hardest I've worked out with weights in years.  I'm going to be sore tomorrow.  But I'll get buff. 

That's my New Years Resolution,  to get buff.

60 minutes on the elliptical, 45 minutes of weights.  For some reason the gym was extremely crowded today.  I'm not sure why,  it's just a Tuesday.

I've gained 7 lbs since I stopped running 2 weeks ago, I'm hoping it's from all the muscle I've gained lifting weights.

I decided this year was starting off very badly since I haven't logged any real running miles, and also decided that I'd rather run slow than not at all.

18 minutes on the elliptical then I got on the treadmill to give my leg a try.  I set the treadmill to 7 mph and incline to 3%.  I ended up doing a progressive incline workout, keeping the speed the same but increasing the incline 0.5% every mile so I ended up doing the last mile at 6% (which was pretty brutal)  Leg felt fine the whole time, and I felt like I got a really good workout.  If my calculations are correct that comes to 1,478' of vertical climb over the 7 miles.

7 miles in 60 minutes 8:34 avg pace.

30 minutes of weights in an even more crowded gym than yesterday.

I am now officially signed up for the BigHorn 50 Miler, I see a lot more hill workouts in my future.

My 12% hill climb will just have to wait, I got on the elliptical this morning and even it was hurting my leg so I decided to try swimming.  I haven't gone to the pool this week cause I was afraid it was going to be crowded and I hate sharing lanes, but when I got there I was the only one there, and I actually had the entire pool to myself the whole time.  

40 laps in 43 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of weights, now I'm at work way to early.

Here's kind of a funny story,   I bought some new Nike Free's and finally threw out my old Live Strongs.  Well, this morning (while swimming) I was thinking about tracking my running cadence again and realized that my Garmin Foot pod was left in my Free's that I threw away.  I'm really quite upset about it.

1 hour on the elliptical 30 minutes of weights.  This bites.

Yep, you guessed it.  1 hour on the elliptical, 30 minutes of weights.

Apparently New Years resolution people only resolved to workout Monday though Friday cause the Gym was empty, very nice.

Dido!!

So at 3:00 this morning the night light from my 4 year olds room woke me up, I got up and looked in and couldn't see him in his bed so I started looking around the house in the usual spots, bathrooms, other kids rooms, basement, but I couldn't find him anywhere.  I started freaking out and was just about to wake everyone in the house for a massive kid hunt.  I went back in his room and he was at the head of his bed curled up in a tiny little ball covered in all his blankets, pillows and stuffed animals.  The furnace must have blown his door open.

Anyway, the point of that story was that I had lots of extra time this morning. 

Went to the gym, got in the hot tub for a few minutes, it was really hard to get motivated, jumped in the pool, swam 48 laps in 55 minutes (pretty good for me) got back in the hot tub for a few more minutes, changed and went to the weight room for 50 minutes of lifting.  Felt like I got a really good workout, but I'm pretty tired now.

I just noticed I have Zero followers visiting my blog,  Geez, I stop running for 2 weeks and everyone gives up on me, you people are ruthless...

60 minutes elliptical, 45 minutes of weights.

I'm staying at the Anaheim Hilton in 2 weeks for work and just found out there is the first Annual Tinker Bell 1/2 marathon going on the same weekend I'm there.  I have never in my life gone to a race and had a hotel closer to the start line than this but the race is sold out.  I really, really need to figure out a way to get in.  I don't even want to race it, I just know that if I'm staying at the hotel and the entire hotel is full of runners I'm going to feel really bad if I can't run.   It looks really fun, it follows my normal Anaheim running route but also goes through each of the parks.

40 laps in the pool in 50 minutes, pretty slow but I was just kind of zoning out thinking about all my upcoming work trips.  I sure can think good in the pool, perhaps because there aren't any distractions, at all.

20 minutes of pretty worthless weight lifting.

60 minutes on the elliptical, 45 minutes of weights.  I lifted legs today and will probably hurt tomorrow.

If I don't run soon I will go mad.

60 minutes on the elliptical at a harder effort than normal, 30 minutes of weights.  Now I'm at the airport headed to San Francisco.

Realized I haven't been on a plane in almost 1 month, crazy.  I almost got lost driving to the airport this morning

60 minutes on the elliptical, 20 minutes of weights in the Hotel gym.  I'm going to have to try and run tomorrow, I can't workout in that stuffy, hot hotel gym all week.

How bout them Pat's...

The weather man says its going to be raining here the rest of the week and I just couldn't not run in my favorite place to run,  So I did.  I strapped on my leg brace as tight as I could get it, took 800mg of iburophen and off I went.  Down Market street to Embarcadaro, out past Pier 39, Fishermans Warf and up to the top of Fort Mason Hill so I could enjoy the view of the GoldenGate Bridg.  Stopped for about 5 minutes just to take it in, it was a beautiful morning, clear skys, no fog and a very nice temperature for running.   Very happy I went, my legs took about 1/2 a mile just to remember how to run, and I'm going to be very sore just from not using those muscles for so long but it was worth it.

It's funny how relative running speed is, I've run past a number of people in the past at around 6:30 pace and they look at me and say "I wish I could run fast"  Well today, coming back I was limping along at around at 8:30 pace and passed a guy, he looked over at me and said "boy, I wish I ran that fast"

7 miles in 57:22 8:10 avg pace

No rain this morning, but still I didn't want to tempt fate and run 2 days in a row on my leg.   Plus I had to start work early today so 60 minutes on the elliptical, 20 minutes of weights.  Followed by the worlds yummiest apple fritter.

Same route as Monday out to Fort Mason hill and back.  Everything loosened up quite nicely this morning and I actually felt pretty good.  My legs are going to take some time to get back but definitely some progress and I don't feel like such a sludge after getting a run in.

7 miles in 56:42 8:06 avg pace.  Followed by 30 minutes of weights and core.

Googlers (That's what Google employees call themselves) are in really good shape, the gym was full and everyone on the treadmills were going at a pretty good clip.  I'd work for Google if it didn't mean moving to California.  They actually offered me a Job in Zurich once (my dream place to live)  but I couldn't convince the wife to go :(

60 minutes of elliptical, 30 minutes of weights. 

Last day of conference then I get to tear it all down and start all over again next week.

Plan A, get an early flight out of here (failed, Sold out)

Plan B, go for a nice run to the Golden Gate bridge (failed, it's raining hard and I've become a panzy)

Plan C, Workout in the gym and take my normal flight (failed, my normal flight was cancelled due to it raining hard)

Alternate plan D, 60 minutes on the elliptical, 30 minutes of weights and hopefully get out of here sometime today.  (1/2 complete, still up in the air if I can get on a non-cancelled flight)

Help!  I'm trapped in San Francisco, someone rescue me!!!

60 minutes of elliptical, 30 minutes of weights

Monday I will try and run, my leg is feeling pretty much healed.

Well, that went well I thought.  Not quite the 100% I thought maybe I was but not to shabby.  My legs took a while to remember how to run, my shin was a little tender but I could tell I wasn't really hurting it.  I think tomorrow I'll swim just to be safe.

I have 3 weeks from today until I start following a training program for the Big Horn 50, I haven't put a plan together yet but I at least know when it starts :)  So 3 weeks to get completely healed, and in good enough shape to easily run 50 - 60 miles/week to start.

How bout them Pats!

8 miles in 59:55 7:30 avg pace

40 laps in the pool in 45 minutes, followed by 25 minutes of weights.  

8 miles in 59:22 7:25 avg pace.  Man I'm out of shape!

10 minutes on the elliptical then I went to the treadmill, at about 4.5 miles Riverton Paul came and started talking to me, he mentioned that I was limping pretty bad, after chatting with him for a bit I decided if it was that obvious maybe running wasn't a great idea so I went back to the elliptical for 20 more minutes.  30 minutes of weights.

Thanks for stopping me Paul.

30 minutes on the hotel gym elliptical then I decided to go take a nice easy run around Downtown Disney. 

Last year at this conference I was arguably in the best shape of my life and I ran the LA 13.1 series 1/2 marathon at Venice beach.  This year the conference is 2 weeks later and I was kind of sad that I couldn't go run again, so when I found out there was a 1/2 marathon right in Disney I couldn't resist.  Well, it could be a huge mistake for a number of reasons.

1. Maybe the title "Tinkerbell" 1/2 marathon should have given it away but I went to the expo last night and it turns out that out of the 12,000, (twelve thousand) participants, 900 are male, and judging from the people at the expo I would guess a large number of those 900 are questionable.

2. The lady I bought the bid from on Craigs list had never ran a 1/2 marathon before and thought her pace was about 14min/mile.  So my bib number is 10074 out of 12,000.  So I'm in coral E, the last coral.  I measured it this morning, it is .45 mile from coral E to the start line, so unless I can persuade someone to let me cut I'm guessing at least a 45 minute wait before I can start weaving in and out of 10,000 people.

3. I was kind of thinking I'd run a 7:00/mile pace but after this mornings run anything under 7:30 seemed to aggravate my leg, so I'll shoot for a 1:40:00.  Faster if I can get up closer to the start.

Oh Well!. it never was really about running a race, I just thought it sounded fun to run since I'm right here and the start line is closer to my hotel than any other race I actually went for.  On the plus side the medals are really cool, probably the neatest finishing medals I've ever seen.  And besides, it's Disney the happiest place on earth.  How could anything go wrong?

Humm!  Well that was interesting to say the least.  I’m probably going to be shunned from the world wide running community after this one.

Got up at 4:30 showered, ate oatmeal made from my single serving coffee maker in my hotel room and walked 5 minutes to the start of the race.  I meandered up as far as I could but when I got to the B coral the security was very thorough and I found out that men were not even allowed in Coral A and B, which was fine, so I hopped into Coral C and went to the front.  There were about 20 other guys so it seemed this was the official start line of the un-official mens race.  It was very organized, not surprising since Disney is the master of crowd control.  Waited for about 30 minutes and the race started, Coral A went, Coral B moved forward and every 5 minutes they let the next coral go.  So I was exactly 10 minutes behind the official start.  The C coral started of much like any other race, a bunch of people sprinting ahead going way to fast, including me, even though it was on the only uphill of the entire course.  This went on for about 400 meters, then we hit a wall, not “the wall” a wall of 4000 Tinkerbells.  For the next 4 miles it was pretty much what I guessed it would be, a lot of swerving and maneuvering up and around bushes, sidewalks and spectators.  The pace went from 5:30 pace to 10:00 pace.

The first 5 miles were very entertaining though, we went into Disneyland, made a full loop around the park and then across to California adventure.  All of the Characters were out and it’s the first race I have ever done where people stopped and were actually standing in line to get their picture taken.  Kind of weird.  I settled into a 7:30ish pace and was pretty content with that since that’s what I told myself I would do yesterday.   We left the parks and went out onto the roads, which wasn’t nearly as fun but at least there was more room and I wasn’t having to dodge people all over the place.  Just ran and enjoyed myself, gave a lot of high fives and just enjoyed that my leg wasn’t hurting and I was actually getting a good workout in for the first time in 2 months.

Around mile 9 I passed a girl who told me I was the 3^rd place male.  I’m not sure how she knew that unless she was at the start of A coral and was only “duded” twice.  I sped up a bit, I knew there was a Peter Pan ahead of me from C coral, right after that some guy came out of no where and passed me.  That was the first time I got a sense of ‘this is a race’ in me, I quickly jumped on his tail and followed him for a while.  He was clomping and breathing quite a lot so at mile 10 I decided to turn this into a 5K race and I took off.  He held on pretty good we went back into California adventure and had a lot of weaving to do but I could hear him right behind me.  We actually passed 3 guys so I’m not sure where that 3^rd one came from.  At mile 12 I got a side cramp but just told myself to get through it.  I pushed pretty hard, down the home stretch a couple of my co-workers were watching so I high fived them and took off.  I lost that guy at that point.

I’m pretty sure I was the first place male,  but I don’t know that for sure since it was so crazy at the start, there is a chance someone from one of the corals behind was faster, and there is also a chance there was someone that snuck into Coral A or B that didn’t have to weave in and out.  I know one of the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings was in Coral A as a guest celebrity and I don’t remember ever passing him.  You’d think I’d notice a hobbit running.

******************

Update,  The results are already officially posted.  I actually ended up taking 16th overall, 7th in the men.  That actually makes me feel better that I didn't win and screw something up.  The actual overall winner of the race was a male that started in coral D with a chip time of 1:25:36.  And the guy I thought I beat had a chip time 2 minutes faster than me so he started back in the middle of Coral C.  Wacky, Wacky.  Oh well, it was fun.

Now off to work.

60 minutes on the elliptical, 30 minutes of weights in the hotel gym.  It was a perfect morning yet again for a run but I decided to give myself a day or 2 break.  Shin feels good today, but my calves and quads are sore.

45 minutes on the elliptical then my co-worker came to the gym and got on the treadmill, I asked if he'd rather go outside and run the Downtown Disney loop.  He said yes, so we did.

Leg hurt, I should have worn my brace.