Ooooh, that smarts!

Sunday morning, my lovely wife and I decided that we were going to go for a nice walk on the beach. It was before 10, and it seemed like such a nice day, so we headed to our local coffee house and picked up some drinks and then headed off to the beach. It was supposed to be a nice stroll. It ended up being a death march.

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but at one point, we realized that we'd been walking for a really long time. LW asked me if we were going to be walking all the way to the Sea Turtle (a local hotel), and we decided that it seemed like a good idea. We were very wrong. As it turns out, the total length of our nice beach stroll was 6.4 miles. Don't get me wrong -- that would have been great, if we had been prepared for it.

Since we weren't expecting to go for such a long stroll, we hadn't slathered ourselves in sunscreen. And we weren't wearing good shoes. Or good clothes. And we ended up finishing after noon, when the midday Florida sun was beating down on us horrendously. We got burnt. To a crisp. And it hurts. Happily, I was wearing a shirt the whole time. So now I'm just a redneck.

Granted, we live in Florida. It wasn't the first time, and it sure won't be the last.

Moving on, LW wants to learn how to swim better. Given that I was a competitive swimmer in my youth (from when I was 7 to shortly before going to college), she turned to me to be her coach. Luckily, she doesn't have a bad stroke at all... just some tuning is necessary. Unfortunately, I don't remember all that many drills to get that tuning done. And even more unfortunately, she seems to have hurt her shoulder over the weekend, which very much affected her pool time.

Now, since her shoulder is hurt, she's taking it easy. And I am very happy about that. Mostly so that she can have a chance to heal and make sure she doesn't make it worse. Of course, there's a side benefit in that I didn't have to get up at 5:00 this morning to go to the gym. Instead, I woke up at 6:30 and dragged myself out the door. Some things got in the way of my time, so I had to cut my workout short... I just did the 10 minute cardio at the beginning, lifting for about half an hour, and then stretching (well, I threw the basketball for about five minutes, but not well). That got me to work a little after 9. Which means that I still have to get up early. Sigh.

Disappointing. But I know I can do it.

Now I just wish my neck would stop hurting.

Another beautiful Saturday morning

This morning, I decided to try another route. I've actually run it before, and it's pretty close to 5K length, but I took a couple wrong turns the last time, which made that run more like 3.5 miles. Well, I did it again. Not so bad as last time, but I took a wrong turn again and turned it into 3.3 miles.

I also changed some things up for this morning. I was thinking that it's been a while since I actually ran a complete mile, so I decided to give it a try. I ran the first mile in just about 10 minutes (I don't know what the exact split is -- I obviously didn't know the route well enough).

Still, it felt pretty good. The first mile was fine... and I was taking it pretty easy the whole time. After the first mile, I switched back to a 3 minute run/1 minute walk trek. However, by the time the third mile came along, I was getting pretty tired, and I'm starting to notice that when I get tired, my form definitely starts to suffer. I start running much heavier and flatter. I'm trying to make sure to work on that -- anyone have any suggestions?

Facing the day, pre-dawn

Yesterday, I was under the impression that I would have to wake up at 4:45AM to get to the gym in time for my lovely wife to make it to power-body-pump-flow-whatever class at 5:45. But last night, the plans changed. She decided that she would much rather do the cycling class that starts at 6:00.

That was the sweetest thing I've ever heard.

I know I've harped on the early morning thing before, and I know I will again, but I just have to say that there is a huge difference in those 15 minutes. 5:00 is reasonable. It's early, but it shows dedication. Before 5:00 -- even at 4:45 -- is insane. That's just gone over the edge.

"When did you get up?"
"Oh, I got up at five this morning."
"Wow... that's early. You must be doing great in your training!"

As opposed to:
"Before five."
"Dude... you're insane. Don't come around me anymore. You're not welcome here. "

See? Those just sound like natural conversations to me.

Now... this isn't to say that I'll never get up at 4:45. If my lovely wife wants to go to whatever random class is at 5:45, I will naturally support that. But I'll complain the whole time. And you'll hear about it.

Oh, and today's workout? Not too bad. 10 minutes on the elliptical, a trip around the weight stations (which felt pretty good), and then 15 minutes on the stairmaster (although not a StairMaster(TM)... it's from TechnoGym). That kinda hurt, but I wanted to change things up a bit -- the elliptical gets boring when that's all you do.

For this weekend, I'm looking at running again tomorrow (hopefully a different route... I'll tell all about it), and then probably swimming on Sunday. I'm excited about that... I used to be a competitive swimmer, so I love getting back to the pool. Plus, my wife wants me to coach her a bit to help her stroke along. Should be fun!

Oops

Thanks to everyone for their well wishes on the 5k yesterday. However, you know how plans sometimes go awry? Well... yeah. That happened.

The plan was to go to the pub crawl for just a little while. My lovely wife was going to come out a couple hours later, hang out for an hour or so, and then we would head home, ready to relax and get up early for the run.

In actuality, she arrived about 45 minutes after we started and said, "Do you want to split a pitcher?" Now, I've never been able to say "no" to her... especially when I've already been drinking and she wants to offer me more sweet, sweet beer. Then there was an issue where we couldn't go walking around the street with full beers, so we had to chug them to catch up with everyone else. It's a beach town on the 3rd of July -- how come we can't carry beer outside? Sigh.

So, I ended up getting home at about 2:30 in the morning, and we slept right through the race. I kinda figured that might happen, but not in so spectacular a fashion.

But they say that the only real mistakes are the ones you don't learn from. Now I know the truth... no pub crawls the night before a race. I'll get my carbo loading done in some other fashion from now on. But definitely not with so much beer. I hear pasta is good. Or potatoes. Maybe that would be a better way to spend the night before.

So, I don't have a time to report from the race. I did, however, get up and ran my three-loop trip around the neighborhood this morning. And it was hot. And it was humid. And my legs were dragging something fierce. For once, my lungs were feeling mostly OK, but my legs just weren't working past the first mile.

2.9 miles / 33:13 == 11:27 pace.

Oh, well... I know I'll have good days and bad days and going half mad days (any Buffett fans out there?), and today was pretty much expected to be a bad day. Tomorrow, we attempt to get up at 4:45 in the morning to get to the gym on time. But that shouldn't be that bad... we're not going out for beer tonight.

Next race: Vestcor 5K Bridges Run on July 21. And this one, I'm actually going to run.

Oh, boy

Yesterday, I found out that I screwed up at work. It ended up not being a huge deal, but it was big enough that I had to put everything else on hold until it was fixed. Which took until midnight last night (actually, there was one nagging thing this morning, but that wasn't too bad). Now, if you recall, I woke up at 5:00 in the morning yesterday. Which means that midnight was not a time when I wanted to be awake. And I was planning on waking up at 6:30 this morning to run.

"Planning" is the operative word there.

Now, first, let me mention that my lovely wife did, in fact, get up at 5:00 in the morning to go to the cycling class at the gym. And she left me at home, sleeping. God bless her.

However, when the alarm blew at 6:30, I looked outside, and it was still pretty dark. "Obviously, that's just not safe!", I told myself. So I went back to sleep. Briefly.

I ended up getting up at around 7, out the door at 7:10, and ran basically the same route I did on Sunday. I changed directions, though, and ran clockwise through the neighborhood. I'm trying to keep things balanced that way. The other thing to note is that I ran 3 minutes to each 1 minute walking. And it felt... ok. Not great. I was dragging a bit at the end there. But I think that may have a *lot* to do with everything surrounding last night and this morning. What's most important to me at this point is that I STILL DID IT!!!! It wasn't that long ago where I would have made an excuse, slept another hour, and gotten up and gone straight to work. But not anymore. I'm in training! (kinda)

Oh, and it was a little faster than Sunday, too. 32:17 for the three loops, plus warmup and cooldown. I'm still trying to keep things kinda slow for now.

Oh, and I did sign up for the Celebration 5K tomorrow morning. This should be interesting. I'm not expecting a PR, but I'm curious to see just what I can do. My last 5K was in early March, and it wasn't timed, so I have *no* idea what I can do... but I know I lost a lot over the last couple months.

Plus, there's a pub crawl tonight. Hey, it's a holiday. I'll try not to go overboard, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time I've run with a hangover/buzz/lampshade on my head.

Wish me luck!

Talk About Your All-Time Backfires

So I've spent the last few days ribbing the wife a little bit about her lack of desire to get up and work out.

BIG mistake.

Last night, she tells me that she wants to start doing some of the classes at the gym before work. Which is great... except for the starting time. Tuesday through Thursday are for cycling, which starts at 6:00. Monday and Friday are for some other class... something having to do with weighted bars... and they start at 5:45. In the morning. Plus, we're trying to carpool to work a little more these days. Hey, that gas is pretty expensive now. Oh, boy.

So at 5 AM, the alarm goes off. It's still dark, and will be for quite some time. And she pretty much rocketed out of bed to go get ready. I stumbled around for a few minutes, trying to get my bearings, and finally got around to getting changed. We checked to make sure that we had everything we needed, packed the days lunch, and were out the door at 5:25 or so. And the kicker? The class started before we got there. On Friday, we have to get up earlier.

That'll teach me.

Sunday Morning Run

Yes, I've hit a milestone in my running career. If I recall correctly, today marks the first time since high school that I have actually gotten up early on the weekend just to work out. The alarm went off at 6:45 this morning... and I actually got out of bed at 6:50, and hit the road just a few minutes later. Yes, at this point, that's really early for me on a Sunday.

I decided to just run around the neighborhood, which is just about .9 miles/loop. I did a five minute warmup, three loops around the neighborhood, and a five minute cooldown. I ran the three loops in 32:48, but what's way more important is that it felt good! I didn't have the tightness that I had on Thursday, my asthma didn't act up nearly so much, and my legs were still pretty strong at the end. Granted, I was concentrating on going a little slower than last time, but I guess that's what I have to do for my training runs -- especially when I'm just starting out like this.

Of course, as we were going to bed last night, my lovely wife was saying that if we got up early enough so that it was still cool (it was about 76 when I woke up), she might join me. That lasted up until the alarm went off. Her first words of the morning... "Have fun." Of course, she has repeatedly said that she doesn't like running when it's more than 50 outside. Good thing we live in Florida, eh?

Oh, and there's a 5K in Jacksonville on Wednesday morning. And a pub crawl Tuesday night. What to do... what to do...