With that said, I’ve signed up for the Country Music Marathon, which takes place on April 24, in Nashville, TN. I’ve heard great things about the race, and Nashville is the next most convenient city for me to race in behind Atlanta.

This change actually might end up working out for the best. Thanks to the bronchitis I had, I missed 2 weeks of training at a rather crucial time, so having a marathon 2 weeks from now (when ING was supposed to be) would have been rather stressful. With it now being 1.5 months away, I can still finish out my training plan and get all the required runs in.

Look out Nashville, here I come!

I ran 5 times for 30.65 miles. Total time was 5:11:47. I only had one long run for the month, as well as a 10K race:
13.15m @ 2:25:55 (11:06min/mi) @ 154bpm
6.3m @ 50:31 (8:01min/mi) @ 176bpm [PR!]

I biked 5 times for a total of 106.38 miles. I was on the bike for 6:35:08. My longest ride was:
25.23 @ 1:30:00 (16.8mph) @ 137bpm

The one good thing about the time off in February is that it gave my knee some time to recover from the pain I had been experiencing. I have about 1.5 months left until my marathon, so it will be a tough time between now and then, but I’m confident I’ll be ready in time. I’m quite ready to be back on track with my training. In March, I hope to up the number of bikes as well!

Getting there, you had to park about a mile down the road from the start in a school and hike it to packet pickup. Thankfully, unlike some of the more local races, they didn’t also give you your T-Shirt before the race and make you lug it around. Lines moved quickly [even the line for the toilets!] and I was in and out with my number in hand in no time. I took the time before the race to jog for a mile or so, and then spent some time banging massaging my knee where it has been sore, hoping it would help. We eventually got lined up and got started about 10 minutes late.

Coach had given me a race plan of taking the first mile easy @ 9:45, then going miles 1-5 at 9:10, and going all out the last one. I was feeling great that day and felt I would have left a lot on the course if I did that, and wanted to see how much I could PR, so kind of tossed the pacing plan to the wayside. I did decide to keep the major theme with it and go for negative splits. I hit the 1 mile mark at 8:30 and decided to keep it at that pace until the 5K mark. For the first 3 miles, I honestly didn’t feel like I was racing. It seemed like just a nice easy jog to me. My average time for the first 5K was 8:30min/mi with an average HR of 173bpm.

Once I hit the 3 mile mark I decided to lift the pace a little bit and see what I had in me. I was still feeling pretty good at this point, and my knee had not bothered me once. I hit mile 4 at 8:04 pace and still felt great so picked it up even more. I’m fairly certain that from mile 3 on, not a single person passed me! Mile 5 saw me at a pace of 7:26. Unfortunately, Mile 5 had the one small hill and me knee decided to start hurting when I hit the hill. I was able to change my stride and have my knee stop hurting for the most part, but it was not pleasant!

As I was running, I noticed in the distance most of the time a guy holding an orange flag. I never knew what he was doing while I was running, but afterwards, I’ve decided he was probably the pacer for people trying to qualify for Peachtree. I started reeling him in after mile 3, and he would slowly get closer each mile. After the pain on the hill I wasn’t sure if I could catch him, but he was close enough to motivate me to sprint the last 0.2m and beat him to the line. As a side note, if he was the pacer, he was 30s slower than qualifying pace!

I came across the line with a time of 50:30. I was thrilled with this time. This is only the 2nd time I’ve done a 10K, my first being last year’s Peachtree Road Race where I went in 58:43. That meant this was a PR by ~8:10. Wow! I realize that it helps that it was because my only other 10K was a few months ago, and it was after I just got up to the distance, but still, I’m going to be happy with this PR for a while :)

After the race, we had to walk up way too many steps to pick up our schwag bags. Unfortunately it was just a cotton t-shirt and not a technical T, but I guess you can’t get those every time. I did score some form of coupon to waffle house, as well as a much needed banana and some sort of chocolaty tasty granola bar. These helped as I hiked the mile back to the parking lot where my car was!

If there was anything negative about this race, it would be that I didn’t qualify for Timegroup A for the Peachtree Road Race today. I missed doing so by 30 seconds. However, that wasn’t a goal of this race – it was to just see how a 10K went since I hadn’t done one in so long. In any event, it’s not a big deal as my time from one of the 5Ks I did last fall already qualifies me for Timegroup A!

All in all, this race was a blast, and I can see myself setting some new PRs here in the years ahead!

If you’re interested in seeing some of the splits & data, here it is [I'm a data junkie, what can I say]:

Overall: 50:30 – 8:01min/mi – 176bpm – 82spm

Miles 0 – 3 – 25:26 (8:29 min/mi) – 173bpm – 82.5spm
Miles 3-6 – 23:06 (7:42 min/mi) – 178bpm – 81.7spm
Miles 6-6.3 – 1:58 (6:31 min/mi) – 185bpm – 82.2spm

1 – 8:27 – 174bpm – 82.9spm
2 – 8:34 – 176bpm – 82.6spm
3 – 8:25 – 170bpm – 82.1spm
4 – 8:04 – 167bpm – 81.9spm
5 – 7:26 – 183bpm – 81.0spm
6 – 7:36 – 184bpm – 82.2spm
6.3 – 1:58 (6:31min/mi) – 185bpm – 82.2spm

You can view pretty graphs & such as well at Garmin Connect

Training has been going quite well. I created a 18 week training plan and followed it for the first few weeks. When 2010 rolled around I decided to make a big investment in myself and picked up some coaching by joining Team Sasquatch. Since then, I’ve been following the runs prescribed to me by my coach and we’ve been going over the results each week. I’ve slowly been working the distance of my long run up, and I’ve now completed a 17 mile training run. This time last year, the thought of me running 17 miles was laughable.

Over the next month and a half, I’ll continue inching forward with the distance of my long run, and do one or two small races in between. Before I know it, March 21 will be here and I’ll toe the start line of my 1st marathon. My goal is to get across that finish line, and I’m really looking forward to achieving that. This past week, I even had a dream about the day of the race [of course, the dream was I forgot some water bottles, missed the start of the race, etc] but the fact I’m dreaming about it means it is ever so slowly getting closer!

I ran 12 times for a total of 96.85 miles [so close to my first 100 mile month ever!]. I spent a total of 17:12:01 running. My 3 longs runs for the month were:
12.99m @ 2:02:22 (9:58min/mi) @ 168bpm
15.01m @ 2:27:53 (9:51min/mi) @ 170bpm
17.04m @ 3:09:40 (11:08min/mi) @ 161bpm

I biked only 6 times for a total of 102.34 miles. I was on the bike for 6:31:08. My long ride was:
22.85 @ 1:30:01 (15.2mph) @ 125bpm

All in all, a great training month. I had a knee pain following the last long run, but after a trainer session on the bike the next day it felt better. I was supposed to have 2 races (both 5K’s) but one got canceled due to illness, and the other got canceled due to cold & rain. In February, I’m competing in 2 10K races. I haven’t done a 10K since my first at the Peachtree Road Race in July of last year, so this should be interesting!

I’m really looking forward to February’s training. Running wise I’ll put in some more long runs as I inch closer to the ING GA Marathon on 3/21. Will I hit 100 miles this month? On the bike, I’ll be in the early base phase [this past month was pre-base], so it will be more long, slow rides.

• Marathon [ING GA Marathon on 3/21]
• XTERRA Triathlon [XTERRA Ft. Yargo on 4/24]
• Olympic Triathlon [West Point Lake Olympic Triathlon on 6/13]
• 70.3 Triathlon [Augusta 70.3 on 9/26]

On top of those quantifiable goals, some of my meta goals are:

• Improve running speed [based off 5K & 10K times]
• Stay consistent in my training
• HAVE FUN

That last goal, to Have Fun, is the most important one to me and I will shift and change everything around as necessary to ensure that goal is being met. If I’m not having fun, it’s a recipe for me to stop running again, and that doesn’t end well!

To help me achieve most of my other goals, I’ve decided to pick up some coaching. I spent 9 months last year running on my own, devising my own training plan and getting myself back into half-way decent shape. I’m now at a base point where I feel that under coaching I can achieve better results than I could on my own. To that end, I’ve joined Team Sasquatch, which is people who are coached by @SpeedySasquatch on Twitter. I’ve had about a month of coaching now, and I am definitely being pushed to limits I wouldn’t create for myself normally, which I feel is a good thing!

Since I am getting serious, I’m doing some other things as well. I became an official member of USA Triathlon. I’m also getting ready to join GUTS [Georgia Ultrarunning & Trailrunning Society] as well as a local Atlanta based triathlon team.

All in all, I’m looking forward to it being quite a fun year [for a look at what I have planned check out my 2010 schedule]. I’m well into training for my marathon in March, and will provide an update on that next week!

Running
In March, I decided that I was tired of being a lazy bum and decided to start running again. I picked a 5K a few months away [the Big Peach 5K at the beginning of May] and started on a Couch to 5K program. Oddly enough, my problem was I couldn’t go slow enough in training. I eventually learned how to pace myself, and completed my first 5K in over 8 years. Woohoo! Since that first race, I’ve competed in one running race every month the rest of the year. In addition to just competing, I somehow managed to get a PR in every race by around a minute [with the exception of the last race in December]. Not only that, but I got 2nd place in my Age Group in the race in November!

As in aside, I have figured out the key to doing well in races and placing in your age group – race small races! The race in November only had about 80-100 people, and maybe 5-10 in my age group. So I suppose getting 2nd place in my AG for that race is almost like cheating, but I’ll take it!

On top of all the 5Ks that I ran, I also did one 10K for the year – the Peachtree Road Race. I haven’t done another since then, but in the upcoming year I hope to do quite a few of them now that the distance is no problem for me. My times in all my races for the year are shown below:

2009-05-02 – Big Peach 5K – 29:15
2009-06-06 – Virginia Highlands Summerfest 5K – 28:15
2009-08-15 – ATC Grand Finale 5K – 26:30
2009-09-12 – FirED Up 5K – 24:34
2009-10-19 – Germantown Streetfest 5K Bier Run – 22:40
2009-11-26 – TN 5K – 21:56 [2nd place AG]
2009-12-19 – Virginia Highlands Christmas 5K – 23:35

2009-07-04 – Peachtree Road Race [10K] – 58:53

Cycling
I haven’t done any road racing, and I haven’t done any mountain biking [racing at least] but I do love me some cyclocross. When September rolled around I almost forgot about running and threw myself into the game of cyclocross. I had started training in June and built up a pretty good fitness level, but unfortunately [kinda] a long vacation in the middle of the season derailed some of my fitness.

Cyclocross is a lot more difficult to compare your progress as you can’t look at your time since the course varies wildly from week to week, and even on the same property from year to year. So instead of looking at time, I decided to just look at how I placed in my category [CX4 - Or beginner]. Last year, my best placing had me only beating 22% of the people in my category. This year, in every race except for my first back from vacation, I placed better than that. My best placings saw me beating 60%, 50%, and 44% of the other competitors. Definite improvement from last year, but still a long way to go!

Training
As mentioned above, I saw good improvements and progress made in both running and biking throughout the year. I was completely self coached and came up with my own training. My biggest problem throughout the year was sticking with my schedule and talking myself out of workouts. I would go some months with only working out once due to vacation, lots going on at work, or other various lame excuses. My biggest goal for the new year is to fix this and stick with my training plan and stay consistent.

With all that said, I still got a decent amount of training in for my first year training full time. The totals for my year were:

• 76 runs for a total of 241 miles with a total time of 42:39
• 63 rides for a total of 848 miles with a total time of 54:22

A breakdown of both total miles and number of activities per month is shown in the 2 graphs below (click for larger size)

Miles of Activity by month:








Number of activities by month:








All in all, I’m quite pleased with how my 2009 year of racing and training ended up. There are some big changes under way for 2010 to bring even more success in the New Year!

On the bike, I went 296.25 miles for the month over 14 rides, for a total time of 17:50:10. This was by far the most volume I’ve done on the bike before by mileage, with the previous highest being July with 169 miles. The last LSD ride I had was on 8/30. It was a 2hr ride. I made it 32.47 miles – this gave me an average pace of 16.2mph with an average HR of 127BPM. July’s last LSD ride of 24.16 miles in 1:30:00 (16.1mph) with an average HR of 128. I was happy with this, because even with an extra 30 minutes, I managed to increase the speed a touch with about the same HR.

I only got 8 runs in for the month, totaling 29.87 miles in 5:18:13. This might be a trend until December – if I have to drop a training day, it will be a run until I get towards the end of cross season. My Last LSD run was on 8/28. I ran 6.18 miles in 1:10:07 – this gave me a pace of 11:21min/mile with an average HR of 160BPM. There was no LSD run last month, so any analysis on that will wait for next month.

Next month I’ll talk a little more about what training I’m actually doing each week. September will be my last month of training before cyclocross races start, so I hope to make it a very solid few weeks of training.

I have been debating doing a marathon for a long time, with the original goal of signing up for one this fall. However, I’m going to be on vacation for 3 weeks, and then cyclocross season starts – neither of which are very conducive to the marathon lifestyle. Due to this, I decided that 2010 was going to be the year of the marathon for me.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this in the coming weeks, but I look forward to having this finite goal and event to train for. There is nothing like laying down cold hard cash on the race registration free to motivate you to train! My training starts up soon after cyclocross season ends, with enough of a break for me to recover! It should be fun doing my first marathon on home turf – the route actually goes directly by my apartment, if I weren’t running it I could watch/cheer from my balcony. Who knows, if I catch the marathon bug this race, this could be the first of many marathons I do for 2010!