Strong in Mind You Must BE......

That's my mantra for today, a quote from the amazing Jedi Master Yoda. Strong in the mind.......It means so many different things. Today it meant you have to will yourself to get out of bed, even though your body is tired and telling you otherwise. Thank goodness I had that guilt factor of a training partner out there going to meet you for that 5am run. I had already screwed up once this week, and missed him on Monday, there was no way I could do that to him on Friday. I made the commitment, I have to mentally stay strong and get out there.

Today my legs just weren't ready for the days run. They felt heavy, and didn't want to go. The rest of my body....Didn't really care either way. I just knew that I set a goal, I MUST do my best to accomplish it. This is hard week #2 out of three. The remainder of the weekend and next week is going to be an absolute mental battle. I don't have a scheduled day off until next Friday. I may swap Wednesday for Friday, just because my legs will have gone 8 days in a row without a break at that point, making them go 10 could just be insanity. And I don't intend on messing up a speed workout session on Tuesday by taking that day off. Those are way too valuable. Anyways.....back to today's run. On the schedule I had just a 5 milers planned. The way I felt this morning, I really didn't want to go 5 feet. But, it was a nice bright morning with the full moon out, pretty much rendered my headlight useless. Not far from home, met up with Paul, and we started our planned run. Those thoughts of cutting it short kept dancing through my head. See how you feel at Safeway. Those inner daemons were playing havoc on me. We finally got to Safeway, and I absolutely didn't feel strong at all. But, I cussed myself out a bit for being a wuss, and that I could make it to the next street turn in. In between those two points, I started doing math in my head. When I started out the door today, I had a little over 18 miles officially in the books. So, to get to 45, it became apparent that I MUST get 5 miles in today. I really had to play those mind games to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. We got to the second shortening point, and I put the strength of my mind to keep on going. Passing that spot, there was no more shortening spot along the route. To get home, you have to get through it, and suck it up soldier! And suck it up I did. We made our final turn into the Sunflower retirement community, and it was the last homestretch to get back on home. In all, I ended up with 5.25 miles. Even better, the average split times were ALL UNDER 9 mins. For how I felt, I didn't think that was possible. I would have sworn we were running a 9:30 pace. Not so much...They were all around 8:40.


So, Jedi Master Yoda, you are correct, "Strong In Mind You Must BE!"

Train Hard and LIVESTRONG!

Still on Schedule

With today's run of 4.25 miles officially in the books, I can say that things are still on schedule to hit the 45 mile target goal. Hitting this goal will be another huge milestone, that's mostly mental. Mentally, it's hard to comprehend running 45 miles in 6 days of running. It's even harder to imagine that it's something that I've been able to get to in such a short time. When I look back at my training logs that go back to July and August, I really wasn't running a lot of miles. Maybe 15-20 per week. There definitely wasn't much quantity there, but there was quality. I was hitting most of the group workouts, which are for the most part speed sessions. Mentally I wasn't ready to accept long days, and basically would consider a long run 6 miles. Oh what a couple of months can do for your psyche. Now, when I look at my runs, if I'm doing 4 miles, it seems like a day off, and six miles is the norm. In fact, this week, I've taken my 6.5 miles to 7 and those are the strolls through the neighborhood. Weird. I actually enjoy going our for those long runs on Sunday.

So on todays schedule was a group speed session, with the workout being nothing out of the norm. It was 12x400m with a 45 second rest in between. Today's group was actually smaller then usual. Some of the regular faces weren't there, which was weird. Since I didn't go on Tuesday I don't know how people were feeling after Sundays workout. Perhaps there are some tired peepz in the group. I know that I'm tired, but my legs still had a little get up and go in them. I definitely didn't break any land speed records, but I wasn't a slacker either.....Well...except for that first set. I think that one was like 1:48.....We all seemed to be dogging a bit there. But we picked them up from there, and I would say the large majority were all around the 1:41-1:42 range. That's a nice 6:45ish pace per mile, and definiitly faster then what I was running several weeks ago. So, I can definitely say that progress is still being made. The nice thing is, I wasn't destroyed either. I still had some energy left in the tank. To me, that's pretty important. Sure, I probably could have run just a bit harder, but at what expense. To totally kill tomorrws run......Or even the time trial on Saturday. No way. You have to put the whole week in perspective. If you want to achieve your goals, and get theappropriate feedback, you sometimes have to just run consistent. I think that if I would have gone out harder, I probably would have blown up on the last two, and not run them in the fashion that I did. After that first set, once we settled into the pace, everythign was nice and even. So needless to say, I'm really looking forward to Saturday, so that I can see how far I've come. NO WAY NO HOW I'm missing that one!

But, there's still one more day to go before we get there, and I need to get those 5 miles in the books. Until then, train hard and LIVESTRONG!

Monday Night Footbal!!

This week got of to an absolutely crazy start. I totally knew it would, but I didn't want to think I would get caught up in all the excitement of Monday Night Football in Phoenix. Who was I kidding. My first mistake, was not resetting my alarm on Sunday night before. So, when the alarm went off at 5:30, I realized rather quickly that I screwed up and missed the scheduled run with Paul. What was I thinking.....Probably wasn't thinking clearly on Sunday night. That run Sunday AM really took a lot out of me. I went to bed feeling as though I had run a race. Basically, I did. In the on times, I was only 1.1 miles from doing a Half Marathon. So, that threw a MAJOR wrinkle in the training plan because I knew that I wasn't going to be able to make the group workout Tuesday AM. But it made it imperative that I get a run in. More on that to come later.....I need to talk Monday Night Football!!!! If you've read my profile, you know I'm a huge football nut. I'm that fan guy who dresses up, in my case to look like Kid Rock. Well, this was MY night to get crazy in front of the World. Monday Night Football is a HUGE stage. And the team set up everything amazingly! They had American Idol champ, Jordan Sparks singing the national Anthem.

That's her hamming it up for me during the pregame. And then you have the Hank William Jr intro song, 'Are You ready for Some Football'. And to my absolute amazement, I MADE THE CUT! At the very end, there was a clip of me that was taken during the Buffalo game, and even best, it was right at the very end of the song. That's been a dream of mine since god only knows how long to be part of that game intro! That's just plain HUGE to me! My crazy antics with HANK WILLIAM JR! I love it! The only thing better would have been to tape it with him, but I'll take this as one small victory for the KidStallyn! Next I was in the live broadcast on two separate occasions. Once giving the first down signal after a key 3rd down catch in the first quarter, and again around the two minute warning where we were on defense, and I was working my hardest to get the crowd rowdy and was pounding on the stadium padding. And to top it all off, the Cardinals avoided another Monday Night Meltdown and somehow managed to keep San Francisco out of the endzone as time expired with the Niners down by 5 points and having the ball on the 1 yard line. Talk about an exciting end, but man, I was hoping for a blowout!

So, by the time my boys and I got home, it was 12:30. No way I was going to make the run in the AM, but I knew that. But since my kids didn't have school, and my wife also got the day off from teaching, I decided to stay and work from home on Veterans day. I actually managed to get a TON accomplished. And finished up my work around 3:30 pm. From there I went out for a nice run. I was feeling pretty good, so midway I decided mentally I would extend my 6.5 mile run to make it 7 miles. I've got 45 miles scheduled as my goal this week, and since I fubarr'd Monday, I needed to do a little extra credit. And it was a very nice 7 miles...I threw on my music and just went by feel. Sure it wasn't a speed work session, but I wanted quality miles instead. And quality they were. I managed to run each mile split at around an 8:15 pace. At the end, I came in at 57 minutes. HUGE for me. It just shows how far I've come in such a short time. And I absolutely LOVE IT!

Today, I also wanted to run the same course, this time it was at 5am with Paul. Paul enjoyed the extra credit as well. His running was scaled back a bit in the past two weeks since the new baby's arrived, but he's getting back into his normal schedule. And since the turnaround time was really like 14 hours instead of 24, I decided I didn't want to run real aggressive. But, I also didn't want to slack it. So the middle ground was that we ran it and finished right at 1 hour. Absolutely perfect in my opinion. I haven't gotten a chance to look at the splits, I was in a hurry this am to get into work since I had to participate in a 7am teleconference that's taking place in Europe.

With that....I need to figure out how to dial internationally so that I can be a part of this meeting rather then watching them type.

A weekend of Major Accomplishments

When I last left you, I had completed just over 21 miles and taken a much needed Friday off. But the weekend is ALWAYS jam packed with mega miles, and the Sunday run was going to be a major test of endurance.

Saturday started off with 40mins of alternating reps of 5 mins 10K pace and 5 mins HM pace. It was a group workout and I didn't want to go out there and really hammer the course. I had to leave something in the tank for Sundays run. The only real marker I have to go by, is where would I be at the 5 mile point. Typically, I run that course in somewhere around 40ish or just a few seconds under. But over the past few weeks, Paul and I have really made great strides on our weekday workouts. I did manage to keep my paces under 8 mins per mile on each segement. On the 10K sets, I ran a nice 7:15 pace. On the off sets, I ran a nice 7:45 pace. POIFECT. The nice thing was that I crossed the 5 mile point in 38 mins. CHECK! Goal accomplished there. HUGE goal accomplished there. And by the time I finished the workout, I was quite a ways down silverbell. That's a really nice feeling. Butch, wast too far ahead of me, maybe 30 seconds overall. That's a huge accomplishment considering I'm used to him being minutes ahead of me on the finish of a workout like that. I jogged past the half mile mark and started my 5 x 1 min intervals back to the starting point. These I was able to run at a very brisk 6:45 pace. Not too shabby after pumpin out a pretty tough tempo workout. In all, I was able to log 6.6 miles. That's exactly where I wanted to be going into Sundays run of 15 miles.

Sunday's run wasn't the normal 15 mile jog through the park. It was going to be the first real endurance test to really see what my projected marathon pace is going to be. Can I hold that 8 minute mile pace during a run like this.....ON TIRED LEGS. Remember, last week, I cut back to 36 miles to allow for recovery. This week was back to 41, and if I complete it, it will be a hair short of 43. The 15 miles consisted of 2 miles of warmup, 4 miles at marathon pace, 2 miles recovery, 4 miles at marathon pace, and a 3 mile recivery back to the start. That's right, 8 miles of this run were at your targeted marathon pace. We had a group that are about 3 weeks out from thier goal race, doing the same workout, but doing 23 miles. They started at 5:30, and we started at 6. Two of the UBER fast runners came through the first 5 miles at roughly 6ish, so 30 mins and averaging a 6 minute pace. NICE! But, for me I needed the group aspect of this run, and I did the taboo thing....I had my iPhone jammin musinc in one ear. I was using the playlist that I used for the NYC marathon. And boy did that come through for me. Mamma Michele led me out at the start, she set the opening warmup pace at 8:25s for the first two miles. At the time I thought that was a little fast, but it felt really good so I didn't question it and just hung on. when we hit the 2 mile point, that was where I had to get it on. I jumped up to speed and left Michele to do her own thing. I think she was only doing 10 miles yesterday, as she's not training for any upcoming races. I immediately settled into a 7:45 pace, fromthere I eased it back after the fisrt couple of miles and held right on my target of 8ish. I had the alarm set on my garmin to keep it between 7:45 and 8:15 with a butter zone of 8 minutes. And I kept it very nicely at 7:55. When we got tot he end ofthe first 4 mile segment, I was under 32 minutes, and felt very accomplished. Butch finished maybe 10 seconds ahead of me, which was much closer then I had expected. I then started the 2 mile recovery jog in between. That's where it got interesting. Butch took his much sloer then i did. I never once got over a 9:10 pace. Managed to keep that right around 9:05. It allowed me to get my breath back, and start mentally preparing for the next set. I didn't want to slow down so much that I lost my rythem. When I started the next 4 mile set, I knew it was going to be tough to get back going. My legs already had 8 miles on them but I managed to puch through that zone and get right back up to speed. Granted, I was a little bit slower, but I still managed to end up that 4m ile set spot on in 32 minutes, a whopping 20 seconds slower then the first set. To me, over 4 miles, that's in the noise. I'm not going to lie, it was dificult, but mentally, I just kept telling myself to stay focused. and keep turning the legs over, and take them one mile at a time. And to be honest, towards the end, I started feeling stronger and stronger. But boy was I happy to see that 2 mile marker on the road that signified the point at which my 4 mile segment was OVER. From there, there was the 3 mile jog back to the start of our famous 5 mile loop. Strangely, that was the hardest spot for me. By the time I got tot the last mile, I was pretty wiped out. I took a quik look to see where everyone was, and I saw a couple of our marathon trainers and Butch coming up. I slowed and did some backwards strides and started the jog back with them. They were just about complete, and ready to finish as much as I was, but it was the motivation i needed to get through it. They kept a nice brisk pace, and with about half a mile to go, pulled away to get some striders in. I picked up my own pace, but it was no match for their striders. These guys are in a different class then me right now, but it's the place where I want to be. When my watched beeped for the end of the 15 miles, I couldn't believe my time. 2 hours 8 minutes and 16 seconds. I actually had to do a double take. That's a full 2 and half minutes FASTER then what I ran 14 miles in last Sunday. Honestly, that's AMAZING! I didn't think that I could do that.....and shockingly.....I DID IT!

So, next weekend will be a true test of speed, as Saturday is a Long Loop Lope Time Trial on that 5 mile course, and Sunday will be an easy 16 mile run. Two weeks will be the ultimate though....I'm extending what I did on sunday, to 18 miles! Look out world, here I come!

Until then, Train hard, and LIVESTRONG!