“Back In The Saddle Again”

Distance: 10km
Time: 49:20

It had been 1.5 weeks since my last run, but I forced myself out yesterday. I had a good game of Ultimate on Wednesday but still felt sore (and still do a bit). I hope my recovery time improves as I pick-up the running.

It was a very tough run. I wanted to stop after only 3km. I felt still and sore, my sock on one foot was uncomfortable, my new headphones were giving me electric shocks making it pretty tense to watch the Raptors (… worse yet, they lost a key game). Whenever I feel like stopping though, I always picture myself on race day at kilometer #14-ish, and pretend that this is my personal “wall” that is so often talked about. That often gives me a bit of a push. I also like to think, “If I can run a marathon [the eventual goal], I can do anything”… I guess that pushes me, because if I can’t run the marathon, then I guess I can’t “do anything”, and if I can’t do anything, then can I do nothing at all? Pretty harsh, I know, but it got me through the 10km (albiet very sweaty, grumpy, and sore).

Another day, another run

It snowed here yesterday, and London is a little slow to clean its sidewalks.  That meant I had to head to the gym.

I find treadmills really boring, so to make it more interesting I did the ‘Fartlek’ training.   I ran 6.5k with 4k being 2min sprint, 1min. walk.  A light job to warm up and cool down.  I was on for about 40 minutes.

All in all a good week.  Probably my best yet.  I have ultimate tonight and ultimate on Sunday.  I’ll try for a Saturday run to keep the ball rolling.

85 days eh?  That’s less than 3 months!

13k

1hr 15 minutes.

January is long

After a bad week (again) last week, I’m determined to get out running 3 times this week, not including ultimate.

Tonight I did my 8.4k loop.  In about 50 minutes.  Still way slower than you, but I felt great at the end.  I think I’ll do 10k or maybe 11k tomorrow after work.  Wednesday I’ll do the 8.4k.  And Thursday is ultimate.

Now that’s I’ve blogged it, hopefully I’ll do it.  I don’t have anything else happening this week, so there are no excuses.

I made more running purchases lately.  On the weekend I bought a pair of cotton work/gardening gloves.  Today I bought a pair of $30 running gloves.  I bought the expensive ones so I could play ultimate in the snow, but when I got home, I realized they had no grip at all. I wore the cheap gardening gloves for my run tonight and my hands were perfectly warm.  I think I’ll return the expensive gloves tomorrow and see if I can find something else for my upcoming ultimate tournament in Sudbury.

Week 11 – Tuesday – 645pm

Distance: 10km
Time: 45:35

Loaded up with a healthy dinner of soup & buns & perogies w/sour-cream I headed off to the gym and decided I wanted to push myself. My goal was to break the 45 minute mark, and my calculations while running put me on track for that but math is kind of tough for me when running and I was a minute off. In any event I’m very happy with the time.

Yes We Can! Yes We Can! Yes We Can!

Distance: 8.4 km

Time: 50 min.

Temp: -14C. burrr!

Back at it, I can’t use the weather as an excuse anymore.  I’m a bit tired of the gym too.  Walk to the gym…get changed…exercise….shower…get dressed…walk home…it makes a short work out into a 2 hour all evening event.   So I decided to bite the bullet (ice?) and head out tonight in the cold.  It wasn’t too bad.  My New Year’s Day pants are warm, and I wore lots of layers on top.

I actually felt like I ran really fast, and was a bit sad to see that I only ran in 50 minutes. I can do better.

95 days?  You’re already registered?  Oh man, there are some dark days ahead.

No turning back.

Not that I was even considering backing out, but the race is a little more of a sure thing now. I registered for the half-marathon today. April 26th, here I come.

Sort of creepy…

I looked at the graph again, and somehow Excel can see into the future, because it’s the 18th today, and the graph shows data out to the 26th. Where it got this information I don’t know, but I’ll take it as a good sign for the coming week.

Speed

Part of my motivation for this blog was to have a place to store my statistics about my runs. I thought it’d be cool to track the data over time and then be able to graph my improvement. Now that I’m 10 weeks in I figured it was about time to do just that.

First thing I did was create a form via Google Docs. I already use these to give myself regular feedback on other things I do. After a few minutes I had my data inputted into a Google spreadsheet. I had to revert to Excel to do the graph (Google Docs is handy but didn’t quite cut it).

... No improvement what-so-ever.

…

At first I was dissappointed. I’ve been running for 2.5 months and my speed hasn’t increased at all. I can’t beat myself up, though. In the last month I’ve run (almost) as much as November and December combined. This graph also doesn’t take into account the incline I’ve been adding at the treadmill. As these areas have started to be built up I suspect the next graph will show some improvement.

Week 10 – Saturday – 1030am

Distance: 10.48km
Time: 60:20

I was pretty excited for this run: I wanted to have 2 days of “best-ever”s. Friday’s run was my best ever 10km time and yesterday I wanted to run further than I ever had. I think I would’ve been ok to make it, but I got stopped by the treadmill. I guess after an hour they’re programmed to wrap things up. So I ended up with a shorter run. Looking back I guess I could’ve just hopped onto another treadmill or something but when I’ve been running for an hour my brain isn’t really able to focus on more than one thing.

So this pretty much means I’ll be running outside for my longer runs, which presents an problem given how cold its been lately. I know that people run when it’s cold and all, and I was surprised at how -5 wasn’t that big a deal, but -20 (like it’s been here for the last week) is more than I care to hazard. As my long run is going to be on the weekends, I’ll run my long run outdoors if it’s warm enough, otherwise I’ll just do whatever I can do in 1 hour at the gym. Can -20 really last that long, anyway? What happened to global warming?

The countdown timer I threw together is popping out to me whenever I hit the site (and not just when it incorrectly gets rendered at the bottom of sidebar instead of the top. Grrr!). We’re now less than 100 days to the race. Going from 101 days to 99 days mentally seems like more than 2 days. Now as every day ticks past I can feel the race getting closer.