Running has not existed since last Sunday for me, and that run was probably not a good idea. I've been extremely sick for the past week, and the two of those days were spent in the psychologically grueling experience of an interview for a university faculty position. I woke up Thursday morning feeling the worst I have in a long long time. I have a feeling, though, that this was more from overdosing myself on various cold medicines to get myself through the interview process than anything else. I also stepped on the scale this afternoon, which read an eye-popping 142.6 pounds. This is at least 5 pounds below my normal low end fluctuation in weight.
Hopefully I'll be back to running soon. The sickness is clearing out now, although my tubes are still pretty scratchy. If any of you have Riccola stock, you might want to sell now though, and buy back once it stabilizes again after my candy sucking spree.
I actually slept (off and on) until 1-2 pm today. That was pretty awesome. The whole family was all napping for the whole morning. We're gonna have to make that a Saturday tradition until R grows out of it.
So running....last run was Sunday, weather was really nice (which is why I went out against better judgement). It was about 4 miles, and I didn't even bring the watch.
It's gonna be a little while before I'm back up to speed, especially since I've got another interview this next week, but hopefully I'll at least be healthy by the end of that.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Thank you kindly for the bum-rub
So yesterday I cashed in on an old gift card for Spa Nordstrom that my wife gave me for our anniversary some 6 months ago. An hour of full-body deep-tissue massage seemed appropriate given my recent meltdown. It was an interesting experience at the spa...a little too frilly beforehand. I didn't feel 100% right being the only male in the pre-massage room sitting on a bunch of oversoft chairs with my feet soaking in some herbal tea or some crap like that, but in truth it was very relaxing, and I didn't care. The massage itself was just awesome. The masseuse spent a little extra time on my calves (which have been giving me trouble in recent months), and on my stabilizers (read "my ass"). My IT band also had an up-close-and-personal with the woman's knuckles. No surprise to me, my upper back was also pretty tight from doing mind-numbing calculations and editing my presentation 12 hours a day. I was a little sore in a couple spots afterwards, but nothing too bad. I could definitely feel the scar tissue in my left calf for about 40 minutes after, so that still needs some work.
I ventured out for a run this morning, and it went pretty well. I didn't keep it super easy, but I didn't run hard either. 6 miles at 6:50-7:00 pace. I really needed a generic run to get my mood up again, and this did the trick. I probably should have been running 8 minute pace, but my brain needed a recharge. My back didn't feel bad at all, so hopefully I'm just about over this little setback.
So thank you, stranger who rubbed my bum, and thank you, wife, for the great present that I put off using for far too long.
I ventured out for a run this morning, and it went pretty well. I didn't keep it super easy, but I didn't run hard either. 6 miles at 6:50-7:00 pace. I really needed a generic run to get my mood up again, and this did the trick. I probably should have been running 8 minute pace, but my brain needed a recharge. My back didn't feel bad at all, so hopefully I'm just about over this little setback.
So thank you, stranger who rubbed my bum, and thank you, wife, for the great present that I put off using for far too long.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
A Perfect S*** Storm
So I'm out of the running picture this weekend, and next week will probably be fairly laid back. After a speed workout last Thursday, I pinched a nerve, or something, in my upper back. An attempt at jogging on Friday resulted in pretty severe spasming and pain. Ibuprofen has done a good job of helping with the pain, and presumably the swelling and inflammation. Hopefully I'll be good enough to jog tomorrow.
This is in the middle of the wife and son both being sick. His fever was terrible for us to go through, especially since he had an infection when he was 10 days old, and the hospital experience was *NOT* a fun one. He's also old enough now to get very scared in hospitals. Thankfully the fever faded pretty quickly, but now it's replaced by the less stressful, but still very non-fun stuffed up baby. The biggest issue is that the little guy needs his nose to breathe while he eats. Most of you guys have kids, so I'm sure you're familiar with all this. So we've had the humidifier going full blast all week.
It's also in the middle of me trying to finish a project and get this job interview together. Tough stuff this week.
So this week has really sucked runningwise. I've only run on Tuesday and Thursday, and the little 3 miler jog on Friday.
Oh well. Time to get back to work.
This is in the middle of the wife and son both being sick. His fever was terrible for us to go through, especially since he had an infection when he was 10 days old, and the hospital experience was *NOT* a fun one. He's also old enough now to get very scared in hospitals. Thankfully the fever faded pretty quickly, but now it's replaced by the less stressful, but still very non-fun stuffed up baby. The biggest issue is that the little guy needs his nose to breathe while he eats. Most of you guys have kids, so I'm sure you're familiar with all this. So we've had the humidifier going full blast all week.
It's also in the middle of me trying to finish a project and get this job interview together. Tough stuff this week.
So this week has really sucked runningwise. I've only run on Tuesday and Thursday, and the little 3 miler jog on Friday.
Oh well. Time to get back to work.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Stop...Nanny Time
even more awesome than Hammer Time. We had a new nanny start this week to help out so my wife can actually work on her Ph.D. She seems absolutely great. Like night and day compared to our last nanny. Now we have to make sure we can keep her. Boy's sleeping habits have been adjusted slightly, just in time for the nanny to be able to put him to sleep for naps. Phew.
Yesterday we woke up to another 5 inches or so of snow on the ground. Ugh. It's a big sloppy mess in my neighborhood right now, and nobody seems to be interested in plowing our street (it's been two days, and still nothing). I've been doing too much running on the indoor oval and treadmill, so my Saturday aerobic intervals were done on the lakefront path, despite there being a cm layer of snow everywhere, making it pretty slippery. I was extremely surprised to find myself hitting the prescribed paces, and even a little faster.
2m WU
1600m (5:28) 1600m rest
3x(2000m on 600 rest) with the 1st mile of each 2000 at 6:11, 6:08, and 5:54
20 min CD
HR averages were 167 - 164 - 170 - 172 for the timed miles.
The other workouts this week were pretty decent.
Thursday saw a 4x(300m fast, 300m rest) 49s-49s-50s-51s
Tuesday saw a 10 miler at 80% (6:32 pace)
The other days were recovery / strides.
Tomorrow will add a 15 mile long run to the week, putting the total precisely where it has been for the last 4 weeks...60.X miles. I've been a little disconnected from the other posts this week. Getting to be crunch time for these talks I have to prepare.
Yesterday we woke up to another 5 inches or so of snow on the ground. Ugh. It's a big sloppy mess in my neighborhood right now, and nobody seems to be interested in plowing our street (it's been two days, and still nothing). I've been doing too much running on the indoor oval and treadmill, so my Saturday aerobic intervals were done on the lakefront path, despite there being a cm layer of snow everywhere, making it pretty slippery. I was extremely surprised to find myself hitting the prescribed paces, and even a little faster.
2m WU
1600m (5:28) 1600m rest
3x(2000m on 600 rest) with the 1st mile of each 2000 at 6:11, 6:08, and 5:54
20 min CD
HR averages were 167 - 164 - 170 - 172 for the timed miles.
The other workouts this week were pretty decent.
Thursday saw a 4x(300m fast, 300m rest) 49s-49s-50s-51s
Tuesday saw a 10 miler at 80% (6:32 pace)
The other days were recovery / strides.
Tomorrow will add a 15 mile long run to the week, putting the total precisely where it has been for the last 4 weeks...60.X miles. I've been a little disconnected from the other posts this week. Getting to be crunch time for these talks I have to prepare.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
I got yo' Hadd test right heeeah!
Bizzizzatch!
I was pretty psyched on my long run today to find that my pace at 65-75% has dropped dramatically. 131bpm put me at 8:10-8:20 pace, 140 put me at low 7:40's, and 151 put me under 7. This is compared to 9min pace, 8:10 pace, and 7:30 pace, respectively, 2 weeks ago. For reference, my max HR is probably about 203 (taking a measurement from 3 years ago and subtracting 3). It just happened...just like that...all of a sudden. It's interesting to note that I'm now the "magic" 6 weeks into training again. Daniels and others have said that 6 weeks is the time it takes the body to adapt to a given training load. 3 weeks of that have been under Will's instruction, and the 3 weeks before that were 60-70 miles a week of aerobic running. We'll see what happens after another 3 weeks. My resting HR has plunged as well. I'm back under 40bpm again, for the first time since last winter.
Thus ends the first 3 week training cycle.
I'm fairly used the pattern now:
Mon easy running with strides at 5k-10k race pace
Tue hard aerobic run (8-10 miles 85% or 80% respectively)
Wed recovery
Thu mini-workout - mile race pace intervals 200m-600m in length + easy running
Fri recovery
Sat focus workout - tempo/speed/10k drill
Sun long run - 15 miles starting at 65, slowly building to 75%, 12 if 10k drill on sat
The 10k drills are the major workouts. I had my first one yesterday, and it went fairly well. Yesterday was 400m at goal 10k pace, 400 float (6-7min pace). Every 3 week microcycle, the length of the on parts increases, so in 3 weeks I have 800 on 400 float. Eventually, this gets all the way to 1600 on, 400 float! This will be sometime after the Shamrock Shuffle in late March.
Food is the topic of the week it seems. Part of being an athlete seems to be an obsession with food. What do I eat to be healthier? What about to be faster? I've come to the conclusion that nutritional science is too young and complex of a field to take much of the recommendations seriously. I do my best to stay as far away from foods born from recommendations made by the diet industry
I'm kind of tired of hearing people say "Calories in = calories out! It's so simple!" While the first part is true, in principle, the "simple" part is complete bull. Metabolism and appetite are extremely complicated things. People understand some parts of it, but the complex interaction of different food products with the human body seems very poorly understood. For now, I'll stick to "real" foods, stuff that great-grandma would recognize as food, and try to get a good share of veggies. I think that's good enough.
Have a great week everyone!
I was pretty psyched on my long run today to find that my pace at 65-75% has dropped dramatically. 131bpm put me at 8:10-8:20 pace, 140 put me at low 7:40's, and 151 put me under 7. This is compared to 9min pace, 8:10 pace, and 7:30 pace, respectively, 2 weeks ago. For reference, my max HR is probably about 203 (taking a measurement from 3 years ago and subtracting 3). It just happened...just like that...all of a sudden. It's interesting to note that I'm now the "magic" 6 weeks into training again. Daniels and others have said that 6 weeks is the time it takes the body to adapt to a given training load. 3 weeks of that have been under Will's instruction, and the 3 weeks before that were 60-70 miles a week of aerobic running. We'll see what happens after another 3 weeks. My resting HR has plunged as well. I'm back under 40bpm again, for the first time since last winter.
Thus ends the first 3 week training cycle.
I'm fairly used the pattern now:
Mon easy running with strides at 5k-10k race pace
Tue hard aerobic run (8-10 miles 85% or 80% respectively)
Wed recovery
Thu mini-workout - mile race pace intervals 200m-600m in length + easy running
Fri recovery
Sat focus workout - tempo/speed/10k drill
Sun long run - 15 miles starting at 65, slowly building to 75%, 12 if 10k drill on sat
The 10k drills are the major workouts. I had my first one yesterday, and it went fairly well. Yesterday was 400m at goal 10k pace, 400 float (6-7min pace). Every 3 week microcycle, the length of the on parts increases, so in 3 weeks I have 800 on 400 float. Eventually, this gets all the way to 1600 on, 400 float! This will be sometime after the Shamrock Shuffle in late March.
Food is the topic of the week it seems. Part of being an athlete seems to be an obsession with food. What do I eat to be healthier? What about to be faster? I've come to the conclusion that nutritional science is too young and complex of a field to take much of the recommendations seriously. I do my best to stay as far away from foods born from recommendations made by the diet industry
I'm kind of tired of hearing people say "Calories in = calories out! It's so simple!" While the first part is true, in principle, the "simple" part is complete bull. Metabolism and appetite are extremely complicated things. People understand some parts of it, but the complex interaction of different food products with the human body seems very poorly understood. For now, I'll stick to "real" foods, stuff that great-grandma would recognize as food, and try to get a good share of veggies. I think that's good enough.
Have a great week everyone!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The White Stuff
Just keeps coming. The temps were real low the second half of this week, and there was a good hard snow on Monday night. I ended up running on Tuesday for 10 miles at a pretty hard effort, running over a minute slower a mile than I would have on flat, non-snow-covered ground. Thursday's mini workout was 6x200m with 200m float inbetween. That was run at a temp of about 3 deg F. Yuck. Wed and Fri were recovery, and today was the Saturday bear workout.
I wanted to head to the indoor track again, but varsity softball girls were practicing...so back to the damn TM for a hard workout. 6 miles of 400 on (1:20) 400 float (1:40 avg). This was tougher than last week's workout, but not gut-busting until I took the float parts faster (1:37) in the last couple miles of intervals. Having a friend running next to me helped, but conversation was somewhat limited as I got to the later stages of the run.
I've managed to complete destroy my Leopard installation on my new mac (I'm used to linux as a primary OS, and there it's pretty damn hard to do something that will not allow your computer to boot). By attempting to downgrade Quicktime to an older version that could handle flash, the system was completely hosed, so far as I can tell. This is the best way to learn how to do things with a computer though...kill it and fix it...kill it again, fix it again. Very time consuming though.
How do you folks put your kids to sleep? Our boy is 5 months now, and we're trying to wean him from needing to fall asleep while feeding. There doesn't seem to be any other way that he'll go to sleep except crying himself out of consciousness, and this is exceedingly painful for all involved. Any ideas?
I wanted to head to the indoor track again, but varsity softball girls were practicing...so back to the damn TM for a hard workout. 6 miles of 400 on (1:20) 400 float (1:40 avg). This was tougher than last week's workout, but not gut-busting until I took the float parts faster (1:37) in the last couple miles of intervals. Having a friend running next to me helped, but conversation was somewhat limited as I got to the later stages of the run.
I've managed to complete destroy my Leopard installation on my new mac (I'm used to linux as a primary OS, and there it's pretty damn hard to do something that will not allow your computer to boot). By attempting to downgrade Quicktime to an older version that could handle flash, the system was completely hosed, so far as I can tell. This is the best way to learn how to do things with a computer though...kill it and fix it...kill it again, fix it again. Very time consuming though.
How do you folks put your kids to sleep? Our boy is 5 months now, and we're trying to wean him from needing to fall asleep while feeding. There doesn't seem to be any other way that he'll go to sleep except crying himself out of consciousness, and this is exceedingly painful for all involved. Any ideas?
Monday, January 21, 2008
Third Time's the Charm?
It was cold again on Sunday. 4 deg F when I eventually left the house, -12 or so with windchill. 2 hours out in the cold was on the agenda. I dressed up, and hit the road, where dressing up involved wearing wool socks. At about halfway through my 15 miles, my middle toe on my right foot started throbbing a little. Uh oh. This is the toenail that I've lost twice already, once after a 20 miler in racing flats that were a tad too small, and the second time on a very humid day when I raced a half marathon. Every time it comes back, it's just a little bit uglier.
Maybe this time it's just going to decide that enough is enough, and not bother growing back. Not like I would deserve any better, the hell I've put that little guy through.
The cold wasn't actually that bad. A few times the wind was on my face, and it was annoying, but otherwise I was dressed plenty warm enough. The toe is still pretty unhappy, and will probably be splitsville in a couple weeks. Hope I didn't ruin anyone's dinner.
Today:
6.5 miles or so, mostly on grass with 4x200m strides on the Jackson Park track (41-40-39-38). Pretty nice progression down in time as I loosened up.
Sun:
15 miles starting at 65%, working up to 75%. Kind of tired by the last 4 miles.
Maybe this time it's just going to decide that enough is enough, and not bother growing back. Not like I would deserve any better, the hell I've put that little guy through.
The cold wasn't actually that bad. A few times the wind was on my face, and it was annoying, but otherwise I was dressed plenty warm enough. The toe is still pretty unhappy, and will probably be splitsville in a couple weeks. Hope I didn't ruin anyone's dinner.
Today:
6.5 miles or so, mostly on grass with 4x200m strides on the Jackson Park track (41-40-39-38). Pretty nice progression down in time as I loosened up.
Sun:
15 miles starting at 65%, working up to 75%. Kind of tired by the last 4 miles.
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