The Racing Season Initiation

Well the 2011 Racing Season has started out for me as somewhat of a mixed bag.  Yesterday, thanks to a  change in schedule, I was able to race the Tom King Classic Half-maration.  This was my first year running it, and thanks to a fortunate alignment of the stars and planets, we had pretty decent weather this year.  In years prior, it has been cold and/or rainy.  Yesterday it was a sunny, but windy, 58 degrees with the temps climbing up into the 70's by midday.  I was pumped to be racing again but also tense and unsure as I was going into this race fairly undertrained.  I was cocky enough to believe that my prior training and overall fitness might land me a PR, but in my heart, I knew that I just didn't have the mileage or endurance yet to roll out an awesome race.  It was this nervous anticipation that sent me to the "little runner's room" several times before the race and which I assume led to my undoing.  My plan was to start off with 8:00/mi pace for the first couple miles and then work down from there to 7:50's for 4 miles, then 7:45's for 4 miles and 7:40's for the last 3.1 miles.  This actually was a decent plan, and I was able to pull it off for the most part.  At mile 6 I noticed that my pace had picked up steadily to 7:40 for that mile, and thinking that was too fast to maintain, I tried backing off.  Miles 7-9 were definitely more reasonable with a 7:43, 7:46 and 7:45.  It was at mile 10 that things fell apart.  I was starting to feel the cramps set into my calves, and by the time I transitioned into mile 11, I had a nasty side stitch that was threatening to tear the whole thing apart.  I sucked it up, called myself every conceivable bad word in the dictionary, and tried to regain my pace.  By that time, the damage was done, I was dehydrated and I eked out a miserable 8:17 for mile 11.  I pulled it together to get a 7:55, 7:37 and 1:27 for the last 2.1 miles but I was moving on sheer hate for my weakness and stubbornness to finish.  In hindsight, I was still too slow in the middle miles for mile 11 to have made much difference, but in my race clouded brain, mile 11 was the one that did me in.  I ended up finishing with a 1:43:07, 7:53/mi pace.  No PR but I was darn close (1:42:00 last year).  So considering that I could have used more mileage training, I can't really complain about my results.  The day was a bit hotter than expected, I pee'd way too much before the race, and I needed more training, but I only missed my PR by 1:08 minutes.  Not too shabby for my first race of the season.

On a final note, the really cool thing about running in my hometown is that I get to race/run with fellow local bloggers/celebrities (Most of the people I follow seem like blogging celebs to me), some of which I consider good friends.  For instance, I saw Donna, whose blog is (Mis)adventures in Running.  She has had an amazing running career transforming herself from a couch potato to a running coach/fitness guru/motivator/inspiration in just under 4 years.  I used to work with her husband in Clarksville, and not only has she inspired me with her progress, but she's impressed me by how many converts she's managed to pull into running.  She had a fair contingent of her running pupils taking a shot at the race.  I saw Melanie, who writes Life is a Marathon.  While I don't know her personally, I've followed her blog for a couple of years.  She seems amazingly friendly and in January, she did the Goofy Challenge at Walt Disney World (something I'm hoping to do in 2012).  I saw her prior to the race and at mile 2, I managed the nerve to tell her that I enjoyed her blog as I passed by.  Finally, I saw my friend Jim, who writes Run for Dori.   He helped coach my son's basketball team last year, and he is a good guy for someone who is so tall and imposing.  His wife, Dori, is fighting leukemia, and he has used running to raise money and draw awareness to causes to fight and cure cancers.  Whenever I think about how much I've accomplished, I think about what Jim has done to use running to really help others and build a community of support.  So to my friends and fellow bloggers, let me say that it was really cool to share my experience with y'all yesterday.  Thanks!

The Widget Re-Assignment

Last week my laptop was struck with a virus which forced me to re-format my harddrive and re-install my OS and all my apps.  Usually big fun, but of course, I hadn't backed up any of my browser bookmarks,  (PSA:  Always backup, backup, backup!)  so I've been spending a small portion of my week re-installing drivers, apps and bookmarking my favorite sites (like this super-awesome blog site, dontchaknow!).  In the transition, logyourrun.com now doesn't want to play nice with Garmin Connect.  So now, Logyourrun.com is not importing my runs from my Garmin.  Lame!  Fail!  Boo!  Hiss!  I checked all the obvious settings, but nothing has changed in any of my accounts.  Ugh.  Not wanting to devote more time than necessary to this little picadilly, I've decided to move my tranining info over to dailymile.com as Garmin Connect doesn't really have the import functionality that I need.  Dailymile.com seems to be adequate.  I miss all the minutiae of detail from logyourrun.com, but dailymile.com makes it much easier to sync my workouts.  All in all a decent trade-off.  I haven't gone to the Y at all this week.  Epic fail.  But I did some pilates/body weight/dumbbell exercises at home to supplement my runs this week.  Virtual Hi-five!  I finalized my registration for the Tom King Half-Marathon next week, and though I'm no where near ready, I'm looking forward to racing again.

The Obligatory Update

Like my blogging, my running has suffered of late.  I wish that I could say that I was overwhelmed with work, basketball coaching and other sickness, but mostly it was laziness and video game playing.  It's shameful how easy it is to blow off a workout session to level up my newest character on DC Universe Online (fyi, I'm on the Zero Hour server.  This game is AWESOME!).  However looking over my calendar, it occurred to me that I have a marathon to run in  two and half months, and my longest run, until today, had been 7 miles.  Throw in that I can't run my first two races of the year because of scheduling conflicts, it would be wise of me to defer my marathon.  But as my lovely wife has often told me, wisdom has not always been my strongest quality.  So today, I ripped out 10 miles at an 8:32/mi pace.  I'm feeling it now.  And it feels a lot like a large full bag of feces.  A very, very FULL bag.  For the week, I did 31.23 miles at an average pace of 8:39/mi.  I did 10 minutes at the Y of weights and about 5 minutes of light weights at home during The Biggest Loser (afterwards I ate some ice cream while I watched the weigh-in.  Good times).

On a more positive note, yesterday was my son's last basketball game.  As most of you know, I was one of the coaches for the team.  They won in a spectacular fashion with the other team cursing and gnashing their teeth in frustration (and that was mostly the other coach!  Not my fault, I swear).  They ended the season 6-4, and frankly I was surprised (happily) that the won any games under my watch.  That just goes to show how talented the kids and the other coaches were!  Go Bears! 

End of the Week Recap 1/16/11

This week I did 18.15 miles at an average pace of 8:32/mi. Not too bad. I tried a little speed work (as in almost non-existent), but I think that I need to lay off the speed work till I get my endurance back up. Interesting (to me, but not to anyone else with a pulse), I stealthed in a long run unintentionally! I had intended to get in a nice 6-7 mile run on Friday. My run was fair, but with my wonderful Garmin 405 (that I got for Christmas!  Thank you honey!) on the lap info screen, I didn't notice that I got in 8 miles! My longest run for the year so far (I know, I know...2 weeks. Big whoop.), and it felt good to get in the mileage. I did about 75 mins of cross-training and weight lifting. I'm starting to feel buff again, but not quite beach ready yet. So the re-tooling of the "Gun Show" continues on! Updates as they develop!

End of the Week Recap 1/9/11

First week of the year, and it was a decent comeback. I did 16.84 miles at 8:22/mi. I also managed 2 hrs of cross-training. My weight was back down to 166.8 lbs from a ridiculous 173 lbs after New Years. I'm trying to stretch at night and do some core work to reduce injury. So far, so good, but that being said, I'm sitting here with an ice pack on my shin. So an easy day tomorrow if the snow holds off. Have to remember, nice and easy. Going for the distance. This is harder than I recall.

The Race Schedule

Well, I've fleshed out my schedule as much as I can at this point, which you can see on my blogsite.  Most of it is still unfinished as many of the races that I want to do haven't posted any information yet.  A few notables:  The 8th Annual Race Judicata is on February 26, 2011, which unfortunately is the same day as my daughter's last basketball game.  I may only run the 5k this year, so I can make it to her game.  Maybe I'll get 2 suckers teammates and we can enter as a team.  Hmmm.

I'm currently planning on doing 2 local half-marathons, the Tom King and the Middle Half, that I have not yet run, so those should be fun.  They're both allegedly very flat and fast.  I'm taking another stab at the Country Music Marathon, and hopefully it won't be the disaster that it was last year.  My intent is to use it as a training run for my fall marathon.  So I'm looking for a nice, easy FINISH that doesn't leave me completely dead.  That leaves my big marathon, which should be the Tupelo Marathon.  Registration isn't up yet, but in the past they've had the coolest looking shirts and finisher medals (a skull and crossbones!).  Even though it is supposed to have some rolling hills, that will be the marathon that I look for my fast time this year.

The race I'm looking forward to the most is the Warrior Dash.  Not only does this race have fun obstacles like barbed wire and fire, but it has lots of adult beverages and a cool buffalo hat!  There's even steel viking hats for age group winners.  Throw in that it's near my hometown and I'm so there!  I considered wearing a kilt in the "traditional style" but I think that my lovely wife would probably frown on that.

Finally I'm also considering the Disney half and full marathon in 2012.  It doesn't really count for this year, but I'm keeping this in mind for later as I don't want to finish the year either completely dead or injured.  We're planning on making it a family thing with my wife and kids and my brother's family and also watch me kill myself run.  I want to run the half (on Saturday) and the full marathon (on Sunday) to get the coveted Goofy Medal.  My lovely wife thinks that this would be a bad idea (granted this is not the first time that she's said that I've had a bad idea).  But seriously, if I'm going to go all that way to run, shouldn't I go for it?  I say, YES!

The Running Geek Upgrade

Well, it's 2011 and I'm still cobbling together my race schedule for the year (i.e. sweet-talking my lovely wife into letting me run some of the crazier races), but I have figured out my goals for year.  As stated, I've decided to keep 2011 within more reasonable boundaries.  First off, my plan is to get my weight down to 160 and keep it there.  Ugh.  I can't believe that it's even gone up.  Moving on!  My race goals are simply put:  to be faster than I was last year in every race distance.  

Along those lines, I'm scrapping any formulaic training program and using my own what-do-I-feel-like-doing-today methodology.  That being said, I will incorporate one day of speed/hill work and one long run.  I'll also be working up my distance to get closer to 50-60 mile weeks, but at much slower paces than I did last year to reduce injury and increase recovery.  Throw in a decent amount of cross-training/weight lifting to build strength, endurance and overall fitness, and I think I have a recipe for a decent year (consequently, this is close to the same formula that I used 2 years ago to get here).  And add in a name change to the blog for some added motivation, and we're off!