Goodbye August

We had such a nice time together.   But boy am I glad that's over with now hopefully, we can find some time to relax in September.

• The first week we were a bit distracted or tired and took a recovery week.   We also spent time roaming the country side looking for bathrooms, and enjoying a wedding anniversary.   Lowest weekly mileage @ 13.7
• The second week we spent in a funk.   Blame my wife's 10 year high school reunion, or just that it was time for the funk-a-thon, whatever it was at least it was short lived.   I pushed through the agony and the desire to avoid running by putting in my longest weekly mileage to day @ 29.5. 
• The third week we celebrated running for a whole year.   We did this by banging out 5 the day I started running.   We also celebrated by running an impromptu Half-marathon at a faster pace than I have run that long of a distance.   A great week of running, but one without the bustle of added activities. Mileage 28.5
• Perhaps the most tumultuous week was the fourth of the month.   The changed schedule from the week before leading to a missed speed workout leading to a 5.5 mile run with no aim (looking back I loved that run).  Then the first shot at 20 miles, which ended up being 18 in light of trying to stay hydrated. My 10 year high school reunion, golf and a picnic on the hottest day of the year here.   The missed chance to make it to 100 for the month by trying to sleep off the grogginess.   And fantasy football draft.   Glad I moved the long run to Friday - weekly mileage 23.6.
• The last three days of the month spent recovering from last week while preparing for a trip this weekend.   Finally got in those 5 miles needed to reach the 100 mile mark for the month.   A great tempo workout this morning with a really speedy mile at the end just for good measure, perhaps the best run of the month.   That is the best way to leave the month behind.

Turns out this month wasn't too bad.   Though it was busy, and I am certainly looking forward to the more relaxing month of September
Total Monthly Miles - 100.3 my first triple digit month. Hopefully the start of something great.
Have fun out there guys!

I took my DW wife to the running store last Friday, in order to pick out a new pair of shoes.  Now, I suppoes that my intentions were twofold.  First I wanted her to get a good pair of shoes if she is going to start getting active again now that the baby is here.  Second, I wanted to look at new shoes (read: try out the Kinvara 2).

The guys at the store are awesome.  They runyou through all the normal tests, stand on each foot, walk back and forth, then recommend a shoe.  First, they grabbed her a pair of Adidas and had her move around in those.  After a few minutes, she told him what she felt in those and then he went to the back and worked his shoe finding magic, brought back 4 new pair.  She eventually narrowed it down to a pair of Sauconys and the Asics GT-2160.  After trying both shoes, she settled on the Asics. Thankfully she absolutely loves these shoes.  Now she just needs to go try them out before we set up a training plan for her. 

In the meantime, I asked to try on the Kinvara 2s.  Let me tell you,  I was so excited to try these bad boys on and take them for a test run.  So out of the store I went for a quick little lap.  They felt great, light and airy, like I could take off, fast.  But, there is almost always a but, they rubbed funny.  What is this, why do the tops of my feet hurt?  Nuts, these aren't going  to work for me.  I can't justify running shoes that rub my feet, no matter how light and airy they seem.  I was major bummed, becauase I was dreaming of these shoes.  Back into the store I went and told my sad story.  They brought out 4 more pair for me to try on.  I decidede on the Brooks Launch.  These are nice, light, but not as airy, shoes, that felt great on my feet.  I should have known, I love my other Brooks shoes.  My wife was impressed that I had the where-with-all to recognize a problem with the shoes, and not  be sold on their awesomeness.  Like I said, if I am going to run 400ish miles in them, they better fit right.  So with the purchase of new shoes in hand, I have officially retired my first pair of shoes, a pair of Adidas with 285 known miles on them.  They were starting to hurt my feet on even short runs.  The new shoes will Launch Tuesday, with and easy run (pun most definitely intended) before they take over interval/tempo runs. 

Speaking of intervals, Friday called for 12x400 with 2 minute recoveries.  The first 8 sets were awesome, the energy was there to lightly jog between each interval. But by set 9, I was drained.  Now the intervals themselves were are all run at roughly the same time, within three seconds of each other, but the final four sets I walked the recoveries so that I could push through.  The average for the intervals was an aweseom 1:34, the fastest being at 1:31 and the slowest at 1:38, a great little workout.

Now, for whatever reason, that great workout didn't translate to a great long run Sunday.  I am guessing that between the hard intervals, the early morning Thursday, or the DW reunion Saturday night, the long run wanted to kick my butt.  And it did, I had no desire to get out of bed, but the knowledge that my friend was going to meet me for 10 later drove me to get it started.  Needless to say, I awoke 30 minutes too late to get the 8 in before hand.  So I decided to try to get 16 in.  I got to the park at 6:40 and knew it was going to be tough.  A very slow 6 miles later, and I met my friend, wanting to stop, so it was good he was there.  We headed out for another 6, slowly, then passed the cars again on our way to finish out his 10 with another 4.  This 16 was bad, it was slow, it was long, it was tiring, to an already tired body.  It ended up being a 16.2 mile run in 2:47, eek.  That was 15 minutes worse than my last 16 mile run.  Oh well.  Sometimes you gotta prepay for that amazing run with a few bad ones. 

Pics of shoes will be up soon.

Have fun out there guys.

Looking Forward

Wow, I have so much going on this month it is ca-razy!  (You are supposed to read that last word in a high pitched, comedic type voice.)  Before we move on to August's crazy plans, I want to recap the last part of July.

Saturday, was my youngest son's one month birthday!   I forget how quickly time goes by, and how much newborns change in one month, wow!   It was also a month of firsts for me runningwise.  I eclipsed 25 miles in a week for the first time ever, ran 16 miles in one go for the first time, and ran a total of 88.5 miles in the month.   The 16 mile run was Sunday, and I have been splitting up my longer runs with two friends.   This weekend was the first time they split the run equally.   The first 8 miles were at a blistering (for a long run) pace of 9m/m for a total time of 1:12 run with my friend who just started running with us.   The second 8 miles were run with my friend that I trained for the Half-Marathon with.   Those second 8 miles were slow - like 10:15 - 10:30 m/m, slow.   But I didn't care, its about the company and the miles, not the time (yet).  So the 16 miles was run at about a 9:45m/m pace for a total of 2:35.  Overall a great long run. My wife tried to convince me to head out and run that last 1.5 miles Sunday night to get to a nice even 90 miles for the month.   I decided there was no way my feet were going to let the rest of my body move from the couch to the bed much less and extra 1.5 miles.   It was a fun idea though.

So August,   I have a whole bunch going on, and that doesn't just include ramping up to 20 miles in preparation for my first marathon.

This week my wife and I celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary .  Next week, we are going to her 10 year HS reunion.   Two weeks after that my best friend is flying down from Alaska to attend our 10 year HS reunion.   Really!  I can't believe that it has been 10 years.   I should note that my wife and I went to high schools in the same city, went to the same community college for two years, and did not meet each other until we went to college 150 miles away.   Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways.
- WARNING  : Definitely not running related, uber nerdy talk coming on a completely different sport.  -

To top all that off, with everyone in my fantasy football league in town for the first time in years, we are holding the draft (for those that play fantasy football you know what I mean about having everyone around) at my place.   I love my fantasy football, and I am elated that the NFL has managed to figure out the labor problems (morons).   Mostly I love the fact that my friends and I get to spend the next 4 months bad mouthing each other and then whining about who wins.

Back to running. Finally, the biggest, and perhaps the most important thing, I will be celebrating my Runniversary this month as well.   I will try to keep the sap level down when I write the post for that.   I meant to kick off the month with a 3 mile shake out, easy, run yesterday, but I like to sleep, so I slept.   I got out and ran this morning, nothing too exciting about a 3.2 mile run, other than it helped get those muscles loosen out a bit.    This week is a short, long run week, which means I get to continue to try to add that 4th running day to my week. Ultimately, I want to build to 5, so that I can increase mileage some more.   Baby steps as I gear up towards a marathon.   I will be able to add those days this winter as a way of maintaining mileage.
Have fun out there.