Am I bragging?

The way I see it, I'm a very average runner, as far as runners go. I guess as far as your average Joe is concerned, I'm sure I'm more active than "he" is, but still.

Allow me to explain. Those of you that follow me on Twitter or on Facebook will know that I post my runs in my "status" or as a "tweet"... mainly because I know that some people who follow me there are interested in keeping tabs on my training, etc. However, just about everyone I've ever really known is a friend on Facebook, and this last weekend, after posting the results of my long run, I got a comment that went something like this:

"Zach why do you post everytime you run with how far you went in your status report? I feel like I should be giving you feedback or coaching advice."

The guy wasn't someone that I know very well, so cutting him off from my Facebook updates didn't cause me a lot of inner turmoil or anything. I was just wondering if it comes across as bragging or something similar. I'm just using it as another way to log my training, and for those who are interested to follow along. It's by far not the only thing I post there.

Thanks for reading. I had to vent. :)

Weekly recap

Monday - 6.1 treadmill miles in the late evening after the kids were in bed. Watched the fist hour of "Oscar" with Sylvester Stalone. Great flick.

Tuesday - 5.12 miles outside at lunch in the Avenues. Great, hilly run. Took off my long-sleeved shirt and ran in short sleeves for the second half. Beautiful day.

Wednesday - 40 minute bike ride on the Cycleops. 14.2 miles.

Thursday - Interval run, 5.58 miles on the treadmill at lunch.

Friday - Easier bike day on the Cycleops. 10.8 miles in 30 minutes, early AM before work.

Saturday (today) - 14 mile long run in the foothills of the Oquirrh Mountains. 10:42 average pace. Long, hard run all the way to Copperton and back (the long way). Butt kickin.

Total: 30.8 miles running in 5:15:56
25 miles on the bike in 1:10:00
No weight training this week. Oops.

Looking forward to the cutback (rest) week next week!

Different Intervals

I tried a different interval workout today. This one was a Carmichael Training Systems workout that I got free in a Power Bar email newsletter a couple years back. At the time, there was no way I was going to do 50+ minutes of intervals, so I just saved it in my iTunes and kind of forgot about it. Well, last night, I dusted it off and loaded it onto the iPod to use today.

Basically, it goes like this:

10 minute warm up, including four 20 second stride outs, then 5 sets of:

1 minute hard, 2 minutes easy, 2 minutes hard, 2 minutes easy. Then a 10 minute cool down.

Maybe I didn't push it hard enough on the hard parts, but it didn't seem like it was as hard of a workout as the Get Fit Pod workout that I'd done the previous two weeks. I do love the coached workouts, though. It's nice to have someone yakking in your ear telling you when to speed up and slow down, etc. Today I ended up covering 5.58 miles in 55 minutes.

I think I'll keep this one in the repertoire for future interval sessions, but I think I'm going to favor the other one for now. And I'll constantly be scouring iTunes for other podcasts with coached running workouts.

January Totals

January I had my 2nd best running month ever, second only to last April, the month before I ran the Ogden Marathon. All in all, in January I ran 106 miles in 18 hours, 57 seconds - an average pace of 10:12. I also biked 92.9 miles in 4:21:45.

I'm well on my way to achieving the 1000 biking and running miles for 2009.

Intervals!

So on my new training plan, Thursdays are speedwork days -- that means either a tempo run or intervals. I had planned on doing two tempo runs and one intervals run during each three week "on" training cycle. (More about training cycles in a future post, I'm sure.) Well, last Thursday I tried an interval workout I had downloaded from the "Get Fit Pod" podcast. It basically goes like this:

• Warm up for however long... I think the podcast has you warming up about 5 minutes as it introduces the workout, etc.
  
• Find your base jogging pace. This is pretty much the pace you runs on a "normal" weekday run -- quicker than your long run pace, slower than an interval pace. I set this at 5.9 mph on the treadmill, or about 10:10/mile. Do this for 2-3 minutes.
  
• Then the intervals start. The first is one minute all-out running.
  
• Rest for one minute at your base pace (5.9 for me).
  
• 2nd interval - 2 minutes of all-out running.
  
• Rest again for one minute at your base pace.
  
• 3rd interval - 3 minutes of all-out run-as-fast-as-you-can go-go-go running (see a pattern here?)
  
• Another recovery jog - this time 2 minutes.
  
• 4th, and longest, interval - 5 minutes as-fast-as-you-can-for-that-long.
  
• 3 minute recovery period. They let you walk if you need to on this one. How generous.
  
• 3 minute interval
  
• 2 minute rest/recovery
  
• 1 minute interval
  
• 30 second recovery
  
• 30 second interval -- this is the absolute fastest you can go.
  
• Cool down.
  

I stretched out the warm-up and cool-down periods so that the entire run would be 5 miles for me today. Last week when I did this, I just extended out the cool down into a 4.5 mile run. Today I added to the front side of the workout as well. Let me tell you, this workout is KILLER, and it's fun to do on the treadmill. It definitely breaks up the otherwise monotonous 50 minutes that would be a ~5 mile run. I highly recommend it. I like to call it a "Spin Class For Runners." Try it!

Saturday's Run

Saturday I went out for a 12 mile run, with an icky long false-flat section that stretched for miles. One cool thing was, right at the end of this long uphill grade (We're talking like 6-7 miles of constant 1-3% uphill), I saw this very large bird take flight off the top of a power pole about 100 feet ahead of me. As it swooped down over the field to my left, the sun caught its head, and it was a gleaming white. The bird crossed over the road behind me and landed atop another power pole about 150 feet behind me. I had to stop and just stare, my mouth gaping open. I couldn't believe that I had just seen a freakin' bald eagle while out for a long run. I had only ever seen one in captivity before, never in the free wild. It gave me a boost to finish out the last 3.5 miles. What a sight!

Meteorology 101

Okay, basic physics: Hot air rises, and cold air falls. Typically, the higher in elevation you go, the colder the air gets, right? To escape the heat of a hot summer day, you head to the mountains, where it's cooler, right?

So, in a typical environment, the hot air near the surface of the planet rises, and as it does, it cools, which in turn makes the air fall (colder air is denser, but we've been over this already), so you get this stirring action (called convection) that keeps the air, shall we say, "fresh."

Well here in our high mountain valleys, it snows in the winter, which tends to keep the air around the ground area cold. Cold air falls, as we've discussed, but this air is already on the ground... so as warmer air aloft moves over us thanks to a nice "ridge" of high pressure, the cold air is trapped, because it's colder than the air above it, instead of warmer like it usually is (hence the term "inversion"). That was a long run on sentence, but if you read it a few times, you'll get what I mean -- if you're still awake at this point, that is.

Anyway, in this nice layer of colder air near the ground that's not going anywhere because it's colder than the air above it exist all the cars, factories, oil refineries, furnaces, fireplaces, etc. (and sublimating snow, which adds to the visibility issues), and since the usual convection isn't happening, all the particulates, pollution, water vapor from the snow, etc., just hangs in the air, and all of a sudden you have Salt Lake City doing its best Los Angeles impersonation, like this:

My point? You really don't want to be out running in that gunk if you value your lungs. So, I'm relegated to this:


*Sigh* 5 miles today. Here goes nothin'.