Circumnavigation of Mt Soledad!

Its Sunday again, which means that I was due for another long run. Being able to track my run with the GPS freed me up from having to run the same course all the time. Today I chose to run around soledad mountain. It wasn't my longest run or my fastest, but there was some more ups and downs, most notably an overpass within a mile or so of the end of the run. Getting over that guy was rough. Actually the last four miles or so of this run was really hard. My legs and lower back were burning and I felt like I was on the verge of cramping up. On the bright side, the weather was great and I dont have any chaffing. :)

Looks like the Marathon distance is within reach. The next steps are to go run in the snow and finish raising the big pile of money I still need. Please feel free to help out however you can. Every dollar counts. I also could ideas and introductions for corporate sponsors. :)

Cloudy Lunch Run and a Neato iPhone Tracker

Went for a quick run at lunch and used my new iPhone to track my progress. It has used the gps and tracks your pace and elevation. It even logs pictures you take along the way. So Neato!

Thoughts on the Pole

I did an 18.6 mile run today. Two laps around the airport at a 9 min pace. Slower than the 21.7 mile run last week. The difference lies in the fact that I missed breakfast and it was freakn cold, windy, and raining. It is amazing how being uncomfortable eats away at your mental resolve. I have assumed that the cold and the snow at the pole are horrendous and that is why the fastest men's times are four and a half hours. It is a little scary to imagine what wind and snow and 40 below will be like.

Dudeman Sinks the Bismark!!

Went for a 7.1 mile run at lunch today. I spent the morning hobbling around, still sore from Sunday, and was trying to talk myself out of going. Then I got a text from my good buddy Justin 'The Dudeman' Gillen asking if I was going for a run at lunch. Obviously I had to go. Justin recently ran the Santa Barbara Marathon in a near super sonic three hours and change. Damn close to a seven min pace. If he wasn't such a nice guy I would have been intimidated by running with a living, breathing rocket ship. Luckily he was really nice about slowing down to my pace and I did my best to speed up (mostly to impress him). It worked out really well! We did the run in a record 54.8 min. That is a 7.7 min pace! Take that 8 min barrier; who's your daddy now!

21.7 miles !!

Yesterday was a perfect Sunday in Mojave. Warm, no wind, clear sky. A good day for my longest run so far. I did a 21.7 mile run, non stop, at a 8.7 min/mile pace. It was my longest training run by over three miles! I drank 1.6 liters of water and ate a couple of the power bar energy gel packs. Banana Strawberry is disgusting. The route was two laps around the airport and part of a third lap. I took an mp3 player but found I didn't need it and was more comfortable just focusing on my form and breathing... and just enjoying the day. All in all, it was a nice run. The first 18 miles were pretty comfortable. The last bit was hard. I knew that you were more likely to 'hit the wall' after the 18 mile mark and I was mostly stressed for the last three miles that each successive step would be the one where the world came to an end. I didnt find the wall this time around. Aside from being really tired the only squawk that I can report is some sort of fatigue in my lungs or throat. For the last mile or so every breath was accompanied with a buzz or hum that I had no control over.
Also about ten minutes after the run I got really cold. Like teeth chattering REALLY cold.

Today I am sore. But not as bad as on some other runs. I finally feel like the marathon distance is within reach. Yee-Haw!

Happy New Year!

It has been a while since my last post. In the mean time, it has been a busy couple of weeks. Work has been crazy and I've been getting over a nasty cough. I was getting a little discouraged that I wasn't getting to run much and I seemed to be getting slower. Maybe that is why I haven't written, I have been a little embarrassed at my lack of progress.

I've had a couple good runs this week and have taken stock of where I'm at and actually find myself in pretty good shape. I've busted the 300 mile mark for total training miles, made a new fastest pace for the 9.2 mile course at 8.2 min/mile, and made a new fastest overall pace of 7.2 min/mile for the three mile course. I think I owe the recent increase in speed to Juls. Juls and I have puzzled over my continued soreness after runs. Sometimes I could barely walk a few hours after a hard run. Juls pointed out my general lack of flexibility and my lack of enthusiasm for stretching after a run. All true. I found that I was particularly stiff on the back of my legs; calves and hamstrings. Since then I have been paying extra attention to stretching and flexibility in general. I guess it is paying off. Another one Juls came up with another one that seems to have made a difference. Chocolate milk. Juls read someplace that a big glass after a run aids in recovery. Sure enough. I have tried it after a couple long runs and find my recovery is reduced...or at least that it seems that way.

With increasing flexibility comes some changes in stride. I'm finding that my stride is longer. The cadence of breath doesn't seem to have changed much. In order to maintain the rhythm of the run, my legs are having to move faster relative to my body. I'm finding myself self using my upper body and abdominal muscles to make this happen by twisting at the hips. I'm tending to hold my arms rigid relative to my chest and swing the whole upper body works in the yaw directions out of phase with my hips and leg. This is a departure from my former form. Previously I tended not to twist my spine and only arched my back to aid in breathing. My arms swung at the shoulders and didn't seem to add much energy to the stride. Hopefully I'm getting stronger and I can massage my form to take advantage of the strength

The sound barrier of the moment is the eight min per mile pace for the nine mile course and the seven min mile pace for the short runs. The time versus distance plot of all my runs shows a trend toward a 4 hr marathon. A plot of pace versus calendar days shows a trend toward a 6.7 min per mile pace by early April, which is where we can find the North Pole Marathon.

Long story short. The running is going well. The big hurdle at the moment is funding. I'm gonna need to find some big sponsorship in the near future if I'm gonna have a chance at making the race.