The weather was beautiful today, a welcome change from the normal stuff the last few weeks have offered. The long run felt very comfortable and whole stretches seemed to just happen without much thought or effort. I had to check my watch to make sure time was passing.


First 7 in 1:03:55
Second 7 in 1:00:42
Total 2:04:37
153 beat per minute average (74%)

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
14	34	125.6	??

I biked today. I lifted today. I will run tomorrow, long, more than likely.

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
6	20	111.6	??

What do YOU think?

I am torn on this one.
The old Wonka was pretty darn good. Before seeing the new Johnny Depp version, I asked myself, isn't time better spent movie-tizing an original story rather than remaking this cinema classic? (sidebar: like wasn't The Grinch a total waste of time? yuck) Yet, I must admit, the new one was not so bad. The headline is definitely "Depp Out-weirds Wilder".

<==Old Wilder OR New Depp==>







And, no, I didn't run today.

Owner of a soft marathon PR

That is a tough way to be described.

But, hell, it does fit for the time being. This whole thing is, after all, all about being better. A 3:26 marathon (the PR) doesn't really fit in (according to the many and somewhat dubious calculators) based on what I can do at shorter distances. Meaning, based on my shorter distances, I should be faster at the marathon than I have been, all else being equal.


Example:
This morning was my weekly tempo run, six miles total, three slow and three faster.
First 3 ==> 27:40 at 148 bpm
Second 3 ==> 20:05 at 182 bpm
I am pretty pleased with the comfort level on the faster three. But, it doesn't quite add up.

Below is the output from entering 3 miles at 20:05 with a 207 max heart rate.

DISTANCE TIME PACE HR
2 mi 0:12:57 6:28 207
5 km 0:20:51 6:42 201
5 mi 0:34:51 6:58 195
10 km 0:44:04 7:05 193
10 mi 1:13:40 7:22 188
HalfMthn 1:38:41 7:31 185
Marathon 3:28:35 7:57 177

Running 3 in 20 should have required more heart beats than it did, or, the flip side, the 182 beats should only have gotten me a 7:44 pace. It might all have something to do with my maximum heartrate. 220 minus my age is a lot less than the 207 I get up to. I am not sure why that is the case.

Of course, I may just need to get out and put some real miles on. You can't fake a marathon like you can a 5k.

I sure don't have the answers today. But I am going to look back and see what I have done training-wise and race-wise and what I need to do to get the "soft" whited out.

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
6	20	111.6	??

Shifting Gears

We are going to get a lot more focused here on the actually running and improvement of said running. The schedule and the routes are going to be change but the goal will basically be the same. Just a heads up.

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
8	14	105.6	??

I successfully broke the cycle and got back to morning running.

The place where I do most of my running was all underwater during the 100 year floods of 1993. Now, with the whole area safely behind the new 500 year flood levies, we coyly thumb our collective noses at Mother Nature. Regardless of my little paranoia that if it keeps on raining the levies are going to break, there is much property development going on to be sure.

There has been a lot of dump truck/surveyor/bull dozer activity over the last few weeks in an area very close to the river. Yesterday, I realized, there is now a large gravel parking lot in the middle of nowhere with beautiful green fields on either side. There was some kind of ceremony going on. My guess, and I will keep you posted, we have our first polo fields! Maybe one of you readers knows better.

I am sure they thought I was as weird as I thought them.

===> 8 miles 71:50, too hot to trust the hrm again

102 degrees, or so says my car thermometer

I found myself once again trying to get out of the dreaded "night running mode". So I decided to stop off and run on the way back from work today to allow for a morning run tomorrow. The only problem was the ridiculous heat.

So, an odd question occurred to me while running. Does wind chill work in the summer? Today was hot AND windy. Shouldn't that make it cooler? If not, at what temperature does wind chill not work? They say that we all need a good friend who is an attorney and one that is an accountant. That is great, I have those covered nicely. But, what I need now, is a meterologist friend. Anyone know where THEY hang out?


Last night ===> 6 miles
Today ===> 6 miles, 53:25, absurd heart rate escalation

====> 7-8 miles, moderate pace

Just a rest day

Hardly bloggable, but nonetheless, blogged!

New Stadium

There is probably a very real chance that I saw my last Cardinal game in the old stadium tonight. There are 33 home games left but things are getting busy. I sure have a lot of memories of various games over the years. Still, I can't quite get myself motivated to actually buy some of the old seats before they tear it down. I will, in all likelihood, scour eBay for some in the secondary market.

By the way, regarding the previous post, the actual choice was "C". In reality, all else is never equal!

Decisions, decisions....

<==Choice A
Choice B===>

<==Choice C
Choice D===>










====> Tempo 3 miles in just over 27 minutes and 3 miles in just under 21 minutes

Tour Fever

There is an odd and growing phenomenon that takes place this time of year. Bikers ( big and small, serious and casual, fast and slow, etc and opposite of etc) all show off their most ostentatious giro finery. Call it either the "Lance Effect" or "American Consumerism Rides Again". I guess it is probably equal parts of both.

There are plenty of really serious cyclists out here. But the ones who I seem to seeing a lot lately have no problem mixing high-tech time-trial singlets with a totally upright hybrid bike. The clothes look cool, even if they don't help with the speed thing. Now, let's talk about the super flashy running shoes I just got.....


====> Biked and lifted. I felt very well rested, but I think it made sense to take a day off from running.

Mostly excuses

I ran ten this morning. I really intended on going further but for a couple reasons ten worked out better. It was hot for sure. Try as I might, I didn't get out early enough to beat it. My heart rate just kept going up, so I stopped when I did.

I think I will go a little longer tomorrow morning and make my body think it really did get something long done. I DO like the heat, but I am REALLY ready for a cloudy day.

One good thing, I finally replaced the seat on my road bike. So now it is ready to get back into the mix.



====> Ran 10, 1:29:32, 148-168 bpm.

Cocoa

For a few of the people that I think read this blog, the word "Cocoa" may mean more than a hot chocolate. I will get back to that in a bit.

Before the dawning of invisible fences in suburbia, the ever tense relationship between dog and runner was much simpler. If there was a fence and the dog was behind it, the dog could safely be ignored. Sure, there was the odd fence that was no longer up to the task of canine containment. Too, there was the odd dog that clearly was uncontainable. But, for the most part, fences afforded the runner a bit of peace of mind.

Now they all have invisible fences, great invention from a homeowner's standpoint. But the problem for the runner, of course, is that invisible fences look remarkably similar to no fences. Today, I had a holy-crap-that-is-a-big-dog-charging-at-me-there-must-be-an-invisible-fence-why-is-the-owner-panicing-type-of-experience. The short version; big brown dog, no invisible fence, apparently I can run faster.

So back to Cocoa. When I was very young, before the invisible invention (E may remember this) Cocoa educated us on how big charging brown dogs can scare the living crap out of you. After my Cocoa moment today, I took some satisfaction in calculating that Cocoa is over 231 in dog years now. I probably can stop worrying about Cocoa.


===> Run 4.2, hot/humid/hilly 34:35

Training at High Humidity

If only there was a benefit to living and running at low altitude and high humidity...the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi would become a Mecca of sorts.

====> 6 miles, 152 bpm, 53:03, lots of sweat

One would think.....

....that after a week of silence, I would have quite a few new things to say on this blog...and not just running related material, mind you. I should have much more solid stuff to explain the silence. I should maybe have tales of touring the capitals of Europe with my cactus_bird folio, or stories of great intrigue regarding the heart rate training of some obscure indigenous tribe, and certainly an account of how the Machines decided I knew too much and took corrective action. But it just isn't the case folks.

In reality, the real world is a busy place and sometimes fun things (like this blog) get pushed to the side. I WILL say that my running is going just fine. This will most likely be about a 40 mile week.

More to follow.

This morning ===> 6 miles===56:13===150 bpm

Taking it to the Next Level

I have to confess, that on rare occasion, I have, purely for logistical reasons, blogged about running PRIOR to actually doing the running. Today while running (yes I did do the run prior to this typing) I envisioned taking this to the next level by quitting the running-part altogether and focusing all of my energy solely on the blogging-about-running-part.

I am not saying it would be easy. Occasionally, I would have to lament some stress fracture symptoms when my quasi-mileage got too high. I would need to commit to learning photoshop so that I could edit myself into a variety of running pictures. Finally, and quite logically, I would need to find some speedy dupe to enter races under my name in exchange for free race t-shirts (I would keep any race hardware that he may earn). Race performances wouldn't be tied to training, instead, I would vary them based on whether my "killer race" funny story was further along than my "there's always next time" entry.

Of course, somewhere along the line, I would actually blog about the trick in a way that made people think I was trying to be funny. "That Jack, such a kidder!"

Oh yes, I have it ALL figured out.


===> 6 miles, 158 bpm, 54:24

===> 6 miles, middle 3 as a tempo, just a tee tee under 7 min/mile I would guess

The Machines

A friend of mine has a theory that the emergence of blogs is one of the last signs given prior to the Machine led apocalypse.

The Machines, in order to truly replicate that which is uniquely human, needed human data and lots of it. This data, they computed, would at last give them insight into all of our dreams, gripes, obsessions, quirks, and basically the stuff that makes us human. So the Machines actually invented blogs as a collection tool...and boy is it working like a champ. The young and weak were drawn to blogs almost immediately, then came the egotists, then finally with feeble resistance came the fitness obsessives and the runners. None of them knowing that with each mundane post, each idle comment, each outrageous rant; the Machines' data set grew and the redundancy of mankind accelerated.



It is compelling logic, especially if you read a few too many blogs. I have not conceded to them yet. To combat the Machines, I personally like to toss in a couple curve balls to keep them guessing. Please do your part.

=====> Today I will run 32,768 miles, backwards (that is actually just to throw the Machines off. 6 miles, shhh.)

229 Candles

Happy Birthday America!

Flash Bang

Well, today I had a really good run. To be really good, I like to have some exogenous meteorological elements to overcome. I got some.

When I was a kid, I am pretty certain my house was hit by lightning. We had a TV antenna the size of a hand glider on the roof above my room. My dad was pretty certain that rabbit ears were ok for the masses, but for the home of a Bell Labs EE, you had to have something that would also look appropriate on a lunar lander. (Two side notes: 1. Years later, we re-installed the same antenna in the attic, once it was no longer visible, it was quickly retired for satellite TV, hmm. 2. Bell Labs was famous for inventing the what?)

Back to the lightning strike, I remember a big late night electrical storm. At some point, all of the hair on my head filled with static. A huge flash and bang came. I think the lightning probably followed the cable that all such apparatus have installed, so no harm done to the house. The only real damage was my clock radio. It made odd playing-a-record-backwards type of sounds for the next couple hours, while unplugged even. Also, some integrated circuit gave way and the poor thing never could tell time again. According to it, I am now 8465 years old. The 8-track player is still ready for that medium's ultimate comeback.

So today, as I ran, I was almost as close to another lightning strike. I started this run knowing that there was a storm brewing, the sky was pretty easy to read. It started of well enough, but the last half was good and wet and windy. It was the type of run that makes you say "yes, there are a lot of reasons to sit on the couch; yes, being cold and wet is not that comfortable; and yet, man do I FEEL ALIVE."

===> 8.4 miles running, on the hill loop.

Late Eight

=====> 8 miles running

Random

Today was another night run. It really gets a bit more challenging as the Fourth gets closer. Now it isn't just late night dog walkers that are the threat, it is kids with explosives. But it is all in good clean fun, until...

The photos are just random ones I took today. The first being a determined turtle, slowly and steadily swimming along. The second being two darning needles, obviously quite in love, or so it would seem. I am no entomologist, but they sure look happy together.


====> Ran 6

Night Running, Bass Ackwards

I am sort of stuck in a night running rut this last week. I am a recent morning convert but I had been a night runner for years. Night running certainly comes with drawbacks.

1.) I run slower in the dark. I run about 30 seconds/mile slower when it is dark. I think it has less to do with being tired at the end of the day (I can hoot with the night owls) and more to do with being overly cautious of branches, rocks, cracks, and stuff like that.

2.) When I run at night, I stay up way too late afterwards. I find it hard to go to bed sweaty. So I stay up past the point where I have any chance of breaking the cycle and getting up early to run the next morning. I do pointless things after a night run, like blog entries.

3.) Occasionally, on Friday and Saturday nights, you have to bear the outrageous hollers of troubled suburban youth hauling by in daddy's BMW. The teens are harmless to be sure, but not helpful either.

Tonight was a night run. Tomorrow will be too. So, you guessed it, Sunday's long run will be at night. Then on Monday, I kick the habit and make it happen in the morning. If I don't make it out Monday morning and instead go for the night run again, I may get a bottle rocket in my shorts. Now there is some motivation to get out early.


====> Ran 6