Thursday, May 26, 2011

Smell Ya Later

So far so good this week.  I put in good intervals Monday, a 6 mile tempo run on Wednesday, and my legs don't feel too beat up.  Probably because I haven't done much weight lifting this week.

And now, I'm less than 8 hours away from the start of my long weekend - beginning with a 10 hour drive to the Outer Banks!  A weekend of relaxing, laying around on the beach, and running barefoot in the sand.

Then next weekend it's back to my hometown of Beckley, WV, for the Lewis McManus 5k.  I should be able to crack 20 minutes this time, I'm pretty confident that I could have done it at my last race.

I'm keeping this one short.  To all reading this, enjoy the holiday weekend!

Monday, May 23, 2011

Locked out (and a Possum)

So I meant to post this on Thursday...

I made a special trip to Wal-mart Thursday evening after work.  Why, you might ask (and I assume you do, since you're a curious and polite audience)?  To buy a new gym lock.  I had a great workout on Monday, headed into the locker room at the YMCA all set to head home for spaghetti, and found a different lock on the locker I was using that day.  It turns out they rented it to someone, who hadn't put a lock on it yet, and he randomly arrived to do so while I was in the weight room.  So they cut my lock off, bagged my stuff up, and waited for me to come looking for it at the front desk.  No message over the intercom, no looking for me, just snip, bag, sorry about that, email our directer to be reimbursed.  $3.47 for a lock, not worth the gas required to deposit the reimbursement check.

Thursday was also the scene of an aborted workout.  Wednesday night we had a visitor at 2 am - a possum.  The dog cornered him alongside the house, and barked until someone came to do something about it.  Had this happened to me growing up, I'd have dispatched the critter, and in the morning disposed of it in the woods.  But now I've got neighbors, and wasn't too keen on people waking up to a shotgun blast at 2 am - not to mention I didn't care for the idea of shooting so close to the siding on the house.  So I took a tomato stake and beat him with it until he finally ran.  Possums are stubborn, and pretty fearless.

So I didn't get back to sleep till nearly 3, and by then my night of sleep was ruined.  I woke up exhausted, struggled through my early routine, laced up the shoes, and hit the road for 12 - 1/4 mile intervals.  After the first few, I decided to cut it back to 10.  A couple more intervals, and I decided that I wasn't doing any good, and turned around, got on a decent pace, and went home. 

But I got 12 good intervals this morning, I've got a lock for my next trip to the gym (tonight), and we're getting things prepared for a trip to the Outer Banks this coming weekend.  God and possums willing, I'll get in a few more good workouts before we leave, and then do some running in the sand while I'm down there.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Back on Task

So when we last spoke, I was tired and struggling.  Normally, this sort of thing would be the start of a short but damaging motivational slide for me - a week of running less than I should, drinking beer and relaxing more than I should, skipping the gym, etc. - followed by a week of guilt, lamenting how no training progress had been made, and telling myself, "alright, self, don't do that again".

Well, turns out, I didn't do it again.  I took an extra day off (Saturday) to do a little volunteer work, then picked up my long run on Sunday, and hit this week just like any other.

I helped out on Saturday morning with the West Point Bridge Design Contest state championship (WV's site is here, the national contest site is here).  It is an academic contest where kids older than 12 team up and use this cool software designed by some engineers at West Point to design a bridge for a given scenario.  The bridge has to hold its own weight, and that of a passing truck.  The cheapest design is the winner.  Kids all over WV have worked on it in their spare time this spring, trying to whittle down the cost of their design to qualify for the state level competition.  At the state competition, they have a limited time period to work on a scenario which is different from what they designed for in qualifying (or, this year, they were given 2 scenarios and scores were cumulative).  In addition to all of this hard-core thinking going on, there was a fun mathy/sciency scavenger hunt-type race on Friday afternoon, just for fun, which my wife volunteered and helped out with.  I am planning to volunteer as a local mentor for Putnam county schools next spring.

My nerdyness behind me for the weekend, I set out early on Sunday morning with a rigid plan for what I needed to accomplish for the day - starting with my run.  I had a nice 10 mile run, which steadily got faster as I went on without me noticing.  I ended up averaging a little faster than 8:30 per mile, which is a good starting point for summer, and didn't really feel like I was pushing that much.  I got a little sore from it though, which tells me I did push more than I meant to.  I also have a pretty bad blister on my heel because one pair of my shoes hate me.  I hate to make such a statement so early, but I'd like to run about 7:30 per mile at the Virginia Beach Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon in September, so I need to start working on my pace over longer runs in addition to my 5k-specific training.

Speaking of 5k-specific training, Monday I got back to my 12 x 1/4 mile intervals.  I've gotten comfortable at a 6:20 per mile pace, so Thursday I plan to try to maintain a 6:00 pace through my interval workout, which I think I can handle if the blister will heal.  Today I ran in 45 degrees and steady rain.  Which sucked, but I'm happy I forced myself out to do it.  I'm pretty sore from my Monday weight lifting routine, but that will go away once I get fully back into my workout schedule.

This post has run a little long (get it, now my posts are running too!?), back to work for me.  Hopefully I'll have a short post tomorrow with an interesting story about the weight room...

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Out of Gas

So I may have overcompensated for my performance this past weekend.  Monday and today I did 10x1/4 mile intervals at a 6:20/mile pace.  Tuesday and Wednesday were both easy 5 mile runs.  The temperature and humidity are taking a bit of extra toll, as we're suddenly seeing 85 degree weather all day followed by rain all evening.

I'm tired.  I don't think I fully recovered from the race before Monday's workout, but I did it anyway.  And I got going again in the gym yesterday after 2 weeks off - I never take it easy in the weight room.  I can still feel this morning's workout in my legs, even though it's after lunch.  I'm glad I've got tomorrow off from running.  I could use a day off from work, my weekends haven't felt especially effective lately, I need an extra day.

Maybe I just need a nap.

Monday, May 9, 2011

1/2 of Awesome

So the first race of the year has come and gone.  How did it go?  Unsurprisingly, I failed miserably to reach my goals.  Well, perhaps that is too harsh.  I managed to put together a team for the race, and we did raise some money for breast cancer research, which means the important goals related to the event were realized.  But I'm talking about my own little selfish performance goals - those are the ones that I failed to reach.  I was hoping to really have a big day, run a faster time than I have in a long time - 19 minutes if possible.  Realistically, I figured I could push and maybe go 19:30.  20 minutes was a given.  In reality, I ended up running 20:45.



The plan was pretty simple.  Try to get to the turn around at about 10:00, then pick things up on the way back.  I didn't get boxed in at the start, I set a good pace that I could hold early, I was a little tight but otherwise things were going great.  I hit the turn around at 10:05 - the first half of the race exactly as planned.

Then came the second half.  Near the turn around I started getting a stitch that spread from just one point all over my side.  I slowed a bit and it eased up, but every time I tried to pick the pace back up I'd be forced to back off again.  I struggled to keep my pace up as much as possible, but really didn't get to push the way I needed to for any kind of meaningful time.  I ended up 36th (out of 750 timed participants), but was 4 minutes off the leader.

So I had a very good half of a race.  From what I can determine, the problem is my low mileage, and my inconsistent training over the past month or so.  Lots of weeks I do well with my harder workouts, but end up missing other workouts like easy runs or long runs.  My whole year has been that way - overall, my training has been good, but when you break it up into any 2 or 3 week period there are gaps in my running that hurt my performance.  I've got to stop missing workouts, especially the weekend long run.

My next race will be the Lewis McManus 5k in Beckley, WV, on June 4th.  It is a fairly small local 5k in the town I grew up in.  Pretty flat, with a handful of local runners who are pretty good, a low-key event.  I've adjusted my schedule to include a lot of interval work and less tempo work.  I'm usually very good at running close to race pace, so I need to do less of what I'm already good at and spend more time improving my pace.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

2 Days to Go

Two days left till the first race of the year!  I'm taking this morning (Thursday) off to let my legs recharge, then a short run and some strides tomorrow to keep loose, then it's race time!

I'm also stuck in the field inspecting today and tomorrow, so no lengthy post ranting about someone getting on my nerves or treatise on my training theories.  Just a quick hello, then off to work.

Monday, May 2, 2011

The Home Stretch (and assorted leftover Easter goodies)

Just 5 days left until my first race of the year!  I did a hard benchmark run this morning to see where I'm at - 1.5 miles at race effort, 2 x 1/2 mile at race effort, 2 x 1/4 mile at race effort - and the results are looking promising.  Not where I wanted to be when I set out at the beginning of the year, but a solid base to work from this summer.  It'll be mostly easy workouts the rest of the week, as well as some housekeeping as team captain for the race.

Speaking of housekeeping, a few things I've been meaning to post:

Upcoming Changes

I'm planning to redesign my page very soon.  I didn't put much into it in the beginning, I was more interested in getting to the writing part, but now that I'm going I think I'll try to pretty this place up a bit.  Try not to feel lost if you wake up one morning and this place looks completely different.

Pictures from Out of Town

Here are some of the pictures I took while inspecting railroad bridges up in the mountains, as promised in my last post.  I took a lot, I'm only going to post the best of them.








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