5505...

Bib numbers for the Boston marathon came out today. No, I'm not one of those obsessive compulsive people who check the Boston website every day to see if the numbers have been published. Thankfully there are a bunch of people on the Runner's World forum that are that way, though I will admit to checking the RW forums to see if anyone else has posted that the numbers are up. I suppose that's just as bad. Anyhow, the whole reason this was of interest was there was a contest to see who could come closest to predicting their bib number. These numbers are handed out sequentially based on qualifying time. Based on previous years entries, I knew that I would be in the 5000's and the number 8 is a lucky number in chinese and so i chose two of those and then to make the number look symetrical, I decided on 5588 which wasn't too far off my actual number of 5505. Still there are a lot of others who were closer.

So this morning I did 6 miles recovery at about 9:35 pace. Did these in the new Asics (BTW I did my 20 mile long run in my old shoes). My longest mid week run of 14 miles is tomorrow and I'll probably do that in my old shoes and then switch over to the Asics for good this weekend. Those shoes should carry me through to Boston and to the taper for the Ottawa marathon where I will then switch to a new pair of my old shoes.

Great day for a run

Had 20 miles on the schedule for today. Normally for 20 miles, there's a 10.2 mile route that I would normally do twice around where I live. I've done this route for the last couple of long runs and it also makes up part of the mid-week general aerobic runs that I've been doing lately. Needless to say, that route is getting very boring. It was such a nice day that I headed downtown to run by the lake. Wore knee-length shorts and a short sleeve shirt underneath a long sleeve MEC thermal shirt which turned out to be just about perfect for the weather. Wish I had brought my camera as there were a couple of pictures that I would have like to have taken.

One logistics problem I had was that the water fountains haven't been turned on yet and there really isn't a good place to buy anything to drink around the 10 mile mark so I tried stashing a drink bottle along the route. I had to drive a bit out of my way to hide the bottle which I did behind a recycling bin. I ended up using a poweraid bottle which has a tamper proof wrapping at the cap since I was afraid that someone might pick it up, open it up and spit/pee in it and then put it back. Yes, I'm paranoid. Anyhow that worked out well. Not sure if this would work in the summer time as i'm sure there would be more traffic around and more likely that someone would see the bottle.

Route can be seen here. I've been using Running Ahead's website this past week and have found that it's much more usable and offers more features than Garmin Connect. I averaged 8:40 pace for 20.3 or so miles. Had some HR monitor problems at the start, but eventually it started working. Tried to keep the HR at just below 160 or so. So a rough estimate is that at a HR of 160 I seem to be able to hold a pace of about 8:30. Looking back at my info from last year, i could maintain 8:30 pace at a HR of 150 and this was in the middle of the summer. I wonder how long it will take me to get back to that point?

Soreness

Did 11 miles on Friday with about 6 miles at an LT pace of 7:18 pace. I ran into the HR spiking problem which has plagued me in the past and it was hard to get a judge of effort level. Maybe I could have gone faster, don't really know. Did these again around the track which is good for helping me maintain a constant pace, but I'd like to get back to do my shopping mall LT route since that's got some small hills in it to keep me honest. Won't be able to do that until the huge piles of snow have melted. Next LT is scheduled for end of March so hopefully mother nature will warm things up soon.

Did 6 miles recovery today at about 9:45 pace. I tried the new Asics shoes again today. This is the third time I've run in them. The soles of my feet don't hurt as much as they did the first time I used them, but I'm noticing that a bunch of other muscles in my legs are starting to get sore. I'm uncertain if it's the new shoes or if it's that my older shoes have worn out or if it's because i'm approaching 55 miles/week threshold again which has given me issues in the past or whether its a combination of all of them. Either way 20 miles is on the scheudle for tomorrow. What shoes to wear? Maybe I'll flip a coin...

Airport Run

So on Tuesday I did 6 miles at a slow pace which include 6 strides and this morning I did 12 miles. With the recent switchover to daylight savings time, running in the morning is a bit of a drag. Last week, it would be bright enough in the morning that I could see where I was going , but not this week. It was raining a bit this morning which didn't help things. I plodded along today at a fairly conservative pace of 9:20 and a low HR. It was just too dark and dreary and my legs are sore in a couple of places. I think I will have to do most of my GA and long runs slower than I have cause i think my body is rebelling a bit to the ongoing increases in mileage.

I signed up for the Pearson 5k race on June 13. The run takes place on one of the runways at Pearson International Airport. They had the first one last year and I wanted to sign up for it, but it sold out pretty quick. I had thought that it was only going to be a one time event, so I'm glad they brought it back.

11 weeks to go

18 miles done today at about 8:50 pace. I'm a bit fearful of these every increasing long run's cause it's been a while since I've run this long. I'm always afraid of bonking. Last couple of miles were a bit tough. My HR monitor gave me some problems towards the end. Also I had some strange pains in my shin areas. Kinda like the pains that have bugged me in the past, so I have to keep my eye on them. This was a 50.9 mile week. Next week is supposed to be a 54 mile week which includes the first of three 20 milers.

I noticed this past week in a thread on Runner's World that Pfitz released a new edition of his book Advanced Marathoning. I'm following one of his plans now and some of you out there in blogland are or have in the past also. I'm not sure it's worth buying again. Someone posted the differences in the 18/55 training plan which is the one I'm following and it seems that they've added an additional marathon pace run and made a few minor tweaks here and there. There's supposed to be additional information in the book, but I'm not sure how useful it might be.

New Shoes

Did 7 miles @ recovery pace which included 8 strides. It was supposed to be a General Aerobic run, but I tried out a new pair of shoes today, Asics 2130. These have been in my closet since I bought them at the Napa marathon expo a little over a year ago. Anyhow, my feet didn't adjust to them that well and the soles of my feet were aching quite a bit during the run, so i couldn't really run much faster than a slow recovery pace. Probably averaged about 9:40min/miles or so. Strides felt a bit weird cause the shoes felt like they were going to come flying off. I have to look a bit closer at the lacing. I'll do my recovery runs in these things for the next few weeks which should hopefully give me enough time to adapt.

Free Shoes

Did 4 miles recovery yesterday and 11.3 miles today at about 8:40 pace overall, though the last 8 miles or so were done at faster than 8:30 pace. -6C this morning. HR seems lower than it normally has been. I had wanted to do this at about 8:45 pace which is the expected marathon pace for a 3:50 marathon which is what I'm aiming for in Ottawa, but the pace kept speeding up. Based on the HR and paces, I seem to be fitness-wise where I was at this point in the training schedule leading up to a 3:17 marathon in 2006.

I received an email offering a free pair New Balance shoes in exchange for a link to a NB online store and a review. It seems legitimate since I've seen a few posts from people giving reviews about the NB shoes they've receive, however i don't think they realize that I'm up here in Canada since their store says they don't ship to Canada. Oh well. NB shoes were my first real pair of running shoes and it would have been nice to try them again.

It's really cold

Not quite -19C this morning, but still pretty cold at -16C. 10 miles with 5 @ LT pace on the schedule. Alarm went off at 5:45, but laid in bed for half an hour trying to convince myself it would be better to do it later. Finally rolled out of bed, put my winter stuff on and headed out. A t-shirt, a long sleeve shirt, a second thermal long sleeve shirt and a fleece shell. two pairs of gloves and a winter toque, thermal underwear and running pants.

Did three mile warmup to the track where i started into it. We haven't gotten a lot of snow lately and the sun has been out a lot. I had assumed that the track would be clear since most of the snow everywhere else is gone, but one end of the track still had some snow and ice on it. Had to do some careful navigating at that end. Was supposed to do 20 laps, but ended up with 21. I seem to always lose count and either do one too many, or not enough. This ended up being 5.2 miles at an average pace of 7:15min/mile. Then did one additional lap at recovery and then did the one mile jog home. My water bottle ended up freezing half way through the tempo run. Even with my fancy bottle with the kicker valve and me constantly shaking it, the water froze solid in the top part of the bottle after 45 minutes. Next time, i think i'll have to use gatorade since it should have a lower freezing point.

So it seems I 'm starting to get faster. This was slightly faster and slightly longer than the LT run I did 2 weeks ago, but this is still a long ways off from when i could average this pace over an entire marathon.

It's cold

Did 12.1 miles outside yesterday for my recovery week long run. Nice and sunny but quite cold at -10C and windy. Bundled up pretty good and felt good after a few warm up miles. Overall pace was at 8:58. First three miles were @9:26 pace and the last 9.1 miles @ 8:50 pace. When I got home I noticed my reflection in a window showing me that I had icicles hanging down from the sides of my toque. I was so surprised by them and how foolish i looked that I knocked them off right away. I wish I had gotten a picture first to remind me whenever I want to wuss out of a run.

It looks like I may get a chance to get that picture tomorrow though cause the temperature predicted for 6am tomorrow is -19C without the wind chill which is when i would normally head out for a morning run. At least there's no snow, like some parts of the NE US are getting. Just have to convince myself that getting out won't be so bad...

Watching paint dry...

...watching grass grow or running laps on an indoor track. These are all about equivalent in terms of excitment. Did 4 miles recovery this morning around the track and was quite boring. We've had a recent spell of really cold temperatures. It was -12C around when i left so thought i'd head to try out the track.

The track is suspended above a hockey rink so it's not actually quite long being 161m long for one lap which means you have to run 10 of them to get to one mile. There isn't much in the way of scenery up there and if it wasn't for the fact there was some activity on the ice below, it would have driven me crazy. 4 miles required 40 laps. I'm pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to keep track of 40 laps and I didn't feel like pushing the lap button on my watch 40 times. I wanted to bring my Polar foot pod measuring thing, but i've been running my recovery runs in my nike frees and the foot pod doesn't feel comfortable when laced into the frees. I ended up bringing my garmin hoping that it would be able to get a satellite signal, but the measuring wasn't too great. You can see the map here. It thinks I did a little under 2.5 miles which is wrong. In the end, I was able to figure out that it took me a little over a minute to do a lap which means that 1 mile would been done in a little over 10 minutes so i ended up just running for 41 minutes or so.

There was a practice going on below for little kids. It was funny to watch cause when one kid would fall there would be a chain reaction with other kids tripping over the one that fell and you would end up with a big pile of kids on the ice. Anyhow, i think this is probably one thing I'm not going to do again anytime soon. It's just too boring. As much as i detest treadmill running, this was worse. If I had brought my mp3 player, it might have been a bit better but i'm not sure that even an mp3 player could save a long run on this track.

Insert Interesting Title Here...

Did about 4.5 miles recovery pace yesterday at about 9:25 pace. Was supposed to do 5, but was ran into some stomach problems part way into the run and decided to head for home.

Today did 8 miles overall at about 8:40 pace. Did this run after work. I've been pretty good as of late getting up in the morning to run, but i couldn't roll out of bed this morning. I always check the weather for the following morning the night before and I knew that there was supposed to be a dusting of snow on the sidewalks which have been pretty clear these past few days. I think my subconscious realized the snow was going to melt during the day and it would be better to run in the evening. It's that or I'm just lazy.

So i mentioned a while ago that i signed up for another gym membership that provides access to an indoor track. Well in keeping with my general ability to pay for gym memberships and not use them, I haven't been there since I signed up for it at the end of December. I'm going to try and head there on Saturday morning for a recovery run.

Start of Recovery Week

Decided to keep with the recovery week. I have plenty of other chances to deviate from the plan so why start now. Plan for today was 8 miles with 8 strides. In total did 8.5 miles @ 8:22 pace. This was a lot faster than I've been doing my runs lately. I guess the training is starting to kick in now. It's been a while since I've done any strides. They felt very uncoordinated.

So it's a little under 2 months till boston. I've been lately following the Boston forum on Runner's World. A couple of people designed these shirts for distribution at a FE (forum event) at Boston. I sent my cheque in for one last week.

Front

Back

The logo is a similar replica of the famous CIT GO logo on the Boston course. If you don't know what HTFU means, well you can probably figure it out from the title of the following video.

YouTube Link

Hamster Wheel...

I had a 17 mile long run planned for today. We got a couple of inches of snow last night. I checked outside this morning and it seemed to be okay to run through, but the wind was blowing quite hard. I thought about driving downtown to do it since the main trail downtown gets priority snow clearance, but I just didn't feel like battling the wind which would be worse by the lake, so I headed off to the gym.

I've been casually listening to running podcasts these past few weeks. I've been sampling a bunch of them trying to get a feel for what i might like to listen to on a regular basis. There are just too many of them that are too long to be able to listen to them all. I downloaded about a gig's worth of stuff onto my mp3 player hoping to hear something interesting. Unfortunately i ended up only listening to one podcast since i forgot to reset the maximum volume setting on my mp3 player. It's set at 60% which means that it will only play up to a maximum volume of 60% which keeps it from blowing out my eardrums and is normally okay for listening to music, but isn't loud enough to hear someone talk. After about an hour, i ended up stopping it and plugging it into the treadmill earphone jacks to listen to what was being shown on the TV. There was a little segment on Trish Stratus the former WWE star. She's apparently turned to Yoga and has even started up here own studio up here. She's flexible....

As for the run itself, i did 10.5 miles at 6.5mi/hr (9:13 pace), 2.5 miles at 6.6mi/hr (9:05 pace) and then did the final 4 miles at 6.8mi/hr (8:50 pace). HR creeped up above 160 for the last couple of miles. Comparing this run to a 17 mile run I did on the treadmill last year, it is evident that I've slowed down quite a bit. Last year I could maintain 8min/mile at a HR of less than 160. Of course that was after a marathon training cycle so the comparison might not be fair.

So total for the week was 47 miles. This upcoming week is supposed to be a stepback week to 37 miles. I've been thinking of maybe just repeating this past week instead, but I might need the rest and recovery. Will see how I'm feeling the next couple of days first.

Enjoy your week all!

Winter's back

Did a little over 5 miles yesterday at 10 min/mile pace. It was really tough. I didn't really drink a lot the day before and I don't think i was recovered from the LT run the previous day.

Did 10.2 miles miles this morning at about 9:20 pace. Weather was just below freezing. I contemplated going back to sleep when I woke up but realized the weather was going to worse in the evening and I don't want to run at the gym so I trudged out the door. There was about 2cm of snow on the ground and running through it was a bit of a chore. Guess I've been spoiled the past few weeks being able to run on bare pavement/sidewalks. Basically tried to keep the HR below 160.

I've noticed that my HR monitor has been giving me problems over the past few months. Sometimes the reading will be zero. It doesn't show in the graph but basically anytime there is a constant horizontal reading such as during the 1 mile mark, the watch is actually not picking up a signal from the HR monitor and gives me a reading of zero. I discovered by accident about a month ago, an undocumented feature where if I hold my watch right up to the HR monitor while it is doing this that the watch will reset and reaquire the signal which causes it to work again. Previously, i would stop the watch and restart it which was a bit of a pain cause then I had to merge the two data files. I've had the HR monitor for about 4.5 years so i guess it was bound to start having problems eventually.

Poodle Puppy...

Headed out this morning to do 9 miles with 4 @ LT pace. Pretty good weather. It was -10C but there was no wind which is how i like it. Most of the snow has melted and the track at the local high school is clear. Decided to head out and do the LT run there. Did a very slow 3 mile jog to the track and then did 17 laps (4.2 miles)at LT pace.

Ran the LT part by HR trying to keep it at just under 180. I ended up averaging 7:23 pace for the LT portion. This however included one lap where I had to stop because a guy walking his poodle let him off the leash and he started running beside me. I slowed down a bit hoping that the dog would get bored and go back to his owner who was yelling for him, but he just stayed with me. He then starting bumping into my legs. I don't think he was trying to bite me or anything, but i ended up having to stop cause he was so small and I was afraid that I might accidentally kick the poor little guy.

Finished off with another 2.3 miles at about 9min pace. Total for the day was about 9.5 miles @ about 8:40 pace.

New Look...

If anyone watched the Simpsons last night there was a new intro to the show that added most of the new characters into it and made it seem more modern, yet at the same time still faithful to the original. So in honour of that, I've updated my blog to a new look. The old one is the one I was using since the blog was started way back when so it was time for a change. Still haven't worked out all the kinks, but it's usable now.

In case you missed it...

Youtube Link

Family Day!

Saturday: 3 mile recovery run

Sunday: 15.6 miles at about 9:09 pace. This was about 3 miles more than i did last week and was the longest run I've done since the beginning of August of last year. The week was about a 10 mile increase in mileage (to 40 miles/week) so i planned to run this by keeping the HR below 160. First 3 miles was done at 9:27 pace, next 7.2 miles @ 8:56 pace and the last 5.4 miles @9:07 pace which was a bit of a fade at the end. The big bump in mileage was to try and get back into a training schedule. I've moved into week 4 of the 18 week plan of Pfitz to coincide with the Ottawa marathon. Week 4 is a 42 mile week and a 15 mile long run so that fit in well. I had considered trying to jump back into Pfitz' 12 week plan for Boston which would have required a 43 mile week with a 16 mile long run, but it requires a 5 mile LT run tomorrow and i'm not sure i'm going to be able to handle that. Even the plan I'm on requires a 4 mile LT run tomorrow which is going to be tough. Plus, the 12 week plan packs a lot of running into a relatively short period of time and i don't want to risk hurting myself. I'm obviously going to have juggle running Boston into the schedule but since I'll be doing it as a slow long run, it shouldn't be too difficult.

So it's a holiday up here in parts of Canada (ie, Family Day) and i have some time to catch up on some things. While surfing around this morning i noticed a new 10 mile race on April 5 that runs around the golf cart path on a local golf course. It's two weeks before Boston and the week after Around the Bay. I like doing interesting races so I signed up for it. They host a half and 10k road race in the fall, both of which I've done and it's a pretty well run event. It's a pricey at $90, but they are giving out a "first-class race jacket" which should partly offset the cost. I just hope that it's not plastered with sponsors logos. The training plan currently has a 20 mile long run planned for that day so a may end up swaping that with the previous week which only has a 14 mile long run as part of a recovery week.

Splish Splash...

I did a little over 9 miles in the evening on Tuesday at about 8:49 pace and then did 3 mile recovery the following morning. This morning I did a little over 9 miles at just over 9 min/miles. The weather was miserable this morning. The temperature has warmed up to about 5C and all the craploads of snow we had gotten over the past couple of weeks is now melting and to top it all off, it basically did not stop raining last night or today. Thankfully, it was above freezing cause I'd gate to see how much snow we would have gotten otherwise.

Looking back at it now, I'm not sure how I got myself out the door this morning. It was rainy and windy and the sidewalks had big puddles in them. Have you ever noticed that when you run through puddles that you alter your stride to avoid splashing water on yourself? If you stride normally while running through a puddle, your foot lands, kicking up water, which just happens to conincide with the forward movement of the other foot which basically causes it to get soaked. I noticed that I tend to either try and get my other foot ahead of the splash or lag behind it so it doesn't get wet. I think someone should do a PhD thesis on this cause i think it would help a lot of runners.

As bad as it was this morning, I'm kinda glad now that I went cuase the temperature has dropped to freezing which means the sidewalks are probably now skating rinks.

Accomodations

Rest day today, my quads are a bit sore. I tried the foam roller thing today for the first time in a while and it hurt bad.

So I'm signed up to do the Around the Bay 30k race at the end of March. The race takes place in Hamilton and is supposed to be older than Boston. Unfortunately Hamilton is not known for its tourism and doesn't seem to have much in the way of hotel space as I've been having a hard time trying to find a room close to the start. I'm tentatively booked at a place about 6 miles away. Looks like I will be driving to the start line on race morning.

This got me looking at Ottawa hotels as well for their marathon, but it's a bit hard to judge right now how many nights I will stay in Ottawa and whether I will drive there or fly there or sit on a train. I've got family in Ottawa so I might try and see if they'll put me up for a night, but if I'm staying longer, I'll probably want a hotel room.

Here was an interesting video I saw on digg today.

Youtube Link
There's a bit of running in it, kinda.

Slow is me...

Headed downtown to do my long run today which ended up being about 12.5 miles. Quite a few people out running. Averaged about 9:15 pace but that included a couple of portions when I walked a bit cause my HR was spiking. This tends to happen right when I start back up after I've stopped for a traffic light or today where I had to get rid of a pebble in my shoe. I would normally just completely stop and wait for the HR to get back under control, but i was a bit pressed for time and ended up walking through it and it seemed to get the HR back under control more quickly. I think next time, rather than stop at the traffic light, i will jogg in place to keep the HR up since coming to a complete stop seems to be what causes it. This run felt hard. This is the longest distance I've run in over a month and my HR is higher than it normally would be. I know this will come down with continued training, but these things are always humbling.

I brought my cell phone down with me today. It was a bit awkward to run with it since it's a bit on the heavy side and I only had a chest pocket and one in the back of my pants. While it was in my chest pocket, I think it was interfering with my HR signal which it why there's a weird reading in the above graph at the start. I then moved it to my butt pocket but I'm sure it looked weird from behind. Took a few pics. Sorry for the crappy resolution.

Snow Covered Boardwalk



Winter Swans

Ottawa Marathon...

Did 9 miles outside yesterday at about 9:45 pace. I'm still having problems getting up in the morning to get out so i did it late in the evening. I'm going to try for about a 12 to 13 mile run tomorrow and am considering driving downtown for it tomorrow. Running the same route up here in the burbs is getting boring, plus we're supposed to get some rain today and with temperatures being above freezing and the massive amounts of melting snow that is around, there's going to be a crap load of flooded and puddled sidewalks.

I've volunteered to be the 3:50 pace bunny at the Ottawa marathon which is on May 24. I've had fun pacing half's before. This will be the first time I try to pace a full. I think the pace shouldn't be a problem, but a part of me is concerned about the unknown of being on my feet for almost 4 hours which is something I have not done in a couple of years. I will get a better judge of it after Boston where I hope to run slower than 4:10 so if that goes well, then Ottawa should be a breeze. I also put my name into the hat to pace the Mississauga half, but a decision won't be made on that till the end of February.

Laces...

Went to the gym this evening and did 9 miles on the treadmill. I had wanted to do it outside this morning, but I just can't get up in the morning to do it. I even went to bed last night at 9pm fully expecting to be up bright and early to get the run in. Alas, I still haven't been able to convince myself in the morning that running outside is better than sleeping in a nice warm bed.

Most of the run was done at 6.5 mi/hr since I'm still trying to ease back into it. I did do one mile @ 8.3mi/hr just to see if I could handle it.

One side effect of the internet access issues at work is that I can't read blogs during my lunch hour, so I have to read actual paper things like newspapers and magazines. So today I read the January edition of Runners World which I've had for a couple of months now. BTW, I cancelled my subscription about a month ago when I realized I only skim through it looking at the pictures. I still have to read the February edition which I'll do tomorrow. As a tip, you can access back issues for free on Google Books. You can also read Running Times there too. One of the articles I read was on shoelace tying. Apparently, I tie my shoe laces wrong. I tie "granny knots" which supposedly make it easier for my shoe laces to come undone. My shoelaces tend to come undone quite frequently and this is probably the reason. I tried doing it the right way and it felt strange. Guess I got to get used to it. You can read more about it here.

Back in the game

I haven't been able to do much training these past two weeks. Friday I did 6 miles at the gym after work at a slow pace which is the first run I did in about 2 weeks. I came back an hour ago from a 10.2 mile long run outside at about 9:45 pace. Yes, I missed the Super Bowl. I did tape it, so I'll probably try and get around to watching it sometime this week. I already know who won but for me it's the execution that counts and not the final outcome. Watching TV is going to get a lot more difficult this week cause all the shows I'm interested in are starting to come back now. There's Lost, Heroes, Chuck, Fringe, 24 and Life on Mars to name a few.

So with my work thing done, I should have more free time to post and read, unless my TV watching gets in the way. While surfing around today and visting a bunch of running forums that i've read in the past, I noticed a thread indicating that they shut down Boston registrations last week for this year. Wow that's really early. Last year, it didn't close until the end of February and this year it filled up a whole month earlier and last year they had the Olympic trials. I guess the Last Chance for Boston Marathon which is in two weeks is going to have to change their name now or otherwise move the marathon to sometime in January.

Anyone there??

Geez, it been a while. Here's an update. 37 miles for the first week of January and 38 miles the following week. I did 24 miles last week and I have done a big fat zippo this week. Training was going pretty good until this week. Some work things have come up and the crappy weather has been making running outside difficult. Though I was on an 18 week plan, I think i've missed too many runs. A 12 week marathon training plan would start this upcoming week but i don't think i will be able to run at all this week, so it'll be an 11 week plan at best.

I did sign up for the Around the Bay road race which is on March 29th. Looks like I'll be doing it at long run pace, though I may try to do it at my Boston pace which would get me under 2:15 which would allow me to receive a special medal.

My lack of posts lately and generaly non-existance in blogland has to do with my new company's web access policies. Previously, I could slip in the odd blog read at work since I only had to worry about people looking over my shoulder, but now the system allows the IT people to actually see what you're doing on your screen at any point in the day from whereever they happen to be which means no inappropriate use of companies internet resources. All this means is when I get home which has been pretty late lately, I have hundreads of posts to read through and if I skip a day, i end up with even more. I have to go through my subscriptions and cull some of them since I"m subscribed to about 300 different blogs. Not all of them are running blogs. At best, I end of skimming through them and looking at the pictures. Even if there is something interesting that i could comment on, it's usually a post that's several days old and I never feel right posting to an "old" blog post.

Things should hopefully get better after this upcoming week.

2008 Year in Review

I'll try and keep this short. 1665 or so miles for 2008 which is down from the 1825 or so I ran in 2007. The year was front-end loaded mostly because I BQ'd in May which caused me to slack off for the rest of the year. Did a bunch of races. Off the top of my head, 2 marathons, 2 halfs (as pace bunnies), two 10k's, a 9k, an 8k and about four 5k's. I think that's all of them.

2008 I guess will always be remembered as the year of the Boston qualifier and will probably be the fastest I will ever be. The amount of training required to get me there was a bit too much and since my BQ time drops by 5 minutes next year, I probably won't ever feel the need to go faster.

I don't really have any plans for this year. Other than Boston and mulling about a marathon in Hawaii, I have no real goals or races in mind. I still would like to break 20 minutes for a 5k and 42 minutes for a 10k and set a PR for the half in 2009, but will still be content if I just stay healthy.

May you all meet your running and personal goals for 2009! Thanks for reading.

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.

Another 6 miles

We got our first dumping of snow for this winter. Still don't want to run outside yet so went back to the gym today to do another 6 miles. Forgot to bring a running t-shirt, so i had to use the t-shirt I was wearing. I can't remember the last time I ran in a non-technical fabric shirt. Wore the HR monitor today. I still haven't changed the battery in it and it kinda died towards the end. Started out at 6.0mi/hr and then increased it by 0.1 miles after each mile. Then did a brief 2 minutes or so at 8.8 mi/hr, but by then the HR monitor had stopped working so there's no useful info from that.

While there, a yoga class was going on. I've never attended any classes there before but think I may try it at some point this winter. They have a class that combines yoga, pilates and tai chi which i think might be good for increasing flexibility and core strength. They have an orientation session on tuesday evening's so i'll probably go to that first to see how difficult it is first.

Back to the Gym

So it's gotten cool. Not quite winter like stuff, but just above freezing. I've been dreading going outside for a run. Went through my closet on the weekend trying to find all my winter running stuff. I know that one of these days I'll have to go outside to run in the cold, but that day was not today. I went to the gym. I haven't been to the gym in over 7 months (April 1 to be exact) and I've paid 7 months in membership fees and gained nothing in return. They must love me there. Well next year I'm going to quit the gym after Boston. There I put it in writing so it's going to happen!

So the injury seems to be getting better but I wanted to take it easy. Did in total about 6 miles. First 2 miles were at 6.2 miles/hr and then did 1 mile@6.3, 1 mile@ 6.4, 1 mile@7.0 and then the last mile@8.5miles/hr. Almost slipped while on the treadmill. While watching tv, i started to drift off to the side and the next thing I know I'm grabbing the side rail cause my shoe was half on the treadmill and half off. Oh well. With 7 months of treadmill rust, I suppose it was bound to happen.

Still ouch...

Didn't get around to doing the 6 miles I had planned last Thursday. I tried to do 6 miles on Friday but could sense that the foot was still not right so i cut it short to 3 miles. Didn't run on the weekend. The tenderness on the inside of my leg is gone so i couldn't understand why the foot was still giving me problems. I started feeling around a bit more and noticed another tenderness on the outside of my leg which was really painful if i massaged it.

According to a reference book i have, it was the Peroneus Brevis muscle. Punched that into google and up pops this page on inflammation of the muscle and the picture to the right. The website says that symptoms are pain at the attachment point at the bottom of my foot (where the box is) which happens to be exactly where i have my pain so i'm pretty sure that inflamaton of this muscle is what i have. I'm going to try some ultrasound on it to see if that helps.

Oh here's an interesting invention. A treadmill .... on wheels. Somehow, this doesn't seem like such a great idea.

Youtube link

Ouch

I've only run once since my last post which was 5 miles on Saturday. I was supposed to do 6 miles, but the bottom of my right foot was giving me pain. It was on the outside part of my lower footand I could not continue running after 5 miles so i walked the last mile home. Never had that feeling before. I got home and started feeling around my leg and noticed that my calf was really sensitive. in fact, it feels like it was in the same spot that I had back in the winter/spring of 2007 that sidetracked me for a while. That pain was in my left leg while this was in my right leg. It might be a trigger point and so I've been giving myself painful massages the past couple of days and it seems to be getting better. I'm going to try a short run tomorrow to test it out.

Contemplating races...

So let's see.  Last week I didn't run at all and this week I did about 9 miles on Tuesday and 6 miles yesterday.  I'll going to try and put in maintenance mileage over the next month or so.  Boston training would start in December, but i have no desire to try and run a PR at Boston.  In fact, I'm going to aim for a personal worse time, just to force myself to enjoy the experience.  In the process of doing that,  I don't want to feel too miserable so i have to be in some kinda marathon shape.  Competing interests?  Yeah, probably.  

I'm giving serious thought of racing the Around the Bay road race which is 3 weeks before Boston.  it would force me to train and sludge through another winter of training and peak for a fairly long distance and then i could comfortably run Boston a few weeks later.  I'm also trying to figure out what other races I might want to do next year.  I noticed in Runner's World an ad for the Kauai marathon  in Hawaii next year.  It's a first time event and happens to be on my birthday.  that would be fun to do.  I think I'll probably enter the lottery for NY and try my luck at that.  I'd like to try and complete the 5 marathon majors at some point in my running career so it's better to start now then later.  

Niagara Half Pace Rabbit Report

So the night before the race didn't go too well. Went to bed at around 11:00pm and set the alarm clock for 6:30. Unfortunately at 3:30am in the morning, the people in the room next to mine decided that they were going to start playing loud music. Actually, it kinda was good, cause i ended up waking up and surfing the net a bit when i noticed the clock on my computer read 4:30. I then realized that the clock radio in my hotel room was actually an hour slow, and I would have woken up an hour later if they hadn't been playing that music. World works in funny ways.

Headed down to the buses which transported us to the start-line and arrived at the start line at around 8:30. Start time was at 10:00am. I kept to myself for the next hour or so. I wasn't wearing my bunny ears and my shirt was covered up so other than the 2 hour sign, i didn't really stick out as a bunny. With about half an hour to go, i figured I should probably make myself a bit more visible in case people had questions. I met up with the 2:15 pace bunny, put on my hat and uncovered the shirt and we jsut kind of hung around answering questions of people that would ask. With about 15 minutes to go I headed off the drop off my bag and do a quick warm-up. Positioned myself in the start corrals with about 5 minutes to go then we were off.

I was carrying the 2 hour sign and had decided I would try and carry it with me for the whole race. This was a bit awkward as I had a bottle of gatorade with me also. First technical problem was encountered about 1 minute into the race. My HR monitor began to slip down off my chest. I tried to yank it back up, but with the damn sign and the bottle of gatorade, it was a bit too difficult. Someone asked me if I wanted them to hold the sign for me, but i being too proud said no. I ended up just yanking the HR monitor strap off and shoving it into my pocket.

Running portion was supposed to be at 8:45 pace, but i ended up hitting the first mile marker at 8:34 which was a bit fast. I had to do 10 and 1's and i'd configured my garmin to do the 10 and 1 thing. About 15 seconds before each split I would yell out that we were walking (running) in 15 seconds. That way it would give a bit of a heads up to people that weren't intending on walking so they wouldn't plow into the back of people. During the first walk break, i surveyed the people around and had about 20 people with me.

By the two mile marker, I had ended up banking about 25 seconds which was a bit fast. I then proceed to slow down a bit over the next few miles to bleed some of the banked time off when I then encountered my second technical problem which was my garmin went all screwy. If you check out the Garmin Route you can see a portion at around the 116 route marker where it appears that the course juts away from the river. Well, the course doesn't actually do that. If you check out the split times, garmin thinks I was averaging 4 minute miles for both the walking and running portions during this stretch. With the incorrect information, I basically was running blind. I couldn't rely on HR to judge pace cause I had taken it off and I just ended up trying to run a comfortable pace. I finally realized that i probably wasn't getting a good satellite lock. I was wearing the garmin on my right hand, but was running on the left side of the road. I was doing this to avoid the aid stations since I had my own gatorade bottle and didn't want to get in people's way. However, I had a bunch of people bunching up around me to the right that were probably blocking the satellite signal so i decided to switch to running on the right hand side of the road which allowed me to get a better satellite signal and the garmin started working again.

Up until this point, I had been drinking some gatorade every time I would walk. The gatorade bottle i was using was the ones with the twisty cap which I've used in the past and really like as it's easy to open and close. However, today the gotaorade bottle i was using must have had a defective cap cause after some time, the twisting action wouldn't work. So a little over halfway through the race, I ended up having to dump the bottle and rely on the aid stations. The water tasted nasty. The aid stations were actually pretty good otherwise as they were manned by some pretty enthusiastic people. Most had screaming cheerleaders and high school kids.

By about the 7 mile marker I was withing 15 seconds of where I should have been at each split and with the garmin working again, i was able to settle into a nice rhythm. i ended up chatting with one very talkative lady from Winnipeg who was in toronto visiting her son and deicded to sign up for the half at the last minute. She said she is mostly a marathoner having most recently done twin cities. I mentioned to her that I was thinking of doing that eventually and we ended up swapping stories of marathons for a little while. It was kinda funny passing people cause they would start swearing when i pulled up beside them. I guess they had a hidden goal of sub-2 hours and when i pulled up, they realized it wasn't going to be.

So getting towards the end, most of the group that I started with were still around and with a downhill portion coming up and most of the people ended up taking off. As mentioned, I ended up finishing at 1:59:46 which was pretty good. I handed off the 2 hour pace sign to one of the group that thanked me afterwards for getting her to sub 2 hours. I was thinking of giving her the hat too, but figured it would be a bit gross with my sweat all in it and such.



So the weather generally co-operated. There was no rain and there was a cross-wind for most of the race and a bit of a head wind at the end. This certainly was fun. I'm thinking it might be fun to try and pace a full since i've never really taken it easy for an entire length of a marathon.

Quick update...

Pace rabbit duties done. Finished in 1:59:46 chip time. Had a good time despite some technical problems. I'll provide a more detailed report later. I'm going to New York tomorrow and am scrambling to get some last minute things done.

Getting Ready...

Posting from Niagara falls. Always nice to have free wireless at a hotel. I thought I'd try and be smart and book a hotel room at the last minute on priceline, but due to the Canadian Dollar taking a nosedive this past week, it was actually cheaper for me to book directly with the hotel then go through priceline. Should have booked it earlier. This same thing happend to me with my Boston registrations. I mailed in my entry hoping to save the $6 (?) online fee but by mailing it in it took about a month for the charge to actualy appear on my credit card which by then the Canadian dollar had dropped causing me to lose more than $6.

So picked up the bib and everything. I kinda played dumb and was able to score a free ticket for the bus to the startline. In addition to the normal loot, I got a pace rabbit t-shirt and a nice hat. This hat has the bunny ears made out of foam and they're actually sewed onto the hat so they won't rip off like the last time i pace-bunnied. I also got a sign. I should have asked if they expect me to carry this for the whole race. I'll have to see how it goes.

I had a bit of an ulterior motive to do Niagara. As some of you might know, i have a website which provides shooting locations from the show Wonderfalls. Some of the scenes from the show were shot in Niagara falls and i was hoping to get some pictures of those locations, but two things messed that up. Firstly, I couldn't find my Wonderfalls DVD's which i haven't seen in a long time so it was going to be hard to match up locations without getting screen caps from the show and secondly the weather forecast for today (and tomorrow) had rain, rain and more rain. Not exactly, the best conditions. I didn't end up bringing my camera, but am regretting it now since the weather wasn't that bad. Here are some cell phone pics.

American Falls

Canadian falls

Tacky Niagara Falls pic

Too dark...

So it's gotten cool. I did 6 miles at a moderate pace of 8:23 min/mile on Tuesday. Meant to get out yesterday and today but it's too dark in the morning and evening. It just doesn't feel like i should be running, it feels like I should be sleeping.

So the pace bunny thing for this Sunday has been settled out kinda. I'm officially registered, but it seems that I don't have a ride to the start line. The race charges $10 for a ride to the start line, and I guess it looks like i have to pay that out of my pocket. I don't mind it, but if i'm already going to be spending on a hotel room and gas to drive down (and back) to Niagara Falls , it would have been nice not to have to spend more money on the race.

So a 2 hour half is about 9:09 min/mile but they want us to do 10 and 1's. I configured my garmin to do 10 minute intervals with 1 minute recoveries so that should be easy to keep track of. I'm thinking that 8:45 pace for the running portion and 18min/mile for the walking portion would bring me in at around 2:00 hours. The walking portion might be a bit fast, but if I slowed down too much, it just means i have to run faster during the run portion. Now for me the difference between 8:45 pace and say 8:35 pace is not that much, but for someone running at their LT threshold, that can push you from LT into speed work type interval pace which is the absolute wrong way to run a race. I've made a pace band with walk adjusted km and mile splits, so i'll probably just adjust on the fly during the run.

Weather is looking crappy for Sunday. About 10C which is good, but rain. Oh well, I've been lucky so far with dodging the rain bullet during races, but I guess my luck had to run out eventually.

Zoo Pictures

Here a couple of pics from yesterday.



Spider Monkey



Sumatran Tiger



Baboon



BobCat



Flamingo



Lazy Lions



Ostrich

Week in Review

Tuesday: Did a little under 10 miles in Hyde Park in London. You can see the details here. I averaged 8:40 pace which is pretty good considering I had only about 5 hours of sleep and my internal clock which was on Eastern Daylight savings time said it was 2:00am.

Wanted to do a short recovery run to get some pictures from Hyde Park on Wednesday, but lack of sleep caught up to me and i ended up skipping it.

Saturday: Did 6 miles recovery run at about 9:20 pace, then went to the zoo. The zoo run which is a 10k race was taking place today. If I had planned a bit better, I should have signed up for the zoo run and did my recovery run there. Being the gadget nerd that I am, I ended up bringing my garmin along. You can see the route I took here. I brought the garmin along cause I was trying to practice my 18min/mile walking pace. I couldn't quite get the pace right. I don't think garmin's are very accurate at paces that slow. I like going to the zoo at this time of year, cause the leaves are changing. Also, little kids who dress up (ala Haloween) got in for free so the animals are a bit more active since they are seeing all these weird costumes for the first time.

Sunday: Today, i had planned on heading over to the start of the Toronto marathon since it's about 6 miles from my home. I wanted to do the 6 mile run there, watch the start, run around a bit and return to get up to about 14 miles for the day. Unfortuntely, I ended up waking up at just after 8:00 and realized I would have to haul ass to get to the start line in time. Ended up not going. I did do the same 13 mile route that I've done the past two Sundays. 13.25 miles in 1:58:13 for an average pace of 8:55 min/mile. Ran this continuously rather than the 10 and 1's i've been doing over the past few weeks.

So I'm supposed to be the 2 hour pace bunny next Sunday for the niagara half marathon, but haven't heard anything else from the pace bunny organizer or the race yet. Hopefully, I'll hear from them soon as I've been trying to land a cheap non-refundable room on priceline. I was also hoping to do a half the following week-end, but I'm on the fence about it. I don't realistically think I can PR, since my LT pace has sucked pretty badly these past few months. I will probably end up trying a short LT run this week and depending on how that goes, will have to make a decision.

Walking Speed...

A little over 45 miles for the week. Did 6 miles recovery on Wednesday, 10.2 miles at 8:51 pace on Thursday, 6 miles recovery on Saturday and 13.25 miles today. I tried again today to do 10 and 1's to try and come in at a half marathon time of 2 hours. Again I was a bit fast and did the whole 13.25 miles in 1:59:25 which translates into a half time of 1:58:04. I've been using the Running Room walk adjusted pace bands which give me a running pace of 8:46 for the running portion with a "moderate" walking pace. I'm wasn't too sure what "moderate" meant. I was able to nail the 8:46 running pace, but I still ended up a bit fast. I did some reverse calculation on the pace band numbers and moderate walking to them means about 18 min/miles. I was walking at 15-16 min/mile. Guess I have to slow down a bit.

My HR monitor has been going a bit crazy this past week. It doesn't seem to pick up my HR properly. I've been doing some experimenting trying to figure out if it's the battery, the strap or the transmitter itself. It's been a bit frustrating cause it works just fine while I'm just sitting here at home, but doesn't work when I actually try and run with it.

So I'm off to the United Kingdom tomorrow morning for a couple of days. I will try and get a 10 mile run in on Tuesday morning in Hyde Park. Should be fun!

Cranking up the Speed.

So I'm going to try to post a bit more often now that training is starting to ramp back up a bit. Did a little over 10 miles today with 3 in the middle at LT pace. It sure is dark in the morning. Can't wait for daylight savings to end so that there's a bit more light in the morning. Don't like the thought of leaving work and having it be pitch dark outside though. Did the LT portion around the track. 12 laps. Tried to keep the HR just below 180 and I ended up with the 3 miles of LT being done at 7:06, 7:09 and 7:06 pace. Ideally I'd like to try and maintain that pace for a half marathon in about a month, but I'm not sure if that's realistic. I haven't run an LT type run of more than 1 mile for more than 2 months now, so it just maybe that the cobwebs have to be shaken out a bit.

This is pretty cool video. Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHC_Qyov2Xc

Week in Review

So this past week topped out at 40 miles. Did a little over 10 miles each on Tuesday and Friday, 6 miles on Saturday and a little over 13 miles on Sunday.

I did my long run on 13 using the 10 and 1 method which is a way of running where you run for 10 minutes and than walk for 1. I did this cause I'm thinking of being a pace bunny for the Niagara Half Marathon which is on October 26th. The pace bunnies are sponsored by the Running Room which requires that pacers use 10 and 1's. I've never done them before so before I commit, I thought I try it out on a long run. I didn't quite get the pacing right. I tried to target 8:45 pace for the running portion and than walk at a reasonable pace. According to Garmin, I did the 13.13 miles in 1:59:06, but the distance was wrong. I actually did 13.25 miles which translates into a 1:57:45 half. Too fast. It's a bit tough to monitor pace with the constant stopping and starting.

So guess what showed up in my inbox today?

Yipee!!! I mailed in my registration for Boston almost a month ago and have been waiting for some form of acknowledgment for a while. I started to worry that maybe my entry got lost in the mail and have been checking my credit card account daily on-line for the past week to see if a charge was made. I know, pretty anal, but I got the idea from someone on the Runner's World Forum so at least it's not just me!