Training for 1/31/11

This morning I started the last week of the 100 push-up challenge, did my ab exercises, invisible chair-sitting and weight lifting, and then ran a routine yet significant 5.5-mile easy run with Pepper.

It was so significant because, when it was done, I had officially logged 207.4 miles this month, my first 200-mile month ever, and a 53.5-mile increase over last month, which was my previous best mileage total.

And the best part is — I feel great! No tightness, no soreness, no blisters, definitely no injuries. I was a little intimidated by the schedule going into January, but I mostly nailed it. Go. Me.

Officially, the odometer rolled over to 200 miles yesterday on my short recovery run with Pepper at the trail. And a very large chunk of the month’s miles came Saturday, when I ran a 20-mile training run. The first 17 miles of that run were awesome. I ran a 10.5- and a 6.5-mile loop. Then I got Pepper for the last three miles as promised, and neither of us really wanted to be out there. It was kinda miserable, but I finished it.

Sorry for ruining the surprise ending to my monthly summary, but here it is anyway:

Mileage:

• Week 1 (Jan. 1-8): 52.9 miles
• Week 2 (Jan. 9-15): 42.5
• Week 3 (Jan. 16-22): 49.5
• Week 4 (Jan. 23-29): 54.5
• Week 5 (Jan. 30-31): 8

Total: 207.4 miles

No racing in January, just training. I have no races planned for February either, just 186 more miles of training, including two more of those 54.5-mile weeks. Once I get through February, it’ll be taper time for the marathon.

Yesterday, I took some pictures of Pepper on the trail:

Crossing a bridge.

Headed up a hill after the bridge.

Back at the trail head, Pepper gave that stick he carried in his mouth the whole way hell!

Then he curled up and took a nap all afternoon while I cleaned the house.

And, just because, here is a picture of my New Balance 100s with their spiffy new orange laces:

Training for 1/28/11

This morning was a nice one for a run, as far as winter goes — clear and calm.

I ran 10.5 miles in 1:33:53, which works out to an average pace of 8:56/mile, just under goal marathon pace. While I ran I plotted out my 20-mile run tomorrow morning. I think I’m going to do the 10.5-mile loop first, then the 6.5-mile loop and then get Pepper and do a final 3-mile out-and-back to round out the day. I’m sure he could run the entire 20 miles with me, but he just insists on going too damn fast for those long runs.

Today is Clark’s champagne birthday; that is, he is turning the same age as the day of the month on which he was born. I just learned about this special birthday last year, so I didn’t get to celebrate mine, but I wouldn’t have remembered it anyway, since my birthday is April 1. Tonight, we’re having dinner at his parents’ house. Clark asked for crab cakes and a chocolate cake for dessert. I can’t wait.

Yesterday, I was out of the office all day once again due to an assignment, but I did my weight training and yoga before work as usual.

This weekend, I just have my first of three 20-milers tomorrow morning and a short recovery run Sunday morning, and some housecleaning. Clark’s going to the beach again to help work on the beach house, possibly both days, and there’s not even any football to watch unless you count the Pro Bowl. It looks like it will be a pretty quiet weekend.

Training for 1/26/11

This morning, I was supposed to be in Denton at 8:30 a.m. for an assignment, which meant I would have had to get up rather early to get in today’s workout and be there on time. I set my alarm for 5:45 a.m. last night before I went to bed. I woke up this morning about 90 minutes before the alarm, heard it pouring its butt off outside, cancelled the alarm and went back to sleep. I’ll run in cold and raining, and I was even going to try to run in cold and dark despite my fear of the dark, but cold, dark AND raining? No thanks. I decided to take some running clothes with me to work and I’d get in a treadmill run sometime.

Then, at 5:45 a.m., I was awakened by my phone, but it wasn’t the alarm. It was a text message alert. Caroline County schools were delayed two hours. The early assignment was with some students, which meant the assignment was delayed as well.

Perfect! I got up at my normal time, did my push-ups, abs and invisible chair-sitting, then ran 5.5 easy miles in a cold, steady rain at an 8:49/mile pace and made it to the assignment. No treadmill required.

I got to wear my 100s for the first time in a week, since my new orange laces finally arrived in the mail. They got soaked again, but I made sure to put them well out of Pepper’s reach to dry.

There was no post yesterday, again due to my work schedule (an entire day of following around the county commissioners while they visited businesses… yawn.) But there was a run.

I did my 10.5-mile loop: A mile to warmup; a 50-minute tempo run at 7:48/mile pace, covering 6.4 miles; a five-minute recovery jog; eight 30-second sprint intervals with a minute of recovery jogging between each; and about another mile to cool down. Total time was an hour and 28 minutes, overall average pace of 8:23/mile.

My first couple of miles of the tempo run were a little over eight minutes each, which means I actually managed to speed up quite a bit as the run went on to finish with that average pace. Go me.

After that run and a full day of standing around listening to business owners drone on about their companies, I was exhausted. I fell asleep last night before 9:30 p.m. — I couldn’t even stay awake for new episodes of Tosh.0 and Teen Mom 2! Unheard of!

Training for 1/24/11

I’m expecting this to be the hardest week of training for my marathon. All of the runs increase to the longest they’ll be throughout training — two short runs of 5.5 miles each, two middle distance runs of 10.5 miles each and a 20-mile long run — but, unlike the other two weeks with the same mileage coming up next month, this week was preceded by one that ended with a 19-mile long run, instead of a cutback week with a 12-mile long run.

This morning, I started a repeat of week 5 of the 100 push-up challenge, did my ab exercises and invisible chair-sitting and ran the first 5.5-mile run of the week.

Apparently we’ve had some “arctic air” come down and I don’t appreciate it. It is bitterly cold. Fortunately, the wind isn’t blowing too hard, so it’s not as bad as it could be.

The arctic air was here all weekend too. Saturday’s 19-miler was not much fun, due to the cold. It was the only thing I had to do Saturday, and it took me forever to make myself do it, because I was already cold just sitting in the house. It was so cold I wore fleece pants over my tights. When I finally got running, my iPod died within the first half mile, even though it had claimed to have more than half its battery life remaining before I left the house.

I ran my 9.5-mile loop once and got back to the house, where I could hear Pepper howling inside (Clark was at the beach, helping his dad work on his parents’ beach house.) I still had to run the same 9.5-mile loop again, but I felt bad leaving Pepper by himself any longer. Even though the farthest he’d run with me was 4.5 miles, I decided to take him with me. I figured I’d need the motivation of a small dog yanking on the leash to get through the second loop, because I really just wanted to go jump in a hot shower.

It turned out to be a good decision. He did great! He cruised along through the whole thing, and in the last couple of miles, when I was feeling worn down and wanting to stop, he kept me running.

It would have been a great run altogether, except I had really bad GI problems. I had to stop in the woods three times — once on the first loop and twice on the second, and that was after using the bathroom when I went in the house to get Pepper before I even started the second half. And I didn’t just feel like I had to go at those times, I actually felt a little nauseated. It was extremely frustrating. I can’t think of a single thing I ate or drank in the two days before the run that could have caused that.

When I was actually running, it went well though. I finished both loops with the same average pace of about 8:55/mile, much faster than I should have run. The first time around, I couldn’t slow myself down because it was so ridiculously cold, and the second time around, I couldn’t slow Pepper down and I had to keep up.

Back home, I took that hot shower and spent the rest of the day on the couch in my sweats.

Yesterday, Pepper and I went on our short trail run, and then I took him with me to TK’s house, where my friends and I finally exchanged Christmas gifts, and to my parents’ house before coming home in time to see the two NFL playoff games. Unfortunately, Clark’s Steelers have advanced to the Super Bowl, where they will play the Packers.

Hey, I just checked the weather for the rest of the week. Tomorrow’s supposed to be 20 degrees warmer, and all that snow they were predicting for Wednesday is now just a 40 percent chance of showers. That’s all good news.

Training for 1/21/11

We were supposed to get one to two inches of snow overnight, but I never saw a single flake. This morning, it looked like it might have rained at some point judging by the few puddles I saw on the roads, but that was it. Second “winter storm” in a row to produce nothing. I like this trend.

It was a clear, sunny, cold and breezy day for my 9.5 miles at goal marathon pace. Yesterday, I went to the Queenstown outlets before an evening assignment to return a pair of shoes I didn’t want, still had time to kill and went to the Under Armour outlet. Wouldn’t you know it, all of their winter gear was on sale or clearance. So I got another sweatshirt and a third compression mock neck top.

Something about new gear, even if it’s just like stuff I already have except in a different color, is very exciting. I don’t know if it was the thrill of the same outfit in new colors, the relief of missing the snow or what, but I had another great pace run. Again, I was aiming for 9:00/mile, but felt good at a faster pace, and wound up running the loop at an average pace of 8:39/mile. The winds started picking up in the last mile and a half. I’m glad I got out there early enough to avoid that for the most part, because it got a whole lot colder.

Tomorrow is my 19-mile long run, so I’ll do the 9.5-mile loop I ran today twice, and slower. According to the training calculators into which I’ve plugged my race times, my long run pace should be between about 9:15/mile and 10:24/mile. The last few have come in at 9:15/mile, so I’m right at the high end. I could stand to slow them down a little more.

As for the rest of the weekend, I’ll take Pepper to the trail Sunday morning for a short trail run, and then I’m finally meeting my friends to exchange our Christmas gifts. Also, the football playoffs continue Sunday, but it’s not as exciting now that the Ravens are out. Boo.

And now I will tell you about the most disgusting thing I have ever seen… or touched. Last night, I had the aforementioned evening assignment, and Clark had to go to dinner with his boss and a potential customer. Clark came home after work and fed Pepper, but he didn’t have much time to let him run outside before he had to leave to meet everyone at Suicide.

I was the first one back home, and when I opened the door, the first thing that hit me was the stench. The dog had taken a shit on the floor — and then run through and smeared it EVERYWHERE. Every inch of the floor was covered in it, and it was on the table and bench, the door and even some of the walls.

What. The. Hell.

I threw Pepper out of the house. He ran circles outside for a while until he realized I was still in the house, so he came running up to the door to beg to be let in. Not a chance in hell, dog. I knew he’d either squeeze by me when I opened the utility room door and spread the shit through the rest of the (carpeted) house, or, if he stayed in the utility room, jump all over me and get shit on my clothes. I threw a poop-covered mat and towel outside as well, got the bathroom surface cleaner and a roll of paper towels, stripped myself down and just started scrubbing.

It took at least half an hour to clean up all the shit. The whole time I had to breathe through my mouth. The smell was just unbelievable. I had been starving and looking forward to making some spaghetti when I got home, but that appetite was gone. Pepper sat outside the glass door, watching me clean up his poop, continuing to beg to be let in.

Finally, I didn’t see any more poop anywhere, so I let Pepper back in. After I scrubbed on his paws to get the poop off them, he slinked off to a corner to pout because I’d left him outside so long. Like I cared. He could stay there all night.

Clark got home not long after that and decided to clean some more with Mr. Clean instead of the bathroom cleaner. The smell had pretty much faded away by this morning.

And that was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.

Training for 1/20/11

Today is the only day off running in a week for me (well, Sunday technically is one but I like taking Pepper to the trail for a short run), so I lifted weights and did a 35-minute yoga routine.

Training for 1/19/11

This morning was push-ups, abs and invisible chair-sitting before a 4.5-mile easy run with Pepper. Once again, we were met around the 2-mile marker by the neighbor’s dog, but this time there was only a couple of minutes of sniffing — no scuffles — before Pepper and I got going again.

It was still overcast and cold, and a touch foggy, but the rain moved out overnight, so it was a much more pleasant day than yesterday.

I’m a little annoyed with Pepper today, though. Yesterday, I ran in the rain in my 100s, and when I got home, they were understandably soaked. Normally, we clear absolutely everything out of the utility room when Pepper’s going to be left home by himself, because we have to confine him to that room to minimize damage. He still goes nuts when he’s alone. Yesterday I hung those shoes by their laces from a rack above the washing machine to dry. I have a few clothes pins on that rack to hang up sweaty gloves and earbands after runs, and it’s never been a problem. He’s never gotten any of them.

Well, somehow, yesterday that little jerk yanked down one of my shoes, and completely destroyed the laces. They were in five totally separate pieces when Clark got home. Fortunately, the shoe got away with only a couple of puncture wounds in the tongue, but now I can’t wear them until the replacement laces I ordered get here.

Just so at least something good came out of it, instead of ordering another pair of the gray laces that came with the shoes, I ordered a pair of bright orange laces to match the orange soles.

I still have my new 730s though, so it looks like their breaking-in period will get shortened.

Training for 1/18/11

Ugh. This cold, nasty weather shit is starting to wear on me.

This morning, I had a 9.5-mile run on the schedule. As promised by the local news stations, it was raining. And it was just above freezing. Cold, wet and windy. Yeah, let’s go for a run!

On days like today, I remind myself how it could very easily be cold, wet and windy on the day of the race for which I’m training, even though every time I think about the marathon, it’s a clear, calm, sunny day with perfect marathon-running temperatures in the 50s.

So, I got dressed. Base layer compression top and compression tights, water-resistant sweatshirt, gloves, socks, trail shoes and a baseball hat to keep the rain out of my eyes.

My feet were completely soaked halfway through the warmup mile, and the sweatshirt was getting there. At the one-mile marker, I sped up for 45 minutes at tempo pace. I ran the exact same run a week ago and felt invincible. Today, I was practically fighting myself to take every single step.

After a 5-minute recovery jog, I did seven 30-second sprint intervals, with a minute of recovery between each, then slowly ran the remaining half mile or so home to cool down.

I was beat when I got home. I peeled off my soaking wet clothing and hung it all up in various places to dry, put on some warm, dry clothes to stretch and took a hot shower. I pulled out my training log and wrote “9.5” on today’s date, instead of “0.”

Spring (and my marathon) are only two months and two days away. Just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other until then, I guess.

Training for 1/17/11

What a crappy day. It’s Monday, we’re supposed to get even more snow and rain later today and through tomorrow and there’s no heat in my shitty old office building.

This morning I started the week with the beginning of another cycle through the final three weeks of the 100 push-up challenge workouts, weight training, abs, invisible chair-sitting and a 4.5-mile easy run with Pepper.

There was one piece of really good news this morning though. Last week, I was trying to figure out my spring race schedule. I really want to run a half marathon sometime before summer hits, to take advantage of all the miles I have and will be putting in for marathon training. I found a very brief, uninformative advertisement on a website about a half supposedly being held at Dover AFB on June 5. I e-mailed the race director, and lo and behold, there IS a half marathon on the base that day! Not only does it fit into my race schedule perfectly, it’s only $30! That’s the cheapest half marathon I have ever seen. I’m sure the T-shirts are cotton, and we get coins instead of finisher’s medals, but who cares? It’s a cheap, chip-timed, supported, official half marathon.

That way, I’ll be able to run the Oxford Day 10K on April 30, instead of the half marathon I’d been considering in Ocean City. There was another half marathon in Cambridge on April 9 I might have considered, but I think that will be too soon after the marathon to recover and get back up to speed. Instead, I’ll just run the 5K that day, the 10K three weeks later, the Masser Systems 5-Miler on Memorial Day weekend and the half marathon a week after that. Then it’ll be summer and time to just concentrate on running those 5Ks in the summer series and training for a fall half marathon or two. I don’t think I’m going to do a fall marathon this year.

Ah, I love it when things come together!

Oh yeah, the rest of my weekend — I ran a 12-miler Saturday morning, in those new shoes I got last week. Dumb, dumb, dumb! I never should have run a long run in new shoes. I got the worst blood blister on my right pinky toe I’ve ever seen. The left one had a blister too, but there was no blood in it. I lanced both of them and put on some Band-Aids. By yesterday morning, they were OK to run a short run at the trail with Pepper in my broken-in 100s, and this morning, I ran my 4.5-miler in the new shoes with Band-Aids on my pinky toes and they were fine.

I’m hoping to break in those shoes enough this week so they’re ready for the 19-miler this weekend, since I hope to wear these things in the marathon.

The rest of the weekend was spent watching football (some of it rather depressing football) and cleaning. It was another quiet, productive weekend.

Training for 1/14/11

Today is freaking cold. It’s not windy or overcast though, thank God. It’s just really, really cold.

I ran a 9.5-mile marathon pace run this morning. I was a little sweaty when I finished the run, but a lot of me never warmed up, especially my hands. It wasn’t as bad when I was running in the sun, but a lot of that loop is shaded and the sun wasn’t very high yet anyway, so it was pretty chilly.

The run itself went really well. I was aiming for 9:00/mile, but I felt good at a pace a little faster, so I just went with that. I finished the loop in 1:22:37, average pace of 8:42/mile.

I probably ran it faster because I had an extremely annoying song stuck in my head. Normally I would wear my iPod on a run like today’s, but it died yesterday and I forgot to charge it. So instead, I listened to “Somewhere Out There” from the 1987 movie “An American Tail” for a pretty large chunk of the run. My high school band used to play it every year at graduation as the new grads left the stage. We usually had to repeat it several times, in a continuous loop. Somewhere around the 4-mile marker, I realized I was hearing it on that same loop in my head, played by the band. Sucked.

This week was a cutback week, so tomorrow’s long run is only 12 miles. I’ll take my new 730s out for their maiden voyage. I’ll also take Pepper out to the trail Sunday for a short run. Other than that, all I have planned this weekend is housecleaning and the Ravens-Steelers game. GO RAVENS!