October 2020 in review!
Total mileage for the month: 220.2
Sep. 28-Oct. 4: 67.8
Oct. 5-11: 81.1
Oct. 12-18: 69.1
Oct. 19-25: 21.8
Oct. 26-Nov. 1: 1 (it was a pain-free mile - I'm just being super cautious and waiting until Monday, Nov. 2 to truly try to start back because I cannot need 4 months off again)
Yes, I look odd and don't care!
Races:
This past Sunday, Oct 25th I ran the Blarney Stone & Screaming Banshee Mashup Half Marathon which was a reschedule of the Blarney Stone Half Marathon that was cancelled in the Spring and combining it with the Screaming Banshee Half Marathon scheduled for Oct 25th. 3 friends and I from our running group had originally signed up for the spring Blarney Stone Half.
The race had 3 start windows; 9-9:40am, 9:40-10:20am for the Half Marathon/10K/5K and an additional start window of
How time flies when you're having fun. Or not.
Can't blame my current state on a lack of motivation. Even without a race to train for, there's nothing I like more than taking long, hard runs in perfect fall weather. And there's been some beautiful fall weather around here lately.
I'm what would be considered "recovered" from my bout with Covid-19 late last spring. Mild symptoms, relatively speaking. Headaches, fatigue and shortness of breath. Six weeks from start to finish, more or les
A whole year in review.
Most people would say that Covid was the most impactful thing of their 2020, but really that didn’t affect me too much. I was pregnant again! Yay! So, working from home (was already doing that with my toddler), not racing, and avoiding people really wasn’t a big deal. Pregnancy – not as easy as the first time. Birth – much, MUCH, easier than the first time. Now recovery – so far, so good, but its slow, which is difficult. I waited the recommended 6-weeks to start
Coming along.
My routine the last couple of weeks has been 4 miles on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then 6 on Saturday. Nothing to brag about, but at least it's running.
As for the knee, Ralph continues to improve, slowly. I notice him about half the time, but the pain level is mostly 1-3 on a 10 scale. I'd like to be going further and faster of course, but I don't want to wreck anything, so I'll stay with the current state for now.
I only occasionally see other runners, although
September 2020 in review!
Total mileage for the month: 291.4
Aug. 31-Sep. 6: 71.2
Sep. 7-13: 70.6
Sep. 14-20: 65.9
Sep. 21-27: 76.3
Sep. 28-Oct. 4: projected at 60ish
"Races":
Sep. 18: 2020 20k Time Trial in 1:20:34 (6:29 pace).
Workouts:
Sep. 1: 7 x 800 m (track) with 2:00 recoveries in 2:57, 2:58, 2:58, 3:10, 3:16, 3:15, 3:18 (2.1 warm up, 3.6 cool down). I
The idea to run a 20k time trial started because I was registered for the Dam to DSM 20k race. I'd entered long before it rescheduled then turned virtual (before COVID and even before my hip issue!). The virtual race window was August 31 through September 7 and I planned to run a hard 20k on September 5, but due to being overly cautious with a hamstring I tweaked lifting I ended up just running an easy 20k that day. The hammy was back to 100% just a few days later, and for some reason I still
A couple of weeks in now after taking a couple of weeks off, I think I can confirm my previous diagnosis of tendonitis.
This is actually from an old basketball injury. In fact, my last basketball injury and the reason I retired from the sport altogether. I was semi-retired at the time and let some guys talk me into coming for a night because they needed a player to round out the team and avoid a forfeit. Took a fall and landed on my knee and was in pain for a while. Some months later I went
With T-Rex getting a little more independent at school and Mrs. Dave working full time, I find myself with more free time than I've been used to over the years. Not running a ton adds even more. So I decided a couple of weeks ago to do some deep cleaning around the house, starting with the bedrooms. I imagined that I would whip through one per day after work and be done in less than a week (4 BRs). You can already see where this is going.
The first room when just as planned. Removed all the
I’m fortunate to have a really great, supportive LRG based at the YMCA in my town. Group runs are scheduled at various times every day of the week and there’s usually always someone ready to jump in on whatever workout shows up on my training schedule. Still I don’t think I truly appreciated the benefit of a solid LRG until everything shut down last March and all running races cancelled or went virtual. Several sub-groups of our LRG popped up to train for and run virtual Fall races together.
This was supposed to be the summer I took on my first 1/2 Iron Tri -- swim 1.2, bike 56, run 13.1, but like everything else it was canceled due to Covid.
I've been riding with a great group of people for the past 3 months. Many of them are veterans of the Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard. They asked me to join their fundraising bike team for the Foster 100. The Foster 100 raises money for service dogs for veterans. The Covid rules for the event were to accumulate 100 miles in the we
Not much running going on over here. I've decided this knee thing is tendonitis. Of course I'm no doctor, but I've seen this before. I suspect that my efforts to keep the mileage up after I tweaked the quad last month led to me favoring the left leg and putting more stress on the right. This knee actually has a tendinosis (longer term injury) from an old basketball injury. In the past, more mileage has been good for it, but not this time I guess. Did a test run a week ago and failed. Jogged abou
And it has been almost 6 months…Back then the pandemic was just beginning, and I think we all thought, surely this will be over by fall…nope. Probably not soon either. If we’re lucky things will look better by spring. From mid-March to mid-June I worked entirely from home, and since then I’ve been in the office 2 days a week (except this past week when I finally used some vacation days, though I did not travel). I was initially very worried about my general employment since my typical work canno
August 2020 in review!
Total mileage for the month: 294.6
July 27-August 2: 64.0
August 3-9: 60.1
August 10-16: 69.7
August 17-23: 64.1
August 24-30: 64.2
#augustangst - we think we are funny!
Races: None yet, but I did two time trials, a 2 mile in 12:13 and a 5k+ in 18:35.
Workouts:
August 4: 10 x 300 m
Since I don't expect to have many/any race recaps this season, I thought I'd recap some of the time trials I do. Next time I'll have a better name - my running group is doing two "Pick Your Poison" track time trials in September.
My coach put a 5k time trial on my training schedule for August 21. I think she mainly wanted to see where I was at and get my max heart rate. I knew I wasn't in top shape so it didn't feel like a big deal, but at the same time I treated it like an actual race.
Haven't any pictures of this adventure yet. One reason is that the scenery has been much less interesting than you might expect, due to the California wild fires. That's just crazy. But I big high pressure centered over Nevada/Utah has all the smoke swirling north and then east and it's all around us here, just west of the Tetons. Nasty stuff. Combine that with the altitude (4700 ft) and the issues I've got with both legs the last couple of weeks, this hasn't been a great stretch of training or
I first heard about the Run Thru Hell sometime in the 90's. At the time I wasn't running enough to think I should do such a crazy thing as ten hilly miles in the middle of August in Michigan. Granted, it's not Florida or Arizona, but average morning conditions include both temps and dew points in the 70s. Icky, soupy stuff for running.
Anyway, I finally got up the mileage and the courage to go to Hell in 2011, the summer I was training for marathon #5 (Philly). Finished that day in what I t
Not being much of a racer back when we could race all the time when we wanted, I surprised myself this week by signing up for a race.
It's not really a race because I'm not in shape to do any racing racing. And it's not really a race because it has an open start, with no more than 5 people allowed to begin the course at the same time. But there's a course. There's an entry fee. There are timing chips and times recorded and awards to be given out. So, it's a race.
It's the annual Run Th
is what the cardiologist suggested. Usually in summer I like to do trail runs up to high mountain lakes and streams, fish a bit, then run back. My doc advised that climbing 2-3000ft up a mountain, with heart rate near max for several hours, does not qualify as moderate. Who knew ?
Ran a couple of times, easy 3 miler around the park, which went fine except the bum left knee woke up from its slumbers and started paining again. Back on the bicycle it is, then.
Instead of the trail runs, d
I have slowlyyyyyyyyyyyy started back running after recovering from my hip injury. I have been running 4 days a week for the last couple of weeks for 15 miles total each week, with my long now 5 miles. I running slow and easy to build up my strength averaging about 10 minute miles with my heart rate getting closer to my easy effort rate.
The week of July 19th I was on vacation with my wife and 2 daughters, and we went to Grand Haven, MI to a place we have renting every summer fo
Over two weeks since my last entry. No excuses.
I at first supposed that my mind was simply on other things, but if I'm being honest, I think it's because my personal motivation just isn't here right now. I never raced much, but for the last ten years I've at least had a marathon or two out there that I was working on. Truth is, as the audience here has dwindled and the interaction with it, I miss the buss of having people comment and ask questions and voice opinions on what I've written. H
July 2020 in review!
Total mileage for the month: 290.3
June 29-July 5: 62.2
July 6-12: 71
July 13-19: 60.7
July 20-26: 75.0
July 27-Aug. 2: projected at 64, and I noticed my weekly mileage totals illustrate that I've been taking a day off every other week
#jumpingjuly
Workouts
No races, yet I am breaking all my records for mileage. I'm running more than ever, yet the body is hanging in there just fine - no injuries or even sore spots to speak of. Without race goals, this year is about adjusting to running more and seeing how that goes. Well, it has gone exceedingly well!
In January I committed to 4 days a week for the whole year. Ever since age 18, I've always thought I needed rest days. For 30 years I never ran more than 3 days a week - sometimes much less. The
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