Running

I'm not really always convinced I like running, especially when it is running for exercise. Running for exercise is not my favorite kind of exercise. I like to run with friends or my wife but by myself is mostly a dread.

I do like to train for something; there is an end goal. I need something to strive for, something to win. This weekend was my opportunity to test my training for a 5k race. I have been running, pushing myself hard to get my 5k times down to a competitive level. I do need to define the competitive level I’m looking for as average people competitive. You can go run almost any 5k in Austin, and find people in most age-groups who are capable of running in the top tier of any age-group. You’ll have 60 year-olds who can out run most of the 30 year-olds and 30 and 40 year olds who are just as fast as high-school and college students who are in peak performance.

Luckily the cost of most Austin races starts at $25 which is prohibitive for budget, when my wife and I both like running in races. This forces me outside of Austin, where normal people exist and have regular lives where they go to work, hang out with the family and try to fit exercise in as best as they can. Best of all is the cost of races goes down. This weekend, my wife and I ran in the Blue Bell Fun Run. My wife did the 10k and I did the 5k. Our original plan was for me to push Mayzie but since my wife was nursing a neck injury we decided to push our little girl, which turned out great because she fell asleep in the stroller which gave her plenty of time to get a nap something, that she probably wouldn’t have gotten on my short 5k. Both races only cost $15 per person, but included a day trip and lunch with a lot of friends.

I finished with a time of 21:13 which comes out to a 6:50min/mi pace. Overall not bad, that is 8 seconds faster than the previous weeks 5k race in Lockhart. My mile splits were 6:26, 13:42, 20:32. That 2nd mile has always been a slower mile for me. Unless I run with my GPS, I always run a slower 2nd mile. The course was really hilly, which I knew from the previous year, but I still managed to scrape together a 2nd place finish in my age-group (30-39.) I got a nifty plague too. There were 138 men in my age group, and I finished 41 seconds behind the first place guy. There were a total of 1680 people in the race, but they were average people not crazy fast Austin people.

This weekend I’m running in the Dragon 5k in Wimberley. It supports the school I used to work for and will be a great opportunity to try to get my post baby 5k time under the 21 minute mark. My ultimate goal is to get back to the sub 20 minute range, which I hope to do before a race ($15 with Groupon) in Austin this June. I am looking forward to this weekend’s 5k because I have not been back to the school I worked in since 2004. It has been a long time and I can’t wait to see how it has changed, plus I have a long-shot chance at winning this small event. I should at least get a top 5 out of this one.

Blue Bell 10k

Every time I comment on EMU's blog, I always get a lot of people reading mine. So I figured I'd post something recent, however it is rarely as informative and much less frequently updated.

Last year my wife and I, plus a group of friends, ran the Blue Bell 10k. The Wifey and I had a great time pushing the baby and running together.

Since my recent moral defeat at the Bandera 50k, which I haven't talked about yet because I'm still stewing with the disappointment, I've really struggled for which race to sign-up for. I enjoy shorter races and like them because you get to run faster. I like fast. I really enjoy 1 mile races but something about the challenges you face during a distance race makes me want to run the 10k or really just rerun the Bandera 50k.

Right now, I really just want to be successful at the race. Which means winning something. Prior to my wife having a child and us adding a little one into our family, we actually had won a few races or age groups at smaller 5k's like the Blue Bell. Those were the days where I could expect to average low 6min/miles or touch into the 5 min/mile range for the whole 5k. Those were the days indeed and now I'm happy to average low 7 min/miles for the whole race. But I know I'm capable of more.

SO I've decided to run the 5k. It is a good quick race, I get to run fast. There is not a lot that can go wrong during a 5k versus a longer race so it could be a good moral booster. I'm going to set my goal for a nice conservative pace of under 21 minutes. I have 12 weeks until the race. I will be using this FIRST's training (Furman Insititute of Running Science and Training) plan. I am looking forward to it. I've used these plans for about 3 years and have really seen amazing improvements. If you want to get faster this is the plan for you. Also, I've lost 7lbs since the first of December and have about 10 more to get to a good competitive weight. It is amazing how much easier it is to run and run fast when you've lost 20lbs. Hopefully, by triathlon season the wife and I will be at a much more competitive place, she'll just say healthy place.

My blog

I started this blog as a way to document my training for the Bandera 100k with my wife's cousin.

We ended up choosing the 50k instead and I struggled mightily during the last half of the race. I learned so much about distance racing in this race and I learned so much about myself that I would recommend it to everyone. This year I chose to do the 50k again because I want to make sure I've been successful at one level (in this case distance) before moving to the next. I'm excited. I think I know what works and I think I know what tools I need to be successful during this race. I will miss the fact that this year the starting temperature will not be 10 degrees with a wind chill of 7. It is only supposed to be in the 30's this year although this morning it was 28 degrees and we're supposed to be getting a cold front on Saturday night.

In all my goal is to finish in under 7 hours, although I would be happy with anything under 8. Some people read that and think, "that's only 15 min/miles" but I've learned to excuse that line of thought which was once previously mine. Turns out it isn't the distance that makes this race hard. I like to tell people if they took every hill and put them back to back and the race was only 5 miles long it would be 98% as hard as the full 31 miles. Last year I remember watching this old man (60+ yr old) scale, climb, or something down this hill all the while thinking, "I'll let him go first so that if he falls I know not to try and go down that way." It is steep going up, steep going down, very rocky and in some places probably qualifies as light rock climbing. I forgot to mention the beautiful views of the hill country. God's creation demonstrates it majesty, there is a place I would have asked my wife to marry me if I knew it was there and knew how to find it.

Speaking of finding it. There were several points last year where I didn't see anyone for a while 30-45 minutes and wasn't exactly sure I was still on the trail and was mostly sure I was lost. Just about the time I was going to whip out my cell phone, and pray it found signal enough to send a text message, I would see someone or some marker reassuring me that I was in fact not lost.

The Bandera course is a great experience.

Things Return To Normal

This weekend my wife and I and several of our friends ran the Chosen: Half-Marathon for Adoption. While it was neither of our best times we both had a great time, and felt good the entire race. I will definitely look this race up next year, because it was done very well for its inaugural race. The only improvement I recommended we better mile markers.


It was a good cap to a week and vacation that didn't go as I expected. First I must say, I was disappointed in the trip to DC because of DC. I think I must watch too much PBS for my own good. They do such a good job of creating feelings and an certain ambiance around the memorials and museums that when I finally saw them I was disappointed. I am not saying they were not neat or interesting or worth the trip and time but the experience is similar to going to see a movie that your friend raved about only to leave thinking it was alright. The movie did live up to the hype. Even the trees were not as great as I had been told to expect. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with our family. We had a great time and I will miss hearing our cousin's three year old call me "Cramen."



Mayzie did great on the plane ride up there. Although she did not watch or even act remotely interested in the DVD we brought for her to watch. Our desire to keep her from watching TV might have backfired and now she is complete disinterested in it, but why complain about that right? However, I learned than about 5 days away from her bed and her routine is about the length that is best for her at 15 moths. She woke up at night and since we were sleeping in the same room and she could see us she started calling for us. "Mama, Dada" she would say over and over. We had to move her downstairs to the living room for anyone to get some sleep after the 5th night. The lack of sleep created a moody baby. On the plane ride home we thought we would skip her nap and let her sleep on the plane, BUT Mayzie now uses the words down and walk so she just wanted down and wanted to walk on the plane. Since, she does not understand the concept of "we can't do that right now" she was frustrated. That coupled with the whole tired, because we made her skip her nap, thing created a horrific mess of crying and screaming until she fell asleep. Thankfully that nap lasted all the way until we were at the terminal.



Once we were home, everything instantly returned to normal. Mayzie sleeps her 11-12 hours takes her 1-2 hr nap and is happy and playful.

Diet, exercise and racing

What people hear me say, "diet" they usually quip back with a, "you're too skinny for a diet" or something like, "because your SOO fat!" But I think of diet as something you're on all the time. You can have a bad diet or a good diet or a balanced diet, whatever kind of diet you want. No matter the name a diet is something you have all the time. Since the baby has come into our lives we've been eating a good or at least decent diet nothing just outright horrible, BUT we've dropped the exercising from our routine once we started getting ready to sell the house.

This week was 16 weeks until our next half-marathon. My wife and I would like to get back towards our PR times and for that I've decided to do some work on my diet. This week we also started our structured run training, so I decided to lay some ground rules somewhere to help keep me accountable for my actions.

1.) No drinks other than water or tea
2.) 1 hr of exercise per day (more on this in subsequent posts)
3.) Nothing with added sugar
4.) Nothing with added salt
5.) Vegetables or Fruits with every meal.

It is a simple straight forward diet that doesn't involve doing or eating crazy things. It is just back to basic good balanced dieting. Right now my daily caloric goal is 2200kcals. This is a fair amount of food for a person who is eating healthy. I'm looking forward to getting back into a routine that leads to a healthy lifestyle.

I'm lazy!

It has been quite a while since I've had any REAL training plan that I followed. I did a 10k this spring but I just went out there an winged it.

Even though I've been doing a lot of work around the house and haven't just totally turned into a vegetable. I think I've watched less than 10 hours of TV in the past 2 months.

We have been in our new house for just under a month and with all the crazy things going on we've managed to find a kind of groove to make things work. One thing I cannot seem to get a handle on is training for something. Every night I see my dog looking at me with anticipation about our run and I cringe because I don't want to run. Sometimes I force myself to go out there and just get it over with and always I feel great afterward and wish I hadn't waited until so late because I might run longer. I can't get up earlier than 5am and really struggle to get up before 6am. It could be because I'm going to bed sometimes after midnight working on things around the house. I don't want to repeat my last house, where I said one day we'll do ______ and then we did that one thing to prepare to move. I can't remember the last time I've swam and I am afraid my bike has rusted in place.

So blog, and the two people reading it, Monday, June 28th starts an exercise routine. I will start running, riding or swimming every night. At lunch, I will no longer waste my time walking around Home Depot, Lowes, HEB or Best Buy. Instead, I will go to the gym and lift weights or run or ride the stationary. At night, after all the needs to be done is done, I will go to bed before 10pm. This will allow me to get up early enough to go swim. And since I work best when I have a goal, Austin Triathlon you are on my calendar.

Lubbock to 100 days!

There are less than 100 days to my wave start of the Buffalo Springs 70.3! Oh I'm nervous just thinking about it!

Strangely, I think I am going to be well prepared for it. I still have a lot of work but a lot can be done in 14 weeks and I'm going to have some fun. It will be the day before the baby's 1 year birthday!!! This was the race I was supposed to do but had to fly home because the baby came. My flight left 20 minutes after the start of my wave.

The 100 day mark is really a reminder that every day I need to be monitoring my diet, making sure I push myself hard at every workout and get good sleep! I can't wait!!

IF anyone wants to do some riding, running or swimming let me know, I could always use a workout partner or heck just do it with me!

Competition!

I love competition!! I can't wait to get into a triathlon, that moment as they count down to the start and the thrashing water that insues. I love at a running race where you try and figure out who is REALLY going to set the pace and not just going out there to blow up half-way into the run.

However, I'm feeling really outta shape right now. Except today! This morning I managed to dig myself out of bed at 4:30 and was in the water by 5:20 for a pretty vigorious swim workout. The thing is, I felt great! Finished strong and felt like I could do more!

Then at lunch, I made myself go to the gym even though I wanted to go bike drooling. On my plate was just a 5k run. I've been struggling to leave the 8min pace, which is pretty slow for someone who wants to run up front. Today I ran in the 7's and the last 600m at a flat 6min/mi pace. I felt great!

SOO maybe I just have been letting my body convince me I'm outta shape when really I just needed to push a bit harder. I can't wait for the season to start!!!

BANDERA 50k: It wasn't as hard as I thought!

IT WAS HARDER!!

Ok so if you go all the way back to the beginning of this blog, it started out as a training log to complement my cousin's training blog. We were comparing styles of training against each other to see how they might prepare us for a 100k race.






Well after an injury and much protesting by myself we decided, and thankfully so, to do the 50k instead of the 100k and here is a report from Saturday's Bandera 50k.






First we woke up at 4:30am to eat, get dressed and drive to the race location. 4:30am is an hour that most people never see unless they can't sleep or have a sick kid. The temperature outside was around 10 degrees according weather records for the area. 10 degrees!!! The really crazy thing is I looked it up AND some people in shorts!!






So we start the race at 7:30 a few minutes after the dawn and it gets light really fast but since we're in the valley there is no warmth from the sun. It is cold but my beard is holding steady and my warm clothes were perfect. The thing that made the real difference were the toe warmers. it is no fun to run with cold toes and the toe warmers were absolutely perfect.





Everything was great until about mile 10, supposedly the first 10 were the hardest, however since I was wiped out and hadn't trained consistently for this race the next 20 miles were the hardest for me. People hear that you're running 31 miles and they think the mileage made this race hard. The truth is, if you were to put all the hills back to back and the race was only 5 miles, then it would have been just about as difficult.





At the 12 mile mark I finally convinced my cousin to leave me behind and salvage whatever time she could. She managed to finish in 7:17. I walked/limped and almost crawled to the 15.5mi aid station. There I promptly announced, "I'm done!" continued to a chair and sat down. The volunteers graciously told me to just sit there and think about it. I announced several times I was done. They convinced me to eat a grilled cheese sandwich and I drank two glasses of coke. As I was sitting there thinking, it occurred to me that one day I might have to tell my daughter that she couldn't just quit something because it was hard. And if I wanted to teach her that lesson, I'd have to make sure I believed in what I was saying and had lived it myself. I had also been reading about the power of the Holy Spirit and how has American Christians we don't place a lot of value or believe there is a lot of power in the Holy Spirit. So I prayed, that I would have the strength and ability to finish this race and that I knew it was impossible for me to finish the exact same distance I had just finished by myself. I ran the next 11 miles.





It was nothing short of a miracle in my book, it really completely changed how I felt about marathons and the half-ironman races. I was really surprised because I had tried electrolytes, I had eaten carbs and I had taken water. I had tried to keep my physical needs met and so when I couldn't go further I just figured it was my lack of training or actually just my lack of just plain exercising. 15 1/2 miles was the best I could do. I had only put in about 30 miles of training so it makes perfect sense that I couldn't do this. So that's why, as goofy as it sounds, I really thought it was the Holy Spirit trying to show me that there is power, beyond what I'm capable of. I'm sure scientists and myself could rationalize it away, as electrolyte imbalance or calorie deficiency. But I had taken some of that in and it was more than just "getting my second wind." I did something I was sure I couldn't do. Something I would have bet money on that I couldn't finish.





I think I will always cherish this race because I found my breaking point before half of the race was over and had to rely on my belief that through the Holy Spirit it could be finished.

Let's be realistic here

When I was in high school the first week of x-country practice was really hard. You go from not really running to running 10-12 miles per day. So by the end of the first week, you hurt. All over, your biceps, your abs, your shoulders, your neck and those are the things that just swing, you can imagine what your legs are like. While I was in High School I discovered a secret to beat all this.

Protein shakes! Sure they don't taste great, but being someone who likes to cook I doctored them up into something delicious! I made protein shake root beer floats, with cookies-n-cream ice cream because that's my favorite, or if I didn't have root beer then a Protein shake malts.

Annnnddd... They were amazing you could literally feel the soreness go away. I would drink 5 serving per day. Sure maybe it was placebo, but it worked and they were a whopping 3000 calories but I am pretty sure we were burning that during our workouts. Anyway, it was like an ace in the hole. Guys would be hurtin' but I would feel only mildly sore and I could finish the workouts hard.

SO fast forward to today. Yesterday I ran 5 miles for the first time in over a month. It was probably the 10-15th time I've run since the baby was born. I was sore, I could feel it the moment I got off the treadmill. It was that kind of sore that you instantly know you're gonna hurt tomorrow and makes you scared of the next 36 hours. So, I resorted to my old trick, though not as big because 3000 calories today will just make me fat. Within hours the soreness started receding, and this morning I feel 90%, today I'll run 5 miles again. It is part of my plan to shock my body and to at least get it ready to survive some of this 50k, but lets be realistic I'm gonna need a lot of protein shakes to recover from this dumb idea.

Seriously, I'm gonna die

and not in the, "We're all gonna die some day... blah blah blah!" I don't like to blog about the same thing repeatedly but seriously there is not stopping the approaching doom I'm about to face.

That whole schedule of running 5 miles per day and 1000 flight of stairs per day, it was just reality in my head, and while I was typing it out in the blog world. In the real world, it was cold this week, I was tired this week. I did not get up and run, I did not do anything. Oh wait that's not true, I just remember I did do something this week. I went on two short walks with the wife and kid(s), in our fancy BOB stroller that I bought to run with, but I'm sure it didn't do anything to counter-act the 1430 calories of my favorite type of candy (fruit jelly pure sugar kind) I received from Santa

I know what your thinking, "YIKES!! 1430 calories!!" But relax I didn't eat them in one day, it took me a full 36 hours to eat them all. That's only 40 calories an hour, unfortunately it amounts to almost 1/2 lb of fat no matter how you look at it.

So now you know why I'm so sure I'll die, and you know why I had to share with you again my failure to get back on the horse of physical torture they call endurance sports.

AHHHH!! Bandera 50k

OMG!! Really January 9th, might be the last day I'm alive. At best it might be the day I survived but lost any kind of status as an athlete.

I really haven't run in probably 4 weeks. Sad but true! And prior to that I had only run about 7 or 8 times since the baby arrived 6 months ago. If you miss a few days or even a week or two there isn't much difference that goes on in your body. Any perceived change is mostly mental. It takes more than 2 weeks to really start noticing an effect in your performance. Well for me it has been 6 months. I was supposed to compete in a 1/2 Ironman race the day the baby was born and can confidently say I was in the best shape of my life. Just under 6% body fat, able to swim more than 2 miles without stopping, bike 56miles maintaining a 21mph speed, and run a 1/2 marathon with a 7min/mile pace, all on the same day without a rest in between. NOW if I could just swim 2 miles, I'd be happy. I don't even want to bike 56 miles and when I ran the Rock-n-Roll 1/2 I was just happy it was over. But 50k is 31 miles and it is 31 miles of rough terrain, steep hills, and loose soil. I am sitting here thinking what was I thinking?!

The only good news is I've got a partner that is faster than me, which will help me push harder. I have a good idea and experience on how to handle my nutrition during the race and hopefully enough experience to know when to take it easy. We were supposed to do the 100k, but due to my partner's injury we're cutting it to the 50k so if anything I can just be glad I'm only doing half what we originally planned.

Here's what I'm thinking, I'm going to start running 5miles every day in the morning, and 1000 flights of stairs on the stair-treadmill thing at the gym. It might not do much but at least maybe I can shock my body back into shape. Pray for me!!

Post-Op

Alright I'm feeling pretty good. Yesterday I only took Advil, and everything seems alright. Today I'm gonna see what no pain meds feels like and so far everything is good.

SO I'm gonna get on the trainer today. I'll try and take it easy, nothing to crazy, but I need to get going on this training deal since I have a 1/2 Ironman coming up in 7 months plus this 100k/50k race.

My 100k running partner got hurt. Whew! I'm sad she got hurt because that is no fun, it just plain sucks BUT the good news out of it is that I don't have to endure one of the toughest tests I could imagine. However, it looks like she wants to do the 50k which is going to be really hard so I guess I'm not quite off the hook yet.

In other news I'm going to meet with the Plum Creek guys on Thursday. I'm nervous, I really want this mini golf idea to work and I'm about 2 steps away from needing to put my name on paper and put some money on the line. It is a great idea, one that will work and one I'm willing to make my job. I think God has provided some of the means, we'll see what happens.

Saturday's 10k

Wow! I'm really outta shape... where it effects me the most is mental toughness. I virtually have none. I know I can run 6.2 miles... I did it at the half-marathon just a week ago.

So I set out to once again try and hang with my more consistent friend for as long as I could in the race. I managed a little over half-way and then decided to take a break. At that point in time I waited for my wife who was walking with our baby and told her she could run while I walked with the baby. Our jogging stroller was given to us but our baby is still way to small for us to really use it for running so one of us needs to walk.

She ran until we were on the same lap and then we walk/ran the last lap together. It was what I wanted and it made the race enjoyable.

It really fired me up about getting a jog stroller that we could use now. So I bought one on Sunday. A Bob, I had been looking at other strollers but secretly wanted a Bob. I just wasn't willing to pay over $200. It was like a mental block for me. BUT on Saturday after the race I found one on craigslist (my favorite website) and scheduled to look at it on Sunday. My wife had seen in the Baby Bargain book that fixed wheel Bobs were the intersection point on quality, functionality and price so that helped sway me to buy it. I wanted a Revolution, because they look cooler, but they were soooo expensive, even used ones, and we already have a stroller for non exercise applications, which helped me realize I just want something I can take the baby jogging in without worrying if her neck got broken or if she fell forward and her face is rubbing the front tire.

So I managed to pay $190 and can't wait for my wife or myself to use it. Hopefully together!!

Rock-n-Roll

Now when we found out we were going to have the baby, people began to tell us how our life would change. When they would tell me how it would change, it was basically that all my hobbies would go out the door. I knew that they had some truth there, because everyone was telling me the same thing. But in my mind I thought, "it doesn't have to be that way!" What I didn't count on was that I would WANT to miss workouts because I wanted to spend time with the baby OR because I WANTED to give my wife some time away from the house.

As a result, I've neglected swimming and cycling and running and any other physical activity for that matter. The only bad thing is we had signed up for a half-marathon before the baby. Having not trained for this race, and relying solely on my base from the half-ironman training I did in the spring, I did it. My poor wife and to just rely on good ole' fashion blood, sweat and tears.

Before the race I started thinking it was a bad idea, at mile 1 I thought, "this was a dumb idea" and then mile 2 I thought, "am I going to make it?" And it kept getting worse until mile 4 when I decided to run to the 10k mark and walk to let my wife catch me and we could finish together.

She never caught me and I walked to the end. We finished the Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon, it wasn't pretty but it helped kick-start the desire to train hard so I can be fast. Now to figure out how to make that happen.