Running Ramblings

Harvest of Hope Ride (Savannah to Augusta)

2007-10-24T11:19:00.000-04:00

Sign on door of convience store on way home from Augusta

2007-10-20T23:19:00.000-04:00

140 Miles Down. Zero to go. It's done!

2007-10-20T19:21:00.001-04:00

125 down. 15 to go! Ouch!

2007-10-20T17:55:00.001-04:00

105 down, 35 to go

2007-10-20T16:38:00.000-04:00

Lunch stop. 87 down. 53 to go!

2007-10-20T14:53:00.001-04:00

Rest Stop in Estill, SC

2007-10-20T12:37:00.001-04:00

Hillbillies at Harvest of Hope Retreat

2007-10-20T11:17:00.001-04:00

Rest Stop in Clyo

2007-10-20T11:16:00.001-04:00

Beginnertriathlete.com

2007-04-07T10:55:00.000-04:00

For all my fans out there (hey dad) who've been wondering why there hasn't been much activity on blog lately it's because I'm mostly just posting to my beginnertriathlete.com blog lately. It allows me to plan and log all my workouts and track all the data and statistics this engineer craves. So, no I have not fallen off the wagon. I've just changed seats!

Go check it out!
My Beginnertriathlete.com blog

Oh, BTW, this video shows why I'm not too eager to do a full Ironman race anytime soon:

Ugly Toe!

2007-03-28T21:35:00.000-04:00

Here's a couple of pictures of my right big toenail. It died a week after doing the Marine Corps Marathon. Well that was 5 months ago and it still hasn't healed up. I'm not sure what to do? Should I be worried??

Links to ugly toe pics (not for the faint of heart):

http://picasaweb.google.com/tripphoward/RunningRamblings/photo#5047154375615209570

http://picasaweb.google.com/tripphoward/RunningRamblings/photo#5047154521644097650

Triathlon Map

2007-03-25T14:17:00.000-04:00

I created a "collection" on Microsoft's local.live.com website containing all the triathlons that are in this area and that I could possibly be interested in doing. I intend to use this to plan which 3 or 4 I might actually do this year. It helps me figure out just how far I'd have to travel and who I might could stay with.

Triathlon Map

Wednesday Night Run - Getting Back on Track

2007-01-24T21:56:00.002-05:00

All right, it's time to get this train back on track. I had a nice break over the holidays and was had a sinus infection/cold for about a month but it's time to get back on track and get back in the groove.

I've been getting the ball rolling again for the past few weeks. I even swam 3 days last week. But this week I've almost got derailed again. I slept in Monday and Tuesday instead of getting out to the pool as planned. And today Wendy made me like 18 homemade chocolate chip cookies to take to work as a snack. They were gone by 4:00! And though they tasted wonderful, I've felt horrible physically and mentally all day.

So, I went out for a 3 mile run after I put Sarah to bed tonight. I hate to think that I probably only burned about 3 cookies worth of calories though! Ugghhh! Well, anyway, I feel much better now.

Well, I've decided to make triathlons my focus this year. I want to do several sprints and one or two olympic distance races. Mostly though I just want to live a healthy and fit lifestyle, and triathlon seems to be a great fun way to accomplish this.

I've decided that my first big race will be the Turtle Crawl at Jekyll Island on May 5th. I'd also like to do the sprint at Parris Island on March 17th. Now I just have to decide on what training plan to follow. More on that later...

Enmark Savannah River Bridge Run

2006-12-03T10:43:00.000-05:00

I ran the Bridge Run yesterday with a couple of friends from church, Jay and Collis. We had a good run. It was the first time any of us had done the bridge run and I think it was Jay's first 5k ever. I'd say they both did really well. We ran the whole race together right up until the last 1/4 mile were Jay just decided to kick it to keep this poor little 10 year old from finishing ahead of him. It was shameful. Anyway Jay finished 29:17, I was a couple of steps behind him at 29:20 and Collis was just a few more steps back at 29:27. We had a great time.

Click here for the results.
Click here for GPS activity on MotionBased

2006 Marine Corps Marathon, Washington, D.C.

2006-11-04T09:10:00.000-05:00

Well, I made it! I'll update this post with more info when I have time later but I wanted to go ahead and post something now for those who might be wondering how it all went.

The trip to Washington was great. Sarah was a champ as far as the traveling goes. She sang most of the time in the car and just seemed to enjoy the whole experience. On the way up she would occasionally say "I want to go back home". Now that we're back she keeps saying "I want to go back to Washington D.C.".

Dumb me left both my Forerunner and our digital camera at home in our haste to get on the road. We ended up buying several disposable cameras and I got the pictures developed onto a CD. You can check out all our D.C. pictures on Flickr by clicking here.

The race was great too. It was a little more crowded than I had anticipated and we really couldn't run our own pace until around mile 10 or so. That and the really heavy winds put our goal time of 3:50 out of reach this time. I finished in 4:04:00 and considering the circumstances I'm really happy with that. That said, I'm still thinking of running another one to try to get in under 4 hours.

Well, that's enough for now. I'll try to update this sooner than later.

My Results (4:04)

My Results Graphically

My Splits:
Mile Time Pace
5 48:28 9:42
10 1:33:01 8:55
13.1 1:58:57 8:22
15 2:15:49 8:53
20 3:01:29 9:08
23 3:31:28 10:00
26.2 4:04:00 10:10

My MarathonFoto Pictures (bib no. 15400)

Our Flickr Pictures

Final Week

2006-10-23T21:43:00.000-04:00

The big day is less than a week away. I've had some good long runs since my last post with some really good paces (see links below). I'm thinking that 3:50 is finally within grasp. If you haven't done so already you can sign up to receive my split times in real time via text message on your cell phone or by email by going to this website.

Track Tuesday

2006-10-04T11:01:00.000-04:00

Well I had to cut Tuesday's intervals a little short. After a 1 mile warm up I did 4x1200m intervals instead of 6 due to time constraints and slipping split times. The legs felt pretty sore after the workout yesterday too.

I'm planning to go for a short bike ride on my lunch break today to keep the legs loose. It's finally getting cool enough to exercise at lunch again.

4x1200m
Split Times:
1 5:28
2 5:32
3 5:31
4 5:35

Saturday 15 Mile Run

2006-10-02T23:15:00.000-04:00

Sarah and I went to Milan this weekend for my niece Holly's birthday party. We went up Friday afternoon and spent the night, the party was on Saturday afternoon. Friends and family and check out Flickr in a little while from some party pics. We also decided on the way home Saturday that we'd go stay Saturday night with my Dad because Sarah wanted to go fishing at her Papa Tony's house. I'll be posting pics of that to Flickr as well shortly.

Anyway, I got up Saturday morning and headed out for a 15 mile run around the big city of Milan. My plan was to do three five mile loops, but after the first one I decided to just do out-and-backs for the remainder so I could stay off Hwy 280. Of course this meant that I had to run past the same houses and dogs 5 times. After hearing their dogs bark for over 2 hours, I'm sure some folks were really wondering when this "Forest Gump" guy was gonna call it quits.

Well I did call it quites eventually, but not before pounding out another 15 miler. It wasn't a bad run, but it wasn't all that great either. I didn't really have the pep in my step that I had last weekend, but that could just be my body recovering. Or it could be a sign that I need to quit skipping runs, I didn't do the tempo run this week, but I did ride my bike to and from work on Wednesday. I just need to be more consistent. Towards the end of the run my hamstrings were pretty tight. I feel like if I had run on Thursday they would have been looser.

Tomorrow is track Tuesday and we'll be doing 6x1200m repeats. I better get to bed now though or I'll never get up in time.

Later!

Saturday 15 Miler

Julie Moss

2006-09-29T23:18:00.000-04:00

Endurance 50

2006-09-27T21:55:00.000-04:00

I don't know if you've heard of this guy before, but he's clearly a little nuts. Right now he has just run his 11th out of a planned 50 back-to-back marathons. That's right, he's gonna be running 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days. It's being called the Endurance 50. His name is Dean Karnazes and he is an ultra-marathoner. He runs races of 70 to 135 miles at one time.

He's running actual marathon courses in each state and in several states (where the schedule worked out) he'll be running in the actual marathon with everyone else. In fact he will be running the Marine Corp. Marathon with Dane and I at the end of next month. You can even sign up to run with him if you want but I don't think we will. Were hoping to set a good time and not so sure how speedy he is gonna be by then.

Oh, and he's also wearing a GPS watch system from Timex during all of this. You can track his progess and GPS data on this website.

Way Cool!!

Wednesday Ride to Work and Home

2006-09-27T09:11:00.000-04:00

I rode my bike 15.5 miles to work this morning. It took a little over an hour total including all the stops, but the average moving speed was still 18.3mph. I'll be riding home after work tonight as well. The air was kind of cool this morning. It almost felt too cool at first but once I got a couple of miles into the ride it felt great.

I saw this great video today on training for a triathlon swim start. For those who have never participated in a mass open water swim start just let me tell you it can get a little crazy. You start out swimming more in people than water. There's feet and elbows flying everywhere but that's just part of the sport.

I'll post links to this mornings ride when I get home tonight.

UPDATE:

Had a good ride home too. Below are the links to this morning's and this evening's rides.

Tuesday 400m Intervals

2006-09-26T21:50:00.000-04:00

Well, today was supposed to be a 12x400m interval workout but it turned into an 8x400m workout when I overslept a bit. The workout went pretty well and I ran all the intervals at 1:44 or better. The planned pace was only 1:48/400m so I was happy with the faster pace I was able to maintain.

Plan for tomorrow is to ride the bike to work and back home, mainly to save on gas money. Then Thursday is a 5 mile tempo run. I'll be in Milan on Saturday with Sarah for a birthday party for our niece Holly, so I'm planning to run the 15 miler there on Saturday morning. I'm looking forward to the colder weather that's being forecast too! I think it's supposed to be in the lower 50's. That should feel nice.

Splits
1 1:44
2 1:38
3 1:42
4 1:44
5 1:44
6 ?? (hit lap button twice)
7 1:44
8 1:43

20 Miler!

2006-09-23T20:56:00.000-04:00

Well the first 20 miler is in the bag! Dane and I ran it this morning from his house in Georgetown. We did two different 10 mile out-and-back routes. Our only walking was when we stopped for water and gels at miles 7, 10 and 15. We kept a really great pace for most of way too, including an 8:26 mile 10 and an overall average pace of 9:14. That includes that water/gel breaks and a short potty break at mile 10.

I'm really encouraged by today's run. I felt really good almost all the way to the end. Mile 19 was difficult and mile 20 was pretty hard, but overall, it wasn't nearly as bad as when we ran that 20 miler last year.

I also ran a good 8 mile tempo run this week while I was down at St. Simons Island. I spent two days down there inspecting bridges for the Sea Island Company. I kept an 8:33 average pace and finished strong with 8:07 split for mile 7.

I've also included links below to some of my other recent activities including a good 15 mile run last weekend, a really rough 18 miler the weekend before and my first half-century (50 mile) ride on Labor Day.

See ya later!!

Catching Up

2006-09-18T22:04:00.000-04:00

Well, I was going to try to catch up on posting some of my recent activities but for some reason the Motionbased.com servers are all tied up tonight so I can't get to the links. I've done quite a bit since my last post, including my first 50 mile bike ride and an 18 mile run. The 50 miler was pretty fun, the 18 miler was not.

The marathon training is coming along pretty well. I've starting getting the tempo run paces down pretty good and the interval runs too. Right now I need to be more careful about what I eat during the day if I'm gonna do a long run in the afternoon. Fried chicken before the 18 miler was a bad idea!

This weekend will be a 20 mile run. I'm not sure yet when and where we'll run it since Dane's son has a soccer game sometime on Saturday. If it's late enough we'll try to do it early Saturday morning. But we may end up running Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

Tommorow is 4x1600meters at the track, bright and early!

More later...

I'm Back!

2006-08-21T22:59:00.000-04:00

Well it's been a while since my last post back on May 9th and a lot has happened since then. I left off with my experience in the Knotty Pine 5k in Swainsboro. As you may recall, I didn't set a PR there as I had hoped for and I must say I was more than a little disappointed by that.

The following weekend I completed my first ligitimate sprint triathlon in Ponta Vedra FL, the Beaches Fine Arts Sprint Triathlon. I did OK but got really bad cramps in my calves as I started the run. I had to walk and then jog a bit for most of the first mile until the cramps eased up. Needless to say the run was a little slower than I'd hoped for. I finished in 1:14:10. Not bad, but I really think I could have done better.

Currently I'm training for the Marine Corps Marathon to be held on October 29th in Washington D.C. I'm already 6 weeks into my training plan. This time I'm using the Less-is-More training plan from Runnersworld. It has me running an interval run, a tempo run and a long run each week. I only run 3 days a week, but they are all quality workouts at a faster than normal pace for me. Its been a challenge but I'm getting better a making the paces. The tempo runs have been the hardest to get right.

Anyway, I haven't quit. I did take a few weeks off after the triathlon and I finally finished my bathroom remodel project (I'll post some pictures later). I'm still running and riding quite a bit. I haven't swam in a while though since the aquatic center has been closed for repairs for a couple of months now. I'll try to get back into updating this more often.

See ya!

Latest workout: 40 mile ride at Hunter Army Airfield