October, just around the corner

October is a very important month.

The month basically begins with a race this Sunday, a half marathon. This half should be a good test to determine where I am; just multiply by two and add ten minutes to get a marathon proxy. By month's end, and hopefully 200+ (hard/injury) free miles later, the training for my real goal race will be complete. With all that hay in the barn, I will taper and be quite confident.
Having said that, I think that if I am totally honest with myself (which I usually am), I would admit that two things are weighing on my mind regarding running. The first is that I am just not getting enough sleep to let good recovery and adaptation fully take place. The second is that I need to run more fast or at least "goal pace" miles.

Yesterday, I put in four miles at 7 and felt good. Today I am going to do some 800's at 6-ish pace. Then I think I will take it easy until the race. The sleep thing, well it sucks when there is a problem at work at 11 pm. What can you do?

	M	T	W	T	F	S	S	Week	Month	Last Month
Miles	R	6	8	--	--	--	--	14	152.6	164.7
Rest	6	7	--	--	--	--	--	13	??	??

Poetic License

In the interest of full disclosure, you should all know that this run didn't actually happen on Sunday. Nor did this writing actually take place Sunday night. The run happened Monday evening and the writing on Tuesday afternoon. But, hey, if you can't move a few facts around once in awhile, then just what IS the use of technology?

What I am doing is called smoothing in the world of statistics. If I didn't smooth, it would look like I ran 24 miles last week and 62 this week. I am clearly not ready for the 62 yet and 24 makes me look like I have been skimping. So let's pretend it didn't happen.

By the way, all this makes Monday a "rest day". Ahhh.

===>Miles

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
16	40	138.6	164.7

===>Rest

M	T	W	T	F	S	S	Total
6	7	7	7.5	5	8	6	48

One run down for the day, almost caught up. I slept like a rock last night.

===>Miles

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
5	20	118.6	164.7

===>Rest

M	T	W	T	F	S	S	Total
6	7	7	7.5	F	S	S	29

Well. This pattern is starting to look familiar. It's Thursday and I need to run how many more miles to have a productive week? Yikes.

I have been traveling enough of late to make a regular morning or evening run more challenging. I flew into EWR yesterday and had a total "where am I again?" experience. My head was spinning a bit and for a minute I felt like the guy in the black trunks!

But I had a nice run this morning and am planning the same for this evening. I should be caught up by Friday evening and be just fine. (This just in, just In case it is important, 7 this morning and 8 after work with the last few miles being 400 and 800s on the tiny cinder track.)

===>Miles

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
15	15	113.6	164.7

===>Rest

M	T	W	T	F	S	S	Total
6	7	7	T	F	S	S	20

My odd food pyramid.

A running friend recently commented on my odd diet. So now I can't help but look at it more closely.

Have you seen Blazing Saddles? There is a scene that reminded me a bit of today. It's the one where the Waco kid downs a bottle of whisky in the town jail and then the Sheriff says "this".

Let me explain.

The good news: I ran 20.2 miles today and played an hour of tennis.
The bad news: I was no model of nutritional excellence.

Intake Today
____________________________________________
Coffee (2 cups)
Gatorade (2 qts)
"Espresso Love" GU (1 squirt, 2x caffeine)
Egg McMuffin (no meat)
OJ
Hash brown (extra greasy)

Subway BMT (six inches)
Cherry Coke (2)

Snow Caps (half box)
Milk Duds (handful)
Popcorn (movie kind, buttered)
(can you tell I went to the movies?)

Peanut Butter Creme Cookies, by far my favorite. (half package)

Spaghetti with meat sauce
Bread
Cake, yellow with chocolate icing (1 slice)

2 quarts Gatorade
____________________________________________

This is all about self improvement. So here's to better nutrition!


===>Miles

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
20.2	44.4	98.6	164.7

===>Rest

M	T	W	T	F	S	S	Total
x	x	x	7	8	7	x	x

My famous photos (well, sort of)

As some of you may recall, there was an excursion to the western desert this Spring (it is in the March archive for anyone interested). I think that trip was really my digital photo debut. I finally got the difference between the old click, wait, cross fingers, develop and the new click, look, delete, click, look, keep.

Two of the photos I posted were named "cactus bird1" and "cactus bird two". For some reason, those two guys continue to come up #1 and #2 on a Google Images search when "cactus" and "bird" are the query words. I have an embedded tracking tool that tells me that this query drives more traffic to this blog than anything else. I wonder why these two are at the top of the Google list. To be fair, "Stone House" also gets a crowd, but nothing like the birds. None of the other photos have ever been hit.

I have a friend who lives quite nicely by exporting beads from Asia and selling them from his website here in the USA. Regarding the "cactus bird" phenomenon he says "I would give my left bead to come up #1 in a Google search." To which I really have no response other than saying that I am vicariously enjoying my photos' 15 minutes of fame.

***********
This quote is completely non sequitur, but it struck a chord with me. As I have said in the past, it is my blog and other things may creep in.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
- Voltaire

***********

Also, a couple friends have asked how to start their own blog. The link is now to the right, have fun.


===>Miles

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
6.2	24.2	78.4	164.7

===>Rest

M	T	W	T	F	S	S	Total
x	x	x	7	8	x	x	x

Catch up time

So it is Friday. There are only two days left in this training week. I had planned on having a big fat mileage number when the books close on Sunday. But, as I look at the little tracker box below, it appears that I have my work cut out for me. A twenty will help to be sure, but we'll need more than that to tip the scales.

Speaking of little tracker boxes, I am floating something new on this entry, a sleep tracker. I confess, I am an eight hour-a-night guy and have been for a long time. I can fake that I need less, but I think I may get a wee bit, shall we say, short. So though my approach is not really scientific, it is at least in the right direction for self-improvement. As they say, you only tend to get what you measure, so we will give this tracking a shot.

By the way, I can die now. I saw Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway last night.

===>Miles

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
8.0	18.0	72.2	164.7

===>Rest

M	T	W	T	F	S	S	Total
x	x	x	7	x	x	x	x

Six Degrees of Separation

You all know about that Kevin Bacon thing, right? Well, today I am going to do my small part and link to a new blogger initiative that is now live.

I think they intend to keep it pretty clean, so if you can handle this one you should be fine with that one! But one never knows.

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
6.0	10.0	64.2	164.7

Hello, I am back.

Lots of flying, a raucous birthday party, almost no runnning M-F, and two premier runs on the weekend. That is my basic summary of what my blog posts should have sounded like. Of course, what they actually sounded like was dead air. As always, there is a lot of context needed to understand the pauses. Suffice it to say that, once again, enough dust has settled for me to get back setting fingertips to keyboard. So all is good.

It was very nice to have received a few emails saying "Dude, where are you?"

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
4.0	4.0	58.2	164.7

end of week

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
0.00	21.6	54.2	164.7

Twenty +

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
20.9	42.6	32.6	164.7

Easy day

More or less, today was just a set up day for tomorrow's long run. We did some biking as well, including some twilight stunt riding. We tied our all-time record, three of us on one bike.

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
4.2	21.7	11.7	164.7

Draconian Measures

Well, the title exaggerates a bit. What I did was to require visual verification for comment posting. That just means you need to enter into a box what you see on the screen when you post a comment. Don't be scared away by it, it won't bite. This is just something that a human can easily do and that the auto-web-crawling machines have not been able to figure out.....yet.

Easy 6, intervals at the mini oval.

Today	Week	Month	Last Month
7.5	17.5	7.5	164.7