I like to move it, move it... 2010 Version

I'm using the theme song from Madagascar for my 2010 Running Season.

Yes, I'm a Type A personality. My color is Gold in the True Colors personality profile. Planning stuff, especially my running routine, is my thing. Some folks wing it, I like to plan it. Or for 2010.... Move it, move it.

I did a little research after reading that Jesse was planning on using Pete Pfitzinger. I have adopted Pfitzinger's Intermediate 55-mile program for my next Marathon.  I've got the book on the way too, so I plan on doing a deep dive into Phitzinger's principles. We'll see how this plan goes for the spring Marathon, and if I will continue to use it for the fall Marathon.

Really, the Trails are calling my name this year. Even before I began running early this year, what I really always wanted was to run trails. Stephanie had bought me some nice trail running shoes for Christmas LAST YEAR, and I finally used them, for their intended purpose, last weekend. Nashville only has a few good trail systems, so the it will be off to Chattanooga a few times this year.

My GOAL race/run for this year will be an 50K Trail Ultra Marathon called StumpJump. Considering that it took me 2 hours to run 9 miles at Percy Warner Park (and IT WAS BRUTAL), I've got a lot of training to do for this one.

2010 Running Schedule (subject to Change)

• Start the year off  with Old Man's 50K Run at the Murfreesboro greenway. I'm going to try the entire 50.
• A few 5/10K runs in Jan/Feb.
• Tom King Half Marathon at Titan's Stadium in March.
  
• Rock Creek River Gorge 10.2 Mile Trail Run in Chattanooga in March.
• 11th Country Music Marathon in April - Steph is running the Half. Will be fun.
• Wild Thang Trail Run in Nashville and 
• the Scenic City Trail Half Marathon in Chattanooga in May.
• RC and Moon Pie 10 Miler - Should be HOT in June
• July/Aug/Sept will be 50K training period, with a few 5/10K's thrown in to keep the speed up.
• Oct 3rd, 2010 will be the Rock/Creek StumpJump 50K - Move it, move it.....
• Tentatively scheduling Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon in November, because I enjoyed it so much the first time.
  

I will probably miss one of my favorite races from the past year, the Middle Half Marathon. It was a blast. They have to schedule around MTSU football games, but last year was on the same weekend as StumpJump. I'll keep an eye on it.

My personal goals are:

• Have more FUN. I know I am a planner, but running, at its core, is about getting away from ordinary life and enjoying nature and yourSELF.
• 1.500 miles is my goal. 1,800 is my stretch goal.
• Lose 10 more pounds. I think I will be much fitter running at 150 instead of 160. Seriously, I will need an entirely new wardrobe if that happens. This time last year, I was around 180 pounds.
• 3:45 Marathon
• 1:40 Half Marathon
• 21:xx - 5K
• 44:xx - 10K
  

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Foot Prints

What is up with all of the crap about Carbon Dioxide emission and stuff they are discussing at the "Green Summit" in Copenhagen? It is just baffling the things that so-called intelligent folks come up with.

It's even funnier when Idiot's join in the fun, and try to make things "right" by "off-setting" the carbon footprint of others. Some company (I guess you could call them that) is going to plant enough trees to off-set the CO2 that President Obama is going to emit while flying to Copenhagen to meet at the summit. I don't know, but maybe Obama would emit less CO2 if he didn't fly there to begin with?

But jeez, it's not  like CO2 is even poisonous. In fact, what would trees, plants, grass, etc. turn into Oxygen if it weren't for Carbon Dioxide.

So, what is your Carbon Footprint? I suspect that since you run a lot, that your emissions are quite a bit higher than some folks. And what about me? I used a dang treadmill for 60 minutes tonight. Wonder how much that was?

Al Gore has a good thing going. He's going to make a fortune pulling this over every ones eyes. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for helping to create less pollution though technology. Getting off America's dependence of oil would be an awesome thing. But seriously, are they all that naive to think that human being's can man-make anything that mother-nature could not adjust to?

Just be careful, because before long, us runners will have to purchase some "carbon off-sets" every time we use a trail or buy some new Nike's.

I better go plant some trees.

1,001 Miles

I broke though the 1,000 mile barrier today. 1,001 to be exact.

1,000 more than I ran last year.

I'm hoping to run 1,800 miles next year, which will average 150 miles per month.

I remember the 1st mile, last year on my birthday in late December. I think it took 12 minutes, and I walked at least 3 or 4 times.

I remember the first time that I averaged around 9:00 per mile in early January. It was at a hard effort.

I just finished running 26.2 miles, averaging 9:03 per mile.

1,000 miles is about the distance from my door step to Boston, Mass. WOW.

This time last year, I would have thought that was crazy.

2009 RnR Las Vegas Marathon - Race Report - Pt. 2

Mile #7 to Mile #12 heading towards downtown Las Vegas and the turn around. Temp remained in the 30's to low 40's, but the wind was still kicking around 10-12mph. As we cleared the tall casinio's, the sunshine warmed me up a little and I ditched the beanie and gloves. Ditching the gloves was a bad idea. My hands remained cold for then next 2 hours.

I had intended to use my Chickamauga fluid strategy by taking a water bottle through 13 miles. This worked strategy worked great the first time and allowed me to breeze through all the water stops that were very crowded with all of the runners on the course. At Chickamauga, it was kind of a last second strategy, where I stopped by a 7-11 on the way to the Marathon, and kind of winged it. This time I found a sweet water bottle at the airport on the way into Vegas, and kept it in the room since Thursday. Saturday night, I'm looking all around the room for the water bottle and can't find it anywhere. Crap, the service lady must of tossed it, even though it clearly was NOT IN or NEAR the trash can. Back up plan was to get a ginormous water bottle at one
of the shops at the Belligio. It was just too big to carry, and I dumped it about1/2 mile into the run.

At 10.5 the full takes a right out west of town, and the Half Marathoner's keep going down LV Blvd to the finish line. Mile time come in at : 8:33 - 8:36 - 8:34 - 8:44 - 8:47 - 8:58 (1:25:38 at Mile #10.)

Mile #13 to Mile #20 - Almost imperceptible during the run, but there is a
500 foot elevation change from mile
8 to mile 20, up hill. So much for a flatcourse. It's an out and back between mile 15 and 24 and watch the front runners going by in the other direction.
My legs began to feel heavy, and I
walked through several water stops and even stopped to stretch my quad and hip, trying to get loosened up. Mostly the same scenery. Not much crowd support and the bands were far between. I had my music player on anyway, so the lack of music didn't bother me. I was just trying to stay motivated and plug out the miles. 9:16 - 8:45 - 8:54 - 9:46 - 9:23 - 9:32 - 9:43 - 9:32 (2:58:10.51 at Mile #20)

Mile #21 to Mile #26.2 - What (gradually) goes up, must come (gradually) down. And so it was. Elevation dropped off 250 feet over last 10K. I was wondering where some of the speed came from. I didn't realize it during the race, it was so imperceptible, and when you are tired, it's sometimes hard to tell if you are going up or down. Still walked though most water stops, but never hit the proverbial wall. The Half marathoners finished up coming down LV Blvd into the Mandalay Bay front parking lot, but they banished us Full marathoners to come in the "back door" and finish on the side of the parking lot ??? Oh well. I kept thinking about "leaving it all on the race course", so I stepped the last 1.2 up as best I could. Unlike last marathon, where I was passing a lot of folks, I was the one getting passed up, until the last mile. The one thing that Rock N Roll does for the Full is to announce the names as we came in. The announcer is very up beat and it was cool still having good crowds pushing you on in that final last 385 yards (which I counted every one.) I was glad to get it over with and find Stephanie. They had setup a cool TEXT UPDATE thing, and it texted her as soon as I finished and she found me very fast. After marathon food was a joke, not even going to comment on it. 8:44 - 9:18 - 9:37 - 9:22 - 9:31 - 8:43

Official Time = 3:56:56
Garmin Time = 3:56:20 (set to auto pause).

All in All it was a great time out in Vegas. Stephanie was ultra-supportive and helped me wobble back the 1.5 miles to the Bellagio and get me into the bathtub. She even got a couple of large bags of ice and got me a great ice bath.

2009 RnR Las Vegas Marathon - Race Report - Pt. 1

Short Version

3:40 or 3:50 was not in the "cards" for this run. I gave it a shot, but just could not get my legs to turn over like I had planned or anticipated.

I guess consistency counts for something. Finish time - 3:56:56 for a new PR by 20 seconds.

Long(er) Version

5:30am and out the door at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I have about a mile and quarter to cover to get to the starting line at the Mandalay Bay Resort. Las Vegas Blvd is closed to traffic, so I can walk right down the street. The first cold snap of the year for the area, but its only about 38 degrees out, but the wind has been blowing for a few days.

The last week of taper had not gone as planned. I had not put any miles in since Monday. I prefer to log at least some tempo runs, all the way up to the race day, to keep the edge on. Brad Hudson calls it sharpening. The long red lights and traffic make any sort of workout hard when staying on the strip, even early in the morning. Plus the large amount of walking may have helped to tire my legs out in a different way that I was not expecting.

6:00am and I was finally at the "runners village" in the parking lot near the starting line. Competitor knows how to put on a race, but like Country Music, the mass of people make everything seem chaotic. It took 5 minutes to locate the bag drop-off area, and when I finally got my warm-ups off and in the bag, the lady was taking one or two bags back at a time and trying to sort them by last name. There was only 30 people standing in line waiting for this lady, and she was in no hurry to get going. After 5 or 6 minutes, I finally took my bag and up to another volunteer and asked her to help, which she gladly did.

6:14am and I made it to the corral #3 and listened to Cher sing the national anthem. 6:15am and the Elite men took off to fireworks  and they did a rolling start, which worked much better than pausing every 45 seconds between corral's like CMM, which I thought worked very well. So the gun fires and we are off. I've had NO WARM UP and very little stretching, oh well.

6:15am - Mile #1-9:05 - It was still dark out as we took off down Las Vegas Blvd.  About 3/4 down the street and a U-turn back in the other direction. LV Blvd is very wide and a great street to run on. All of the casino's were lit up and there was a lot of excitement. Trying to find a grove and get going, but right off the bat, I can sense that I'm not into it. I tell myself to give it a few mile to warm up and maybe it gets better. I need to average 8:20 or so for a 3:40 marathon.

Mile #2 - #6 were the best of the race. All the way down LV Blvd as the sun was starting to rise and the casino's lit up and glowing. Looking back at the map, it was a noticeable gradual down hill all the way through the turn around at mile 8.5. About 200+ feet of downward elevation change. It was so gradual, it was hardly noticeable. Several bands and pretty good crowd support down the boulevard. Perhaps it was too early, or not much mention of the event for the locals, but the crowds are no where near as big as CMM. I was able to get into the groove, but just could not find the speed that I was aiming for.  8:29 - 8:36 - 8:29 - 8:17 - 8:24. I was at 51:15 thru mile 6.

26.2 or Bust - RnR Las Vegas Style

First off, I want to thank everyone who has followed me on this blog for the last few months as I have trained for my first Marathon. All your words of encouragement and advice have been greatly appreciated.

My mantra for this coming race is a quote from T.S. Elliot - "Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."

What this means to me, is: GO STRONG OR GO HOME ! ! !

Being a newbie, and somewhat injury prone, I have taken a cautious approach to my race running. Only one race have I felt that I have left it all on the road, with nothing left in the tank. I realize that running races is a process, especially with us who have this newly founded hobby. Leaving it all out on the road, though, is a different type of beast. Truly pushing ones self to go beyond your limits, and leave the comforts of the "conservative nature" is somewhat hard.

Steve Prefontaine is a very quotable and successful runner back in the 70's when running really exploded. He was notorious for wanting to bury his opponents, and leave them in his dust. One of his quotes goes, "A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more."

So, what's it gonna be?? I'm going to shoot for one goal only, if I fail, at least I will leave it on the track.

3:45 3:40 (Thanks for keeping me honest, Jesse)

I'll try and post some pic's of Las Vegas and the expo before the race.