Taking Victories, One Workout at a TIME!

I think that my time playing, watching and coaching football has really helped me clearly see that you cannot look ahead in order to meet your goals. In football terms, it's focusing on that BIG game 2 weeks from now, and not taking care of business the way you should with the teams your supposed to beat. I'm starting to apply that same philosophy to my speed workouts in the morning, and it has really had an impact on my performance, it a positive way.

Mamma Michele is the master creator of some of the most amazing workouts. Where she comes up with some of these workouts is beyond me. I swear....there has to be some torture book out there. Either that, or she's writing a psych book on getting grown adults to do insane things. I've compared us to Pavlov's dogs. We're out there doing the session....beep beep beep.....slow down.....beep beep beep......speed up.....and so on and so on. We're conditioned to the beep beep beep. And today there was a WHOLE lot of beeping going on.



On the schedule, 20x1 minute with decreasing rest periods (1 min, 45sec, 30sec, 15 sec). Those rotated as we went through the workout. What was funny, I had programmed my Garmin to do the workout. And, it gives you a heads up that the interval is about up....little 5 second beep warning....Threw everyone off thier routine a bit at the start.. hehehe....Like I said, we're conditioned to the beeps. you hear a beep, you either speed up or slow down.

But, those who weren't used to the Garmin got used to it...Or got used to Dave giving the verbal, 5 seconds left, warning. :) The last time I did this workout it was only 16 1 minute sets. This time, being 20, I wasn't totally turned off. I actually like the challenge of building up the number of sets. And after examining the data of Dr. Garmin, my body agreed. I had a great run! Almost all of my sets were in the 7:15 range, and I had several at 6:59. Yep.....Mark that, there's a 6 in that first digit! Hopefully that's a trend that you'll be seeing more of those as the blog goes on. That's the goal: Hammer the hard workouts, and cruise the tweeners all the while building up the miles and doing more with less. That's the important part. The repetition of running for a predetermined amount of time, but because your getting faster, you're mileage increases.

So today, I managed to get in exactly 4 miles during this workout! With the 1.75 miles of warm up and cool down, I got in 5.75 miles. I've set my goal this week at 35 miles. And after 2 days, I'm almost a third of the way there with just over 11 in the books. So now, with Today's in the book, I can officially look forward to tomorrows workout. It's a 5.7 mile meeting with Paul.

Until then, Train Hard and LIVESTRONG!

WOW! What a Sunday.....

Talk about an EPIC performance! Sunday was definitely the day of all days. I had a HUGE day planned. Normally, on Sundays, I don't set my alarm for the 4am wake up call. Not in the NORM. But yesterday wasn't normal by any stretch of the imagination. Let's break it down, blow by blow! Saturday ended up getting washed out by a garage sale. The early start of trying to capture those early buyers made me forgo the group workout, that just was moved to 6am for a little bit more light. And to be honest.....I'm glad I didn't go out. for my horrible allergies sake, it would have ended up as a disaster. The winds were howling as a front moved through, and at about 10am, it collided and brought about MUCH cooler weather. So yesterday when I stepped out the door, I encountered my first go at 43 degree running weather. I had a compression shirt, and a long sleeve running shirt, shorts and GLOVES. The wind had really calmed down quite a bit, but it was C-O-L-D and D-A-R-K at 5am. WHAOH! But, you got to git er done. And I started off on my 10 mile stroll through the neighborhood. I took my mormal route down to the running path, up to coyote trail elem, down silverbell to wade, up wade and around the reserve loop, and then finally the BIG loop. And because I had to git 'er done, I couldn't dilly dally around. When I got home, it was a little after 6:30ish....and I did the 10 miles in 1:30. Not bad at all for running my myself, and starting off really slow in the first mile (9:45). But as the sun started to rise and I managed to get on home, I was FREEEZING by the end. It was that cold....But I felt GREAT afterwares. But there was no rest for the weary. After an overly long hot shower....I re-warmed up and managed to wrangle up the kids and get them loaded up in the truck for a long day to Phoenix. WHY??? Because the Arizona Cardinals had a battle with the Dallas Cowboys. And boy, all this running has really helped out with my cheering from the front row seats. As a DIEHARD Cardinals fan, we had a tough job on our hands to drowned out the Cowboys fans that showed up. And my Ton Loc voice today is a great reminder of one of the BIGGEST victories this franchise has EVER seen. And for those who haven't seen it, this is what I saw from my seat in the South Endzone.

And that's how we won the game. For the first time in NFL History, a game in Overtime was won by a team with a blocked punt returned for a TD. How fitting. And the Cardz are 4-2 with a 2 game lead in the NFC West for the first time in team history.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention todays BRRRRRRRRRRR of a run. It was again 43 degrees at the start, but today I was a little bit smarter. I did wear the long spandex to cover my whole legs, but I couldn't find my cold weather hat.....well...that was until AFTER I got home.....Peachy, just when I needed it. Anyways, I met with Paul, and we managed to do out 5.7 mile loop. I actually didn't think I would get the whole thing in. I was drained after yesterday, and my legs were tired. But we cranked out a 9 min mile pace and got it done. That's 15 miles in 2 days! My legs ROCK right now. Tonight, I've got a date with my Compex and a protien fruit smoothy! Can't wait!!! And tomorrows workout....20x1 minute! BOO YEAH!

Until tomorrow, my Ton Loc voice bids you farewell!!!!

Sluggish, but complete!

The title says it all. Today, my legs were had that traditional dead feeling about them. In latin, it's called Elegusbetiredus. And that they were. Mostly from the above threshold workout from yesterday. Those 16x400m were a killer. And I knew they would be too. So I fully expected todays run, whihc was scheulded as the same as Mondays, to be slower. And that it was. And thank goodness for running partners. Otherwise I wouldn't have been there. Having that guilt hang over your head that you were at home sleeping while your training partner is out there getting stronger is not a good feeling. I'll get that one on him tomorrow, since he has to go into work early and can't make the group session. I'll be grindin out those 800m repeats! All eight of them. Seems crazy that we put our bodies through this motion. But there one thing I can honestly say is, I've never met a runner who hasn't been goal oriented. We're a strange breed. And now that my Coffee Shop nightmare is over, I suddenly have all this extra time that I can dedicate to the sport that I love, and stay trim and fit along the way! That's the greatest part. Getting out there and exercising an hour a day, it means you care about yoursself. That's probably the main reason that you can find yourself blend into a running group so well. It's like minded people that have similar goals and care about themselves.

That was actually one of the many topics we covered in our run today. Surprisingly, we weren't a whole lot slower then Monday. About 15 seconds per mile difference which equated to a little 2 mins overall. Not too shabby considering my legs didn't have the getup and go they had on Monday! And not too bad considering we beat our time from two weeks ago. I can always find the silver lining and make it into a positive. I guess that's my gift. I'm a glass half full kinda guy. There's always an oppertunity in somthing.

And with that, I'll end this post. It's time for a little post run relaxer of Green Tea and some breakfast. Throw in a side dish of my compex on my back, and my morning is SET. If only I could take a little nap.... HA! I wish!

Train Hard and LIVESTRONG!

The weather cool off, but the Training RAMPS UP!

The training regimen too another giant ramp up this week. I like to follow the philosophy where you work hard for two weeks, take an easier week to allow for a little recovery, and the start the cycle over. With that, last week was my easier week, so this week, I have to come out of the gate and start getting the miles in. This past Saturday, I scheduled my own workout of a 30 minute tempo so that I could keep the miles low, but still get a feel of where I am. Two weeks before that I ran the same workout with the group of non-racers, and I got in 3.85 miles. Saturday was used as a measuring stick to make sure I'm still making progress. That was difficult, because only 2 of us weren't racing, so my normal group wasn't there to keep pace with. That's the beauty of training with a group. You have someone out there to keep you mentally focused. I have a problem where my mind wanders when I get out there by myself. BUT, as luck would have it, my first two miles were incredibly steady at a pace of 7:34 and 7:37! Talk about consistent. I have no idea what my 3rd mile was because I didn't capture it when the alarm went off, but I'm pretty sure this is where mentally I checked out. I'm thinking it was around the 7:50 or 7:55 range. It's this are where I really need to "focus". Having said that, I did make it almost a full 10th of a mile further then two weeks ago. That's a HUGE mental victory. My first goal is making it to the 4 mile mark. I should have that the next time I run it. Not sure exactly when that will be, as I'm considering running the 10 miler coming up since it's going to be run on a Saturday instead of the usual race Sunday.

I ended up taking Sunday off as a rest day so that I could keep my mileage down, and the fact that I had to head up to Phoenix for the Cardinals game early. This week, I cannot afford to skip. I have to get up and out of bed, and GIT 'ER DONE!! NO EXCUSES. So far, I'm right no track mileage wise. Yesterday was a GREAT run with Paul. We did the 5.7 miles (Paul did 10), and we managed to cut 2 full minutes off our time from two weeks ago. Talking the whole time. that is another marker of your fitness. As the pace of your easy days picks up, that just means your fast days are going to get even faster. That's a great thing. Eventually, instead of going by mileage I'm going to have to start managing by time. Right now, that only took 49 minutes. I'm going to have to increase that to a full hour. But that's for another day.

Today was what I like to call a "Ball Buster"! 16 x 1/4 mile, NO REST, Target times of 1:45 on the out, and 1:55 on the return. This was the first time we've EVER run that workout. And it was everything I thought it was be. But you have to GRIND IT OUT! And, as expected, I only hit my target time twice. Obviously, I'm not happy with that. But I really had no idea what I would to it in. The hardest part of the workout was actually the turn around. You easily lose 2-4 seconds, and it really takes you out of your stride. So, even though I'm unhappy that I didn't make my times, I'm happy that I ground them out. In looking ahead in the schedule, it doesn't look like we're doing that one anytime on this schedule. So it will probably be a while before I get to see progress n that one. No biggie.

And with that, for the remainder of the week, I've got another 5.7 miles tomorrow with Paul, 8x800 on Thursday, and the 2 fer 5K on Saturday. So far, so good, and it looks like I've got a LOT of quality time scheduled with my Compex and Active Recovery massages! LIVESTRONG, train hard, and keep reaching for new heights!

A weekend of Beautiful Weather and Great Running

So after taking my two scheduled days off, I came into Saturdays' run rested and ready to push out a great workout. Saturday is always a speed workout day, and on tap for this day was a mental crusher of 2 x 5K with a 3 minute rest in between. I hadn't intended to run the second 5K since I had an appointment to get my trucks AC fixed, but I was feeling really great.

My first 5K was incredibly consistent on the out and back course. 7:15, 7:23, and 7:33. Considering the homeward stretch was slightly uphill with a stiff breeze in your face, I'll take that as a consistent run. I couldn't have been happier. I hammered home one of my best 5Ks in well over a year. That's a great place to be at the start of a marathon plan. The second 5K, I had intended to go out to the 1 mile mark and make the turnaround there. Wasn't pushing the pace like before, but I wasn't totally slouching either. The goal pace was supposed to be 30 seconds per mile slower. And when I got out to the 1 mile mark, iI made the command decision to just do the whole darned thing. What's an extra 8 minutes amongst friends. So it was at that point I set out to catch some of my group members that were ahead of me. In all, I ran my final mile at a 7:45 pace, within the 30 seconds. And best of all, I felt great and that's a HUGE mental boost. I have to say, my mental state of running is probably my biggest deamon. It keeps me from waking up in the morning. And it keeps me from doing the FULL workout, because I'm usually somewhat intimidated by the "mileage". Lately my minds been in the mode of saying I'm not prepared for the longer workout. But, with each and every milestone met, that facade gets chipped away.

Which takes me to Sunday. My planned run was only going to be 8 miles. Mentally, that's a really long way. But, after running 7 (after warmup and cooldown) from the day before, it was only 1 extra mile, and it's not anywhere near the pace I had run in Saturday. Sundays are a nice easy, throw on the iPod and lose yourself in the outdoors and music. Which is EXACTLY what happened. I got up a little later then usual, and headed out t he door a bout 8:15. I had one of my genius playlist rolling and I have to say...The are GENIUS. A great set of tunes for a nice easy run. The thing about my Sunday runs, I like to run them a bout 2 mins per mile slower then my speed sessions. I never even looked at my watch, and after the first 5 miles I hit the lap at 45 and some change. Suring these worksouts, I take a few breaks along the way to break up the monotony. So after a quick water break, I got back to pace and busted out the next 2 mile segment. This is where the run got a bit deviated. That 2 mile segment took me a little further out then I had though, I 8 miles wasn't really going to b e 8 miles. It ended up being close to 9.5, but hey....You gotta get home don't ya. But, after that 9.5 miles, I had a GREAT amount of energy left over. I came home, hooked up the compex, and rolled through a nice active recovery cycle of my back and legs and manages to BUST through all the jobs I had intende dto do. Talk about productive. Not only did I have a great weekend of runs, I ended up above my 27 mile goal with 28.6 miles.

And this week has started off even stronger. I fugured my les would be spent today, but I met Paul again, and we wne out for a little Monday AM stroll. Last week on Monday, I did 2 miles of what I like to call cleanup. Today, I wasnted to extend it a bit, but not the full 5 miles we had run on Wednesday. This time I did a modified small loop with the intent of doing 3.5 miles. More then last week, which is the ULTIMATE goal. Build up the miles, lose some weight, and run your marathon like ya stole something!

Hope everyones weekend of runnign was as great. LIVESTRONG and Train HARD!

6 Days Straight and Going Strong!

So, now that I'm getting accustomed to my new found life, that is the rebirth after the coffee store, I'm finding that I am being MUCH more consistent about my running. Back when I owned the store, I would basically have something to do virtually every single day with the store. Whether that was going to the bank 3 times a week, making the Costco runs twice a week, or working in the store twice a week, it was always such a burden. Add into that the engineering carreer, I was probably putting in close to 80-90 hours per week, working.....

I guess they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And that's for SURE the case right now, because unloading the day to day stress of owning your own business, I've re-found my love of running, and as the title states, I've run 6 straight days!!!! BOO YAH! Now, that's an amazing accomplishment in itself. Today's run was with a running partner in my group. Yesterday, Paul and I made the commitment to meet each other at 5am so that we could get in 5 miles at a nice relaxing pace. What was supposed to be relaxing, turned out to be a great run. When you out there with someone else, especially someone who has very similar goals as you, you find out what is actually a very comfortable pace where you can still converse back and forth. Never in my mind would I have thought that pace would have been what we ran. At one point, at the start of therun, we both decided that the pace was too fast and we should throttle it back a bit, which we did. But that didn't actually last very long when analyzing Dr. Garmin after I got home. What I didn't realize, is that we ran that 5.68 miles, in basically 51 minutes. WAY FASTER than I think either one of us had intended. But you get lost in the run. We had great conversations about our goals, etc. We're both in a very similar position. About 8 weeks ago, I weighed in at 205 pounds. Today, after changing my diet over to the Nutrisystems plan, I'm sitting pretty at 185. Paul is in a very similar situation. He popped up over 200, and just recently started his own plan, and is starting to see the results. We both have goals of sustaining longer distance runs at a faster pace. My ultimate goal, as I stated in one of the other blogs was to run my slow days at 8:30, and my speed days in 6:54ish. I'll tell you right now, today, we averaged a 9 minute pace, with a couple in there at the upper 8:40s.

The fact is that it's 90% mental. We had no idea we were going that fast, we were lost in the conversation. We weren't pushing hard, we were just out there cruising. And it was great. We even talked about how roughly three weeks ago, we were on a Saturday morning group run, when I had uncharateristically passed Paul....So much, to where I had a pretty big gap behind us...That was until the last set when I started to hear him coming on. He didn't want to finish behind me, I didn't want him to pass me, and we literrally ended up in an all out sprint for the last minute, finshing stride for stride. Would we have put out the effort running by ourselves. NO WAY. But it's moments like these when finding a running partner with similar goals really pays off!! So, if you can find someone with similar goals, I highly reccomend making that commitment to helping better yourselves. It will pay off, and I'm already seeing the results!

Train hard, and LIVESTRONG!!!

What a GREAT Weekend of Running

This post is LONG overdue, as it's been several days since my last run. I got a GREAT weekend of quality running in, and I have to say I feel GREAT! Saturdays workout was a 30 minute tempo. The course is very familiar, as I've run it hundreds of times. I wanted to use it as a gauge to see where is my fitness for now. My goal was to see how close to 4 miles I could get in that time. I didn't expect to get there, but I needed some kind of baseline since this was the start of marathon training week #1. So, meeting a relatively small group (since there was a race on Sunday), us non racers toed the line at 5:30 on a beautiful Saturday morning. Knowing my goal, I ended up a little farther then where I thought I would at 3.85 miles according to Dr. Garmin. And the beauty, I checked my pace at each mile reminder, and I was always around 7:45....Which, if you calculate the final pace, it's right at 7:45. Nice and consistent. Where do I want to be?? I want to get that down to somewhere between 7:00 and 7:15. That's VERY doable where I'm at right now by race day in mid January. Some of that will come with weight loss. Right now at 186, I'm about 15-20 pounds over where I want to be race day. I would like to be somewhere around 165-170 by then. As the miles increase, the weight will come off. It has to. It won't have anywhere else to go. So, if I lose another 15 pounds (low side), that's going to equate to almost 30 seconds per mile. That gets me right at the low end of where I want to be race day! And the beauty is, I have 4.5 months to get there. That's less then a pound of weight loss per week. VERY VERY DOABLE....and yes....I have the weight to lose.

Sunday was also another great day to run. I don't set a target time, I just like to go out and run, and finish when I feel done. So, out the door I headed at about 7:15. I also take it easy, like a 9:30 pace, with planned water breaks along the way. I managed to get in 7.5 miles and ran for a total of about 1:10 minutes. I was actually gone a total of 1:20, but that 10 mins is par tof my planned water stops. No need to hurry, just take it easy and put the miles on the feet.

Monday, I woke up before my alarm clock which was very very unusual. I wasn't feeling 100%, so I just wanted to take it very easy, and get at least 20 mins in. I managed to get that done. No break neck pace, just a 1 mile out and a one mile back course. Nothing to brag about, that's for sure, but it definitley made a difference in how the legs felt today.

Today's run was a group workout. It's always fun to find out (after you've started) that you're doing a shorter workout then you had mentally planned for. I came in thinking we were doing 16x1/4 mile. I misread the schedule. And thankfully it was 16x1 min. Very nice mental recovery there. And I ran very well.....My first set started off very slowly. I think we ran it at like an 8 min/mile pace. I'll have to go back and look at Dr. Garmin to verify that, but it was almost conversational. I definitely managed to pick up the pace as we went along, and by the end, I was really trying to hang with one of the the faster runners of the group after he passed me. I can thankfully say, he didn't actually gain much distance on me after he made the pass. So it was a GREAT motivator to hang with him on the last 3 sets.

I also plan on meeting with Paul tomorrow morning to get 5 miles in on the big loop. we can take it fairly pedestrian, and still get done with enough time to make my 6am telecon!

Until then, LIVESTRONG and TRAIN HARD!