I Did It!

Yes, my very first marathon has come and gone. I promise I'll write more about it as I wrap my head around it, but I did meet my goal -- I finished.

Las Vegas Marathon
December 7, 2008
5:17:52

2008 Carrabba's Summer Beach Run Report

Yes, yes, it has once again been a bloody long time since writing, but I've actually been stocking up on things to say. Hopefully, in this way, reading this will be slightly more exciting than reading "I got up. I ran. It was good." But that is neither here nor there right now. The item of immediate importance is last night's race. You might have been able to guess, but it was the 2008 Carrabba's Summer Beach Run.

The Summer Beach Run bills itself as "Florida's Oldest Footrace", and given that this was the 44th running (meaning that it started in 1964, if you're arithmetically challenged), I'm not going to argue with that. So they've had a lot of time to get it right. And they're pretty good at it. I'm sure this came in handy this year, as the run was postponed two weeks because of our unwelcome visitor (Fay). Luckily, Hanna left us alone, so we were able to run last night without a hitch.

The run itself is pretty simple. Get out on the beach, run 2.5 miles south, turn around, and run back. Of course, there are a few reasons why this is not quite so easy as it might sound:

• We have great sand for running on the beach here, but we're still running on sand. Hard packed sand don't quite work as well as pavement.
  
• It's a beach. It's not exactly what one would call "level". Again, it's probably some of the best for running, but it definitely slopes.
  
• Some of our beach seems to have disappeared thanks to Fay. It was a little tight at the beginning (there were 1163 finishers)
• Oh, my God, was it hot. Low 90's during the day. Probably got all the way down to the high-mid 80's by race time. Oy.
  

So there we were. Lana and I went "early" so that we could get a parking space, and we got to the beach about an hour before the race started. For some reason, though, we never even thought that on a really nice day, crazy people would want to go out to the beach for any reason other than a run. Jacksonville, however, appears to be just chock full o' crazy people -- and they were, indeed, all at the beach. Parking was rough. But after driving around for a little while, we actually found a good spot (right on A1A) and proceeded to wait for our good buddy Dreama. There's just not enough room in this blog (or even the entire internet) to explain Dreama, so we'll just leave that completely alone.

We got our chips (well, I did... Lana has gone ahead and made the purchase of a personal ChampionChip), and headed over to the starting area. There was still 15 minutes before the race started, so we got to warming up. Before we knew it, they were starting to give directions. Now, if you've ever been to a 1st Place Sports race, they are consistently wrong when they give directions. It's really interesting. Every time... they say that you run out, turn to your right, and run back. And every time, you run out, turn to your left, and run back. We really don't even listen to them anymore.

And that means that I'm sure the next race is actually going to be different and I'm going to get lost. I'll end up in Fernandina with no idea where the course is. That's my luck.

After the directions, the announcer led a tribute to John TenBroeck, a founding member and longtime leader of JTC Running, a member of the race management team for 1st Place Sports, and one heck of a nice guy. On Friday, he lost his battle against cancer. John was one of the pace leaders for the Jacksonville Galloway Training Group, and you could always count on his terrible, terrible jokes to completely distract you from total pain. He was also the voice that you would hear at the finish of the races, and (from what I hear) he would do the award presentation also. He was a wonderful man who gave a lot to running, and he will be missed.

After a minute of silence, the cannon started, and the race was on! We were led (once again) by a group of our military men and women running in formation -- if you've followed me for a while, you'll know that my picture of this group was a picture of the week last year. Well, about 40 seconds after the gun sounded, I crossed the start line and got on my way.

Now, to go back a couple days, on Wednesday night, I went on a training run. I had The Perfect Run. The one we love. The "Even the Russian Judge Likes It Run". I was flying, and everything was great. It was cooler than usual, my shoes felt right, the traffic was light, and it seemed like every part of the run was downhill. I felt so good that I added another half mile to the run. I ended up finishing four miles in 34:36. Yeah, FIGJAM.

So, going into the race, I was thinking that I should be able to run it pretty dang quickly. But with the heat, I figured I would push for a little slower than the other day. I figured that about a 9:00/mile pace would be right. So that's what I went for.

Now, here we are, we've just started running this five mile run up and down the beach. And there's really not much else to say about it. Except that I cannot figure out why people/tourists are still standing on the beach *IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CROWD*. Seriously. There's 1000 people running at you, and you're just hanging out in the middle of where they're running. And making them run around you. Or you're letting your kid dig holes in the beach right where people are running.

Sometimes, I really don't like people. But I love gatherings.

In any case, there really wasn't much to report, except that I couldn't get my water at mile 1. The rest of it was pretty uneventful... focusing 100% on that spot 15 feet ahead of me so that I didn't run into a hole that some kid had dug in the beach. Oh, and looking for Lana.

But that 9:00 mile that I was shooting for? According to the Garmin, I ran 5.08 miles. And I did it in 45:03. Not half bad. Of course, the *official* results are a little different, since there's no chip time. But let's compare and contrast with last year, shall we?

2007:

ID #	PLACE	CLASS PLACE	NAME	AGE	TIME	PACE
258	455	61	Bill Carlson	35	54:10	10:50

2008:

ID #	PLACE	CLASS PLACE	NAME	AGE	TIME	PACE
251	274	38	Bill Carlson	36	45:34	9:07

In a nutshell:

• I lost almost 10 full minutes. Oh, yeah... that's a PR.
  
• I improved 23 spots in my age group
• I improved 181 spots overall (for men).
  
• I'm older
• And apparently, I registered at just about the same time each year.
  

Dang. I'm good.

Coming up next? More training. After that? The Expedition Everest Challenge at Disney. And that's when my race season really starts going.

Wish me luck!

GPS - Revived!

When I got home last night, I tried the trick for resetting the Garmin (Forerunner 205, for those who came here searching on "Forerunner 205 reset"). Specifically, the trick is to hold down the Mode and Reset (Lap) buttons for three seconds, and the power button. Lo and behold, it came back up with no problems. At the time, I was really hungry, and there is no run planned for today, so I just rejoiced at that and let it charge its battery, so I don't know if I lost any of my settings or my profile, but at least it's back up!

Garmin. Stronger than a tropical storm.

Soggy, but fine

I'm finally posting after Fay came through late last week and did, in fact, mess up my training. In fact, it stopped both our Wednesday run and our long run on Saturday. Honestly, that had more to do with the beer at the hurricane party, and the fact that it was a "short" 8 miler this weekend, but still, it was rough to go that long without running.

The damage was pretty minor. We had a branch down, and some massive bits of our neighbor's scrub pines in our yard. The back yard turned into a swimming pool that was about an inch or two deep, so I couldn't even get any cross training in. Our neighbors had to cut down a tree that about split in their yard, and another neighbor had a big limb come off their tree, so we do have a pretty impressive pile of debris sitting in our cul-de-sac:


Annoying, but it obviously could have been much worse.

However, this morning, as I was getting ready for my run, I found a possible tragic victim of the storm (and it's accompanying power flickers) -- my Garmin 205. It won't power on anymore. I haven't had a chance to try to reset it yet, so I'll check that out after work, but it was terrible to have to run without it. I guess Lana's right... I'm a gadget junkie. And I need my fix. Hopefully, I can reset it with the Mode/Reset/Power buttons, but if not, at least a replacement is relatively cheap at Amazon right now.

At least the Nike+ was still working, so I was able to look at that. It reported 3.56 miles in 32:52 at a 9:13 pace. Not bad for a pretty easy run. Oh, and I also ran with only one of my knee braces on, and it felt a little wonky (like I need to do some exercises for knee stability), but not bad. I had been having some pain with it, and I'm wondering if I've gotten to the point where the knee brace was helping to cause that. I'm going to keep evaluating and see what I can figure out.

Trainus Interruptus

Yesterday morning, I decided to sleep in after staying up to watch the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget (Jeffrey Ross is H-I-Larious), so I ended up going on my run last night. It was 82 degrees outside, and just starting to sprinkle, so the humidity was off the charts. Still, I managed to get 3.5 miles in in 32:52, so it was good. One part that I especially enjoyed was that I tricked myself -- the first part of the run was pretty tough, so I told myself that I would walk when I got to the half mile mark. Then the Garmin beeped, and I just kept on running, and the funny part is that things felt *much* better after that! I'd heard of using that trick before (I think I read it in one of Jeff Galloway's books), but this was the first time I actually remember trying it.

In any case, it looks like tomorrow's run may not be happening. And probably not gonna happen on Thursday either. Or Friday for that matter. If you've been watching the Weather Channel, you know that Tropical Storm Fay has decided to make the entire Florida peninsula her home for the next few days. Well, here's the current chart from the National Hurricane Center:

Edit: The picture got updated, so now it's showing people in the other parts of the state getting rain. Trust me, when I posted it here, it showed a line directly over Jacksonville.

See that part up in the orange section (the Tropical Storm Watch area)? The part that has the storm just kinda hanging out for Thursday and Friday?

That's where I live.

And I don't really want to run in galoshes.

The Streak Ends

That's it. It's over. My long streak of not posting is finally coming to an end.

Actually, there's one more streak that ended this weekend, as well -- my streak of PR's in every single race.

Ever since I started back running after my injuries, I've been getting faster and faster.

I started back in March with the Gate River Run 15K. Of course, since I'd never run a 15K before, that became my PR (which I should be able to beat quite handily next time I run one).

I followed that up with a performance in April at the Citistreet Corporate 5K, where I came in at 28:xx (wasn't chip timed, and I don't rightly recall what my actual time was), and that was the gun time. My Garmin had me at 27:xx. It was a good race.

Then, in May, I went down to Orlando for the Go Red For Women 5K. Great race, except for pulling a muscle in my calf. I managed to run most of it, and I ended up doing remarkably well. I finished in 26:48.

After that, in June, was the OE&S Run for the Pies here in Jacksonville. And even with the horrible food and the day at the beach before the race, the competition managed to spur me onto my best performance to date: 25:35!

And, of course, there was the Peachtree on the 4th of July, which had to be a PR, since it had been a long time since I'd done a 10K, and I got hurt doing that one, so the 1:01:37 that I timed myself at will stand as my PR there.

So last week, I realized that fitting right into my training was the JDR Bridge Run here in Jacksonville. As a matter of fact, I had PR'd at this race last year -- and it was the first 5K I had ever done in less than 30 minutes. So, I felt pretty good about it. I still threw a 3.5 mile run in the morning to try to keep my mileage at something, and I was nursing the nastiest blister I've ever had, thanks to a combination of new inserts and 14 miles, but there I was, at the starting line, ready to run for 3.1 miles straight, and go over two large bridges -- one of which has that nasty metal grating across the center span, and the other one being much larger.

And I did it. The first mile felt great, as is evidenced by the fact that I finished it in just over 8 minutes. Holy crap -- last year, I did that first mile in 9:30! I love being able to actually *see* accomplishments. Of course, as I started going up the first bridge, things slowed down a bit, and when I got to that nasty grating, I *really* slowed down. I've got a totally rational fear of falling on that stuff, especially after this year's Gate River Run. But once I got off the grating, I picked up a lot of speed on the downhill side, grabbed some water, and got ready for the second bridge.

Oh, boy, is that bridge bigger. It's not nearly so intimidating as it was last year, since this is now one of my training bridges... in fact, I've done this exact run many times now, so really, it's just a matter of powering to the top. And I was doing OK -- the Garmin said that I finished mile 2 in something like 16:40, and that was before I reached the top of the bridge... but it was also well before I got to the two mile sign, so I must have been weaving in and out of the crowds. No matter, I was still doing pretty well, and I had the whole downside of the bridge to go.

So once I crest the bridge, I start hoofing it. And I'm passing people, and running like the wind, and I'm feeling pretty good. And then I got to the bottom of the bridge and realized that the rest of the way (about half a mile) was pretty much up a gentle slope. Still, not something my legs wanted to do at that particular moment. I hit the three mile sign just as it hit 25:00, but I was getting tired. I ran into the finish, saw Lana playing around on her phone, yelled at her to pay attention, and came in for a strong finish.

Chip time: 25:56. Not a PR, but not a bad performance, either. And the Run for the Pies has a *very* quick course. So I still felt really good about only be 21 seconds off.

Jacksonville running is fun.

Randy Pausch, 1960 - 2008

Randy Pausch, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, died today from complications from pancreatic cancer. See the full story here.

If you haven't seen his "Last Lecture", it can be viewed on YouTube. I recommend that everyone view it, as it has been an inspiration to thousands of people, has spawned a bestselling book, and has introduced a number of people to a fine individual and one of the truly great educators of our time. In addition to the Last Lecture, I also recommend checking out his lecture on Time Management, given last year at UVA, where he was also a professor for many years.

For those who have watched the lectures, seen him on Oprah or talking to Diane Sawyer, I can tell you that he was every bit as authentic as he seemed. While I was at UVA, Randy was my thesis advisor, and is one of the people most influential to the way that I both conduct myself personally and professionally, along with the methods I use for better engineering and coding. His classes were always extremely entertaining (at least to the folks who got the good grades), and that was one of the main reasons we all learned so much from him.

Unfortunately, I haven't spoken to him since shortly after graduating from college, and sometimes I wondered if he knew just how much he had touched the random lives he intersected through the years, but I'm pretty sure he'd gotten some idea of it through the correspondence he'd gotten after giving the lecture.

Rest in peace, Randy. You will be missed.

Bring It On!

Yes, yes, I know I haven't posted in two weeks. I'm a bad blogger. And this one ain't gonna satisfy anybody who actually cares about my running, either, but I'll give a quick update:

Boot camp hurts. Badly. Those are muscles I haven't used in 20 (OK, 17) years. Damn.

It feels good to be swimming again. Not this week, but 2000 yards last week in about 50 minutes was pretty good. It'll only take a little longer to get back to my all-time high of 5000 in 59:50. But that was when I was 16. And it was non-stop (for the Swim-a-thon). And it was just about the last time I used any of the muscles that we're using in boot camp.

Ran a 10-miler on Saturday. Unfortunately, when you use MapMyRun to create a new route that you've never really done before... well, it doesn't show fences. So we got lost for a little bit. But we managed to adjust and it actually came out remarkably close to my goal distance. And it didn't feel too bad. And it took less than two hours, so I was happy.



And today... we drive up to Atlanta.

And tomorrow... we run the Peachtree!

Wish me luck!

FIGJAM

Yesterday, we had some friends come visit us, and one of them is an avid golfer (and really, really good, too). He told us that he had recently heard Phil Mickelson's nickname on the tour -- FIGJAM. It's an acronym for [censored for parental eyes] "Fudge, I'm good. Just ask me".

Now, that being a great story in and of itself, it seems that it would not make a monumental blog post. So, why bring it up? Well... I'll get to that in a second.

Yesterday was a scheduled 7 mile long run. However, as mentioned before, the OES Run for the Pies 5K was scheduled for last night, so I did a not-so-quick four miler in the morning out on the beach. Turns out that at the time I went out (roughly 7AM), the tide was in and there wasn't a lot of room for running on the beach, and the sand was pretty loose. It wasn't my best effort, but hey, it was a "long" run (even though it was the same length as my morning run on Wednesday). And besides, I had some more to take care of that night.

We then spent the rest of the day eating badly (I had corned beef hash and eggs with hash browns and lots of toast for breakfast), and going to the beach, getting some sun, swimming in the ocean, and basically, wearing ourselves out. We came back to the house at about 5:00 and were all exhausted, and I don't know about the others, but my legs were pretty weak. So we showered, got ready, and headed out to the race.

And it was hot. And parking was nowhere to be found. Finally, we found a good spot, got our timing chips (well, Kathleen and I did... Lana got a personal chip from the Princess Half Marathon, so she was trying it out in this race). First was the Mizuno 5K Championship, where the qualifications were 17:00 for men, and 20:00 for women. And holy crap, are these guys fast. Most of the entrants seemed to be local, but the overall winner was Ryan Woods from Boone, NC -- in a time of 14:40. A 4:43 pace. Wow. It was an impressive race.

After that, it was time for the open race. This is set up so that more average schlubs like us can get medals -- the really fast guys run in the championship race before, and in some age groups, they give medals away 15 deep. Unfortunately, the start for the open race was the same as the finish for the championship race, so once everyone finished the first race, the almost 600 people running the second race had to run into the start (and push around so we could all fit behind the mats).

Oh, and did I forget to mention just how hot it was? It had to still be over 80.

But then the cannon shot, and we were off. The race started by running up Hogan St., which very quickly turned into a fairly steep incline away from the river. Now, since my legs were hurting, my first thought was "This is not good". But then I got slightly clearer thinking, and realized... "If we're going uphill here... we'll be going downhill for the finish!" Yeah, that kept me going for a lot of the race.

The race itself was pretty uneventful. The course was an out-and-back, but with a couple turns in them... an interesting notion. I spent the first part of the race running even with Kathleen, and just a few dozen yards behind Paul. At some point, I passed Kathleen, and kept running, focusing on Paul every now and then... I've never really had a chance to run a race with Paul, but I know he's finished the Gate River Run 15K in 1:40, and that's one of my goals, so I really wanted to keep up with him.

And we ran. And it stayed like that for a while.

We got to the first water stop (at some point after the mile split, but I never saw the sign for the mile), and this is when I realized that at some point in the last mile, Kathleen had passed me. How did I know this? Because the water stops were in the wrong places, were too crowded, and were too small. And we couldn't tell they were there, even as we were coming up onto them. And with the heat, they were necessary. So, as we were running, Kathleen had to run in front of me to get to the water (not obnoxiously so... just enough to surprise me that she had gotten in front of me). And Paul was still there, just ahead of me.

Then we got to the first turnaround, and I noticed that I was actually catching up to Paul. He was right there! Of course, after I turned around, I noticed that Kathleen was right there. It was a tight race. And it really was a race. At least for me. Because it wasn't long after that I actually passed Paul. And then I didn't have anyone to chase... but I had people chasing me. Which is still a mighty good incentive for me.

Yeah, I'm a little competitive.

But we were on our way back. And I passed the two mile mark, and got to the second water stop. Again, it was in the wrong place, but at this point, it wasn't that crowded, and I actually got a great nab on the cup and was able to take a drink, and dump some water over me without really even breaking stride.

And then we were nearing the end. We were on the last long straight stretch before turning for the finish, and we finally got a good breeze. It was still ridiculously hot. And for much of the course, we were getting no breeze, running on blacktop, and crowded with a few hundred of our closest friends. But now, it was feeling good... sweet breeze, and getting toward the end. We ran around the building, and into the home stretch. And the hill. That one from the beginning that hurt so bad at the beginning was suddenly the greatest thing I have ever seen.

And I was flying.

I kicked as fast as I possibly could, and crossed the line. And damn near collapsed.

Kathleen crossed the line 17 seconds behind me.

Paul was 58 seconds behind me.

And me? Oh, I did it in 25:35. A new PR. By 1:13.

FIGJAM.

One Week

Oy... it's been another whole week since I wrote anything here. I'm getting bad. And I expect people to start yelling at me (and I expect Lana to yell at me more) if I keep this up. Come on, guys -- this is a team effort.

So, where do we start?

Token Guy

I haven't yet mentioned it, but Lana did -- we signed up for a boot camp thing. Although it starts at 6PM, so it's not really like boot camp. Plus, it's at our gym. And they're personal trainers, not drill instructors. But I'm sure it'll be good. Of course, when I signed up, I signed my name as "Bill -- Token Guy". And when the guy running it called back to let us know we were in, apparently, I was still the only guy in the class. This should be fun.

Oh, and it turns out that I'm likely going to be traveling next week, so I might even miss my first two sessions that I paid dearly for.

*sigh*

King of the "Hills"

Saturday was long-run day -- six miles was on the docket. I decided that if I'm going to do any sort of good run at the Peachtree, I should probably get some hill runs in. There's just one problem with that: I live in Florida. We don't have hills. But we do have the next best thing. So, I got myself up nice and early (6AM) and headed downtown to run the bridges. The route was pretty similar to this one, except that I ran the boardwalk on the Southbank:



Interestingly, though, when I pulled into the YMCA where I park my car for these runs, the Galloway getting started group for the 26.2 with Donna were pulling in, as well. This is the group I was running with last year, before I hurt myself. I'm wondering if it might be worthwhile to run with them again, even if I'm training for a marathon that's more than 2 months before the 26.2 with Donna. I could always run more after their training runs are done. Any thoughts?

It was a pretty good run, but there were two things that happened that made it less-than-spectacular. First, it came to my attention that in the middle of long runs, especially when not running as a group, it gets hard. And this was a six miler. I'm training for 20 miles beyond that. The mental part of the run is going to be very difficult... and I think I'm just now really figuring that out.

Second, this was my first experience with the middle-of-the-run-emergency-bathroom-needed-and-I-mean-right-now event. I do feel like I've crossed a milestone in my training, but that was not pleasant while I was out there.

In case you're curious... I found one. And there was much rejoicing.

And then, after that, we went drinking for six hours while I was wearing a kilt and we were playing mini-golf (at the Jaxbars.com Annual Putt-N-Crawl). And it was good.

Monday

I didn't have a clever title for this one, because it was just a normal run. 3.5 miles around the neighborhood. It looks like I've moved up my base run to 3.5 miles instead of 3, so that must be a good thing. It was another great run -- about as fast as last week's. And everything felt good. And I finally figured out why it is that I was preferring to do my standard course backwards -- because it turns out that when I do it the "normal" way, there's an incline near the end for over half a mile! Granted, it's not that much... it is still Florida, but it's definitely noticeable.

Oh, and this run? It was the "normal" way.

Missed Opportunity

We were going to go swimming last night, so we brought all our swimming gear. And then there was lightning as we were leaving work. And we didn't have the rest of our workout gear. So we bagged and went home and watched TV. And it was wonderful.

Which brings us to today...

This morning, I got up at 6:00 to go on my (now standard) 3.5 mile run. Lana actually got up 15 minutes later, but somehow, we ended up leaving the house at the same time. She's just more efficient in the morning, I guess. I'm still stumbling around and this morning, trying to find running gear. Yep... it's time to do some laundry. But my nylon shorts loved me today.

We went off on our warmup walk together, but right when it hit five minutes, we split off, and I went to do my "normal" 3.5 mile run. And the stars aligned... and my run felt awesome from the get-go! Usually, my first half-mile is a little slow, but today's first half-mile split was something like 4:19! I was running my .44 miles in 3:31! Yeah, I know those are odd splits to put into this, but dangit, I was happy. What it ended up being was:

4.0 miles (yep, I extended it half a mile again. It just felt sooooo good!)
36:54 -- including walk breaks!
9:11/mile pace -- again, including walk breaks!

Oh, and my last running part? 8:00/mile average pace. I was hoofing it.

Bring on the Run for the Pies!!!!

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!

It's Wednesday, and that means it must be yet another running day. Now, I know (even without looking back over the archives here) that I've had some really rotten runs lately. Well, with perseverance comes goodness... today's run was fantastic! Let me try to set the scene:

On Monday, I got up for my run at 6:30. Of course, I had to actually go through the motions of getting out of bed (which was really hard), and then getting some food and water in my system before running, making sure I knew what I was doing, getting dressed, getting out the door, warming up, running, and cooling down. After all that, I wasn't quite to work as early as I would have liked.

Today, I got up at 6:15. And got out of bed at probably about 6:18. Not too bad... still only had the alarm go off once (although I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to turn the dang thing off for a while). But then I got up and stumbled out to the living room to start the process of getting going. And that's where I was suddenly confronted by the massive pile of cardboard boxes that we've been storing up recently. Well, confronted by the pile... *and* the knowledge that today is trash/recycling day! So, the first thing I got to do in my less-than-awake state was to break down the boxes for recycling and run around the house to make sure all the trash was out the door in time for the trucks, which usually start showing up around 7AM. And then I had to eat (Gu Chocolate Outrage today... yum!), get some water, get dressed, etc. And I was out the door at something like 6:47. Still not bad.

The first half mile was terrible. I did a five minute walk to try to get muscles moving, but they didn't want to be awake any more than I did. But I fought through, and after a mile, I realized I was moving pretty well and getting into a good rhythm. And then, after another half a mile (or so), it happened... I was really moving. And it was almost effortless.

Yes, today was one of those great days we all wait for. Everything was working for me. My legs felt great, my lungs felt great, my energy level was way up there, and the temperature was only low 70s. It was... perfect.

So, the way I've been doing my weekday training runs lately is to run 1/2 mile, then walk 1 minute. After that, I finish out the second 1/2 mile (bringing total run-walk-run to 1 mile) and walk a minute. It seems to be averaging out to be about .06 or .07 miles walking, followed by .42/.43 miles running. And so far, it's been working pretty well. Monday, I was doing OK, but not great... it was something like 5:15 to finish each half mile. Good for a training run, sure. But not magical.

Today... I was finishing in 4:45... and that included the walking! I felt so freakin' good that I tacked an extra 1/2 mile at the end of the run, just because I didn't want to stop. Of course, then I had to get to the whole "going-to-work" thing, but I really didn't want to.

For everyone's entertainment, here is the lap pace chart from MotionBased for this run. It took a couple laps for me to realize I had to hit the button, but I think it gets the point across.

I love days like this.

I love Jacksonville

I absolutely love living here in Jacksonville, FL. Granted, it's a little rough when I realize that I'm going to have to start getting up even earlier to have a chance at running in less than 80 degree weather, but still... this is one great city when it comes to running.

On Saturday morning, I woke up and decided that I didn't want to run in the neighborhood. That's pretty understanding, I think, as I've been running just around the neighborhood for so long, it's just gotten ridiculously boring. I needed a change of pace. So I picked up the MacBook and signed on to MapMyRun, looking for a good spot to run.

What I found was that Jacksonville Beach from 16th St. South to the Neptune Beach border and back is almost exactly five miles (which is, conveniently enough, the distance I was going for). So I got my gear ready, and since it was already 9:30, I made sure to bring a fuel belt full of water and G2 for my hydrating purposes. Yeah, I'm getting smarter. Just don't bet on that continuing. History would be against you.

In any case, I headed out to the beach and went down to 16th South, where there's a good amount of parking. Which was... all.. full. Of course, my brain was slightly working when I realized that I could park anywhere I wanted to on the course, and just run the whole bloody thing, starting and stopping at that point. While this would generally be obvious, I'm sure, to most of you, this was a breakthrough for me. Especially for not even having had coffee. I was proud.

So, I headed up to the massive amounts of parking around the Jacksonville Beach City Hall and found a spot with no problem. I proceeded to sunscreen up (*very* important) and get moving. It started pretty slow, but moved into a pretty good pace. I was doing a 3/1 ratio, mostly because of the heat, but it felt pretty strong. The course I had chosen told me to head up 1st St. , and head back down 2nd St. But that just seemed... boring.

So, instead, when I got up to Seagate Dr. (the first street in Neptune Beach), I took a right instead of a left, and headed onto our beautiful beach.

For the record, let me stress that in no way am I advocating that people start coming to Jacksonville as a tourist destination. We have fewer tourists than probably any place in Florida, and I'm just peachy with that. We have far fewer idiots than the areas around the mouse, or those sun-baked folks in South Florida. But if you want to visit Jacksonville as a runner's destination, I'd love for you to show up, and I'll even show you places to visit.

Our beaches are perfect for running. They are very wide, even at high tide. They are hard-packed sand, which means that although there's much less stress on your ankles and knees, it's still not that much additional effort to propel yourself down the sand. And finally, it's relatively flat, so you don't get the same problems you would see running on the side of a steeply-crowned street. Plus, you get the standard breeze off the ocean, and even the occasional eye candy, no matter what your preferred candy may be. It's a winner.

But more than that, there's also some great runs in other areas of town. We have a race coming up in a couple months called the JDR Bridges 5K (formerly, the Vestcor Bridges 5K), which starts and ends downtown and runs over two of the scenic bridges crossing the St. Johns River. This is the equivalent of hill training in Florida, since it's the best we got, but it's also the first race where I broke 30:00 in a 5K. We have runs that go through beautiful and historical areas of town, such as the Gate River Run, heading through San Marco, or the Ortega River Run, which is a five miler on the other side of the river (which I didn't run, but Lana said it was great). We've got generally quick courses, but we have the oppressive humidity to make it still a challenge. And we've got enough variety that I should be able to keep it from getting boring for a long, long while.

And I've only started to explore.

In case you're curious, this was my five miler on the beach:



Note that, while the map looks like I was running in the water... not so much. I was very much up on the sand. I wish I'd brought a camera. Next time, I promise.

Catching Up

Wow. It's been waaaay too long since I posted, and Lana hasn't even tried to get the blogosphere to yell at me yet. Something must be up. Are y'all getting ready to throw me a surprise party or something?

It's OK. You can tell me.

Fine. I'll make sure to act surprised. But in the meantime, let me mention what all I've been up to, and try to keep it relatively short.

Wednesday, 5/21
Went to my second yoga class, ever. And this one was way different from the first one. The instructor wasn't nearly as much of a hippie chick (hugs were not mandatory on our way out), and the work was much harder! I was hurting for a while after this one. Plus, she kept telling us to stretch our chest and "breathe in the space". Huh? You can't breathe in space. There's no oxygen there. Nutjob yoga teachers...

Oh, and I had a run that morning, too. It sucked. It was hot.

Thursday, 5/22
Nothing at all. It was awesome.

Friday, 5/23
Skipped out of work early and headed to the local bar. Tried some good beer. Figured we would start our weekend of eating terribly off right. Left the bar and headed up to the UVA/FSU baseball game during the ACC Championship Series at the fabled Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville. Ate more. Cursed the powers that be for making college games dry. It's just not right. Don't they know how boring baseball is without beer?

Oh, and I twisted my knee at one point during the work day. Then I rolled my ankle that night in the parking lot.

Saturday, 5/24
Got up and went for a run. It was really hot, but it was only 10AM this time, not noon. Still, it was a great run. And now I'm worried that I have to be hurt to run well. I really hope that isn't the case...

Then, we headed over to my folks' house in Panama City Beach, FL. It's a long, boring drive, but it's always worth it to head out there and see them. This is actually the first time I've been out there during the tourist season, so it was interesting. And they have a local outdoor mall that's recently been finished, and it's pretty cool. Ended up having much beer, and then German food... with a 1-litre Hofbrau Maibock.

Oy.

Sunday, 5/25
Ouch. That was way too much to drink. Got up, went to church, went to breakfast, and ate a *ton*. Then we went to a Cajun festival... do *not* attend a Cajun festival when you are too full to eat anything, and too hungover to appreciate very loud zydeco music. It's a bad combo.

That night, we decided to just eat at the house, because, of *course* we can eat healthy. So we had bacon-wrapped scallops, boiled shrimp, and red beans and rice. Oh, and deviled eggs, just because my dad's deviled eggs are the best ever.

Monday, 5/26
Memorial Day. Got up and went for a run around PCB... or at least from my parents' place to the Wyndham and back. It was hot... I was slow... It was terrible. I ran the full first mile before a walk break, but I ended up on 1/1 ratio because it was so miserable. Bad.

After that, we got to visit the park where Dad volunteers (Camp Helen), and then we headed home. It was a great weekend, but my folks are not diet-friendly. At all.

Tuesday, 5/27
Decided to actually go to the gym and cross-train for once. Rode the bike, did some lifting, and then rode the bike some more. Pretty uneventful, except that I haven't been to the gym in so long, I forgot what weights I use for lifting.

Wednesday, 5/28
Apparently, I should be using less weight than I did on Tuesday. I'm a little sore. Thank God I didn't work my legs, since I've got a run this morning. It was actually nice and cool (only about 70F), so things were feeling pretty good. But I did run a bit out of steam at the end. I really need to do something about my really poor running in the morning. Maybe it's whatever I'm eating, or has something to do with my hydration, or my lack of being totally awake, but there's something going on there.

Thursday, 5/29
Seriously, it's been this long since I posted anything? Wow. You guys must hate me. In any case, I'm sitting at work right now, getting ready to head to the gym for my next round of cross training (i.e., bike and lifting). Today, I'll focus more on legs (no run tomorrow), and hopefully, I won't be in too much pain tomorrow morning.

I'll let you know in another week and a half.

It Didn't Suck

Or, "If You Think My Shorts Are Tight..."

Last night was my first-ever yoga class. I'm not even sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. The teacher was a total hippie, which was interesting. It started with some relaxation, which was a nice way to start the class... some quiet music, the teacher spritzing some supposedly pretty-smelling stuff into the air, and lots of quiet. I almost fell asleep.

I liked that part.

After that, I guess we got into the more stretching part of the day, and this was a bit... difficult. Lana said that I was doing well, but I couldn't help but notice that I was not *nearly* as flexible as most of the people in the room. Yes, it was my first time, but dang! These folks ain't natural!

At this point, I can't say that I have a "favorite" position, but I do have several least favorites. Basically, anything involving my hamstrings is going to be awfully high on the list of "Poses That Suck". It's pretty obvious at this point that my hamstrings, as well as my calves, are very tight.

To go along with that, it's also painfully (and I chose that word carefully) obvious that I really should continue on with yoga. I may try again tomorrow, or it may have to wait a week, but yes, I will go back.

Oh, and thank God there were other guys in the class. That made me feel much better.

Monday Musings

As I was out on my runs on Saturday and this morning, I noticed that I was having a bunch of random thoughts. So, to the best of my recollection, here they are:

• It's true... if you run long enough, you will have bad runs
• And sometimes you'll have some great ones!
• If you run in the morning, it's definitely a good idea to eat something first. Otherwise, your legs just quit on you... or on me, anyway.
  
• Headbands may look really stupid, but they are one honking great idea when it's 85 outside
• Running when it's 85 outside is a really, really bad idea.
  
• Even in North Florida, morning runs are good. Evening runs are good. Noon-time runs are very, very bad.
  
• Even though that was the best run I've had in a while.
  
• Calibrating a Nike+ doesn't really make it entirely accurate. I just made 5% off in the other direction.
  
• I love my Garmin

Basically, I've had a few rough runs in the last few weeks. My legs have just been like jelly, although my Saturday run (at noon... in North Florida) actually felt really good!

I did roughly 3.5 miles on Saturday (my first "long" run of marathon training), and about 3 miles this morning. I can tell you that 85 degrees and sunny seems to treat me better than not eating anything at all and having half a glass of water. Today's run was rough. I did my first mile in a good pace, and then I just completely ran out of energy. My legs were heavy and tight.

So, in an effort to at least get the tightness out of them, I'm braving new experiences... I'm going to my first yoga class tonight with the wife. I am not flexible and I have no balance, but hopefully I'll at least be able to have some fun with it.

Go Red For Women 5K Race Report (Finally)

OK, it took almost two weeks, and a little bit of berating from the wife, but here it is, as best as I can remember:

It was a gorgeous Saturday morning in Central Florida as roughly 1600 women and 160 fellas gathered together to do something to help women, or celebrate women and running, or something like that. I'm sure it was a good cause. Quite honestly, though, I really just signed up for a few very important reasons:

• It's a 5K with a medal. How often does that happen?
  
• It's the last year they are running it, so last chance for a 5K. With a medal.
  
• My wife was already signed up for the 15K the next day. Despite the fact that my first race back from injury was a 15K, I just don't think I'm quite to a point where I'm ready to go that far yet. Even for a medal.
  
• And, hey, it's yet another excuse to get down to Disney.
  

But that's neither here nor there. Let's start at the beginning.

As with any other Disney race, it started with waking up way too early for civilized folks. Luckily, this was just a 5K, so it didn't start until 7:00AM, but we still had to be there before 6:45 to pick up my race packet. I didn't know at the time how much I would appreciate having that much time to sleep in (and we'll see more if holo wahini ever posts her race report -- sure, she wrote a little bit, but not an actual report), but again, I digress. We woke up dark and early at something like 5:45 AM, after which I spent a few minutes blindly stumbling around, muttering a bit, and attempting to put on running clothes. We grabbed a quick snack and got out of the hotel with lots of time to spare.

...which means we got there really early. And there wasn't nearly the lines I was expecting to pick up race packets. I guess most folks were either locals that were able to pick them up the day before, or people who had come from out of town and had time to pick them up the day before. Either way, I got my number, I got my shirt, I got my chip, and I was ready to go.

One side note -- the wahini did get my shirt, because the web site had said that it would be a women's shirt. From what I could tell, it looked like a plain ol' shirt to me. But I'd already signed up with her size, so, whatcha gonna do?

So there I was at the starting gate, putting myself toward the front of the 9:00 - 11:00 pace group. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the space that we were given (not packed in like sardines just yet), and the fact that there wern't all that many people there (for a Disney race), but I got to wander around a bit, warm up a little, and do some people watching. Mostly, it was nice to watch the sun rise...


At roughly 7:00, the far-too-perky-for-that-time-of-the-morning race hosts brought Minnie herself up to start us off on the race, but I think that either her recording broke, or she just didn't like us very much, because when one of them asked "Isn't this a great crowd?", she just stood there.

Awkward...

But then we counted down, and were off like a flash into the wilds of... the Imagination parking lot at Epcot. Yes, because the park is only so big, the first mile or so is run through parking lots, with cones set up to show the course. Like any other race, it was crowded at first, and you had to duck and move to get around people, but eventually, it did thin out. And honestly, having the course start out through the parking lot wasn't bad. At the very least, if you had to step outside the course to avoid a crash, you weren't having to step up onto a curb, a median, or some uneven ground. My knees thanked me for that. But when I finally got a chance to look at the Garmin, I realized that I may be going a little too fast: 8:17. Yeah, I might want to slow that down a bit. So I pulled back a little bit, just to make sure I had enough gas for the second mile, let alone the third. I do also have to make a mention of seeing the cutest little Minnie:


But we went around the parking lot, into a cast member parking lot, and got to mile marker 1 right around the back of Test Track. Of course, since this is one of our favorite rides, I had to try to get a picture of it, too... but on the run. There was no stopping for me at this point... I made the first mile in 8:42!


From there, we went around the corner, hit the first water stop (on both sides of the course -- I love it when they do that), and ran past what I think was the Universe of Energy pavilion, and out to Epcot proper, complete with giant golf ball. From there, it's just a simple run up and around, and...

OUCH!!!!

What the hell? All of a sudden, on the slightest of inclines, my left calf started hurting like crazy! I hadn't heard a pop or a snap, or anything, but my calf just did not want to run any farther. Of course, I did. And I'm more stubborn. So, against all sanity, I decided to keep going. It's a character flaw. But I did slow down a little, and I eased up a bit to where it wasn't hurting terribly bad. And as I kept going, it kept loosening up and feeling better. So on I went, past the various beach-themed topiaries (it was during the Flower and Garden Festival), past the fountains, and up towards the World Showcase.

Once I got up to the various countries, my leg was feeling... OK. Not great, but good enough that I could still run on it. So run, I did. There wasn't much going on in the countries, but I do want to point out a couple things. First, I actually was able to get a pretty decent picture of Norway while running:


And secondly, they very nicely had the torches lit around the water:


At some point in there, we also crossed mile marker 2. And believe it or not, I was still going strong. I must have picked back up before getting hurt, because my second mile came in at 8:42! All of a sudden, I'm thinking to myself that it was possible for me to come close to last week's time... as long as I don't walk. In the last race, I took a couple walk breaks in the third mile, and dangit, I wasn't going to let that happen again -- injury or no!

Of course, from there, it was pretty boring... I was just focused mostly on running a good race, making sure my leg was still attached and feeling OK (hey, I may be stubborn, but I ain't stupid), and trying to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And after heading out of the park, I was on my way. The Garmin was still showing that I was doing remarkably well -- apparently, I did my third mile in 8:42, also! It was amazing how evenly paced it was. I've never run a race like that before -- and that was even while hurting for half the race. But I still had .1 miles to go... and it was time for the kick. And others around me were picking it up, too. I managed to pass a few people, but there was this one really tenacious woman that I just couldn't shake... and she actually passed me at the end. But still... 26:48! WOO HOO!!!!

Oh, and holo wahini was waiting for me at the end. I heard her cheering and gave a little wave as I was hitting the finish line. And then I had to wend my way through the chute, get my medal, Powerade, banana, and blueberry muffin thingy, and then go try to find my wife in the crowd. So, I started heading over to where I had last seen her. And... no wife. Thoughts of the Gate River Run started flashing through my head again, but this time, we had phones. I gave her a call, and she mentioned that Leana had finished shortly after I did, and that she was going to try to meet up with her, which we eventually did, and she's just about the nicest person ever. We also got to meet her folks, who ran the race with her. Of course, we had to get the obligatory photo:


Naturally, after standing around and chatting for a while, Leana went off with her folks to clean up and attack the day, and we went on to breakfast... and my leg had tightened up so badly that I could barely walk! So, there was one more stop for the day, and I know Lana would never let me live it down if I didn't post this photo, too:


Yes, that's me in the medical tent, getting checked out. It's fun having multiple knee braces, and trying to figure out why my leg doesn't want to work anymore. But, I just pulled it, and he gave me an ice pack (and I was very careful not to get frostbite!), and we went on our way. To make a long story slightly less long, it hurt for most of the day, but it did start relaxing in the late afternoon, and by dinnertime, it wasn't that bad at all. It's still a little tight, but I've been running twice more without a problem, so I'm just keeping track of it, massaging and stretching, and trying to take it easy for a little bit. Two PR's in a week and a half was a lot of work... especially when the improvement was almost a full minute! But I got some good rest in, and now we are starting the actual training for the Las Vegas Marathon. And to keep us motivated, we actually signed up a couple days ago. We're in it. And it's gonna be great!

BTW, all the pictures are available from Flickr.

FYI, here is the course from MapMyRun:

A Weekend Full of PR's!

Yes, my wife and I both got PR's this weekend at the Minnie Marathon Weekend in Disney! I ran the 5K, and shattered my previous best:

26:48

I'm too tired to do the full race report now, but suffice to say, I'm thrilled!

Nike+ SportBand Review

For a couple days, we'd been planning on going for a run last night. Unfortunately, when I got home, I was greeted with the sight of a sleeping wife on the couch. Yeah, she slacked out, but she did look awfully cute, too. So, I berated her a little bit, put new Yankz shoelaces in my running shoes, and got ready to head out the door. I figured that after my performance last Thursday, I should go ahead and try to do another 5k or thereabouts, and see how well I can do, and how long I can go without a walk break. So, I put on my Garmin and my Nike+ and headed out the door.

For starters, I should mention the "install" process. Everything works remarkably similarly to the Nike+iPod setup -- the system comes with a small sensor that supposedly gets installed into the sole of a Nike shoe. Of course, I just recently got a pair of Brooks shoes, and I'm really not a fan of Nike, but luckily, Lana had previously gotten a little pocket for the sensor that attaches to the laces using Velcro, so I was still able to go ahead with my run.

I wanted to make sure that I had the running part of the whole thing properly timed out, so I left the Garmin waiting to start until my warmup was complete, but I did start the Nike+ for the warmup. To sync, you simply hold the big button down for three seconds, after which, it will attempt to find your shoe sensor. It will ask you to walk around until it can find it. Also, if there are multiple sensors around (such as at the start of a race), you may have to walk away from the group to sync up the sensor and the SportBand. Once you sync the system, you just press the button to start, and press the button again to stop. Finally, you can end the run completely by holding the button down for another three seconds. It's pretty simple, even if it took me a couple days to completely realize what to do. But that's because I'm an engineer, and I don't read instructions.

So, I completed my warmup. According to the Nike+, I did roughly .2 miles in 5 minutes of walking. When I completed the warmup, I started the Garmin, and proceeded to watch both for the next 3.1 miles.

For starters, let me mention that I have not calibrated the Nike+, and it showed. It was generally off by a bit -- at some points, the Garmin was showing my pace at 9:45, and the Nike+ was showing at 13:00! But most of the time, they were both pretty close to each other. From what I could tell, it seemed to be somewhat based on the length of my stride, and as I was running, I actually used that to note that I did need to shorten my stride. So in that, it actually helped. And I'm sure this will be corrected when I decide to calibrate the thing.

As for the rest, I like this product. The connectors seem to be solid, with snap-like connectors both to hold the band on your wrist, and to hold the module into the band. However, the connectors are deep enough to ensure that they will not accidentally become undone, but not so deep as to cut into your wrist at any time. When not running, you can use the connector as a simple watch (showing time only). When you are running, you can set it to show you current distance, current pace, time, or calories burned (if you entered your weight into your Nike+ profile).

As far as the online environment goes, I'm pretty sure that has been talked about more times, and significantly better than I ever could. But if you haven't seen it, I recommend just checking it out at http://www.nikeplus.com. It's well worth the time, and the online community was one of the major reasons that I made this purchase. Well, that and the upcoming rainy season in Florida, which will make me run inside several times.

So, let's move on to things that I am not particularly fond of. The display has no backlight, so it is nigh upon impossible to see in dim light. I *love* that the 'face' of the watch is removable and plugs directly into your USB port for updating, but the fact that the face is curved does make it difficult to plug into a slim laptop when it's sitting on a table. The only time that this is a problem is when you need to leave it plugged in to charge. Of course, I understand that this is so that it fits around your wrist better -- and I certainly don't fault them that. It's just something to be aware of. Finally, as a geek, I have to point out that the Nike+ Utility (no iTunes requirement) is only supported on Windows and OSX, so if you're a Linux user, I guess you're out of luck for now.

Other than that, I absolutely love the thing. It's light, it's comfortable, and it's small. For the time being, I'm still going to wear my Garmin anytime I'm running outside, but when the Nike+ is calibrated, I could see a time where I cease wearing the Garmin for my more standard runs around the neighborhood. Until that time, I'll be happily wearing both, and looking like the absolute gadget geek that I am.

Oh, and BTW, I was able to complete the 5K in under half an hour (~29:45), and without taking any walk breaks. And I felt pretty good about that.

On to tomorrow's Go Red For Women 5K!

Thursday Night PR!

Yes, last night's 5K was a great run, and I did get a PR. Not only that, but it was just a fun race.

You see, last night's run was the CitiStreet Corporate 5K, and a part of that run is that teams from different companies around the First Coast would run and compete against each other. Now, those of you that know me also know that I work for a computer company, and we spend the vast majority of our days sitting at a desk, exercising nothing but our fingers. Well, I was able to get a team of nine people from my company together to run the race. Some had run before, most had not, and some were just walking to support a good cause (Girls on the Run). But the responses I heard last night and today were almost entirely positive, and a few of the folks from last night are even talking about continuing to run, and even entering upcoming races!

Now, of course I knew this would happen, but it still feels pretty good to help get other people hooked on this running thing. That way, I won't be the only nut in the office.

In any case, back to the run. It was a nice flat course, around the Jacksonville Municipal Stadium and Veterans Memorial Arena. The course was kinda strangely wrapped around on itself, but it ended up being very easy to follow, and with surprisingly few sharp turns.

During training, I'd been having a friendly competition with one of the guys in the office on our training times. He was doing mostly treadmill work, but he was also a high school triathlete, and he's in pretty good shape. I was not a triathlete (although I was a swimmer in high school), and I'm still not in pretty good shape (although I'm getting better). Along the training, we were doing rougly 10 minute miles each. Not bad, especially since I'm still trying to get my runner's legs back. In training, I had been doing mostly 5/1 run/walk intervals. But I am competitive.

So, the gun goes off, and after about 30 seconds, we get to the starting line, and he takes off like a bat out of hell! Now, there's no way I'm going to let him completely run away from me, so I pick up the pace a little, thinking that I'd catch up with him, remind him that there are, in fact, 3 miles to run after that first tenth. Unfortunately, it took a little longer than a tenth of a mile to catch him -- I finally did at about .4 miles in, and at one point, I looked at the Garmin, and saw that I was running a 7:35 pace. Now, some of the folks in the RBF can keep that pace going for 3.1 miles. I'm not one of them. So I slowed down (quite a bit), and we both ran along until about the first mile mark. Now, at this point, I'm still feeling really good, despite the fact that I have yet to take a walk break. So, I just kept running. And at some point right around there, I turned around, and my buddy was no longer with me.

Ah, the joys that training can bring...

So I just kept on running. At mile 1, the split clock read just about 9:00. My Garmin read 8:34. At mile 2, the Garmin said something just short of 18 minutes. Well, at that point, I decided that with 12 minutes to finish before my goal time (30 minutes), I might as well take a little break. I'm not sure at this point if that was really a good idea, because I only walked for about 15 seconds and I could just feel the lactic acid performing a blitzkrieg assault on my thighs. I ran again, and then took another walk break around the 2.5 mile mark, mostly because the wind was picking up.

Coming around the next corner, though, I saw a bunch of people hopping up on the sidewalk, but I just couldn't bring myself to do that... I had to stay on the road and make sure to go around the sign directing us to the right. I don't know why, it's just a pet peeve of mine to see people running around the other side of the sign. I know it's not *that* much of a difference, but it irks me. Oh, well... to each their own.

Coming up on three miles, I see the clock reading 27:00. Holy crap! I can run a tenth of a mile in a minute, and until now, my PR was 29:03 at last year's Vestcor Bridge Run. So, I put the spurs to it... as much as I could at that point, anyway, and I cross the line at:

28:20 Gun time!

Which, according to the Garmin, was 27:47.

The unfortunate part of this is that there were no timing chips, so now I have to do it all again next week at Disney. Luckily, that's a pretty flat run, too.

But for now, let's do the happy dance for me!

(Oh, and yes, I still have a couple other posts to get to... the Nike+ review will come shortly)

New Toy!!

I guess I'm one of the first to get the new Nike+ SportBand. As you can tell from the new widget on the sidebar, I've tested it out by running all the way from my house to the end of the cul-de-sac. I know... I'm a rock star. But so far, I think this is going to be great, and it'll do wonders for trying to track mileage and performance when running indoors, like when it gets too hot or there are too many hurricanes around for outdoor running.

A full review will come after running in my 5K tomorrow.

Weekend Running

Saturday was absolutely beautiful here in North Florida... but a tad warm (about 87 degrees). And with my folks coming into town, both Lana and I decided that the time before they showed up could be much better spent getting the house in order. And hitting the driving range -- which was fun, but showed that any game I had last year (which was none) has completely gone away. It may even be negative now. I kept finding balls on the ground behind me... I may have been hitting backwards without even noticing it.

Sunday, we woke up bright and early and ready to run, and found out -- after we had gotten ready, mind you -- that it was pouring down rain. And it continued to pour down rain all morning. So, we headed off to church, and then off to brunch, at which point the rain had pretty much stopped. The only problem is that when my folks come to visit, well, we don't starve. So, a food coma and some watching of the Masters later, we finally got started running.

4.03 miles in 41:00. I was hoping to keep it below 10:00/mi, but it wasn't all *that* bad.

I don't know if I mentioned it earlier, but we're about to go on a cruise to Key West and Cozumel, leaving Miami on Thursday. I'm definitely bringing running gear, and would love to go for a run in Cozumel, but I'm also going to bring the Garmin and make sure to wear it as I'm running around the track in the boat... and to see if it works plotting the running course in MapMyRun. That should be interesting.

But mostly, I just can't wait for the cruise.

Lana said it all

If you read my lovely wife's blog, you already know this. If not...

We got into the Peachtree 10K! Woo hoo!

At least now I know what my 4th of July plans are going to be.

Of course, Lana posted more here. Check it out!

A good run, and a quick endorsement

That last post was pretty short, eh? Well, there's a reason for that. I posted it over the phone, while in my Jeep, on the way back from my run. Text messaging? Heck, no! That's not nearly high-tech enough for the likes of me. No, this came from Jott. Jott is a service that will take voice calls and transcribe them into emails, text messages, and even blog posts and twitter updates. They even have an interface to the calendar I use (30 boxes). It's not perfect, but it's pretty slick for sending short messages out without being one of those jackasses that try to text and drive at the same time. Oh, and best of all? It's free. Of course, that means they won't be giving me anything special for this fantastic review, but hey, the thing just plain works.

Anyway, the run yesterday was great! Of course, I'm running in a new area of town (near my new gym), and I don't know the area very well yet, so I was putting potential routes into MapMyRun and I thought I had found a really good one -- except that I got there and it was a gated community, so I had to turn around, and get back to the gym to do the same route I did last week. For some reason, though, this week just felt much better!

I was running a 5/1 interval, since it gave me so much trouble last week, but things were just... happy. I wasn't slowing down at the end of the running period, and my walking phase was nice and relaxed, but going at a good clip. Obviously, I'm still not back to where I was before my multitude of injuries, but still... making good progress.

I promise my next post won't have nearly so many links in it.

3.13 miles in 30 minutes...

3.13 miles in 30 minutes and 50 seconds, more to follow. listen

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Brooks Review (and some other stuff, too)

OK, I've been a bad blogger. I went out and got new shoes, ran in them, and never even posted about them.

The verdict:

Love them.

That's not to say that the Saucony shoes I had before are bad... maybe it's just the running with the orthotics in that make those so nasty. But the Brooks seem to have more stability in them. I ran about 3.5 on Monday with the Brooks (and the new knee brace, socks, shorts, and shirt... I was looking like it was the first day of school), and they ran great. The support was fantastic, the cushioning was unbelievable, and the fit was spectacular... even in the 12's.

So, since the last entry, I did 3.5 on Monday at a 4/1 interval, and 3.4 on Wednesday at a 5/1 interval. Wednesday was pretty dang hot down here, and I was soaked through by the time I finished the run, but it felt pretty good. I did take a wrong turn at one point, and I was slowing down more than I wanted to at the end of the 5 minutes, so I think I'll be staying at that pace for a while, just to work on the endurance necessary to keep it there. I figure that if I can build myself up to the point where I can average about 9:30 in the running part, I'll be doing pretty well for the 24th.

Yes, there's a race on a Thursday... it's the Citistreet Corporate 5k, and I'm trying to get lots of my work folks to discover the wonder of running. So far, I've got one guy that'll be a good competition (he'll probably kick my butt, but you never know), a couple who say they're walking, one who is going to sign up for a 5k "mosey", one who rides his bike to the neighbor's house, and two that are saying they're going to need somebody holding up a jelly doughnut for them to follow. Oh, and one that registered to help out the charity (Girls on the Run), but may not actually do any walking or running. But he may show up for the post-party with "free" beer.

Yep, these are the folks I work with. Hopefully, at least one or two of them will get the bug after they see what a race environment is like. I managed to successfully avoid ever wanting to run in a race until I actually did it once... and now look at me! I'm a freakin' running blogger!

So, on on to this weekend and (hopefully) getting in the pool for some cross training.

New Shoes

Over the weekend, I went out to our local running store, 1st Place Sports in Jacksonville Beach, and picked me up a few items:

• New socks (specially made for the overpronator, whatever that means)
• A knee wrap... my left knee has been giving me some problems lately, so I'm going to test this out this eventing.
  
• NEW SHOES!!!

I love getting new shoes. There's all the excitement that this one won't have the shortcomings of my previous shoes... there's still lots of life left in them, so I'm not retiring the old shoes just yet, but they have so much room in the toe box that my feet slide around too much. So, the new shoes are:

Brooks Adrenaline GTS 8

And, oddly enough, they look *just* like the picture in the link above.

The interesting part is that I've been wearing size 10.5 - 11 for years now. And when the very helpful staff measured my feet, they came out at 11.5. And what's even stranger than that, when I tried on the 11.5 shoes, they were too tight -- I had to move up to 12! And that wasn't just the Brooks -- that was with New Balance and Saucony, too.

I wonder if I'm melting into my feet or something.

But, in any case, I have wonderful new shoes that are just itching to be tested -- so I'm going to do that tonight! Stay tuned for the results of my first run.

This just in: Treadmills are boring!

Honestly, I feel really bad for the folks up in the frozen north that have to spend most of the winter running on silly little machines while not actually going anywhere.

Here's the setup: As you know from my previous posts, I'm just coming off a severe lack of running and need to get back into shape. I was supposed to run on Monday, but an influx of green beer kept that from happening. So I needed to get out and run again yesterday at some point. However, North Florida was supposedly expecting some tremendous rain, along with winds rivaling those of the Gate River Run (see previous posts for the recap of that experience).

Given that sort of weather, I decided that it would be a whole lot easier to just go to the gym and run indoors. I jumped on the treadmill (for the first time in even more than five months) and set it to warm up. I selected a simple 5k loop program, and set the incline at 2%. All well and good. After a few minutes of warm-up, I kicked the speed up to a nice, relaxed 6mph (10:00 mile) and settled in for a 2/1 run/walk ratio.

And it killed me. I don't know what it is, but that dang treadmill just really hurts! When I have no problem cruising along outside at anywhere between 8:30 and 9:30 during a 1/1 training run this past weekend, I was struggling like hell to keep up with a 10:00 mile on a stupid little rolling rubber mat. Of course, it doesn't help any that there's no scenery, and no downhill stretches, but dang, that's just depressing!

Luckily, we're in the part of the year where the running is best around here -- daylight saving time has kicked in, but the weather isn't too hot. Hopefully, I'll get a lot of good *outside* runs in while this keeps up.

But I still hate the treadmill.

Round's a shape...

Today was my first training run since October. Since my new target marathon isn't until December, I'm definitely not in full-blown training mode for that yet (plus, I've been sitting on my butt for a few months, so not quite ready to get up to that kind of running yet), so today was basically just trying to see what I can do.

The answer is... "not much".

Ironically, the 15K last weekend seemed to me to be a bit easier than today's slightly-more-than-2.5 mile run. I know I get swept up in competition, and I always do better when running with other people, but dangit, Lana was doing an 11 mile run today, and I am just not ready for that yet. Of course, she's running a half marathon in a couple weeks, so she should be pretty good for that distance. But I digress.

If you want to learn more about Lana and her running exploits, check out her blog, holo lkaiki.

Now, back to me. She was going off on her 11 mile run (yes, I know I said "back to me", and then started talking about Lana again, but it's all setup to my story), and I decided to take this time not to sleep, but to get up and do my own run. I've spent the entire last week recovering, and I'm starting to feel pretty good, so I thought going out for a quick jog through the neighborhood would be a good way to kill some time. And it was. But my running definitely wasn't feeling quite like it did back in October.

Within the first mile, I was *tired*. Now, since this is my first training run back, I wanted to take it nice and easy, so I was doing a 1/1 run/walk ratio. And I was still *tired*. And i was doing about a 12-minute mile. That was odd, for starters, but I guess it's to be expected. I do need to get back into some semblance of shape.

The other thing to note is that this past week, my hip has been bothering me a bit. Not a lot, just a bit. I've been having some intermittent sacroiliac pain, but that seems to have pretty much gone away, and I've been having a little bit of pain in my right hip, most of which I just attribute to no work, having a strange stride as I try to overcompensate, and the fact that I'm not exactly a svelte runner. That being said, it felt a little tight today, but it didn't hurt, so that's a good thing!

And there's one other thing to note. As I was in the middle of the second mile, I happened to catch a glimpse of my shadow. After first thinking, "Dang, that's a good-looking shadow," I noticed that I was bouncing up and down more than I remember myself doing back in the day. I'm pretty sure if I was doing that over the course of the 15k, with my lack of svelte-ness pounding on my hip, knees, and ankles, that it could lead to some of the pain I was feeling over the last week. So I'm going to be working on correcting that and trying to run, instead of just bouncing.

But that's the story of my first run. It was short, flat, and dry. Oh, and it's about 75 right now, according to WeatherBug, so it was a little warm, too. But it didn't hurt.

I'm back, baby!

2008 Gate River Run Recap Part II

"You don't train for a 15k, you just do it."
...with apologies to Barney Stinson and the writers of How I Met Your Mother

Greetings, faithful readers! When we left off, Lana had just found me in the crush of people running the Gate River Run. I swear, the girl has eyes like an eagle! And I wasn't even wearing my big orange shirt anymore... as it turns out, running == warm, even when it's cold and blowing outside. But that's another story. As it is, I suddenly had a running buddy. Of course, at this point, the lack of training was starting to catch up to me, and we decided to be walking buddies for a little while. But not very long... Lana was on a mission, so she left me and my walking ways after just a couple twists and turns.

Of course, at this point, we're in the neighborhoods of San Marco, and one of the greatest things about this race is the community support. People come out of their houses and make little parties... they sit out on their lawns and have breakfast, cheer, and occasionally even hand out water or oranges to the runners. This is also where we started seeing more of the bands that the race organizers set up along the course... I heard it was 10 bands on the course, and I believe it! But, with all these people cheering and hootin' and hollerin', I started getting a little excited. And there was this one incredibly encouraging group that somehow encouraged me to sprint. And, never being one to deny my fans, I did so. What I didn't know at the time was that during this heads-down sprint of at least 20 yards, I somehow passed Lana.

Following this, we continued through neighborhood, and up Hendricks until we turned into another neighborhood. We were coming up on mile 5, and around this point, I started looking for Lana. She had left me behind, after all, and I *should* be catching up to her by now, right? See above, re: I didn't know at the time. I actually spent the rest of the race looking for her at just about every chance I could. That'll teach me to sprint in a 15k.

In any case, we were running by a park where I came upon... another band! I don't even remember which one it was (sorry, guys), but what I do remember is that there were smoothie cups littering the ground, which stuck out quite a bit from the standard paper Wendy's cups that the water stops had. Somewhere, somebody had set up a smoothie stop... and I missed it! Now, if that ain't encouragement for improving next year, I don't know what is!

Of note, at this point, I also noticed that my camera died. We lost the charger somewhere in the house, but I thought I still had enough juice. Guess not.

From there, we ran up Atlantic for a little bit, and then into historic Saint Nicholas. At least, that's what the sign read. To be honest, I've never been into this area, but it seemed nice. The people were friendly... to the point that one of them gave out a beer! Of course, it was the guy running in front of me that actually grabbed it, but more power to him. He was faster... that day. Further on, there was even a group of folks blasting 80's music out of their house and dressed in vintage hair band gear. Best laugh I had on the course that day, guys. Around that point, I definitely needed it.

Why, you ask? Well, one of the other treats of running through St. Nicholas is that as we headed along Nicholson Road, we could catch glimpses of the future. Off to our left was that torture device we had been hearing of all year, and been dreading all morning... the Hart Bridge. It was just barely peeking out, mocking us as we struggled along. I refused to fall into fear, and I rose up and challenged it! "Not today, bridge", I huffed. "I'm looking forward to beating you!"

If only I knew.

Once we got back out onto Atlantic, things were looking up. The wind that had been beating us down all day was suddenly at our backs. I took this opportunity to run as much as I could... my mantra became "Run while it's flat". And that I did. But it was not to last... this occasion was cut short after about half a mile by... it.


It doesn't look like much from afar, and I really wish I had some pictures from going up the bridge, but it didn't disappoint. Honestly, I think that if it hadn't been for the wind, I think it wouldn't have been that bad. Now, that's not to say that I would have been dancing up the span, but really, it was just a big, long, hill.

If it hadn't been for the wind.

The light breeze that had been guiding our way so far suddenly turned into a tempest, in Florida, would normally have a name. The news reports that I saw was claiming 40mph winds, but I really think it must have been even faster than that. People were honestly hunkering down and fighting through the wind! Every now and then (twice, I think, as I was going over), the wind would die down, and everyone would suddenly fall about two feet to the left as they didn't have to struggle anymore. But don't worry, the wind always came back immediately.

And once I reached the top (finally), I looked at the Garmin. According to it, I had about a mile left, and I was at 1:47. Oh, my God... I actually have a chance to break two hours! After not training... at all! I couldn't believe it! And that's when it happened. The fuel hit the fire. And I was running! I ran all the way down the bridge. I had to stop for a second since my shoes became untied, but I tied them really quickly (some tme, I'll have to explain how I tie shoes), and got right back to running... and it hurt. As I was heading down the ramp, I just couldn't run any more. I had to walk, but I was coming up on the stadium... and the finish! So, ok... I'll just walk for a second. After all, I suddenly had a time to beat! So I walked. But not for very long.

As I came up on the stadium, the emotion just took care of me, and I just had to run for all it was worth. I screamed through the tunnel (passing several people as I went), and burst onto the field! And there were people in the stands. Still! After two hours, people were still watching the scrubs like me finish. There was cheering, and there was the finish line on the Jumbotron. But I still had to finish. Now, let's see... when I crossed the start, they told me it was seven mintues in, so if the clock says anything less than 2:07, I should be OK, right? I look up, and...

2:05

SPRINT!!!!

And then it was done. It actually ticked over to 2:06 before I crossed, but my official chip time was 1:58:52. I did it!

And then I realized what kind of idiots we were. Here I was, in a crowd of 12,000 people, with absolutely no plan for meeting up with the folks that I showed up with. If you look hard at the MapMyRun course, you'll notice that I didn't turn my Garmin off for a while, and it kept the track running as I wandered around the stadium, looking for anyone. And wouldn't you know it, that eagle-eyed wife of mine found me again! She's good. Of course, we still had two more people to find, and no phones. We managed to wander back to the car and wait... and that's when Dar showed up. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. And pulled out a lawn chair. And a yoga mat. And a hammock (seriously), and laid out in the cold wind and long sleeves and sweatpants, and waited. Finally, we got a call from our long lost fourth member that she was able to get a ride back to the house from someone else, but by this point, we had already missed the afterparty, and Lana missed her massage.

Oh, well... if it were perfect, there wouldn't be any reason to do it next year.

Here's to next year!!!