Coming soon...

Sick Sucks

This is crazy, people. I don't get sick. Well, okay, I do get sick, sometimes. But this has been ridiculous. For the last month, I've been sick 3 of 4 weekends. And we're talking Friday/Saturday sick. It really bites. Hence, over the last month, I've done exactly 1 (one)long run. Arrgh! It's intensely frustrating. My miles are really suffering as a result.

In other news, I'm finding myself being drawn to the fascinating world of multi-sport. Yes, fellow runners, I'm slowly morphing into a budding triathlete. Now, to this point, I am still very much the triathlete caterpillar, just contemplating building the cocoon that will allow me to transform into a multi-sport butterfly. As yet, I have taken my beautiful yellow mountain bike out on one ride in the last several years (which was yesterday). We went a grand total of 6 or 7 miles. It was a total blast, and it confirmed in me the desire to sell it.

Yes, I am offering up the fat tires to the highest bidder (or anyone, for that matter, that will pay me the asking price) so that I may purchase a set of skinny tires with aero bars. Due to my current financial status, these are sadly mutually exclusive. Someday I'll be in a position to have both a set of fat tires and a set (or two) of skinny tires, but right now, I have to pick. And I pick skinny. If someone will take the fat ones off my hands.

So... know anyone that wants to purchase a mountain bike??

Slackin'!!

Today a marathon went by right outside my office. I could go to the window and look down as the middle and back of the pack went running by mile 22 or so of the Deseret News Marathon. Me? I ran 4 miles of speed work on the treadmill at lunchtime. If I thought June was a down month, July's been even worse.

So far this month, I've had 9 days of running for a total of 43 miles. My lack of running is matched only by my lack of blogging! Sorry! A family camping vacation (which did include a 3 mile hike with a 30 pound almost-2-year-old on my back... that counts for something, right?) and a traditional bout with the summer cold (that is, head and chest cold) have contributed to the lack of miles. Only one long run in the double-digits (so far!) has also contributed. Not having a race in front of me that I'm registered for has been a HUGE factor. Time to get off the duff and pick something to train for, then work out a training program.

Oh, and I did redo my photography website. Check it out at www.zachjacob.com

Good workout, down month

Well, I bagged my run on Saturday because by the time I got up it was already in the 80s and there's no good route that includes a place to rehydrate in the new neighborhood -- that I've found -- yet. Still hunting, though. So that means I ended June (including today's 4 miles, more on that in a second) with 65.1 miles, my second lowest month of the year. If I get registered for a fall marathon (pretty sure the slam is out at this point, I'm just not ready), then I should still hit 1000 miles for the year:

January - 60.8
February - 85.7
March - 100
April - 128.1
May - 95.3
June - 65.1

Total YTD mileage: 534.9, 96 hours, 7 minutes, 45 seconds. That's 4 non-stop days and change. :) And that also means I'm on pace, if I can repeat, for 1069.8 miles for the year. That would be cool.

Today I did an interval workout on the treadmill. 3 mile repeats with 1/4 mile warm-up and cool-down, and 1/4 mile between each mile. Total 4 miles in 38:40. That's a 9:40 average pace (including the rest periods). 2 of the 3 miles were under 9 minutes, so these were faster-than-5k-pace repeats. Felt good, on tired legs and all.

Now that's more like it.

After last Wednesday's agonizingly slow run and Saturday's even worse debacle (11.75 in 2:21:50, a 12:05 pace!), today was more like it. It was hard. I ran with my new neighbor this morning, which was nice to have someone to run with again, and he helped me push the pace. I could tell I was slowing him down a bit, but we managed to put in 4.75 this morning in 48:27, a 10:12 pace. And the splits were even negative -

10:23 (uphill to start)
10:22 (uphill for most of this one, some downhill towards the end)
10:01 (gotta love the downhill miles)
10:05 (undulating up and down hills)
7:34 (10:07 pace - and mostly back uphill!)

My legs are a bit sore, but it was good to get in a nice tempo run with someone who's going to push me a little. We're definitely going to have to run together again -- regularly even.

Oh, and did I mention it was hot? 80 degrees at 5:30 a.m. Ugh. I'm ready for fall already.

Out of practice, and forgive the new theme

This blog theme isn't permanent. It's a temporary exercise in computer programming and website design, at which I know just enough to be dangerous, but not nearly enough to be wealthy.

I went out for an evening run tonight, getting out the door at about 9:20 p.m. This is the first time I've run outdoors in our new neighborhood, and let me tell you... when the sun is down and even though a full moon was rising, it's DARK out here in the sticks. You see, the new neighborhood is still up-and-comin', not at all "established" like the old neighborhood was. As a result, there's not quite the quantity of street lights out here, and the ones that are here aren't, shall we say, completely functional. Lesson learned: headlamp. Wear it.

I ended up doing 5.46 miles in 1:00:28, for an 11:05 average pace. What the ??? I haven't run anything that slowly for less than double-digit miles in I don't know how long. -- Okay, I looked it up. March 15 I ran 6 at an 11:07 pace. That was the day that I was having major back spasms and was trying to run anyway. March 1 was an 8 miler at 11:12, but that was a long run when I was trying to go slow. January 12 was the last time it wasn't a "Long Run" when I did 5.25 at an 11:15 pace.

Must be one of those days. I'll try the route again when I haven't been up all day, chasing kids all evening, and haven't just had 2 homemade beef-and-bean burritos for dinner (mmmm.... burritos...)

Progression

Not my own "personal" progression, but I'm talking about progression runs. I read about these in the recent issue of Runner's World, so I thought I'd give this a try. The basic idea here is finishing strong, or running negative splits. There are a lot of ways you can do this, but what I've done, so far, is started out at an "easy run" pace and increased pace every mile, until I'm finishing up at a tempo-run or interval pace.

Let me explain. I'm slow, as you know. (But I'm faster than I used to be! Quite a bit, actually!) My tempo runs are right around a 10 minute mile pace, maybe just a tad slower (10:05?). My intervals, as I've posted before, are in the low 9 minute pace. So for these runs, I've started out at easy pace (10:30) and increased speed every mile. Last Thursday I started at 10:30 and did one mile at that pace. Then I bumped it to 10:20 for a mile. And so on. I did this for 5 miles on the treadmill (so much easier to control pace on the treadmill!). My splits, so to speak, would look something like this:

10:30 (5.7 mph)
10:20 (5.8 mph)
10:10 (5.9 mph)
10:00 (6.0 mph)
9:50 (6.1 mph)

The total time for the 5 miles was 50:37, or a 10:07 average pace. About the same as a tempo run, but what I'm doing is training my legs to run fast when they're tired. Yesterday I did the same thing starting at 5.8 mph and going for four miles. The last mile I bumped up the speed again at the half mile point and again at the 3/4 mile point. Each time I also bumped up the incline on the TM, just for fun, so by the end of it all I was doing 6.4 mph (about 9:30 pace) at a 3% incline. :) Now THAT was fun! Hard, but fun!

I plan on doing something like this on my long runs, where I try and push it for the last, say, 3 miles of a 15 mile run. Since I haven't had a long run since the Ogden Marathon, I haven't been able to put this into practice yet. This Saturday, though, I will. It's my first Saturday without any plans since May 17th.