Archive for January, 2009

Yesterday was fun, the first truly snowy run this year (as in white stuff covering the ground while simultaneously falling from the sky).  It worked out great because I wanted to keep a modest pace and since the path was slippery, I didn’t have a choice.

Funny though, last night was the first time in weeks where my legs and butt were sore after a run – this from dealing with the snowy path, but ironic that it should happen from a recovery run.  Happily, I woke up today with nothing smarting, so business as usual.  Almost.

In the last entry I wrote that I was going to do intervals today, but the path was still snowy with only a few clear areas so I went the fartlek route instead, which worked out great.  It was a fun change and in the end, I got in 15+ minutes of sub-5K hard running, which is actually a useful amount of speed.

Tomorrow 9 easy.

I had a fantastic run today and even broke some personal records.

Besides my first 14 days in a row, I ran my fastest 13-miler ever (8:26 avg. pace).  It was a progression run, last 4 miles averaged 8:04 (coupla 7:59s in there).

Lastly, you know how in the previous entry I said I was going to do 12, which would bring me a new mileage record of 59.25?  Well, I brazenly wrote that, thinking “I refuse to buckle under the pressure of making that 59.25 a 60, just to make it that beautiful, even, divisible by 10 number”.  Yeah, right.  New mileage record today: 60.25 (still uneven, but at least in the 6-0′s).

So today it’s Eagles vs. Cardinals (so exciting!) and we’re getting a big fat, greasy pizza (even more exciting!).  Then tomorrow I’m going to do a bona fide slow recovery run so that I can get some good intervals in on Tuesday.  Yeah, I’m continuing the “streak” though I’ll no longer be thinking of it as one, just me running until I feel like I need a break.

Beyond that?  Who knows.  At this moment, life is good and that’s all that matters.

I’m not a religious person at all, although when Nick told his friend recently that running is my religion, I had to agree that it is the closest I’ve ever come to having one.  Even so, without a deity in my belief system, I still admit wholeheartedly to believing in miracles.

This week’s Airbus landing in the Hudson River with no fatalities was so jaw-droppingly unbelievable, it most certainly qualified as miraculous.  I kept tearing up when I saw the thing on TV, especially yesterday a passenger being interviewed said something to the effect of, “You know how they tell you to put your head between your legs?  We didn’t.  Most of us looked straight ahead so we could see exactly how we were going to die.”  Jeez, if that doesn’t rip the heart right out of you, nothing will.

I had a miracle yesterday.  Nothing in the comparable realm of serious or life-affirming events, but definitely an unexpected occurrence that seemed to defy the laws of science and nature.

While searching for something in my desk drawer, I noticed my long-dead Ipod Shuffle.  Nick got it for me soon after I started running, in 2007.  That summer I sweated so much, it killed the thing.

A couple days after it died, still deep in denial, I tried one of the “fixes” I’d found online.  Immerse it in a glass of water to let the salt deposits dissolve.  Of course, you’re supposed to do this immediately after it dies before the innards crust over and this was days after, so it didn’t work.  I did have a moment of hope though, when my vegetative iPod’s light turned on, but it was just a tease, the thing was indeed broken.

Soon after, I bought myself a different clip-on mp3 player by Creative, which is still working great, despite an even sweatier summer.  It has annoyances though: playlists aren’t as easy as the Shuffle, if you want to hear the songs in a particular order, you have to use a program that renames the songs on the actual device and also, there’s a tiny wheel for fastforwarding that ends up doing other functions if you inadvertently press it, which you can’t help but do since the wheel’s so miniscule.

So I’m looking at the Shuffle in my drawer, and the fact that it’s even in my drawer and not in some landfill is Miracle #1.  I’m not a hoarder, I prefer living with the least possible crap, and if it hadn’t been for Nick’s inscription on the thing, I would have thrown it out the moment it died. But there it was, looking up at me in all it’s cuteness.

On my desk, recently purchased, is a bottle of electrical contact cleaner.  It’s great for twitchy headphone jacks and noisy pots (knobs) on mixing boards, etc.  So without even a Hail Mary, I squirt contact cleaner into my little blue Shuffle, connect the USB dock and PRAISE BE! as easy as that…I had lift-off!  The Shuffle came back to life.  It’s a miracle, I tell you.

I only wish we’d had such luck with our beloved Canon Powershot camera last month.  The lens suddenly stopped retracting and the pervading advice on the internet was “throw it down or bang it against something…really, it works!”  Unfortunately, heeding this advice, we broke it completely.  We now own a newer model Powershot.

Enough miracle gadget talk though, yesterday’s run was incredible.  Coldest so far, windchill averaging 8 degrees.  Getting dressed was amusing, after all, it’s hard to gauge your first time for a new temp and while I could have used a neck gaiter for my chin, all in all, I dressed well.

The Schuylkill River (how I’d love, just once, not have to look up the spelling of the river I run on every damn day) was frozen in large swaths, with small islands of water surrounded by ice.  I’d never seen it like that before so it was pretty special.  I’d planned on 7 but it was so sunny and lovely, I went 8, averaging 8:40.

Today I’m going out for 8 and then tomorrow (day 14 of my mini-streak) I’m set for 12.  This’ll put me at my highest mileage week to date: 59.25 miles.  Depending on how I feel on Monday, I might keep going with the streak, I don’t have a real reason to end it – nothing hurts and I’m not tired, but that may change after Sunday’s run, so we shall see.

Have a wonderful weekend and (however tiny or goofy) may you find a miraculous happening of your own.

No Pickle!  Less than an hour after I write the entry below I get this email:

“Due to the extreme cold and unsafe running conditions, this weekends Pickle run will be postponed until January 24th”

Well, that’s a pickle!

Oh well, I’m glad I was game for it anyway, I would never have even signed up for a January race last year.  That’s progress.

Tomorrow is that Pickle Prediction Run.  Definitely one of the weirdest running experiences I’ll have had to date.  Besides the nature of the race (pick a time and try to hit it), Weather.com tells me it’ll be 5 degrees windchill.  The cold doesn’t scare me (very high giggle factor, actually), but I have to wonder what effect it’ll have on pacing.  What should I predict?  I’m stymied.

Not that it really matters what I choose – hitting my prediction correctly isn’t the feature for me – it’s pacing myself so that I don’t burn out right off the bat, but at the same time, I don’t want to think I’m going all speed-of-lightening and find out I was dawdling.  So my one real goal tomorrow is to run it like a normal race, as if I had a watch on.

As someone who’s depended so completely on my Garmin since the beginning, when I was still in run/walk learning mode, this will be an all-important lesson in self-awareness.   My, how I need this race.

In the meantime, today’s run should be fun, I’m looking at 2 degrees windchill right now (record cold for me) and it doesn’t look like it’ll get any warmer.  Hey, that means tomorrow will be downright balmy!

OK, see you back here tomorrow with a full report on my picklish hijinks.  Have a good Friday.

Yesterday was one of those weirdly fast yet comfortable runs I’ve been reveling in lately.  I started with an 8:31 mile, then 8:26 and it went down from there, with a few 8:05s – final tally; 8 miles, avg. 8:18.

Then today (day 10 of my mini-streak), I did 7 miles w/8 strides.  Again, another excellent, faster-than-usual time out there, average 8:26.

The interesting thing to note is that these faster easy runs started happening before the weight loss kicked in, so I think my fitness was already changing, but the weight loss is solidifying the fitness improvement.

Speaking of, here’s another reason to try Daily Plate or at least start investigating what you eat.  I usually buy Thomas’ whole wheat mini-bagels but I ran out the other day, so instead of driving to the closest huge-ass supermarket, I walked down to my local Whole Foods and bought some multi-grain sandwich bread, thinking, “this must be much better for me than that Thomas’ crap”.  Joke’s on me!  Turns out the mini bagel has more protein, more fiber and less sodium.  They do have more sugar, but I’d rather have the protein and fiber than worry about the sugar, frankly.

But enough diet talk, I’m sure it’s a bore for a majority of readers out there.  Sorry, I’ll be done with it soon.