Couch to ??k (A RL running dynasty)

[finketr]

I wear prescription glasses and contacts give me headaches.. so as a result I wear sunglasses during the day.. i guess i' should go to best buy or somewhere similar and test drive.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by finketr

I wear prescription glasses and contacts give me headaches.. so as a result I wear sunglasses during the day.. i guess i' should go to best buy or somewhere similar and test drive.

Yeah, I did some web searches but not sure if I could find any great recommendations since I do not wear glasses. My wife wears contacts when she runs as well.

Another option if you have a pair of earphones that you like other than they keep falling out might be to try to figure out why they are falling out and fix that instead.. My old earbuds would fall out because as I ran, my arm motion would pull the cord out of my ears eventually. I know some people have that problem due to the size of the ear bud not fitting their ear well.

For a while my wife had a clip thing behind her neck that you clipped the earphone wire into and it helped hold it in place which solved some of her problems with the wires being pulled out.

Another option could be going with something like yurbuds. I have never tried them, but they are still wired but shaped a little differently and I have heard some people comment that they like them for running. Plus I believe (don't quote me on it) that you can get a few different sizes of buds to find the one that fits most comfortably in your ear. The yurbuds start pretty cheaply so not a huge investment if you don't want to spend a lot for their low end stuff.

[Alan T]

So last week had me at just under 27 miles of activity. 7 miles of that was elliptical which gave me 19.9 miles of running. I kind of wish that I had run 1/10th of a mile further now, but close enough to 20 miles for my first week back after the last race and with the new training plan.

That leads to Monday, which was cross training day. The weather was starting to be a little more spring like finally and I decided to pump air into my bike tires and get out for a ride. It was still cold enough when riding, that the extra speed needed me to bundle up a bit more than I would have for a run, but it was still nice to get out on the bike. This was only my second ride of the year and I think my second since last September maybe?

I realized a few things on this ride though....

- I hate hills just as much on a bike as I do when running.
- I think I am almost to the point where it is easier for me to run a distance to bike it, or at least it feels more comfortable.
- Just because I've been improving my fitness over the last few months, it doesn't fully transfer to my biking. At the bigger hill, I literally felt that my heart was going to jump out of my chest and actually had to rest for a minute or so before continuing...

Either way, I did manage to ride:

9 miles in 43 minutes


To be fair, most of it was a pretty easy ride, and enjoyable. I just had trouble with one hill in the middle of it...




My max heart rate for the ride, even on the hill didn't get over 158 which when running, I'll usually go well over on hills of the same size, so I guess my biggest problem was just the leg muscles needed to power up that hill aren't as defined for me as my running leg muscles right now.

Hopefully as I bike more this spring, that will get better for me.

[Radii]

Newegg.com - SONY MDR-J10/WHITE 3.5mm Connector Earbud Clip Style Headphone

This is what I use when I'm jogging. I keep my glasses on when I'm jogging and the hooks/clips that go around your ears to keep them in place are perfectly comfortable for me even with my glasses on. I got them at Wal Mart for probably about the same $$ as on newegg, I'm not one to spend a lot on this type of thing heh.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by finketr

Started last night. I'm doing c25k week 0...

as in: i did the first two jogs, walked the rest of the time except for the last jog.

So it was 27 minutes of brisk walking and 3 minutes of jogging.

most important thing I learned: I am old.

I started at Christmas. Week 1 of Couch to 5k IIRC calls for 60 seconds jogging/90 seconds walking. I couldn't do this even once. My first time out I did 30 seconds jogging/90 seconds walking and after about 10 minutes of that I had to walk the rest of the way. It took a week before I could even do 30 seconds jogging/90 seconds walking for the full 20 minutes. After that I increased to 45 seconds jogging/90 seconds walking for a week or two. Again when I first made that leap by the end of 20 minutes I was only walking.

Finally about my 5th week I got to "week 1" of couch to 5k doing 60 seconds jogging/90 seconds walking for a full 20 minutes.

My pace is very slow (20 minute mile at best, maybe closer to 22 minute mile), but I can see improvement as long as I go out and do something and don't skip a bunch of days. About 3 months after I started I was able to jog a mile without any walking, which felt fucking great. I'm very slowly trying to increase my distance now.

So don't worry about your starting point, pace yourself and you can improve really quickly!

[Radii]

double dola,

Thanks for the advice in the other thread Alan, I ordered a Garmin Forerunner today. I've been following along here, I'm enjoying the updates, good work!

[Alan T]

Yes, absolutely don't worry about your pace at all. The entire focus to start and really even where I am right now is all about being able to go further. Just gradually work on going the distance and increasing the distance you can go. That is the most important thing right now.

[Alan T]

Radii, which forerunner did you end up getting?

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Radii, which forerunner did you end up getting?

Amazon.com: Garmin Forerunner 410 GPS-Enabled Sports Watch with Heart Rate Monitor: GPS & Navigation

It was on sale at a pretty good discount. I'm a bit concerned about some of the complaints in the reviews about the touch screen thing. But I can return it if that ends up being a problem, seems to have good reviews overall though.

[Alan T]

I looked at the 410 but got scared away from the negative comments about the touch bezel. I use a 210 myself and love it.

[finketr]

I couldn't find the sony j10's at the walmart here. i did see a sport philips headphone/over the ear wired... Didn't get them because just not sure about them yet. I also see that i could get earbuds with mic/remote (like my current earbuds) that appear to have difference earbuds to use.

Anyone have experience with them?

Regarding week -2, day 2: aven't done it due to soreness on wednesday (none on tuesday, weird) and an unstable knee last night... Must get back to it even if I all I do is a brisk 30-45 minute walk.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by finketr

Regarding week -2, day 2: aven't done it due to soreness on wednesday (none on tuesday, weird) and an unstable knee last night... Must get back to it even if I all I do is a brisk 30-45 minute walk.

I know when I first started, I was around 260 pounds and was having knee issues where they hurt from the little jogging I was doing. I talked to the doctor some and he mentioned it mostly was due to my weight and recommended if I was having pain to try something a little less weight bearing such as elliptical which I did for a while. When i came back a while later I didn't have that knee pain any longer.

Your issue might be something else though, but generally if there is pain, you don't want to push it, finding a different activity that doesn't hurt is a good replacement.

[finketr]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I know when I first started, I was around 260 pounds and was having knee issues where they hurt from the little jogging I was doing. I talked to the doctor some and he mentioned it mostly was due to my weight and recommended if I was having pain to try something a little less weight bearing such as elliptical which I did for a while. When i came back a while later I didn't have that knee pain any longer.

Your issue might be something else though, but generally if there is pain, you don't want to push it, finding a different activity that doesn't hurt is a good replacement.

Yeah.. hate elliptical as i feel herky-jerky if you know what I mean...

i'm at the 270 level and trending down, but the strange thing was, Tuesday after week -2 day 1, i felt great, the soreness happened on wednesday and the strange lock/collapse-ish of my right knee was thursday.

i'll go back to doing walking on the treadmill (for pace reasons) and some strength exercises for a bit...

sigh.. i'm still aiming to run a 5k by August even though it's damn hot (100+) here then.

[Alan T]

So last Tuesday was my long day for the week. I truly enjoy my long run days most of the time for a few reasons. I don't try to kill myself with the pace, so usually it is a fairly comfortable pace that is setting and pretty relaxing. Also my long runs more than any other run help me see how much I have improved, going from sitting on the couch all of the time to now running 9 miles in a single run. I also know that adding more miles is the best way to help further improve my running and this is perhaps my single most important run of the week.

That said, I sometimes get bored running the same routes and end up looking for new routes to take. For a while, i was measuring out routes with google maps, but lately have been just letting mapmyrun pick a route for me. It has a "route recommender" feature on it that you can put in your starting location and the distance you want to run and it will help recommend a route for you. A few things to keep in mind however is that it really does not take elevation into consideration when recommending the route, so I have had a few that ended up being pretty rough courses for me to take. Probably not something that I really want to do for my long runs, but whatever.. its just running

So my current training plan that I am on for my upcoming 10k has my long run at 5 miles for the week, but I had planned on just putting it at 6.2 anyways, since that is what I had been running and I did not see any reason to drop it down a mile. Plus I like the 6.2 distance to help me get a feel for how much easier running 10k is becoming for me.

So I popped in the route recommender and went off running!



One interesting thing that I noticed from this run, I had a hill that was both steeper and higher than the hill I did the previous day when biking. I had no problem running up this hill at a decent "easy pace" for myself, where the easier hill on the bike the day before was a chore. I guess that shows how much better that my running has gotten and how it does not transfer directly to biking.

Another thing I encountered on this run was at the last mile or mile and a half, I was on a highway that had horrendous wind.. 20mph wind with 30-40 mph wind gusts pretty much pushing directly against me while I was on a small incline the entire way. It was pretty tough after 5 miles to have the leg strength to push through that and only then I found my pace slipping back to right around 12:00min/mile. I think I'll take hills over strong wind any day after that.


Because of the wind and the hills, I didn't break my best 10k time, but did still make it my second best 10k time which is good to see on such a difficult run for myself.



I also found that someone had created a "segment" within Strava (one of the apps I use to track my running) for the big hill that I ran up. I ended up 4th on the leaderboard for that segment during this run. The hill they measured was 88ft incline in 1/2 a mile (4.3% average grade).

Don't get too excited for me though, I am 4th out of 4 The first place on that leaderboard did that hill 2 minutes faster than me, which is almost half the time. And it was not like he was just sprinting up that hill, it was only 1/2 of a mile of a full 6 mile run that he did where his entire pace was faster than my normal interval training pace.

Anyways...

6.2 miles in 1 hour 11 minutes

[Alan T]

Wednesday and Thursday are both easy run days for me.

Wednesday was supposed to be 3 miles and Thursday 3.5 miles. Thursday I am gradually working up to be a second long day of the week for myself. Probably not as long a run as Tuesdays, but hoping in a few weeks to be up to 6+ miles on Thursday runs as well.

Wednesday I am also supposed to do weight training, but yeah that did not happen. I just have no motivation right now for it and not sure why. I just do not enjoy it too much. Maybe when softball season starts later this month that will change for me, but right now I just make excuses to why I do not want to do the workouts after my run.

So I ended up just running 3.5 miles both days at an easy pace and was done with it. Thursday's run I actually ended up doing with my wife who was a wreck the entire time worried that we would not make it home before our youngest daughter made it home on the school bus. I spent half of the run explaining to her that we could probably walk the 3 miles in time if we had to and make it, but oh well

Wednesday: 3.4 miles in 40 minutes

Thursday: 3.5 miles in 43 minutes

[Alan T]

So Friday was an off day for me and my planned schedule was to do interval training on Saturday and Sunday was an easy run. Because of family and kids and such that did not go quite as planned though.

I have been trying to encourage my oldest daughter to run more with me, she is 12 and I want her to do more than just play video games and watch tv. For the past couple of months she has been running off an on, starting primarily after she got into playing Field hockey in school. My biggest challenge is that she is only with me on every other weekend, it makes it difficult for me to try to build healthy habits for her.

Saturday morning, I went with her to a local weekly race that is held just to run it with her for fun. It had been over a month since I last ran with her, and it did not go that well for her. She did ok for the first mile but then started running out of gas quickly, a clear sign that she just hasn't been running much. My goal wasn't to drive her into the ground though, I just wanted to be supportive and encourage her, so we just took an easy pace and finished 33rd and 34th out of 34. On the plus side though, she did win a free shirt out of the weekly raffle

3.1 miles in 39 minutes

[Alan T]

With the running that my wife and I have been doing and my oldest daughter, it has had an effect on the younger two kids wanting to get into it as well. Obviously I want to encourage that, but they just aren't able to go for long distances, so Sunday I took them out for a little jog around the neighborhood (1 mile almost exactly loop).

Younger kids don't really do a jog though, they like to sprint full speed for as long as they can and then they stop to walk and catch their breath again until they can sprint again. I pretty much just let them do that while I kept up with whatever pace they wanted to go as we went a mile.

.9 mile - 13 minutes

My youngest seemed to enjoy it a bunch and asked if we could do it again the next day. Now that the weather is getting nicer, I will start trying to plan some afternoon walk/jogs with her as well, or perhaps try to get to her school on some days to walk home with her from school. She normally rides the bus home, but I have measured the distance to her school on other runs that I have done and it is pretty close to 1 mile (just a hair more), so that might be a fun activity to do with her on occasions.


----------------------------------

Later in the day on Sunday I was able to get my planned Saturday workout in. Since I had done an easy run with my daughter the previous day, I just swapped the two days and did interval training today.

I had not run on the high school track in a while, and felt like doing it for this run, so I headed there for the intervals. Running on a track is both good and bad, it is bad in the sense that it is not very exciting and only a step up from a treadmill in scenery, but easier than normal outside running in that there aren't hills to deal with.

My plan was to warm up at an easy pace and then run 8x400m with 200m recoveries in between the intervals. 400m is one lap around the track, so pretty easy for me to measure. My interval pace that I was aiming for was 8:56min/mile pace, which is pretty much the fastest intervals that I have attempted, so I was not sure what to expect.



I ended up going way too fast for my first two intervals, both at closer to 7:00min/mile pace, which is waaaay too fast. I settled down for the remaining ones though. I still ran them a bit too quickly, but was in the 8's at least for those. I felt by the time that I was on my last repetition, I was running pretty low on gas, but pretty much willed my way through the last two repeats. Each time, my heart rate climbed just a little more and by the last I was getting close to my threshold, but stayed just under it.



I was able to set a bunch of personal best records for myself during my run though, my fastest 400m yet (as expected from going way too fast on my first two repeats), which also led to my fastest 1/2 mile, fastest 1k and fastest mile yet.

It was the first time that I have run a mile in under 9 minutes, beating my previous best by about 7 seconds which is pretty cool!

I also managed to run a 5k distance in under 30 minutes for only the second time ever as well during this run, without expecting that.

[finketr]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Saturday morning, I went with her to a local weekly race that is held just to run it with her for fun. It had been over a month since I last ran with her, and it did not go that well for her. She did ok for the first mile but then started running out of gas quickly, a clear sign that she just hasn't been running much. My goal wasn't to drive her into the ground though, I just wanted to be supportive and encourage her, so we just took an easy pace and finished 33rd and 34th out of 34. On the plus side though, she did win a free shirt out of the weekly raffle

You came in 34th right?

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by finketr

You came in 34th right?

Yes, actually I did let her beat me

[AnalBumCover]

BTW, thanks for this thread. It's helping me get my own going.

[digamma]

Another thanks here--renewing my interest in semi-competitive running again.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by AnalBumCover

BTW, thanks for this thread. It's helping me get my own going.

Originally Posted by digamma

Another thanks here--renewing my interest in semi-competitive running again.

Glad to hear from both of you. It is good to know others are reading along!


I rearranged my first post in the thread by the way. I wanted a place to keep a track on my personal triumphs and track my current goals. You can see how when I first was finishing up couch to 5k, I wasn't able to go a full 5k without walking either.. and when I finally did run a full 5k, it was over 40 minutes. I've managed to cut around 15 minutes off of that time since then, and now have new goal times that I am aiming for as well as goal races.

[AnalBumCover]

Wow. I like that first post idea. Mind if I steal it?

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by AnalBumCover

Wow. I like that first post idea. Mind if I steal it?

Don't mind at all!

[finketr]

Originally Posted by AnalBumCover

Wow. I like that first post idea. Mind if I steal it?

just give proper attribution so that we don't run afoul of the grammar police.

[Alan T]

So last week, I ended up putting together 30 miles of activity. 9 miles of that was biking, so that meant 21 miles of running, or pretty much where I wanted to be for right now.

As I get ready for my 10k coming up, I'll slowly expand this up to around 25 miles in a week.


So Monday, cross training day for me. I want to get to about an hour of cross training, but so far have only been going about 40-45 minutes. I did the same today, not because of running out of steam though but I actually had a night out with my youngest daughter planned so had to fit it in quickly. I had some contractors doing work on my house on Monday, putting up new gutters since my old ones got destroyed this last winter with the bad storms. They finished up by 4:30 which left me less than an hour to bike. I quickly got ready and took off!

I actually decided to take a path that I have biked before, and make a loop that is the same as my longest run that I have done (roughly an 8.5 mile loop). I knew it would not take too long so figured I could get there and back in time before my wife had to leave for spin class.

One of the fun things that I like about using strava to record my runs/rides is they have a social competition type of section where you can create segments that you can then use to compete against your own personal bests on those sections or compete against others that have done that section. There are privacy settings that you can use if you don't wish to participate or if you want to make your segment private to just you only as well.

On my planned ride, I knew there was one segment that I had taken a few times before.



Now I'm not a great biker, but trying to ride more (once a week) than I have in the past. Last year I was riding this segment in 9 1/2 - 10 1/2 minutes. You can ignore the Jan 31st time, it was one of my first activities after I had back surgery so was taking it pretty easy.

So I knew where this segment was, and decided I would see how I would do this time around for fun.



The segment in question was 2.2 miles and more downhill than up. There were a few uphills in it, but nothing overly tough or difficult. It is a fun segment because for the most part it is fairly flat which means people who are far better bikers than me can get a pretty good speed going on it.



Well, I did improve my best time by almost two minutes.. and it actually put me in the same ballpark as many of the other bikers. Only 10 seconds behind 28th place instead of the 2 minutes I was previously

Anyways, that was just for fun and pretty early in the ride, after that I had another 5-6 miles to go and just made it a comfortable easy paced ride.

8.6 miles in 37:12

[Alan T]

Tuesday was my long run day, I guess my most important run of the week. I did a route roulette and it ended up sending me down a pretty nice highway towards Tufts University Veterinarian school. So alot of the surrounding area is big open fields that they use for the horses or dogs or other animals that happen to be visiting.

Along the way, part of the road goes parallel to the railroad where the Commuter rail runs into Boston. I got quite the startle when during the run an Amtrak train was going down the track and decided to blow its horn right next to me. Made me jump a good bit! After a bit, the path I took winded up finding its way to an industrial area that was not quite as pleasant but it was a pretty fun run and new scenery for me at least!



I had a pretty good climb during the middle of the run, I think it was around 400ft total for the entire run, but the big climb part was about 2 miles all up hill. It was followed with a pretty nice sprint down hill where the grade was so steep that I had little choice but to full sprint down the hill. Overall it was a very beautiful day though, nice and sunny with a cool breeze so it made the run very enjoyable.

I realized near the end of the run though that I had made some pretty good time without really trying to do so. With just a mile left, I knew that I was within 10 minutes of my best 10k time, so pushed myself a little in mile 6 to make it close. I wasn't sure if I had beat it or not until I uploaded my data from my run....



I set a new personal record for my best 10k time, beating my old record by 24 seconds. Still a pretty far distance away from my goal of trying to get a sub-1 hour 10k though, but I still have 7-8 weeks left before the 10k race to try to get there. I am not sure that I will as that is a pretty big gap, but it gives me something to work for!



One of the complications that I have with my long run days is after my run, I get pretty substantially hungry. My current calorie budget is around 2500 calories per day, which would give me a goal of losing 1/2 a pound per week. Nothing earth shattering, but I am not trying to diet but instead I am trying to just live healthier (both diet and exercise).

I don't believe that calories burned off by exercise is a direct correlation to calories you can eat in extra as many fitness apps suggest, but it does represent the large amount of food that I burn off that I need to replace. Seriously shorting my calories is probably just as bad for my health as taking in too many calories is. On Tuesday I ended up eating out twice (Subway for lunch and a mexican restaurant for dinner) as well as had a snack of various fruit in the afternoon, and I still came a mile short on my calories for the day.

I guess figuring out my Tuesday diet is going to take a little more work on my part.

[AnalBumCover]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I got quite the startle when during the run an Amtrak train was going down the track and decided to blow its horn right next to me. Made me jump a good bit!

Sometimes I wonder if they do this on purpose.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by AnalBumCover

Sometimes I wonder if they do this on purpose.

I was no where near an intersection where they would blow the whistle so I assumed they did. Dunno though



Also for anyone interested, I put in the first post below my goals/personal records a section listing the various apps or websites I use with my running. I may have forgotten or neglected to put in a few, but at least you can see most of the things I have tried in case any is of interest to anyone else.

[AnalBumCover]

That's me following you on Strava (Rob Ordona)

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by AnalBumCover

That's me following you on Strava (Rob Ordona)

That's cool, the more the merrier!

[Alan T]

Here is an article in the newspaper that I was interviewed for talking about the various fitness apps and how they help newer runners. Even though they say I have lost 90 pounds, it is really only 60 pounds. Maybe in another year it really will be 90 pounds

Fitness apps get users moving, improving - Worcester Telegram & Gazette - telegram.com

[Alan T]

I am traveling this week, am trying to keep on my running schedule but will be a little slow to post updates until next weekend when I get back

[Alan T]

I'm a little behind in updating this again thanks to more traveling. Trying to catch up!

Wednesday before last and Thursday were both pretty easy runs. Wednesday is supposed to also be a strength workout day which I skipped once again and Thursday I had bowling after running. Nothing much eventful otherwise in either run, just easy short runs.

Wednesday: 3.1 miles in 38 minutes

Thursday: 4.1 miles in 49 minutes

I guess the one thing of note on my Thursday easy run, it took me up one of my segments with a small hill on it. a .4 mile stretch where the road climbs 88 ft.



My Thursday run on the 11th was not my fastest, falling short by 4 seconds from my run a little over a week before. One interesting thing I noticed though is my heart rate was a good bit lower to do the same work. In fact it was lower than a few months ago where it took me 30 seconds longer to go up the same hill. I would like to believe that this is a sign of my improving fitness (hopefully)

[Alan T]

Friday was an off day for me, Saturday was scheduled to be a tempo run. I decided to do the weekly 5k race that is hosted by a local running club that I am a member of. I went with my wife and a few friends to do the run, but I did not plan on treating it like a race. I just was going to stick to my tempo run pace through the distance. My goal pace was going to be a 9:47minute/mile pace, which would leave me right at about 30:30 for a full 5k.

One of the fun things about this club is there are a large assortment of talents when it comes to running. There are the marathoners all the way down to beginners. They do a good job of not being elitist and try to encourage newer runners as well as older runners. With the Boston Marathon scheduled for 2 days later, a large number of the marathon runners in the club were still doing this race with plans to "take it easy". Keep in mind their taking it easy pace in many cases is faster than my race pace though

Setting out at my 9:47ish pace, I ended up right in the middle of a pretty decent group of marathon runners and started chatting it up while running with one of them who pretty much just matched my pace and ran with me. It was pretty cool getting to meet him while running, and even more cool for me the fact that I was able to run sub-10 minute pace and have a conversation, something that i never could do before. We literally ran 2.5 miles of the 5k together just talking. He gave me various pointers for handling the hills better, and I asked him random questions about his experience running marathons and such. He is 50 years old and this was going to be his 5th Boston marathon. He told me that he had just started running a few years ago, before that his "long run" was from the recliner to the fridge. It is always encouraging to me to realize that people who run marathons are just ordinary people who decided to change their lives to become healthier. If they can do it, I can as well.

As running, I got to the final 3/4th of a mile home stretch in really good shape, was not tired at all and he actually pointed out the guy running about 400m or so ahead of us was struggling. he told me that I should try to catch him and see if I could finish strongly. Even though I had planned on running a tempo pace the entire time, I decided to go ahead and kick it up the final stretch and see how I could do.



I ended up finishing strong, running the last 1/2 mile at around an 8:00 pace. I did pass the "rabbit" that I was chasing, and as soon as I saw the finish line, I kicked it up another notch to the point where I finished the race with pretty much my highest heart rate that i recall seeing (189).

I didn't set a new PR for my 5k mostly due to not racing the first 4/5th of the run, but I did finish with a 29:07 5k, which was right among my best. I did also set a few other personal bests for myself:



I actually beat previous best records on 1 mile and 1/2 mile that I had done during interval training. This was a very strong run for me, perhaps one of my best yet. Plus I felt really good afterwards (once I caught my breath that is). I didn't have any aches or pains.

I found my new friend that I had met and introduced him to my wife, and we added him to the list of people that we were going to follow with the marathon tracker on Monday (where it sends updates to your cell phone when they reach certain checkpoints).

Writing a little after the fact about the marathon makes it a little more surreal I suppose. Going from a horrible tragedy to actually being worried about people you know was very disheartening. I had been talking just that weekend about my goal to try to run the Boston Marathon by the time I turned 40 (basically have 2 years to try to do it), and then to see what occurred. Happily the people that we knew all checked in unhurt on facebook and through other means, but what happened did not change my goals a single bit. I still plan on running a half-marathon later this year, and a full marathon next year with the goal of trying to get into the Boston marathon by the time I am 40.

[AnalBumCover]

Originally Posted by Alan T

He is 50 years old and this was going to be his 5th Boston marathon. He told me that he had just started running a few years ago, before that his "long run" was from the recliner to the fridge. It is always encouraging to me to realize that people who run marathons are just ordinary people who decided to change their lives to become healthier. If they can do it, I can as well.

Quoting this so I can read it over and over again.

[Alan T]

Sunday was just a recovery run day after the previous day's "tempo run". Nothing super exciting, just an easy pace to get enough miles to meet my weekly goal of 20+ miles for the week.

Sunday : 3.3 miles in 40 minutes



This gave me 22+ miles of running and another 8.6 miles biking for the week over roughly 5 hours of time. I am still behind in posting here by 1 week, so upcoming next is looking back at my vacation week from last week and then I have more vacation and a 5 mile race upcoming to fit in for my 10k training.

[Alan T]

This past week was school vacation week in Massachusetts. We had plans to travel for the week, so that presented two big problems for me:

1) Trying to keep up with my exercise around the travel and vacation and family schedule

2) Trying to keep to some sense of a healthy diet while traveling and eating out 90% of the time.

We were to fly out Tuesday through Saturday to California, so that left Monday in town. I had softball practice later in the evening so we had planned on Monday to be a day out at Six Flags with the kids.

Six Flags was fun, but obviously the marathon bombing occured while we were on our way home. With three kids in the car, we were not really able to listen very well to what was going on, so my wife kept up to date online on her phone and was telling me as she found out stuff. By the time we got home, the kids just stayed upstairs to play while my wife and I watched the news downstairs. I ended up completely skipping my bike ride that I had planned for crosstraining that afternoon. I still did an hour of softball practice, so I guess that would have to suffice as my exercise for the day.

Tuesday morning we were to head out to the airport for our flight. Due to the bombings, we decided to get to the airport earlier than normal just in case there was extra security. We were to leave at 10:30 in the morning, so my wife and I snuck out in the morning for a semi-long run before we left. I took her down to the 5 mile course for the race that we are doing May 4th and ran that with her. While I try to fit in some decent hills on my runs, she doesn't necessarily do that as much, and the hills on this course killed her. For the first time in a few weeks, she had to stop to walk up the bigger part of one of the hills. I got to the 2 mile mark and waited for about 2 minutes for her to catch up to me. From there on, it was pretty much mostly down hill and we ran it together without any problems.



It ended up being 376ft in elevation gain, I felt pretty good on the run though, but was taking a slower pace than normal. I plan on running it again by myself in the next week if I can find time just to get a feel for what pace I want to take on the race. I think for the most part, taking it easy until the top of the hill and then all out from there as if it was a 5k will be my strategy during the race. I guess I will see how it goes!

Tuesday: 5 miles in 1 hour and 2 minutes


After the run, we showered and got the kids ready and went to the airport. We were flying American Airlines and got to the airport to see perhaps the largest line I had ever seen at the check-in. Not even security yet, so I had no idea what was going on. Until I found out that American had a system wide computer outage. After an hour or 90 minutes, we got through it and security was a breeze compared to that line, only to get to the gate to find out that no flights were taking off until the computer issue was fixed.

So we sat there at the gate for several hours, and got to see so many people who were trying to fly home from the marathon, this probably was adding to one of the worst experiences of their lives I imagine. After a while, they finally announced that all flights were cancelled and they couldn't do anything to help with all of their computers down. We talked to several agents and they echoed the same thing, the company line was to try to talk to other airlines to see if they could help. My problem was that I didn't have a spare few thousand dollars to fly the family on another air-line. So we went and picked up our bags from baggage claim and headed back home to figure out what to do next.

We got home and pretty much it was time to get the kids in bed, while we sat on the phone on hold with American for 3+ hours and never was answered before we went to sleep.

The next morning, I got lucky and got a hold of someone in American and they were able to re-book our flight through United instead, but it was for 1pm. So we were going to have to get everyone up and ready and out the door again. I decided to go for a quick and easy run while the kids all showered and got ready. Nothing spectacular, mostly just getting out for fresh air after the very stressful past two days..

Wednesday: 3.1 miles in 35 minutes

I got home, showered myself and grabbed our bags and we went back to the airport. Luckily we had not unpacked anything, so did not have to re-pack it all. Getting to the airport, we find that due to American rebooking us on United, there were some issues with the e-tickets not being cut over, and we had to wait yet another 1 hour in line trying to get it resolved. Once that was done, we came to find out that United had a 2+ hour delay on the flight we were taking for a quick lay-over in Denver. The problem is that meant we would now miss that flight... Awesome!

I talked to a ticket agent and she rebooked our second flight for a later one, giving us about 30-40 minutes to spare at the Denver layover.. which hopefully would be enough.. but once we were on our flight we got stuck without clearance to take off for nearly 30 minutes... This vacation was getting to be very stressful... The flight itself was uneventful other than the United flight crew being among the most unprofessional that I have ever experienced. In the back of the plane where we were sitting, we heard them openly making fun of passengers as well as their company they worked for. Anyhow, we get to Denver pretty much right when our next flight was to take off but luckily found that it too was delayed by about 15 minutes, but we had to get across to the other side of the terminal. We did a family speed walk and made it to our next gate in 10 minutes, and were the very last people to board, but still managed to get on and get to California much later than planned but still we got there.

We celebrated by eating breakfast for dinner at Dennys at 11pm at night and then checked in the hotel and crashed for the night.

I had runs that I wanted to do both Thursday and Saturday, but my wife seemed doubtful if we would have time... I'll cover those days in my next post

[Alan T]

Blah, been staying pretty busy so falling behind in keeping this updated...

A few quick updates to try to catch back up here...

To finish out the vacation week, traveling is horrible for both exercise routine and eating routine. My goal was to meet my workout plan and also to try not to eat everything in site considering we would be eating out the entire time.

Thursday: 4.6 miles in 52 minutes

Was a pretty easy run through San Bruno, California. Did not have any specific time that I had to be back, but did not know the area that well so just ran down the street until the sidewalk ended, turned around and came back. nothing super special.

Friday: normal day off, we spent most of the day walking around town anyways though.

Saturday: We had to leave for the airport at like 6:45am, including getting all of the kids packed. The Sun rose at like 6am though, so that caused me a problem. I decided to go before the sun rose and headed out at 5:45am since the street had lights on it and it starts getting a little lighter before the sun rises anyways. I had very little time though, so literally booked it.

5k in 29:42

Ran down the same street as the day before, but ran a shorter distance and pretty much tried to haul butt. I recorded my 3rd best 5k time ever, including having to pause for a few lights and it being way too early in the morning.

I got back to the room, packed everyone up and headed out to the airport.

[Alan T]

We got back late Saturday night, and Sunday started my youngest daughter's Spring soccer season, but I was a few miles short of my weekly 20 mile running goal, so fit a run in later that afternoon.

I was going to take it easy, but changed my mind and did some hills instead. (bleh)

Sunday: 4.3 miles in 47 minutes



Well, I made my weekly goal for 20 miles.. barely... with 20.1 for the week.

On the bright side, I moved up to 2nd place on a hill segment on this run. I had previously been third. No chance in catching first place though, the guy ran a 6:53min/mile pace up a 6% grade for half a mile. I'm pretty sure that I would lose a lung if I tried that.

[Alan T]

So last Monday was supposed to be a biking day for me, but it was in the 40s to low 50s most of the day and after being in California the previous week I was just being a wimp and decided to not ride. Instead, I walked to my daughter's school and picked her up and walked home with her. (2.6 miles round trip). She loved it and wanted to do it again some time, so I guess that was a good trade off family-time wise. But I need to try to motivate myself in my non-running exercises. That is two straight weeks of biking that I skipped and I hadn't done any strength exercises in more weeks than that.

Tuesday is my long run day, and I had been doing 6.5 mile runs weekly for a while, and felt it was time to start pushing that back up a little more. So planned a new route that I had not run before that was a little over 7 miles. The weather was brutal, almost May and it was 37 degrees, raining and windy. I just put on my rain running gear and got out and suffered through it.



The hills did not end up being too bad for me, but much of this run was on a local truck route, and those guys driving at 50mph plus the wind just made the route not too much fun at all.

Tuesday: 7.2 miles in 1 hour and 23 minutes



I did record my third fastest 10k time before, but I think that says more for the fact that I just don't run 10k very fast yet than how good this run was, since it was not a very spectacular run at all.

[Alan T]

Wednesday I had softball practice later in the afternoon and was pretty busy with work and a doctor appointment, so no time to run until right before practice. So I just turned my run into a warm up run for practice. Got to the field a little early and ran around the neighborhood for 3 miles, getting back in time for practice.

Wednesday: 3 miles in 32 minutes


Thursday, I am not really sure what the point of my run was to be honest. It had been a while since I had gotten out and tried to run fast just for fun. (Well I guess less than a week, but felt like it had been a while) and some times I just want to run fast to see how I have improved. So I pulled out one of my old courses that I used to run a bunch last fall to see how I could do.



I basically ran a half mile warm up, then 1 mile at interval pace and then the final mile or 1.3 or so at a recovery pace. Nothing exciting, but I did set a few personal records for myself.




The tougher part of this run was that it was very windy. We had 20+mph winds against me the entire time I was running fast. It helped on the way back I suppose, but caused extra work on my attempt to run faster.

Thursday: 3.2 miles in 32 minutes


Edit: This also is a new personal record for my fastest 1 mile time, so I got to update that on my 1st post!

[Alan T]

Friday was an off day for me, and my wife and I were headed out of town again for a friend's wedding. Once again it is a case of trying to fit in my exercise plan and trying to not eat everything in site. (Especially with a brunch buffet planned for Sunday morning.. ugh)

Since we were traveling without kids, my wife and I planned to do the run together, but were up in the mountains, so finding courses gave us two options:

1) Run with hills and enjoy the scenery
2) Drive down the mountain into the town and run on a more flat and less scenic surface.

So we both agreed on just doing the scenic run and take it easy/slow. I made sure to let my wife know there would be quite some hills.. and she said it was fine. I am not sure she knew exactly what 1000 ft of incline would feel like over 3 miles (She had only run 2000 ft worth of elevation thus far before the weekend this year over several hundred miles).

We started off with the plans to run 5 miles, a loop of the area, and where we were staying, there is no way to go up, we had to go either one way or another both down-hill to start. So we went to the right and the first 1.5 miles we went from 831ft of altitude to 508ft. Went from virtually the highest point in the run to the lowest, all down hill.

Running that much down hill, not being used to it is pretty tough on the quads, so we just took it easy and didn't race down the hill, settling in for a comfortable 11:00min/mile pace. My wife complained a little bit about her legs bothering her from the decline, but nothing huge and we found the only real easy part of the course a stretch of 1.5 miles with no real elevation increase or decrease. Since I was running with my wife, we took it easy at about a 12:30 pace. It was actually quite beautiful and I wish I had brought my phone or a camera or something to take pictures!

This is when the pain began. We were roughly half way through the run (2.5 miles in approximately), and at 480ft of altitude. We now had to spend the next 2.5 miles going practically all up hill to get back to a 871ft altitude we started at. The first bad hill was only 1/10th of a mile, but climbed 100ft in that span.. including this doozy:



I am not sure exactly how to describe running up a 26% grade, but I felt like I needed a rope at one point. You can see from my pace, that I wasn't necessarily burning it up that section by the time I had gotten 30-40 feet up there. Once at the top, I waited for my wife to finish getting up there as well and she asked how I ran up that. She couldn't hardly even walk up it!

Now it would have been nice if we had stayed at that altitude and continued climbing, but instead following that hill was another down-hill which took us back another 100ft down. I made the offhand comment to my wife that the downhill was nice, but we would have to run back up it at some point!

Sure enough, we had another long straight-away come up that went directly up hill. .8 of a mile with a climb of 260ft. The worst grade on this stretch was only 12%, but the length of it wore me out.

Once again that was followed by another downhill and then the final uphill 200ft over .6 of a mile with another 12% grade. The final hill my wife just walked, she was pretty much done with the inclines, so I waited for her at the top again.



You can see the fun that I had myself with the inclines. I made the goal to run up all of the inclines, and I didn't have to walk once which I am proud of, but it took a toll on my heart rate. With each of the inclines, my heart rate shot up to 170+, and my pace slowed as I started suffering. It came back down each time when I paused and waited for my wife, otherwise it would have looked a little differently probably but not too much since the downhills would likely have settled my heart rate anyhows.

Even though I run "hills" fairly regularly at home on my courses, I wasn't anywhere prepared for the size of these in the mountain. I think to myself in awe that there are people who run these type of trails and even tougher/longer ones in mountains all the time with little effort. Every time I see how much I have improved in my fitness this last 6 months I am reminded of how much more room there is for improvement.

Saturday: 5 miles in 1 hour and 3 minutes

[Alan T]

Sunday morning I looked and was roughly 1.6 miles short of my 20 mile a week goal of running... We had brunch scheduled with friends at 10:30, so around 8am I looked at my wife and asked if she wanted to go for another shorter run...

I don't really remember what she said, but the look she gave me was something close to what someone might have looked like if I was a convicted serial killer. It was pretty obvious that she was out for the morning run, so off I went on my own.

Everyone always says that you have to be flexible with your running plan and if you are feeling out of sorts, or pain or just not feeling it to change it as needed. This might have been the first day that I have encountered where I should have just taken my losses and just not met my 20 mpw goal. Instead I was a stubborn mule and set out to run anyways, despite still being sore from the hills the previous day.

Right at the start, I had to decide which downhill that I wanted. The previous day was pretty brutal so I decided to run down the other hill instead. It was not any better honestly. Went from a start of 818 ft of altitude down to 459 ft within 1.5 miles. Most of the downhill was between 9% and 12% grade down other than one 13% spot and then coming down off of a highway overpass that got to 20% grade. You can tell it is steep when the whole run down you pass caution signs to trucks telling them to downshift, etc.

I already could tell something was not right as I just didn't feel right going down the hill. Normally on downhill stretches I can just let go and sprint, and can pull out sub-8min pace times without struggling. My fastest time on this run downhill was only 8:35 and my first mile pace was only 10:40 on an entirely downhill segment. It wasn't my quads that were hurting, but instead my lower calf muscles were screaming out a bit.

At this point though I was at the bottom of the hill and had reached the town where it was for the most part flat. I figured I could run up main street and just see some of the town and take it easy for a few miles. That didn't work out too well for me, I was totally struggling. My pace stayed between 11:30 and 12:00 but I just felt like I was going through the motions. After roughly a mile in the town I decided to turn it around and head back up the mountain.

The uphill was just as bad as could be imagined. I averaged about 13 min per mile up the hill, but the disappointing part was that I had to stop and walk three times during the run up hill. Now there isn't anything wrong with having to walk to catch your breath or whatever.. but my heart rate wasn't that bad.. it wasn't my breathing that was dead.. it was my legs. They were just toast. I finally made it up the hill and just went back to the inn and stretched and got ready for brunch.





Hey, I made my weekly running goal though, went 22.4 miles for the week, but it wasn't worth it.

My legs are dead and I have a 5 mile race coming up this Saturday that includes some decent hills. I wasn't necessarily targeting this race for any personal records, but I was hoping to not finish last. We will have to see how I can work through it for the week.


Edit: forgot the link to the run.

Sunday: 3.8 miles in 45 minutes

[finketr]

how much does 4 15 minute walks carrying around the dead 30lb weight of an 18 month old count?

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by finketr

how much does 4 15 minute walks carrying around the dead 30lb weight of an 18 month old count?

Sounds like it would get pretty heavy after a while Do you do it with a backpack or how were you carrying your 18 month old?

I remember last fall I was in a trail race 5k and some guy passed me at about the three mile mark with a kid in their backpack that they were racing with... I was like.. uh no way am I letting someone carrying a kid beat me and nearly blew out just trying to stay ahead of him.

[finketr]

He was in a diaper and shoes as he didn't want to have clothes on after a change of diaper. So, I wrapped him in a blanket (around his shoulder) and him resting his head on my shoulder, arms wrapped around him.

So in front of me.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by finketr

He was in a diaper and shoes as he didn't want to have clothes on after a change of diaper. So, I wrapped him in a blanket (around his shoulder) and him resting his head on my shoulder, arms wrapped around him.

So in front of me.

Yikes, I would have to assume that would get your arms tired after a while

[finketr]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Yikes, I would have to assume that would get your arms tired after a while

Well, my shoulders paid for it last night and this morning...

[Alan T]

Added this little widget to my first post. I think it will show my current week's updated stats in real time.