There are no hills where I live. None. I am going to have to break out the treadmill and practice on incline because hills apparently take some experience. I ran the Howl-O-Ween Dog Run/Walk in Lubbock. There aren't a whole lot of hills in Lubbock either; however, they manage to find them for the few runs they have there each year. It was also freezing. Any recommendations on how to keep my toes from turning into ice and breaking off inside my socks?
I really thought racing would help me t
Came home to enter the weeks runs and found that while I was at work last night Bobby and Bean had been on my computer. Credit where it's due: they didn't lie to me. Even told me they were on our to look for Halloween costume ideas. Thing is, now my computer isn't turning on.
Aren't phones amazing?
This week's running wrap-up:
Tuesday: 3 miles (dead battery no stats)
Friday: 3 miles 34:39
Saturday: 4 miles 50:42
1- 11:39
2- 12:02.
The se
NOTE: This is an updated revision of a bloop written eight years ago. Because of all the specialized running jargon, I felt it would be a fitting celebration of the Looptionary painstakingly constructed by Dave et al for our new Loop.
1. To train properly, you must do intervals, tempo runs, hill repeats, maintenance runs, ladders, fartleks, yassos, and recovery runs. LSD will definitely help, but just say "no" to junk miles. On rest days, do some XT, isometrics, and plyometrics.
At what point does a distance start to get intimidating? For me right now I think it seems to be about 18 miles. Up to 13 I do all the time, even when I’m not training for anything I will run around 10-12 miles every weekend. It’s always nice to be ready to run a half at any time. 14, 15, 16 seem like only a tiny bit more – no big deal. But 18? 18 miles took me 3.5 hours this past weekend. 18 requires serious planning. I need make sure I have enough gus, water, sports drink etc. I know I need to
In my last bloop I was feeling like I was finally getting off the DL. I ran 19.5 miles one week and then boom 💥! Where’s that exploding hot dog when you need it? My whole hamstring was inflamed—top to bottom.
Sigh.
Last week I tried to play nice with it. A 2 mile run, 3 miles ellipticaling and weights. Finally it has started to feel better this week.
I ellipticaled 3 on Tuesday and ran 3 yesterday followed by 2 more on the elliptical. I promised myself just weights today. By the t
The Short:
The biggest lesson I learned from this one is that achieving your goal becomes a let-down if you first think you've exceeded that goal. I ran this race as a progressive split tempo workout, and expected to finish in 1:23:40 if I executed the workout as written (yes, I did the exact math). The weather was craptastic (68* and 25 mpw wind), the course is hilly (around 750 ft gain), and my Garmin freaked out, but I ran the workout the best I could under the conditions I had, and I
Today at 5 pm I walked through my loan documents for my house. That's right, I'M CLOSING ON MY HOUSE! The official deal goes down on Monday at 2 pm eastern time. Things look very good. My taxes will be much lower than anticipated because I will claim homestead tax base and the current owners are both in long term care homes so they have the home as "non homestead" on the tax roll. I'm not sure if other states do this but we do in Michigan. It's a 30-40% reduction in taxes if it's homestead
First it was the left knee. Then the left quad. Followed by the right hamstring and you get the picture... I'm not actually injured and I'm not usually bothered by the taper. It has been three years since I was truly in good enough shape to set real goals for a race, let alone, a marathon. I want to believe I am ready to achieve the time I have set for myself but the doubt keeps popping up. And now the 10-Day forecast is available and I will be stalking it daily.
I used the Bourbon Cha
I’ve been really good about skipping the donut house after dropping the kids off at school. Today though, I really wanted a donut and a latte. The $20 of coffee money in my ashtray still had $15 dollars left and I’ll admit stress contributed to the sweet breakfast, but all in all, I have cut back a lot.
When the donut girl handed my punch card back, “You have a free coffee next time!”
“Awesome! Whenever next time will be.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed and it’s a little sad but at the
Two weekends ago I had 7 miles on the training plan. I ran it, but the last two miles were rough. I had to take extra walk breaks on top of my 5:1 intervals and I was very glad to finish the run. After that run I was a little nervous about the 8 miles on the schedule last weekend. My shins were bothering me a little and my knee was starting to get a little achey -- I figured I would just run what I could and walk when I needed to. But the 8 miles went really well. The 5:1 intervals worked pe
9.8 miles is a weird distance, right? Well in the race description, it says the course will be as long as the trail is completed on race day.
Volunteers have been working on the Dixon Trail for years now. Each year, this run increases by about .2 miles. It takes a lot of volunteer hours to construct a trail and I hope to go out and help sometime. The registration fee went to the funding of this trail and I love that!
I signed up for this race hoping to suffer a bit, it has been a while
The babe with the power...
For some reason my whole life, my sister and I have had a strange obsession with the movie The Labyrinth our whole lives - Bowie is dreamy. Random, I know, but it fits in with my 2017 MDI Marathon experience because I added "Magic Dance" to my playlist for the race.
As I mentioned in my race preview, I wasn't feeling super confident in my training going into this race. It had even come to the point where I was telling myself, "if you don't finish, it's okay,
Or rather, the smells while running. Not of running.
During my long run on Saturday—14 miles with the last 4 at MPish—my mind wandered to a gazillion different topics. One of those was thinking about the weird and awful odors that I’ve come across while running. This thread was sparked, almost literally, from running next to someone smoking a cigarette while waiting at a bus station. Am I the only runner who holds my breath when running next to a smoker? Save me from the cloud of lung can
PRE-RACE Saturday morning
5:00 - wake up; get running stuff and warmer stuff to wear on drive to start
5:30 - check course map and reference Google maps to find a parking lot with easy in/out about midway between start and finish
6:00 - get in car and drive toward downtown (aka uptown) Charlotte
6:35 - park in previously scoped empty, free parking lot; walk to start
6:40 - make small talk with another runner about start; he's not running though and had to defer;
It was unseasonably warm yesterday. It was also breezy. Running in and out of the sun was nice. I was very warm until I was cool. Don't worry I didn't stay cool. I'm still a dork.
I prefer the word autumn over fall. I'm odd that way. I'm odd in lots of ways. Go figure.
Autumn running conditions in northern Michigan can be dicey and moody. One day it may be a nice day and the next is horizontal rain and wind and in the 40's. Well, not this year! It's been one glorious day after another with incredible colors and blue sunny skies. I guess it's our "dessert before dinner" because they are predicting a LOT of snow for us this winter. We'll go from glorious color
... But around the time a vote is called for, we have these new members. Coincidence? Or Russian infiltrators sent to disrupt life as we know it. I suspect the DUDE.
Hi guys! I feel like a lot has changed since I used to post a lot more a couple of years back.
The difference between my first marathon (2010) and my tenth marathon: one of them I just wanted to finish, and one I was desperately trying to hit a certain time goal so maybe, possibly, I could come close to a BQ. Just wanting to finish was my goal last week, for the running of my tenth marathon. Isn't life freaking funny? Spoiler alert: I did finish, and it was an hour and two minutes slower t
So this year has been filled with starts and stops... Run 3 or 4 days in a week and then nada for two or three weeks. I just could never get back into that groove. Sure there were some injuries I guess, but a few years ago I would have run through most of that. Some of it was new aches and pains that come with a 50 year old body I suppose, but also I found myself 20 pounds heavier than I was after my last marathon (Chicago '14) and I needed to get back in running shape to really start enjoyin
Run now or you'll regret it.
The words that finally got me out of bed.
Late.
No rain. No wind to speak of. But I really really didn’t want to get up yesterday morning. When I heard the girl’s alarm go off, I started thinking about when I could run later in the afternoon.
Lets see. I’m going on a field trip with Mookie. I can run after the field trip.
Wait, no. Can’t count on that because we might get back right at the end of the day.
I can run before Bell Cho
Good Morning Loop!
Last Monday (10/16/17) marked 6 months till Boston. As I wrote in my Injury update, I am a bit broken. Physically....Yes....Mentally...Never!!!! I was told on September 17th that I cannot run for at least 6 weeks because of a broken elbow. Well, I haven't really followed that advice. How could I? Running is not just something I do. Running is part of my lifestyle. I can't just bike (that is what led to this problem in the first place). I can't just get on a sta
Dave has built up the Looptionary (see link at top) to help us remember and newbies learn our lingo. If you haven't noticed, bloops and comments will have underlined words which you can hover your mouse over and see the meaning. The challenge now is to see how many of those you can fit in, preferably misused. Or possibly see if you can avoid use of any of them in one bloop.
So my company's name is BIB and our HRM department can Junk Miles of paperwork assigning DNS settings, encouraging LSD
As blooped about a couple of days ago, I've been doing a lot of speedwork this year to reach my sub 25min 5k goal. As opposed to be super specific for this race distance, I designed my sessions based on the fact that I'm more likely to do it if keep it interesting and include a lot of different intervals as well as off track workouts.
I have almost completed 2 cycles at this point, consisting of 10 sessions (10 weeks) each. Going into the second cycle of this I cranked up the paces I wanted
I had that conference call yesterday with all of the VetEx gang. I had many questions but they were all answered by the co-founder in the initial part of the phone call. However, there was one detail mentioned that I think may take me out of the running.
They have plans for us to either climb Mt. Logan or Mt. Rainier next summer (2018), and for that I would also have to take off of work for an entire month. Ouch. I have recently applied for a job that I hope to get, and would start in Decem
I’ve been putting off writing anything about Chicago because I feel ungrateful and a bit guilty about the race. I ran a decent time but it was pretty far off where I thought my fitness was but in hindsight I think I was over trained and the weather did no favors.
Going in to the race I had had a good training cycle, never felt great throughout and definitely bombed a tune up but I had been hitting MP in some pretty humid weather and figured after a taper I’d be in a good position to
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