Man this sucks...

... is what i was telling myself today. I decided to try and do a a 4 mile LT run outside this morning and it did not feel good at all. Did a three mile slow warmup to the track and started into it, trying to keep the HR below 180. Average pace was about 7:33 or so, complicated by the wind blowing quite hard during one of the straightaways. You can kinda see the phenomenon as the HR would rise during part of the track while running into the wind and then would drop back when running with it.

This past week was pretty non-eventful. I did about 8 miles on Friday, 4 miles on Saturday and 13 miles on Sunday. The Friday run was split between 2 miles outside and 6 or so at the gym. It was too slippery on the sidewals and there was no point in potentially injuring myself by slipping on ice. The 4 miles on Saturday was outside and the 13 miles on Sunday was at the gym.

I've going to go register for another gym membership tomorrow morning. The new company which I technically joined at the beginning of December gives us $600 a year for fitness related expenditures which means if i don't spend the $600 tomorrow, I will lose it for 2008. The place i'm going to join is one of the gyms run by the city and it doesn't have quite the amount of equipment that my current gym has, but it does have a swimming pool (which my current one did have, but not anymore) and also an indoor running track which i'm hoping will come in handy over the next couple of months. Not sure if i'm going to cancel my current membership yet though. I'll do it eventually, but I'll see how the indoor track training goes at the new place.

Happy New Year All!!

Mushy White Christmas

Did 8 miles at the gym today. I was supposed to run yesterday and tomorrow, but I don't think I can run on Christmas day so i pushed back these two runs to today and Friday. I'll probably skip the recovery run on Saturday which will allow me to get the long run in on Sunday. We good a good dumping of snow over the past few days and it looks to be a definite white Christmas this year. It rained all day today and so some of the snow has turned into a slushy mess. The wind is blowing like crazy now which should hopefully dry up the sidewalks.

I've been contemplating signing up for a 10 mile race on Friday since I'm supposed to do 10 miles that day anyways. If the sidewalks are fairly clear, i probably won't do the race as it's a bit of a drive from where I am.

Merry Christmas/ Happy Hanuka/ Happy Festivus to all!!

1 week down, 17 to go...

Completed first week on target of 32 miles. Did the body flow class on Friday afternoon. There were only 5 people who showed up. Despite the large dumping of snow on Friday, the snow clearing crew did a pretty good job of clearing the sidewalks by Saturday afternoon so I did a 4 mile recovery run outside. It snowed again last night and there were a couple inches on the ground this morning. Rather than trudge through the snow for 2 hours, I went to the gym and did 12 miles.

Started out at 6.5 mi/hr for 2 miles and then bumped it up to 6.6 for 2 miles and then to 6.7 for 4 miles and then did the last 4 or so at 6.8. I did the last 0.4 miles at 8.7 mi/hr. HR spiked during mile 6 but i ran through it since i had a bit of a breather after 6 miles since I had to reset the treadmill and go fill my water bottle. Towards the end my pace was 8:49 min/mile at a HR of about 156 which i think is about right for a long run pace and effort. Looking back at this entry, i'm quite a bit slower than i was back in February where I was able to maintain a faster pace at a HR of less than 150, but that was towards the end of a marathon training schedule and a couple of weeks before a race so maybe it's not a fair comparison.

This upcoming week is much like the last except I have to add 1 mile to each running day. Not sure if I'm going to be able to run outside at all this week so it looks like it's more treadmill running.

Blizzard...

Took a day off of work today. We're getting a pretty major snow storm right now. I had wanted to do some shopping today, but driving is a bit dicey. In terms of training, week so far has looked okay.

Did about 7 miles outside with 10 strides on Tuesday. Pace was probably a bit faster than 9 min/miles. It was about -7C.

Yesterday I went to the gym to do 9 miles with 4 at LT pace. HR spiked about half way through the first LT mile so i slowed to a walk until it got back under control. In total, I guess I averaged about 3.6 miles at a pace of 7:13 pace (8.3 mi/hr) for the LT portion. I finished up with three miles at 7mi/hr. I was hoping that the HR would drop to less than 160 over the finial three miles but it didn't. I usually treat this as a test of fitness and my long run pace since it gives me an idea of how well i'm able to recover from a fairly tough workout. Ideally the HR would drop to less than 160 and whatever that pace is, I would assume is the fast end of my long run pace. Since I wasn't able to get the HR to less than 160, my long run pace isn't quite 7 mi/hr like i thought it should be.

I had tried to do the Body Flow thing on Wednesday. Left work on time and got to the gym, but i forgot to bring my shorts. I have only two knee length pairs of shorts which i wear for classes, one is grey and the other is navy blue. In the morning, I just grabbed a navy blue piece of clothing from my technical running gear pile thinking it was the shorts, but it wasn't. It happened to be the long sleeve t-shirt that I got from the Niagara half. They are both made by new balance and are the same colour. Needless to say, short of doing the class in my dress pants (or underwear), i ended up having to skip the class. There's another class today in the early afternoon which I'm probably going to do since i can't do much else today.

Running outside

So this past week looked like this:

Tuesday: 8 miles with 3miles @ 7:13 pace on the treadmill

Friday: 8 miles very slow on treadmill. Ran into some HR spiking problems even while trying to run slow. Had to stop to walk several times. I've noticed a definite pattern where I encounter this HR problem when I haven't slept well. I did not sleep well because the office "Festive" party was Thursday night.

Sunday: 10.2 miles outside at average pace of 9:36. This was only the 2nd time I've run outside since I did the half marathon back at the start of November. It was a relatively balmy 4C. it was slippery in places where the snow had melted and refroze and started melting again. I ran this by heart rate and my pace is way down. While I've been able to get to a pace of 8:35 on the treadmill at a HR of 160, when running outside the pace is a full minute slower. I've noticed this type of discrepancy before, but never by this much. Maybe my body just needs to get used to running outside again.

I also went to a Bodyflow class on Wednesday. It's supposed to be a combination of Pilates, Tai Chi and Yoga. I've been wanting to work on my flexibility and thought that this might help. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. My muscles would tremble during some the poses and i worked up quite a bit of sweat at times. I think I'm going to try and attend the Wednesday class for the next two weeks since the training plan has a rest day on Wednesday.

Speaking of the training plan, the 18 week plan starts this week which looks as follows:

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 7 miles General Aerobic with 10 strides
Wednesday: rest (Bodyflow class)
Thursday: 9 miles GA
Friday: rest
Saturday: 4 miles recovery
Sunday: 12 miles

I'm going to try and do all the runs outside, with the expcetion of Thursday's run which I'm looking at doing at the gym since I want to try to include a 4 mile LT run.

Have a good week all!

I have a blog??

So it's been over two weeks since my last post. I think that's the longest I've gone without posting. I don't have much to report training wise. I have been going to the gym the past few weeks and gradually trying to increase my pace and distance. I've gotten to 7 miles/hr (8:35min/mile) on the treadmill for a long run pace of about 13 miles and i'm at about 8.3mi/hr (7:13min/mile) for a short LT run of 3 miles. I also tried a short run outside last Saturday of 3 miles and my pace was way down. I did 31 miles last week and will probably be around there this week. I still have the foot problem which I'm hoping will get better with me switching to a new pair of shoes.

I thought about getting some orthotics last weekend to try and remedy the foot thing, but I couldn't find a place that was open. My company finally "merged" with another on December 1 and i wanted to try and max out my previous benefits before the takeover. I guess it's my own fault for waiting until the last minute. I"m not certain if the new benefits package covers orthotics. The benefits manual says they cover one pair of custom made shoes. the previous benefits package treats shoes and orthotics differently so it's a bit unclear if the new one will cover orthotics. Here's a picture of me that was posted on the new company's website. Pretty spiffy. This was taken 4 days after I had all 4 of my wisdom teeth pulled back in August so that's why the little bit of a smirk. You should have seen the attempts at me trying to smile.

18 weeks to Boston starts next week. I was thinking of trying the 18/55 Pfitz plan again but i REALLY don't want to train during the winter after having done it for the past two. However, i guess that in order for me not to suffer during the marathon, I will have to be in some form of marathon shape. Competing interests, I suppose. I will probably start on the plan, but will skip runs if I feel like it. I will try and stick to the long run schedule though. I'm hoping that's enough to get me through it.