First Long Run

Yesterday was my first long run. Fortunately the weather was a cool 90 degrees and muggy. At least it was a bit cloudy and we ran on the bike path in Lower Bidwell Park. It really was a lovely run next to a stream. There were some other people but not too many and not all that many other dogs which is good because Rusty our Mini Pincher behaves very poorly in social situations and would freak out if he saw too many other dogs.

The run was 6 miles and I ran at a pace of about 5.25 MPH which is a bit slower that I would have liked but the point of this run was to make the distance and be at a conversation pace which is what we were at. I did give a good kick on the last half mile in order to help my mental endurance. It is at this point that I would like to give a shout out to Body Glide, one of the best products ever created. I have used it backpacking, doing triathlons, and long distance running. I put it on all over. If I could get a bath tub full of the stuff and just dunk myself I would. It keeps you from chaffing. Having used said body glide i didn't chaff even though this was the longest run I have had in a long time. At some point i'll have to do a post about the gear that I use.

As far as how I felt during the run I felt great during the whole run. Nothing hurt, I wasn't too tired, and I probably could have kept going for longer if I needed to which is good because i'm going to have to next week. The first two miles went by really quickly, probably because I was talking about fixing up classic cars. Then the next mile seemed to go on forever but eventually it was done and we turned back around which is exciting because even though Chico is relatively flat, there is a river running through the park and the direction it is flowing is a little bit downhill, so the way up was upstream going uphill-ish and the way back, at least in my mind was downhill. So back we went and going back felt like it went a lot faster, probably because I had landmarks to guage how far we had gone. Rusty kept up very well at this pace until about the last mile he started to slow down. My wife has a basket on her bike so if we need to we can throw him in.

Good run, i'm a bit sore today but very proud of myself.

First Tempo, fallen friend

Yesterday was my first tempo run, fortunately it was only three miles, I don't think I could have gone any further. My wonderful wife came with me to keep me running. She can be quite motivating. I pitched the idea of training to one of my buddies about three weeks ago and he sounded mildly interested, and two weeks ago he asked what he could do to get ready. I told him and shocker, he didn’t do it. He also didn’t come out to the first workout which I’m sure didn’t help either. So I was a bit surprised that he came to this workout but it is always good to have someone else to workout with. He had some fancy Bluetooth headphones that connected to his G-Phone which I think is a marvelous thing as long as they weren’t too heavy. The whole wireless thing is fantastic. So we started out with a small hiccup at the beginning where the speedometer on my wife’s bike wasn’t working so after that got fixed we were on our way and all of a sudden my friend stopped. We kept going thinking we’d meet up with him on the way back but he had disappeared. Hopefully he wasn’t kidnapped by professional astronaut pirates or something. Anyway we passed a group of Nor-Cal Roller Girls who were doing some sort of training or tryouts. What made it all the more impressive was the hill they had to go up and that they were in roller skates, not roller blades.

As always our dog rusty came as our companion and usually he is pretty excited about running and will run in front of me, but today he was trailing me and going slow which doesn’t help me at all, plus when he is in the rear holding the leash is difficult because I can’t move my leash arm too much. At the end I gave the leash to my wife which made the run much easier at that point. Finally we made it back to the car and after driving home I celebrated with what might be the worlds most perfect post run food: tortilla chips and guacamole, not the fake crap, real guacamole made with an avocado from my folk’s tree. The meal contains vitamins and nutrients from the avocado and the salsa base from which the guacamole is made, salt from the chips, carbohydrates, protein and omega 3 fatty acids. Plus it tastes great.

First day 9/7/09

I will be posting my training plan later on. Today was my first day of training, don't get me wrong, I haven't been sitting completely stagnant for a long time, I'm not a total couch potato, just a moderate couch potato. I finished my 4th sprint triathlon about 3 weeks ago and I did pretty good for me, 1:45 or so. This race is to help me stay in shape and increase my running speed which is seriously lacking in my triathlons. My goal is to complete the half marathon in a 10 min/mile pace, which is not superfast, but this is my first one and I want to set a realistic goal.

Today's workout was the traditional 1/2 mile warm up, some stretching, and the real workout was 4 X 400, at a 2 min 12 second pace. It was a beautiful day for Chico this time of year, it was about 85 degrees which to me is excellent running weather (compared to 99 a few weeks ago). My fast running will take place at Pleasant Valley High School's track.

I was excited to see that running at this pace was not only possible, but rather easy. I actually did my laps in about 1:43. I took just long enough of a break to not be breathing really hard any more. It was fun to be going fast. I haven't had a training regiment for a long time which had speed involved. Most of my training plans are solely to be able to get the distance done.