ACK!
The Humdinger is coming up Saturday and the excitement is flowing! 7+ miles of running through crunchy, snowy fields, streams, hills, woods, pig barns, etc! Oh and it's only Tuesday...
That's mainly what's in my head right now.
But here's the past weekend:
Kids/warm weather
It was like 45F both days. And I had some easier runs scheduled. Why not make them harder!? (:
Saturday... We bundled up Thing1 and Thing2, put them in the bike trailer/stroller with the front wheel attached and I headed out for 5 miles around the block...
Physical aspects:
Warm temperature was nice.
Wind was apparently in the 30-40mph range. And that enclosed trailer... Well, pushing it into the wind pretty much brought it to a dead stop even downhill when it really blew! But I got some running in. That stroller doesn't track straight either, but it's pretty easy to just tilt it so the front wheel isn't on the ground and then it goes pretty easy. Legs were a bit more tired, but not horrible.
Mental aspects:
The toughest 5 miles ever. Within the first 5-10 minutes my 2 year old decided she did NOT want to ride anymore so we had more than an hour of screaming. SOOO tiring...
Sunday:
Again, another nice 45F.
Windy, but not as bad as Saturday.
8 miles listed...
Well, why not go crazy and try 2 year old on my back.
I didn't have a lot of hope for this, but from past experience, I had better hope that she'd be happier back there than in a stroller.
Physically?
WOW, I don't notice the 5 or so pounds of my Camelbak, but 25 or so pounds of kid? That's a LOT more stress on the legs and joints. We didn't really do any running, I did something more like power walking on the flats and downhills. And thankfully Kenzie was happy to ride back there and semi-snooze. It's hard to tell when she's on my back, but I think the 4-wheelers passing us kept her from fully sleeping for a while, and then she slept for about an hour. I didn't go very fast, but I did go up and down the hills and over the snow all the way.
Then about 3 miles out she started waking up and making more noise. I could barely tell she was awake at first. Then she wanted more bouncing from me "running". Then of course she started saying that she wanted to get out and walk herself and she couldn't seem to keep her bink in her mouth which was almost impossible for me to reach.
I managed to talk her into being a "good girl" and staying back there till we got to the last 3/4 mile around the lake without TOO much trouble.
I let her out once we were off the snow covered road and she was quite happy there, even though the first thing she did was fall over forwards. But then she did a good job(though of course we went even slower yet) of walking along and did some bits of running as well. As usual her biggest problem is keeping going down the road. She wants to either veer off the side into the snow, or run across the other side of the road or something.
But in the end we made it without much of any screaming and we did all 8 miles so WOOHOO! (: Definitely harder on the knees though. I should probably start incorporating more weight into my runs to get used to that(or more yet if I'm going to be hauling SIXTY pounds up ski slopes for Spartan...) I think I have my half marathon training taking me up to 16 miles mid april and then some time before the marathon training starts, so maybe that would be a good time to start adding weight.
Oh, I did also as a "something is better than nothing" finally tie a rope to a beam in the garage. It's about half as thick as a climbing rope and it's not in the greatest location, but it's some place I can at least grab a couple times a day as I come and go and at least start to get used to. After a few days, I can pretty well at least do a pullup on it. Only tried the feet a couple times, no luck so far, but I just looked again at what to do, so I'll have to see if I can improve my technique. Just very difficult since right now my arms and hands aren't overly found of holding my weight much at all.
RACING THIS WEEKEND!
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Monday, February 17, 2014
14 miles: Take 2
So Sunday I did another 14 miles.
End result? Well, it's cool to see improvement. I got faster and with less pain.
I did the half marathon in 2hrs 50min. Would be nice to whack off a good 50 minutes off that time, but hey I've done it only about twice now and there's good improvement.
Got the 14 miles done in about 3hrs.
I think this was about 15 minutes or so faster than last week.
It was about 10F.
Part of this was less monkeying around on the road. Maybe most of it, given the time I spent talking to the neighbors and then monkeying around with my pack and moving food last time.
Water...
Well, I now have the insulated tube from Camelbak. Umm... So it IS better than the UNinsulated tube. However, I have the one with the meter on it, and THAT part is not insulated. Guess what freezes first? It also has a little turbine in there, so guess where the slush gets stuck first once the water starts getting thick anywhere in the tube?
So about the halfway point, I just took out the meter section and stuck it in my glove so I could thaw it out enough to clear it so as not to worry about it breaking anything with further freezing and then tossed it in my pack.
Well... Then there is the bite-mouth piece that's not insulated... Thought that would be open enough to not be a problem. Guess what? It was a problem. So, about 5-10 minutes later when I went for water again, I took that off, and repeated the thawing, clearing, toss in bag process.
So the rest of the trip was done with just the open end of the insulated hose. That pretty much worked. sometimes at around 10 minutes it would require a bit of work to get it flowing again though. If I wasn't hoping for Spring soon I might think about trying to get some heat of some sort going or something...
And on the water front, I ignored the meter anyway since it seemed to only read about half of what I was drinking(presumably the freezing doesn't help much with accuracy). So I just basically ended up trying to take a sip every 5 minutes or so and/or after/between gummy bites or other fuel eating.
In the end, it seems as though I drank a LOT less as the bag still seemed pretty full, yet I did not seem dehydrated. I still ended up having to find a few pee spots, but I think I may have cut a couple of them out. Would be nice to get that figured out a bit better as I'd really rather not have to stop a couple times at porta-potties(if I'm lucky) during an actual half marathon...
I also tried a Honey Stinger Waffle for fuel. Somehow I thought that's what they were intended for, but after actually using one, I rather doubt it. They seem to be made to be eaten 160 calories at once and the main ingredient is wheat. I think they worked just fine, but I guess closer to a normal bar than running fuel. I think I shall be switching to raisins and/or honey rather soon. Need to find a travel bottle or something for honey.
Made sure the phone was fully charged before I left and used the wired yurbuds headphones since I needed to shove them under my balaclava with the cold. No problems other than the usual wire issues where they get caught or otherwise pull and are annoying.
End result? Well, it's cool to see improvement. I got faster and with less pain.
I did the half marathon in 2hrs 50min. Would be nice to whack off a good 50 minutes off that time, but hey I've done it only about twice now and there's good improvement.
Got the 14 miles done in about 3hrs.
I think this was about 15 minutes or so faster than last week.
It was about 10F.
Part of this was less monkeying around on the road. Maybe most of it, given the time I spent talking to the neighbors and then monkeying around with my pack and moving food last time.
Water...
Well, I now have the insulated tube from Camelbak. Umm... So it IS better than the UNinsulated tube. However, I have the one with the meter on it, and THAT part is not insulated. Guess what freezes first? It also has a little turbine in there, so guess where the slush gets stuck first once the water starts getting thick anywhere in the tube?
So about the halfway point, I just took out the meter section and stuck it in my glove so I could thaw it out enough to clear it so as not to worry about it breaking anything with further freezing and then tossed it in my pack.
Well... Then there is the bite-mouth piece that's not insulated... Thought that would be open enough to not be a problem. Guess what? It was a problem. So, about 5-10 minutes later when I went for water again, I took that off, and repeated the thawing, clearing, toss in bag process.
So the rest of the trip was done with just the open end of the insulated hose. That pretty much worked. sometimes at around 10 minutes it would require a bit of work to get it flowing again though. If I wasn't hoping for Spring soon I might think about trying to get some heat of some sort going or something...
And on the water front, I ignored the meter anyway since it seemed to only read about half of what I was drinking(presumably the freezing doesn't help much with accuracy). So I just basically ended up trying to take a sip every 5 minutes or so and/or after/between gummy bites or other fuel eating.
In the end, it seems as though I drank a LOT less as the bag still seemed pretty full, yet I did not seem dehydrated. I still ended up having to find a few pee spots, but I think I may have cut a couple of them out. Would be nice to get that figured out a bit better as I'd really rather not have to stop a couple times at porta-potties(if I'm lucky) during an actual half marathon...
I also tried a Honey Stinger Waffle for fuel. Somehow I thought that's what they were intended for, but after actually using one, I rather doubt it. They seem to be made to be eaten 160 calories at once and the main ingredient is wheat. I think they worked just fine, but I guess closer to a normal bar than running fuel. I think I shall be switching to raisins and/or honey rather soon. Need to find a travel bottle or something for honey.
Made sure the phone was fully charged before I left and used the wired yurbuds headphones since I needed to shove them under my balaclava with the cold. No problems other than the usual wire issues where they get caught or otherwise pull and are annoying.
Monday, February 10, 2014
14 miles
Oh let's see....
I made it 14 miles yesterday. Figured I might as well just head over to the farm and back. It was around 3 hours 15 minutes I think, but that could be cut down a bit. Took a minute at the farm, and then ran into the neighbors and talked to them for a few minutes.
Then a few minutes to put some gatorade in the Camelbak and move fuel around.
Also too many pee breaks.
This was my first time with the new insulated tube for the Camelback and the meter to tell how much I'm drinking. Notes: The meter is a turbine in the tube and is not insulated... Things still get slushy after 10-20 minutes and they get stuck at the turbine. Thankfully not a huge deal to disconnect the hose, suck out both ends and get things going again.
Also not sure how inaccurate the gauge is on it's own, or just with the slushing problems, but pretty sure it was closer to reading half of what I drank based on when I seemed to run out after a 50% refill of gatorade. And that's fine cause it would certainly work out better if I drank less and didn't need to stop 4 or 5 times on the return trip to pee!
I think next time I'll try it with about half of what the meter reads and see how that level of hydration works.
Lost one headphone bud thingy last weekend so I had tried my older headphones but found out they only last about 2 hours. Then somehow I ended up taking them again today after already using them for more than an hour the day before. That meant I had about 1.5hrs before they died. So I just used the phone speaker for the rest of the run.
Either way, Just before I got back to our property at like 13.92 miles, the phone crashed/rebooted. Not sure what exactly the issue was. Pretty sure I saw the "background data restricted" message that shows up with low battery, but it was reading like 31%... Maybe with everything running before the crash it dropped lower or something, but I would have thought I would have at least gotten a warning.... Historically, this phone(Moto X) has had a pretty reasonable battery capacity.
But this does make me question if I should be looking at a GPS watch again... I'm really on the fence with that one. On the on hand, it sounds great to have a device that theoretically should "just work" and not have any battery problems, etc. and give me perhaps some better info while running...
On the OTHER hand, it's not cheap, I THINK I'll have to take it back and plug it into my laptop to sync it and I still have some question if it's going to count towards my Gympact with it's uploaded logs to Runkeeper... Plus, it's nice to just have everything centralized on my phone, along with music/podcasts or whatever...
There's also the question of if I start trying to get a bit of swimming in... Not necessarily laps, but going across the lake maybe... Not sure if my theoretically waterproof phone or the watch would work much better, each sounds like they have some issues from what I can gather...
The other big ticket item that I'm hitting YET AGAIN... Is headphones. I think I have at least a half dozen sets of BT headphones(SOOO much nicer than wired) and pfft, probably a couple dozen sets of wired buds, headphones, what not...
So I'm contemplating spending some serious coin on a set of heapdphones in hopes of getting something that will go the distance... Previous issues have been... Physical breaking plastic, electronic breaking/battery dead/etc, battery life, losing buds, less than enjoyable comfort, etc...
Yurbuds seems to have a set with a lifetime guarantee, that goes over your ear(those seem to fit me the best), comfortable, 6hr battery life(hopefully that would cover the longest of my runs), and do not have a band, so I should be able to just have one in if I want to hear more of the outside world as well. Not to mention that I'd like to think that would make it easier to remove/reinsert with one hand and without knocking the bud part off... Though they do have those bud things, so that's a potential problem, but really I think they'll all have that.
I also looked a bit for headphones for swimming, but from what I can tell, bluetooth just pretty much doesn't work in water so I think I could use my existing wired yurbuds if I was going to try that...
Otherwise though, the run went pretty well.
I had a good amount of right side lower calf pain from the 12 mile run last week, but it was pretty much gone by mid-late week. But I could feel it a bit during the 6 mile run Saturday(I think the hills get it more). And I felt it Sunday, but it wasn't too bad. Well, by the end it was getting pretty darn tired. I was definitely walking a good bit more for those last few miles. But certainly nothing not doable or anything to make me thing I can't go farther. Walking has always been fine and the last 2 weeks I've increased my long runs by a couple miles each time which is a bit of a stretch for sure. And I think my other runs during the week have been more like 50%+ more than they were as well...
So I think overall I'm pretty happy with where I'm at and a bit of soreness isn't unexpected, I'm still working in these distances.
Really need to get a rope hung to try climbing, Humdinger is coming up in a couple weeks!
I made it 14 miles yesterday. Figured I might as well just head over to the farm and back. It was around 3 hours 15 minutes I think, but that could be cut down a bit. Took a minute at the farm, and then ran into the neighbors and talked to them for a few minutes.
Then a few minutes to put some gatorade in the Camelbak and move fuel around.
Also too many pee breaks.
This was my first time with the new insulated tube for the Camelback and the meter to tell how much I'm drinking. Notes: The meter is a turbine in the tube and is not insulated... Things still get slushy after 10-20 minutes and they get stuck at the turbine. Thankfully not a huge deal to disconnect the hose, suck out both ends and get things going again.
Also not sure how inaccurate the gauge is on it's own, or just with the slushing problems, but pretty sure it was closer to reading half of what I drank based on when I seemed to run out after a 50% refill of gatorade. And that's fine cause it would certainly work out better if I drank less and didn't need to stop 4 or 5 times on the return trip to pee!
I think next time I'll try it with about half of what the meter reads and see how that level of hydration works.
Lost one headphone bud thingy last weekend so I had tried my older headphones but found out they only last about 2 hours. Then somehow I ended up taking them again today after already using them for more than an hour the day before. That meant I had about 1.5hrs before they died. So I just used the phone speaker for the rest of the run.
Either way, Just before I got back to our property at like 13.92 miles, the phone crashed/rebooted. Not sure what exactly the issue was. Pretty sure I saw the "background data restricted" message that shows up with low battery, but it was reading like 31%... Maybe with everything running before the crash it dropped lower or something, but I would have thought I would have at least gotten a warning.... Historically, this phone(Moto X) has had a pretty reasonable battery capacity.
But this does make me question if I should be looking at a GPS watch again... I'm really on the fence with that one. On the on hand, it sounds great to have a device that theoretically should "just work" and not have any battery problems, etc. and give me perhaps some better info while running...
On the OTHER hand, it's not cheap, I THINK I'll have to take it back and plug it into my laptop to sync it and I still have some question if it's going to count towards my Gympact with it's uploaded logs to Runkeeper... Plus, it's nice to just have everything centralized on my phone, along with music/podcasts or whatever...
There's also the question of if I start trying to get a bit of swimming in... Not necessarily laps, but going across the lake maybe... Not sure if my theoretically waterproof phone or the watch would work much better, each sounds like they have some issues from what I can gather...
The other big ticket item that I'm hitting YET AGAIN... Is headphones. I think I have at least a half dozen sets of BT headphones(SOOO much nicer than wired) and pfft, probably a couple dozen sets of wired buds, headphones, what not...
So I'm contemplating spending some serious coin on a set of heapdphones in hopes of getting something that will go the distance... Previous issues have been... Physical breaking plastic, electronic breaking/battery dead/etc, battery life, losing buds, less than enjoyable comfort, etc...
Yurbuds seems to have a set with a lifetime guarantee, that goes over your ear(those seem to fit me the best), comfortable, 6hr battery life(hopefully that would cover the longest of my runs), and do not have a band, so I should be able to just have one in if I want to hear more of the outside world as well. Not to mention that I'd like to think that would make it easier to remove/reinsert with one hand and without knocking the bud part off... Though they do have those bud things, so that's a potential problem, but really I think they'll all have that.
I also looked a bit for headphones for swimming, but from what I can tell, bluetooth just pretty much doesn't work in water so I think I could use my existing wired yurbuds if I was going to try that...
Otherwise though, the run went pretty well.
I had a good amount of right side lower calf pain from the 12 mile run last week, but it was pretty much gone by mid-late week. But I could feel it a bit during the 6 mile run Saturday(I think the hills get it more). And I felt it Sunday, but it wasn't too bad. Well, by the end it was getting pretty darn tired. I was definitely walking a good bit more for those last few miles. But certainly nothing not doable or anything to make me thing I can't go farther. Walking has always been fine and the last 2 weeks I've increased my long runs by a couple miles each time which is a bit of a stretch for sure. And I think my other runs during the week have been more like 50%+ more than they were as well...
So I think overall I'm pretty happy with where I'm at and a bit of soreness isn't unexpected, I'm still working in these distances.
Really need to get a rope hung to try climbing, Humdinger is coming up in a couple weeks!
Friday, February 7, 2014
Just got a little excited...
Races are getting closer... like 3 weeks to the Humdinger, then 2 weeks after that is a 5K...
I've mainly just been working on my distances up, but I've kinda got a bit of a bug to see if I can really get some speed up for that 5K... (:
Just need to figure out how to work in that training/testing with my long stuff...
I've mainly just been working on my distances up, but I've kinda got a bit of a bug to see if I can really get some speed up for that 5K... (:
Just need to figure out how to work in that training/testing with my long stuff...
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
12 miles - totals?
Well, I am working on switching it up to the half marathon training. Finishing off my last few 10K training items just cause I'm a bit OCD and I like seeing them all green, even if the training says 5 miles and I do 9 because that's what the half marathon training says.
So Sunday was my long run. 10K said to just do another 10 like I did last week which was my previous longest. Half training says 14 miles. OK, I'll split the difference and go with 12. Well, the schedule got a bit off and I realized I just wasn't going to have time, so I went for Tuesday's 7 miles instead.
So the long run was Monday and I took Tuesday off.
Kinda crazy that now figuring out where I want to run is really becoming an issue with these longer runs. After my 10 mile run on what I thought I might like better on more of a main road, I'm a little LESS likely to want to do those. It wasn't THAT bad, but I still felt like I didn't like the increase in traffic so i've been back to my seasonal road. But that maxes out at about 4.5 miles one way. So I just did that, and then went on to Avoca, and right on through Avoca and out the other end. Came back part of the way on the dike there to avoid being close to some of the cars, but that was a bit rough with 2feet of uncut grass just getting in the way with a decent amount of snow.
But it went rather well all things considered, though I am still definitely feeling the bottoms of my calves. I rolled them Monday and this morning after a 10K through ankle deep snow.
Have to see about this weekend. I think it's calling for 15 miles, but if I've still got some soreness from the 12, I may just split it again and go for the half marathon.
I was also curious to see just what my monthly totals were...
Let's see...
So apparently I started in September of 2013 and ran 7.2 miles.
October: 41.1
November: 59.8
December: 110.5
January: 112.9
And I've already done 38.3 in 5 days for February.
Hmm, that's surprising that there was so little increase from December to January... Must be the 10K training was just holding even. I guess it was more focused on speed than longer distances...
So Sunday was my long run. 10K said to just do another 10 like I did last week which was my previous longest. Half training says 14 miles. OK, I'll split the difference and go with 12. Well, the schedule got a bit off and I realized I just wasn't going to have time, so I went for Tuesday's 7 miles instead.
So the long run was Monday and I took Tuesday off.
Kinda crazy that now figuring out where I want to run is really becoming an issue with these longer runs. After my 10 mile run on what I thought I might like better on more of a main road, I'm a little LESS likely to want to do those. It wasn't THAT bad, but I still felt like I didn't like the increase in traffic so i've been back to my seasonal road. But that maxes out at about 4.5 miles one way. So I just did that, and then went on to Avoca, and right on through Avoca and out the other end. Came back part of the way on the dike there to avoid being close to some of the cars, but that was a bit rough with 2feet of uncut grass just getting in the way with a decent amount of snow.
But it went rather well all things considered, though I am still definitely feeling the bottoms of my calves. I rolled them Monday and this morning after a 10K through ankle deep snow.
Have to see about this weekend. I think it's calling for 15 miles, but if I've still got some soreness from the 12, I may just split it again and go for the half marathon.
I was also curious to see just what my monthly totals were...
Let's see...
So apparently I started in September of 2013 and ran 7.2 miles.
October: 41.1
November: 59.8
December: 110.5
January: 112.9
And I've already done 38.3 in 5 days for February.
Hmm, that's surprising that there was so little increase from December to January... Must be the 10K training was just holding even. I guess it was more focused on speed than longer distances...
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