Second Wind

Nice start to the new year.  Wasn't sure if I was even going to make it out running on new years day but finally just sucked it up and went at around noon.  Nice run and fairly easy pace.  Ran outside the complex today and did the big loop up to my kids school and back.  Traffic was fairly light most of the way and the run was just the way I like it, uneventful.  Went to dinner with Meg and we talked about our new year resolutions for fitness and running.  We both want to shed some weight, (me about 20 lbs.) and I have a goal to stay healthy and BQ this year at St. George.  We also want to work on strengthening our core muscles by doing a good core workout each night before bed.  Should be and exciting and eventful year if all goes as planned.

Time:  8:18/mile

Legs were a bit tired this morning and the run was a lot of work.  Still feeling it a bit from yesterdays run I guess.  One eventful item this morning was Megs Garmin 301 freaked out and clicked off 4 miles in a matter of about 10 seconds.  Even when we stopped it kept counting up the miles.  We both wear the 301 and hers is always behind mine at each mile.  I'm not sure why that is but it does seem to have its share of problems each day.  We may try calling tech support or try sending it back to Garmin for fixing.  So according to her 301, her fastest pace today was about 740 mph and she ran 7 miles in 21 minutes.....nice eh!

Time:  8:38/mile

Still feeling a bit worn out today.  Took it relatively easy and ran pretty slow.  Legs just don't seem to have any zip in them.  I think the holidays, time off and poor diet have been factors in helping me to feel so yucky.  Now that the holidays are over and I can get back into my usual weekly routine my hope is that the running will start to feel better.  Weather continues to be relatively mild here with todays temp at 41 and very light breeze.

Time:  8:39/mile

Today was the best I have felt all week for a run.  Meg talked me into cutting the run short today and spending some extra time after the run stretching.  Seeing as how crappy I have felt all week I decided that it may not be a bad idea.  We ran at a fairly moderate pace for the entire run and then spent about 20 minutes stretching and I did some rolling and massage on my calfs and shins.  I actually feel rejuvinated and hopefully tomorrows long run will be a good one.

Time:  8:22/mile

Nice easy long run today.   Skies were very cloudy today and the starting temp was around 52 degrees.  Needless to say, we were overdressed for the occasion so after the first five mile loop we passed by the house and I shed my coat.  All I had on was my SGM 2006 shirt and some sweats.  I would have like to been in shorts today but didn't feel like changing mid run.  Felt really good most of the way today and the except for the breezy weather everything was nearly perfect.  I would have liked to step the pace up just a little bit faster today but Meg was not feeling all that great so we kept it easy.  May run a couple more miles later this afternoon with Cory as he continues to prepare for the Painter's 5K in 2 weeks.

Time:  8:40/mile

Rest.

Got a little bit of a late start today so I decided to push the pace a little more than usual to get my 7 miles in before taking the kids to school at 6:40.  Didn't have much time to stretch before hand or after so I will spend some time this morning at work stretching.  Just took off and got going as best I could.  That first mile is always the toughest to get the breathing under control and find a semi-comfortable pace.  After 3 miles I had to stop in at the house for a bathroom break and then finished off the last 4 at a fairly decent pace well under 8:00/mile.  Weather was warm again today at 45 degrees and very little breeze.  I had to shed my top layer so I didn't overheat.  I was glad to shed a bit since it is nice to run without so much extra weight.

Time:  7:50/mile

PM:  Ran 2 miles with Cory in 20:02.

Another standard 7 miler today.  Did get chased by a couple of small dogs for the first time in a long time.  When they catch you by surprise it really puts a hop in your step until you figure out that you could just step on them and crush them.  Probably not a good idea when the owner is out there though.  It really bugs me when peoples dogs chase me and the owner won't put them on a leash and can't control them.  People like that deserve to have there dog stepped on or kicked by and unsuspecting runner.  Anyway....it finally cooled off a bit today again....38 degrees.....so I didn't over heat today in my usual attire.  Felt pretty good throughout.

Time:  8:33/mile

Decided to pick up the pace this morning.  About a half mile into the run I was feeling really good and told Meg I needed to pick up the pace today to take advantage of feeling good.  She stuck with me for about another 3/4 mile and then decided to ease off a bit.  I tried to keep the pace around 7:30 for the rest of the run and most of my splits were just a few seconds shy of that.  By the last mile I was really working hard to maintain the pace.  I can tell I need to do more of this faster work if I am ever going to be able to maintain this pace for a full marathon.  My heart rate was higher than normal (for this pace) today too, I think my average for the run was around 173 when it usually would be in the 165 range.  Oh well, there are probably too many outside factors that effected the heart rate today like: the wind, overheating in my jacket, etc., to worry too much about the heart rate.  Overall it felt like a good effort and it's nice to get some faster miles in.

Time:  7:41/mile

Decided to log a couple extra miles today since I didn't have to drive the kids to school today.  Took it pretty easy for most of the run.  Picked it up a little for the last few miles but all in all kept it easy.  Have a little twinge in my left knee this morning and I'm not sure what it is.  It didn't bother me at all during the run but now when I finished and now that I am sitting here at work I feel a little tightness just to the inside of my right knee cap.  I felt it ever so slightly yesterday too but it didn't really bother me at all.  Maybe with the miles building up my knees are starting to revolt.  It's a good thing next week will be a mini taper week for the Painter's half.  Maybe that will give it a chance to get feeling better.  Temp was 38 degrees again today and very very light breeze.

Time:  8:24/mile

With the knee still aching a little and the time short today I decided to cut the distance but kept the intensity up a bit.  Don't know if that really helped or hurt but it felt good.  First four miles were around an 8:15 pace and then decided to pick it up hard for the last mile and ran a 6:30.  Weather was good and knee felt good during the run but is again a little tight as I sit at work.  It actually feels good to get up often and loosen it up a bit by walking around but going up and down stairs causes it to ache a little more.  The reading I have done seems to indicate that its a case of "runners knee" and that I should be able to run through it but that I need to cut the number of miles.  After my long run tomorrow I plan to taper next week for the Painter's half and then I will be starting the second week of Pfitzingers 18/55 marathon training plan which has the miles in the mid 30's for that week.  Hopefully that is enough of a decrease to let this thing heal.  Pfitzingers plan has you running 5 days a week for most of the plan and I usually run 6 days but maybe I will cut it to 5 as well for a while to see if that helps as well.

Time:  7:56/mile

Fairly uneventful half.  Decided to do 3 miles at a sub 8:00 pace to test out my speed late in a run and also to see if the knee is going to hold up for next weeks race.  Good news is that both went well.  Felt like I could have gone faster and the knee seems to be holding up okay.   As I am sitting here typing this I have taken two doses of ibuprofen and iced, compressed and elevated today.  It still feels tight but doesn't seem too bad when I am running.  I will most likely take it very easy this next week and hope to alleviate some of the stiffness and soreness.  I think Pfizingers 18/55 marathon plan starts out the first week around 32-33 miles so that will be a nice cut back for me.  Let the training for Ogden begin.

Time:  8:23/mile

Rest.

Decided to give my knee another rest day since it is still tight.  I don't want to push it with the race coming up this weekend.  It is starting to feel a little better, thank goodness.

Decided to give my knee another rest day but it is getting really close.  I may try to run a few miles tonight to see how it feels.

Kept it pretty simple today with a nice three mile run.  Ran with Megs patella strap to see if that would help at all and it didn't seem to do a thing for the knee.  I had run with the strap last year sometime and remembered that is would always slip down my leg slightly and give no support to the patella.  Well that was pretty much the case today.  I wanted to give it a test under race speed conditions so I picked up the pace on mile 2 to 7:50/mile and mile 3 to 7:30/mile.  It was no good so I will probably abandon the use of this strap anyway for the race on Saturday.  Overall the knee is feeling a bit better and is not as tight as it has been.  I'm just afraid if I try to log too many miles it will tighten up again.  Good thing it's taper time and I could afford the couple extra days off.  A couple more easy runs over the next two days and I should be ready to go on Saturday.

Time:  7:59/mile

Still resting the knee and also trying to recover from a Chiropractic neck adjustment issue that really had me worried but as I am typing this several days later I feel fine.  After the adjustment I ended up having some numbness on one side of my face and was thinking everything from nerve damage to stroke.  I was on the verge of going to the emergency room to have it checked out but you know how we men are and always put things off.  My face and neck are feeling fine now but my stinking knee is still stiff.  I don't think I will be going back to visit the chiropractor.......ever!!!

Nice easy run in preparation for Painter's tomorrow.  Knee was still aching a bit but seems to be doing better and is less stiff.  I'm sure after painters I will be icing and popping the ibuprofen.

Time:  8:30/mile

Well, things went much better than expected today.  The only disappointment I have is that I think the course was short by almost .2 miles so my adjusted time for the course would have been somewhere around 1:38....oh well whatcha gonna do??

I decided to start the race in the middle of the pack this year just so I was forced to hold back a little and not go sprinting out like I tend to do some times.  I was very pleased with my first mile as it came in right at my goal pace of 7:30.  My splits were all very even through most of the race except for a couple of miles that included some nice hills and steady inclines but my slowest mile was only 7:52 which included the steepest (but not very long) hill.  I felt very strong through most of the course but was a little gun shy to push the pace much beyond my goal for fear of overdoing it and then fading at the end.  My desire to hold back and stay with my game plan seemed to work well as I finished feeling strong and with a time that was right where I wanted it to be.  It's not a PR but for this course it is a 20 minute improvement over last year for me.  To run this pace on what I consider to be a very "honost" course I have gained more confidence in my ability to BQ this year if I can stay healthy and continue to improve my training.

Meg dropped out of the half to run the 5K with our son Cory and she finished in 22:22 which is a PR and good enought to take 5th overall and 2nd in her age group.  She earned a nice piece of hardware for her efforts (a baseball size diamond shaped trophy with all the info engraved on it).

Time:  7:30/mile

Rest.

Well today is when things start to get serious about training for Ogden.  I am going to give Pfitzingers 18/55 marathon training plan a try and see how it goes.  I will be modifying it somewhat because the first few weeks he has you running only 4 days a week.  I will continue to run 6 days a week but will look to decrease miles and intensity on his so called rest days.

The legs were a little bit fatigued during this mornings run but not nearly as sore as I expected them to be, in fact, not really sore at all, just a little tired.  Took it pretty easy as the knee is still a little tender.  I have started taking glucosamine and chondroitin again to see if that has any affect on my knees.  I stopped taking it several months ago to see if it really was doing me any good, apparently my experiment shows that I should keep taking it.  I originally started taking it not long after I started running because my knees were always bothering me.  When I eventually got back into shape I stopped taking it thinking that my knees had adapted and I didn't need it anymore.  Now I will start taking it again and if my problem goes away I will continue to take it forever.  I know the science is still a little weak in the area of the effectiveness of these supplements but I have had good success so I will probably keep using it.  One encouraging thing is that after a quick pit stop at the house my knee was not stiff when I started running again like it has been when I allow it to cool off for a couple of minutes.  Maybe I am on the downhill slope of this thing......maybe.

The weather was pretty nice this morning at about 43 degrees, almost too hot for my usual running attire.  I had to unzip my jacket to let some breeze in.  I guess I should enjoy the mild weather as I will be complaining about the heat before too much longer.

Time:  8:42/mile

Fairly easy five miles today.  Picked it up a little for the last mile but pretty much took it easy again today.  Meg had a friend come over and run with us this morning.  Her friend doens't run as fast as we do so we spent some of the time averaging over 9:00 miles.  I don't know if this will be a daily occurance but I hope not and I don't think Meg enjoys it that much either as she is working to improve her speed.  I guess we'll see how it goes.  The knee continues to be on the mend and seems to be feeling a little better each day.  Still a ways to go before we get to 100% though.  Weather continues to be nice at about 42 this morning and a light breeze.  We really haven't had the 1-2 weeks of sub 30 temps like we did last year, hopefully it won't happen and spring will come a bit early.

Time:  8:29/mile

This is the first time I have ever done a 10 miler in the middle of the work week.  Had to get up at 4:00 am this morning in order to get done in time to get the kids to school and get to work.  Pfitzingers 18/55 plan calls for several of these mid week "longer" runs and I honostly think these will be a big help for my endurance or at least that is the theory.  Run went well and was able to maintain a consistant moderate pace throughout.  Run was supposed to be a general aerobic run and I am still trying to decide my best pace for these runs.  I imagine somewhere between 8:00 and 8:30 is probably about where I should be right now for this type of run.  Knee pain is still there but as usual is not really much of a hinderance when I run so I am still hopeful it is on the mend.  Another mild temp day at 39 degrees and very light breeze.

Time:  8:19/mile

A rare wet and rainy day today.  We've been so spoiled with good weather lately that I guess it is about our turn to have something out of the ordinary.  Rain was coming down pretty good for the duration of my run and I came home soaked from head to toe.  Felt a little fatigued today and the legs just didn't want to get going this morning but I continued to push along at a decent pace and got through it.  Knee continues to be on the mend and moving in the right direction so I am encouraged by that.

Time:  8:19/mile

Took it really really slow today and just went for a run until the last mile when I picked it up to marathon pace.  Felt a little worn out this morning and since this was supposed to be an easy day I took it really easy for once.  The first four miles my average was around 9:20/mile and it felt really good to just run for the sake of running.  When I decided to shift gears and do my last mile at 7:30 I found it a bit difficult to get it into gear.  I had second thoughts about picking up the pace but decided to go for it anyway.  Sometimes that pace just feels hard and sometimes, like last Saturday's race, you feel like you could run that pace forever.

Time:  8:53/mile

First half of the run was great today.  Everything felt good and the legs finally felt like they had a little spring in them.  After we stopped in at mile six for some gatorade we decided to pick up the pace for the second half of the run.  For whatever reason I had a really hard time getting the pace to stay in the 8:15 range and so ended up running most of the last half of the run at about 8:25-8:30/mile pace.  The second half of the run was very frustrating because I felt like I was working pretty hard and wasn't seeing the benefit (i.e. 8:15/mile) on the garmin.  8:15 has seemed like a tough pace for me because I hate working that hard and not seeing sub 8:00/mile on the garmin.  I think I can blame most of how I have felt this week on my relatively slow recovery from Painter's.  I don't think I should still be feeling the effects of the race a week later but maybe my recovery just hasn't caught up.  Tomorrows day off should help and hopefully I will be back to normal on Monday.  The knee wasn't a factor at all today during the run and I think full recovery is only a week or two away.

Time: 8:37/mile

Rest.

Lactate threshold run today and it would have been a perfect morning if it hadn't been for the wind.  The temp at the start was 48 degrees but the wind was pretty steady and a bit gusty at times.  Started out with a three mile warm up with Megan and then picked it up for the 4 mile tempo run.  Wanted to run these miles somewhere in the 7:15/mile pace but with the wind I figured it would be pretty tough to maintain a steady pace.  Splits ended up being 7:20, 7:19, 7:24, 7:21 for an average of 7:21 for the tempo section.  Not too bad considering the conditions.  I would guess that the wind cost me at least a few seconds on each mile so the 7:15 effort was probably there, just not the time to show for it.  Cooled down with one more mile and felt like the run was a success.  The knee continues to improve and although my back still bothers me from time to time it wasn't a big factor today.

Our stake had a preparedness fair last Saturday and I was approached by a couple of guys about joining their team for the Ragnar Wasatch Back Relay team.  I felt a little bad because it is a male only team and Meg would not be able to join the team but she was all for it and told me join up.  I still have to check my schedule but it sounds like a good time.

Time:  8:00/mile

Nice and easy semi-recovery run from yesterdays tempo run.  Legs were only slightly fatigued this morning.  The pace was probably a little fast for a recovery run but I just tried to run at a pace that felt good.  I stopped taking the anit-inflammatories for my knee on Sunday night and the pain has not gotten worse so I am hopeful I will not have to continue to use the drugs and the knee will continue to improve as it has been.  The temperature was 15 degrees colder than yesterday at 33 so I had to go back to the full warm running gear.  Now that we are coming up on February, the warmer temps should start appearing since January is on average the coldest month for Vegas.  I look forward to running in shorts every day again but not the heat of summer.

Time:  8:25/mile

Medium long run today at a general aerobic pace.  We went outside our usual neighborhood loop today and ended up dealing with a lot of traffic.  When we finished our first six mile loop and made it back to our neighborhood we ended up having a few close traffice encounters as well.  Just one of those mornings I guess.  Knee was a little sore the first couple of miles and then it loosened up and felt great the rest of the way and is still feeling great as I am writing this.  The weather is still staying a little cool with a temp of 35 this morning and a steady breeze out of the north making it feel a little colder than that.  Picked up the pace for the last couple of miles and ended up running the last mile at 7:50.

Time:  8:27/mile

Word of the day is sssslllloooowwww!  We ran with one of Megans friends today who runs at about a 9:30 pace so we took it pretty easy today.  After our long run yesterday we decided it would be okay to have a nice easy recovery day.  After 4 miles her friend decided to head home and we picked it up for the last mile and averaged about a 7:45 pace.  Everything felt really good and talking and breathing was very easy with the heart rate under 140 at times.  The last day of the month brings the mileage total to 186 which is good enough for second on my all time monthly mileage.  My highest month was July 2007 when training for SGM with 193 miles.  I was injured in August 2007 right after my highest mileage month and I am trying to avoid that this year as February will be close to 200 miles.  The weather continues to be cold in Vegas with 32 this morning.  Thank goodness it is dry because I couldn't hack running on the ice.

Time:  9:09/mile