Week in Review

This was the most miles I have ever run in a single week, also Saturday marked the longest distance and longest time I have ever run at one time. Here are the results.



3/24/08 ..... 46.53 time ..... 4.35 miles ..... 10:47 pace .....759 calories



3/26/08 ..... 1:20:11 ..... 7.48 miles ..... 10:44 pace ..... 1357 calories



3/28/08 ..... 34:04 time ..... 3.25 miles ..... 10:29 pace ..... 696 calories



3/29/08 ..... 3:04:14 time ..... 16:00 miles ..... 11:31 pace ..... 2833 calories



31.08 miles



Some notes on the week:



1. My Friday run was interval training, this was the first time I put this into my program. It was a great time pushing the limits of my abilities. It was a good time.



2. I was only able to complete 16 of the 17 I had scheduled for the long run. This had everything to do with some family obligations. I just ran out of time. I was able to keep a decent pace over some serious hills and I was happy about that. My ankles took a pounding but after a couple of hours I was right as rain. I am surprised that after this type of pounding for hours that it only takes me 90 minutes to feel fine. It is amazing what the human body can handle when it is given the time to properly adapt. One year ago I was running at a 15:00 mile and huffing and puffing while doing it. In one year's time I have really made a substantial amount of progress.

3. Weight Check: Even though it is the 29th, I thought I would go on record. Today's pre run weight was 223. That is 8 pounds less than the beginning of the month. That is not bad, pretty good actually. That makes 25 for the year.

That's all I have

Intervals Day 1

I decided to add a little speed work this week. I have thought about this a lot lately. I don't want to get injured as I approach my first marathon. With that in mind I thought that on the small run at the tail end of the week I could handle some intervals. Tom from Runners Lounge send me some good advice on speed work and I plan on following that. Yet, currently I think I want to just put my toe in the speed work thing and see how it goes.

Today was that little toe experience. I think things went well.

Here is the break down

.5 rest - 11:14 pace
.5 speed - 9:20 pace
.5 rest - 11:37 pace
.5 speed- 9:18 pace
.5 rest - 11:40 pace
.5 speed - 9:42 pace
.25 rest - 10:38 pace

I think this is a good start. I like that I can sustain about a nine and half pace for a half mile. I think that is a good sign. I don't think I am going to push beyond this for a few weeks. Well that is what I have. The interesting thing was that the last quarter felt effortless after the 9 and half's, good feeling. 17 miles up for this weekend, yikes that sounds far.

Running Update

I don't usually write about my individual runs any longer, unless there is something remarkable. Last night I set out for my midling run. That is what I call the long mid week run. I set out to just keep a good pace and be comfortable. At the end of the run I had run each mile below 11:00 and finished with an average pace of 10:43. I have been finishing below the 11:00 pace for a bit of time but this is the first that I have had below 11:00 for seven miles in a row. To make it better, I did a .25 interval at the end of the run at a 7:45 pace. It felt good but strange. I had not run full out in sometime. So I have kicked the 11:00 barrier completely and now I can work on 10:00. Just so we are clear, I will still be over 11:00 for the marathon in May, there is a big difference between 26.2 and 7.5.

Another running related note, I found a track about 2.5 miles from home last night by running a different route than I usually do. I am happy that I can have a level spot to do some speed work. Huzzah. I think I am happier about this than is normal for most folks. Well, no one ever accused me of being normal.

In other news, my work has been getting in the way of my martial arts class, so I am quitting. Well not really, it is just annoying is all. But deadlines are deadlines and sometimes I have to work until 8 or 9 to get some things sorted out. I hope to make up a class this weekend. In an odd way I miss getting hit (now that is an odd admission).

Sad Philadelphia news, a man was waiting for a train and was beaten to death by four teens. The man was 36 and went into cardiac arrest while defending himself. One of the teens is in custody. I really do like the city but sometimes gives me pause. This happened in Center City where it is "safer" than most parts of the city. This troubles me. This city won't be a great city until we get the violence under control.

How's Your Bracket?

I survived this weekend to be in first place in my office pool. With both Drake and UConn dropping out I wasn't hurt. I was saddened when my beloved Temple Owls didn't make it out of the first round. Sometimes you go with your heart, I did. I currently hold a 50 point lead and the most points remaining.

Here is what I have left:

NC v. Wash St. ----- NC

Louisville v. Ten ---- Lou

Kansas v. Vand (they lost already) ----- KAN

Wisconsin v. Georgetown (they lost already) - WIS

Memphis v.Temple (they lost already) - MEM

Stanford v. Texas ----- Tex

UCLA v. Drake (they lost already) -- UCLA

Xavier v. WVA --- Xavier


----------------------
Next Round

Kan v. Wis ---- Kan wins
NC v. Lou ---- NC wins
Mem v. Tex ---- Tex wins
UCLA v. Xavier ---- UCLA wins

--------
Final Four
Kan v. NC ---- NC wins

Tex v. UCLA ---- UCLA wins


Final

NC v. UCLA --- UCLA wins

That's what I have.

Week in Review

This was sort of a throw away week in terms of performance. I was fast but I didn't get in all the miles. I had an extra week built into the schedule so no big deal here are the results.

3/18/08 ..... 35.11 time ..... 3.15 miles ..... 11:12 pace

3/21/08 ..... 36.57 time ..... 3.45 miles ..... 10:43 pace

3/22/08 ..... 2:21:57 time ..... 13.1 miles ..... 10:50 pace

Week: 19.70 miles

Not terrible. I remember a time when a half marathon seemed like too long a distance to consider, not it is becoming comfortable.

In other news, I took the family to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore yesterday. I had never been before. It was a good time, my daughter loved the dolphin show they have at the aquarium and we were able to score some very good seafood as well. It was a nice day. I will have to make a weekend of it sometime this summer.

Just Another Half Marathon...

I was supposed to run 17 miles today; however, with my current funk I knew I wouldn't be running that far. Yet, I did have some foresight in regard to my training planning. When I set up this marathon training schedule I scheduled one week less than I had before the event. I knew that as an attorney my schedule can be suspect at times. Well I took my free week this week. I still ran 13.1 miles today, but that is not 17. So I will do this week again next week with no real damage to my schedule.

How did it go today? Pretty well thanks for asking. Since I cleared the funk out of my head over my training I feel much better. Here is the bottom line.

13.1 miles, 2 hours 21 minutes, 10:50 pace.

Huzzah for the PR. I was pretty shocked to be truthful. When I looked at the final numbers I was in disbelief. My slowest mile was mile 1 (11:06). That is it, 11:06 the slowest. Miles 12 and 13 were 10:57 and 10:59. To put that up at the end is a good sign for me. I felt strong at the end, I had another 6 to 7 miles in me. Things are coming together, even if this week becomes a scale back week, that is fine.

Clearing Away the Funk

I have been off for the past few days. Not as in off work but rather just kind of out of my normal flow. I think a variety of forces were working together in this conspiracy. I pulled a hamstring in my martial arts class on Monday, this prevented me from running for a couple of days. So I was off my routine. Then at my class I have been getting information from different people that is not all together consistent, or correct. So I was building up some stress on to how to best deal with this situation. My work has been a bit more intense lately and that has also added to my flow being a bit stifled. At heart, I am a problem solver. I am not the sort of person you come to if you just want someone to listen.

So I looked at the issues and mostly they are stemming from my martial arts training. I feel a bit off, nothing wrong with that on occasion. There are ebbs and flows in all aspects of life. This is just a bit of an ebb. However, what to do about the contradiction in training? Can be problem really. I think I will respectfully thank the person for any input and weigh it against what I know. Of course, I will do things their way while I am training with them for that time period. The bottom line, I train for self defense purposes, not to look pretty. I can evaluate information pretty well in this realm. So I won't stress the inconsistencies, I will just take the information weigh it and then throw out what is not useful to the main goal, self defense. I may look stupid to those who keep telling me the same thing but I am beyond caring too much about those sorts of things. I also don't care much about belts. So the big problem is solved. I will break it down into a flow chart in my mind.

1. Does it work/ is it effective? Y/N if N dump if Y keep

As to work, the stress generated is a bit out of my control. Yet, we are in control of how much we allow things to have an impact on us. I hadn't run since Monday, that was part of the problem. I ran today and was able to melt off some stress and for the first time since Monday I felt fine. So the problem with work is the problem we all face, deadlines, work flow, and balancing life outside of work. I just need to stop and do some exercise when I feel things building up a bit. OK, problem solved.

Right now I feel 150% better than I did on Tuesday. Sometimes we get in a funk, we just have to realize we are there and why we are there. After that cleaning the thing up usually isn't too tough.

Just Great, (A Rant)

I was watching the Discovery Channel this weekend, you know because I am geek like that sometimes and there was no porn on. So they have an interesting program on the human body. It really was amazing and I was very intrigued. It appears that a man was able to lift 1200 pounds of rock in a crisis situation, A police officer was able to out run a flash fire and the best way to swim the English Channel is to pack on about 16 pounds of fat. All very interesting and worthy of the Mr. Spock eye raise from the old Star Trek.

Yet, I am disturbed. Disturbed how you ask? Well it seems that over the course of human history food has been scarce, much like in most of the developing world. Over that time period of thousands of years, humans have become hard wired in particular ways. The one that is troubling to me is that due to this scarcity of food through human history our ancestors gorged themselves when they did have a chance to eat and then when they didn't their bodies would just cannibalize the fat created by the gorging. Sweet. So not only do I have to fight against increasing portion sizes where the average coke was only 10 oz or 12 oz when I was a kid to now where 20 oz seems to be the minimum but now I have to deal with thousands of years of pre-programing. So because some Cro-Magnon couldn't figure out how to salt and dry his woolly mammoth he decided to eat as much as he could right then, much like a cheetah on a gazelle. So today because Fred Flintstone couldn't stop after the 12th serving I have something else to worry about at the dinner table. Great another obsession. Hmmm, am I eating this because I am hungry or is it just a hard wire response to a lack of food in 4000 b.c.e.

It was interesting to learn; however, it was not something that someone who is food obsessed needs to hear. Just great! That's my rant.

Week in Review

As I mentioned earlier in the week, work was a bit of a bear and I was not able to get any runs in until Friday. Which means that one run was axed from the schedule. But I did manage the following.

3/14/08 (am) .....3.25 miles .....10:54 pace .....651 calories

3/14/08 (pm) ..... 8.2 miles .....11:07 pace ..... 1504 calories

3/16/08 ..... 15.25 miles ..... 11:10 pace ..... 2828 calories

I did manage a decent recovery for the week. Two a days are not really the way to go but as I did a short one in the am I was not overly concerned. In other observations, 15 miles is a heck of a lot more taxing that 13.1. I suppose this might be self evident but not so much for me. After thirteen I was really right as rain, but after my 15 yesterday, my ankles and feet were quite sore. It is the longest run I can ever remember doing so that is probably part of it. I do feel fine today but I went to bed at 9 pm last night, very early for me. I was just exhausted at the end of the day. I am sure that I will have a similar report next week after I do 17 miles.

On the plus side, I did manage an 11:10 pace over 15.25 miles. For me that is smoking and I did shave 2 minutes off my half marathon time from last weekend, a little good weather goes a long way. This week should be closer to schedule.

Working like a mad man

I have not run at all this week. I did run a half marathon on Sunday but that has nothing to do with it. I had a project at work and I have put in about 40 hours in 3 days time. Needless to say last night I was tired ... really tired. Today everything is back to normal. I should get something in tonight, hopefully an 8 miler.

Hope everyone else has been able to keep their schedules.