Short Recap

On Thursday, I participated in the first annual Locust Fork Turkey Trot [put on my my sister in law and her cousin in law]. There were 13 in attendance. I think I did 6 miles, but it could be more. Sara is definitely much faster than I and really pressed my training pace. Last night I did another 10 miler. You can check it out here. I call it "1 Hilly Run," because it seemed like I was running up hill the entire time. All the down hills were steep and fast. The uphills were steep at times, but never fast. Little known fact, however: I think I tend to run uphill better than I do down. So...put that in your pipe and smoke it [if you're the smoking type]. I ran the 10 in just under a 9:30 pace - my training pace is 9:44 - so I'm beating that a bit. I'm looking for a few good races in between now and the Mercedes. Preferably, they'll be short races filled with slow runners and prizes so that I can win something. Let me know if you know of any. La and I just redeemed two "free" entree coupons at Landry's that were won by my unmatched speed in the 25-29 category in the Hueytown 5k. FYI: The coupons were for Entrees up to $9.99. We would have spent less money if we would have eaten at The Fish Market, which would have been closer to our house too. The cheapest entree [apart from a burger or a bowl of soup] hovered around $16.99. Most gravitated within the $19.99+ range. Not too cool for a chain fish restaurant. At least I can say "I've eaten at Landry's," [that is, eaten at Landry's using the tickets I won from winning first place in a race in Huey Town]. Another little known fact: I ran the Hueytown 5k because I looked at last years results and thought, "Man, I can run faster than those guys and I'll win free dinner."

Just under 4

[Check out my run here] Someone told me that I really need to watch out for other people when I run in the city at night. A lot of my runs take me to the north side of town, which seems a little more forboding considering that there are no businesses [or relatively few] that are open there at night. There's some validity in that. When you take a look at the FBI's highest crime rates for cities, Birmingham ranks at number 6 [at least Alabama is excelling in one area!]. Still, I'd much rather be running on city streets than on county roads. I'll take my chances against another man - I don't have much of a chance against a car. Furthermore, there are lots of lights in the city. There are very few where I grew up [the burbs of Huntsville]. There are no sidewalks where I grew up. There aren't as many familiar faces there either...not until someone dies. At the very least, I do have some serious looking eyebrows - those usually work to fend off any miscreant hosts of the city. Not to mention the fact that I have physics on my side against another man - the force of my fist in front of 200 pounds of flesh moving at approximately 7mph. I figure 10 at a sprint. That's a lot of kinetic energy. Just to let that I've thought about this - my whole base of argumentation falls apart when someone asks me "Why don't you just run during the day?" Like I said earlier, "Kinetic energy." 3.9 miles 8:42/mile There should be some turkey day runnin' in the morrow!

Neat sites...

I haven't run tonight [I almost did, but figured it would be best to rest a little]. I thought I'd pass some stellar sites your way. www.mapmyrun.com Occasionally, you may see "Check out my run here," at the top of a run blog. The word "here" is actually a hyperlink to a map of where I ran that evening. I used to believe that mapmyrun overestimated my mileage, but Josh's wife, Amanda, said that she thinks it's actually low-balling it. Either way, it's a heck of a lot better than buying a gps device or cell phone subscription service. Dean Karnazes is an ultramarathoner [the guy has run distances of over 100 miles without stopping]. He's recently completed a jaunt across the US - 50 marthons in 50 states in 50 days. As part of his celebration he decided to run back home...from New York City to San Francisco, CA. You can check out his daily stats here. He's also written a book entitled Ultramarathon Man that you can purchase at Amazon.com. He's been a lot more humble than I thought he would be at first glance, and I've enjoyed following him via the internet. Dean's website is www.ultramarathonman.com. You'll need flash 8 to view it. I've also been spending a good bit of time at www.runnersworld.com. They're putting out magazines slower than I consume them, but there are a lot of great tools and articles there to satiate the athletic beast within you. You can purchase a subscription here at Amazon.com, but I've found them to be amazingly inexpensive on eBay.com [I bought my subscription there for less than $5.00]. Hope some of this helps and entertains! I'll have updated running schedules up soon.

4 Encounters, 9 Miles, and a Bowl of Soup

[You can check out tonight's run here] While many of you were putting yourselves down for the night [possibly] I was finishing up a 9.15 mile run [tonight's pace was 9:38/mile]. The run didn't come easy [My wife and I had to do some pretty hard finagling to convince me to run...yes, my wife and I]. I decided to eat dinner before I went on my run - it's a habit I'm trying to train my stomach for. Over the years, I've thought it most prudent to do without eating before running. On longer runs, however, I know that I need more energy than normal [for example, I burned approximately 1400 calories on my run tonight] - otherwise I'll be dead an hour after the run is over. This too is a great way to experiment to try to discover what race day foods will set well for me before the Mercedes. You can put straight up cash down that I will not be eating italian sausage soup and a grilled cheese sandwich on race day [it's what I had tonight - it's what I tasted for about the first 45 minutes of my run as it came back up a few times]. So tonight, I was scared twice, approached twice, and passed twice by the same police car. Around mile one, a woman stepped out of the shadows on a very dark road. She almost made me crap my pants [and I'm not joking - call it a side effect of eating italian sausage soup and running...if you must]. I yelped and she nearly screamed. I said, "Sorry, you scared me." She said something inaudible as I continued down the road. On the North side of town, probably around mile three, I saw two african american gentlemen walking accross the street. Both had bottles in paper bags. One of them left his original path derelict as he walked up to me. When I passed him, I was probably less than a foot away from him. I looked, smiled, nodded by head and said "What's up." He did the same. I was not intimidated by this but find it strange that somewhere in his heart of hearts was the strange impetus that caused him to walk up to me. On Highland Ave beside the golf course I heard a crashing noise to my right. This scared me. Highland Ave [especially on this section] is not altogether well lit. Further down the road was a police car with her response lights on. The car was stopped and I tried not to look too much. 3 blocks from my house were a man and woman walking down the street. My path took me onto a left turn - they were on my right. I heard them say something to each other and then hear him say, "Hey boss." I run. A louder, "Hey Boss." I keep running [at this point I'm only about 2 1/2 blocks from home]. Finally, the man straight up yells at what seems to be the top of his lungs, "Hey Boss." My thought for the rest of my run was, "I didn't come out here to run at 9:00PM to chitty chat with people. I came out here becaue I know that if I don't now, I won't later." Now it's time to join my wife in what we affectionately call, "The Bed." I need sleep.

Like days of old...

[You can see our run here] Tonight was much different than runs of recent - I ran with a very attractive woman who also happens to be married [to me]. Laura hasn't been much for exercise since we've been back from South Korea [she's been somewhat sick since we've been back, but is gradually coming to health]. She hasn't run much at all, but she went 2.5 miles with me tonight @ 10min/mile! Needless to say, she was super. I expected that we were going to run a short distance away and then come back. She told me "I want to go to the track and run around it a couple of times." To be candid, I didn't think we'd make it that far because I knew the track was over a mile away. Not only did we make it to the track, but we ran around it together. We came back to the house - she stopped for the night and I tagged another 1.6 for a total of 4.15 [for myself] Here's a little known fact for some of you: In college, I used to run with a lot of different people [Laura included]. There weren't a whole lot of guys who would run with me - a lot of them just didn't want to go the distance. Most of my runs, therefore, were with the fairer sex. This definitely made for enjoyable mornings and I saw it as a much more beneficial practice than just going out on dates [though the said runs were supposedly without "romantic" overtures]. On occasion, I would run with other guys - but the funny thing about it was that they could never run as far nor as fast as the girls I was running with. Go figure. All to say, some of those early morning runs helped to develop the wonderful relationship I'm in now. Who would've guessed?

Clean bill of health

[I'm listening to Suddenly Everything Has Changed by The Postal Service]

My blood pressure was slightly [and strangely] high, but my doctor’s assistant told me that it wasn’t really worth worrying about. I was more worried [to be honest] about my weight – I weighed in at two bucks. I may start to watch what I eat a little more, may even cut back on the libations – I figure if I can run lighter, then I’ll definitely run faster. The strange thing about all of this is that I’m running so much more than I was this time last year, and yet my blood pressure is higher as is my weight.

Maybe it’s the muscle mass – muscle is more dense and it’s probably pressing my blood vessels closer to my skin thereby causing the slightly higher blood pressure.

Yeah.

In any case, I have a new run schedule. It has me doing 3 days a week. I figure that I’ll start doing pushups and sit ups on my off days [did you know stronger abs and arms make you run faster? Really, I can’t make this kind of crap up]. My GP basically said that I can run through the blisters as long as I can endure the pain – he said my feet will eventually become harder [this I knew, I’ve just never had the intensity or frequency of blisters that I do now]. His advice was to run a little slower than usual and to buy new socks [Blue Cross Blue Shield is paying for some good athletic care hereJ]. He also said that I shouldn’t worry about speed work for a little while.

So, tonight I went for a 5-miler through South side and then down Greensprings Hwy [not the most pedestrian friendly place, I know]. The smell of burning wood filled my nostrils as I meandered through historic neighborhoods. The wind kissed my face while my sweat mingled with cold rain drops.

It was nice to be out on the street again.

[tonight’s run] 5.1mi [tonight’s pace] 9:15/mi

Takin' it easy...

I went 4 on Thursday night at about 8:52/mile. I had placed moleskin on the bottom of my foot- where the blister is - and later discovered that the moleskin is not supposed to go on my blister. Needless to say, I had some kind of time taking the ultra-adhesived product off the bottom of my blister. The blood blister simply hasn't gotten better [but, it seems, hasn't really gotten worse either]. What has happened is that another blister has formed behind my blood blister on my foot. I am really starting to doubt that I have the proper sized shoes as I've probably run 50 -75 miles in them with no reprieve. However, my left foot is the picture of health. At Laura's request, I have set up an appointment with the GP I've visited a few times near my workplace. They were super to schedule me in @ 8:10 on Monday - I say this because the less I run now, the less I'll be prepared for the Mercedes. Unfortunately, training is not the best place to try to "catch up," as many a person may hurt themselves doing so. If you have any advice, I'm open to it - though I'm still going to my GP on Monday [also, because one of my coworkers told me that he's a marathoner]. All that to say, I've gone from training at about 20 miles a week to 4 this week. Not a good thing.

Back on the reservation, they call me Crazy Face

I'm not 100% satisfied with my time yesterday, though I'm not 100% dissatisfied either. When it comes down to it, there were things that I didn't do during training that I should have done and I'm certain that there are things that I did wrong altogether. My face on this picture, however, is satisfactory as it makes me look mad [not in an angry sort of way, but in the mad sort of way wherein you might thing "This guy needs to be locked up"]. I especially enjoy seeing the strain on my fellow runners faces - this is after the very last hill of the race -about 1/4 of a mile from the finish line. Altogether, it was a fun race. I was suprised by my friends who did well and suprised by my friends who ran this as their first race. Congrats to all! Dissapointments [we'll end on a good note]: - Greg wasn't able to run due to an injury - Listening to the band [Old Dirty Shoe, or something to that effect] @ the after race "party" for what seemed an obscene amount of time - Being passed by pretty much everyone until the last 1/4 mile of the race - Not beating my PR [49:12 chip time in 2003 - 7:55/mile] - Chaffing [as always] - The new blister beside my blood blister on my right foot Good times [ending on the good note]: - Greg's wife placed 8th amongst all women and 2nd in her age category - Being passed by a man pushing a stroller, watching him pass many other people, and remembering that this was all about the fun of it - Hearing "7 minutes" after my first mile and "14:20" after my second - Beating last years time by nearly 7 minutes - Having my wife and friends cheer me on during the last quarter - Passing people running uphill on the last quarter to the finish - Eating Dave's Pizza afterwards [courtesy of Dave's Pizza] Gun time: 49:49 Chip time: 49:40 Pace based on chip time: 7:59.58 min/mile

Tomorrow's Race

Running this tomorrow [if you haven't looked @ the link on the right].

stupid stupid stupid...but very detemined

So. I ran tonight. You can see my run here. I thought "Gee, if I don't run, I'll be really out of shape for Saturday." I kept thinking about how little mileage I'd put on this week [if I only ran on Saturday and Monday, I would have only run a total of 9 miles, which is less than I ran on last Saturday alone]. So I ran. I ran in gloves, a boggin, and I left my glasses on. I had on wind breaker pants lined with a light cotton [or fleece, I don't really know what it is] as well as a long sleeve shirt under a regular t-shirt. It's funny to think of how - when we are out of the practice of doing something - we tend to do idiotic things. There's no blizzard or ice. I couldn't even see my breath! Now, I sweat like a pig and my left leg is hurting again. Stupid, but determined. Today's Run: 3.15 miles Time: 28.09 / 8:56per mile

>>sigh<<

My hammies have been a little hurt lately - I think it might be over exertion [I was pushing a lot more mileage than I should have]. I've decided to rest them a little while because I'm not all together sure how they'll perform [they were still a little sore last night] and I'll stretch them out on a short run tomorrow. To be honest, I don't think it's my hammies as much as it is my ligaments - and that's not cool [as I've had one torn ACL in my past]. So rest, jog, and then run on Saturday. Hope to see you there!