Nothing can keep me from my nightly runs. Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing except home improvements that wind up being a lot more difficult than they were supposed to be. Nothing except that. Nothing except that and a kid with the measles. Nope. Nothing but those two things. And not sleeping. Nothing but those things can make me take three days off like I did earlier this week.
Shockingly, one side effect of the measles vaccine is the measles. Who knew?
Fremont High School has now finished locking up the front gate to their football stadium and wonderful new track. Boo. Fortunately there are at least a couple more easy access points from within the campus itself. On a Wednesday night, the campus is still wide open as students practice their French horns or their dance routines or whatever other activities their parents pressure them to do. Works for me.
Last night, in attempt to regain what little speed I once had, I re-did the old 6x200,4x400,6x200 with lots of recovery, workout that I did 3 weeks ago. While still very slow, I was noticeably less slow than last time...on the order of 2 seconds per 400m. Guh-roo-vee. That, and Junior Sr. sleeping through the night without a single wakeup, has me feeling optimistic again. Cue the doomswitch!
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
A Wedding, a Funeral, and an Update.
Bring da amber lamps! It's the Very First Occasional ThaOBlogg Travelogue!
Dateline: St. Paul, MN.
My grandmother Lillian (age 96) died in February, so on March 12th I hopped on a plane to attend her memorial service and spend a little time with the rest of the family.
In this case, a little time was about 12 hours, since I landed at MSP around noon on a Monday and got on a plane back to SJC at 6 AM the next day. I got to see some rarely-seen family members (basically all of them) and some extremely rarely-seen family members (hadn't seen aunt Marisa in about 30 years). I broke my beer-fast with a Bell's Porter, which was as delicious as I remembered it. I spent what will likely be my last night in the house where I grew up, as ThaOMomm and ThaODadd are preparing to move into a condo (no stairs, no yard maintenance). Maybe it was the wet weather and the brown, dormant grass of late winter, but my old neighborhood looked a hell of a lot dumpier than I remembered it. There were chickens roaming the streets fercrisesakes. I had a chance to run while I was there, but chose to spend all of my limited time either hanging out with the family or sleeping.
Dateline: Pasadena, CA.
On a much happier note, my good friend Rajiv got married on Saint Patrick's Day. Cupcake and Junior were kind enough to give me another one-day pass to attend. I got to meet the bride, who looked lovely and was incredibly nice and friendly. Good job, Raj. Here is the happy couple tearing it up during their first dance. Sorry for the craptacular camera work.
I got to hang out with Erin and Mike Oxlong* and their kids, which is always a hoot. My opinion of Los Angeles did not change. It's still a nightmare.
Dateline: The Vale, CA
Despite a small setback in Junior's sleeping (That Measels, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine does pack a wallop.), my mileage is creeping up into the respectable range. My last track workout of 4 x 1 mile was, on average, about 5 seconds/mile better than it was 3 weeks prior despite windy conditions. Monday's tempo run went well, too, with my pace edging ever closer to 6:00/mile. And I can now manage 3 pull ups...almost 4. Yee fucking ha!
* Not their real last name...duh. Their real last name is Oxinfected.
Dateline: St. Paul, MN.
My grandmother Lillian (age 96) died in February, so on March 12th I hopped on a plane to attend her memorial service and spend a little time with the rest of the family.
In this case, a little time was about 12 hours, since I landed at MSP around noon on a Monday and got on a plane back to SJC at 6 AM the next day. I got to see some rarely-seen family members (basically all of them) and some extremely rarely-seen family members (hadn't seen aunt Marisa in about 30 years). I broke my beer-fast with a Bell's Porter, which was as delicious as I remembered it. I spent what will likely be my last night in the house where I grew up, as ThaOMomm and ThaODadd are preparing to move into a condo (no stairs, no yard maintenance). Maybe it was the wet weather and the brown, dormant grass of late winter, but my old neighborhood looked a hell of a lot dumpier than I remembered it. There were chickens roaming the streets fercrisesakes. I had a chance to run while I was there, but chose to spend all of my limited time either hanging out with the family or sleeping.
Dateline: Pasadena, CA.
On a much happier note, my good friend Rajiv got married on Saint Patrick's Day. Cupcake and Junior were kind enough to give me another one-day pass to attend. I got to meet the bride, who looked lovely and was incredibly nice and friendly. Good job, Raj. Here is the happy couple tearing it up during their first dance. Sorry for the craptacular camera work.
I got to hang out with Erin and Mike Oxlong* and their kids, which is always a hoot. My opinion of Los Angeles did not change. It's still a nightmare.
Dateline: The Vale, CA
Despite a small setback in Junior's sleeping (That Measels, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine does pack a wallop.), my mileage is creeping up into the respectable range. My last track workout of 4 x 1 mile was, on average, about 5 seconds/mile better than it was 3 weeks prior despite windy conditions. Monday's tempo run went well, too, with my pace edging ever closer to 6:00/mile. And I can now manage 3 pull ups...almost 4. Yee fucking ha!
* Not their real last name...duh. Their real last name is Oxinfected.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
[ ] Race Toughness
So I broke my reconstructed race hymen on Saturday and it feels good. It feels so good, in fact, that I put together a racing schedule for myself for the upcoming months. More on that later.
Races are good for me and for anyone else who trains alone. When I run a race properly I can achieve a level of discomfort I just can't simulate in a workout. Alone on a dark track, nobody can see me get lazy during an interval. In a race, when I can't/don't push through the pain, then I get passed by bozos who have no business beating me, which is a real bummer. When the real pain hit in Saturday's race, I did not push through it. I did not push through it because I couldn't push through it because I'm not 'race tough' anymore. The only way for me to get 'race tough' is to race. So that's what I'm a-gonna do.
And now, the tentative racing schedule:
April 29, Great Race 4 Mile
May 13, Running of the Bulls 5k
June 16, Trail Quake Half-Marathon
July 15, Jungle Run Half-Marathon
September 28, Moonlight 5k
October 28, Morgan Hill Marathon
November 11, Home Run 5k
Look for me out there. I'll be the old dude in the Papa Smurf t-shirt.
Races are good for me and for anyone else who trains alone. When I run a race properly I can achieve a level of discomfort I just can't simulate in a workout. Alone on a dark track, nobody can see me get lazy during an interval. In a race, when I can't/don't push through the pain, then I get passed by bozos who have no business beating me, which is a real bummer. When the real pain hit in Saturday's race, I did not push through it. I did not push through it because I couldn't push through it because I'm not 'race tough' anymore. The only way for me to get 'race tough' is to race. So that's what I'm a-gonna do.
And now, the tentative racing schedule:
April 29, Great Race 4 Mile
May 13, Running of the Bulls 5k
June 16, Trail Quake Half-Marathon
July 15, Jungle Run Half-Marathon
September 28, Moonlight 5k
October 28, Morgan Hill Marathon
November 11, Home Run 5k
Look for me out there. I'll be the old dude in the Papa Smurf t-shirt.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Race Recaplet
Well, I ran the Juana Run 8k this morning. The short version is I started a little too fast, picked up a gorilla and the piano he was playing after 3 miles, and finished 10th or so in 28:25. Cupcake and Junior came out to watch and recorded my final waddle to the finish
Friday, March 9, 2012
Ludicrous Speed!
Another week, another trip to the track. Wednesday night I returned to Fremont High for a bunch of 200s and 400s. Once again, the track was open and no fences were climbed and no trespassing citations were issued. Once again, I was the only one out there. Once again I was reminded of how much speed I've lost in the past three and a half years.
Before I left the house there was a little drama. In preparation for my overnight trip to Minnesota for Grandma O's funeral, Cupcake tried to put Junior to bed. This is something she hadn't done since June 2011, when I took over the exclusive duties as part of Junior's sleep training. Results were mixed. No, Junior wouldn't go to sleep for his mama right away, but he did after a short period of screaming/crying. This never used to happen before. In the past, once he started crying, he would not stop for hours no matter what Cupcake or I tried. Good times.
Once I got to the track, the plan was to do some short, fast intervals with lots of recovery. 5 x (200m + 200m jog), 5 x (400m + 400m jog), 5 x (200m + 200m jog). This was the first time in a long time that I got up on my toes for some sprinting, and as expected the results landed somewhere between feeble and merely weak. I timed the quarters, which I ran all out, hard as I could, and they were all right about 75 seconds. That's a pace at which I once could cruise a 5k. No problem, though. I'm old, right? Maybe this will improve with training. Maybe that's just my new top end speed.
Junior slept through the night, and I woke up pretty sore Thursday morning. Yesterday's easy run home from work felt a bit gimpy, but in a good way. Tomorrow I race the Juana Run, which should be fun. After that, I'm gonna try to race once a month until Junior Jr. is born.
Word.
Before I left the house there was a little drama. In preparation for my overnight trip to Minnesota for Grandma O's funeral, Cupcake tried to put Junior to bed. This is something she hadn't done since June 2011, when I took over the exclusive duties as part of Junior's sleep training. Results were mixed. No, Junior wouldn't go to sleep for his mama right away, but he did after a short period of screaming/crying. This never used to happen before. In the past, once he started crying, he would not stop for hours no matter what Cupcake or I tried. Good times.
Once I got to the track, the plan was to do some short, fast intervals with lots of recovery. 5 x (200m + 200m jog), 5 x (400m + 400m jog), 5 x (200m + 200m jog). This was the first time in a long time that I got up on my toes for some sprinting, and as expected the results landed somewhere between feeble and merely weak. I timed the quarters, which I ran all out, hard as I could, and they were all right about 75 seconds. That's a pace at which I once could cruise a 5k. No problem, though. I'm old, right? Maybe this will improve with training. Maybe that's just my new top end speed.
Junior slept through the night, and I woke up pretty sore Thursday morning. Yesterday's easy run home from work felt a bit gimpy, but in a good way. Tomorrow I race the Juana Run, which should be fun. After that, I'm gonna try to race once a month until Junior Jr. is born.
Word.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Beer Near
Back in August of 2010, my lovely and talented wife, to whom I refer on the blog as Cupcake, gave birth to our first child, an inexplicably large boy to whom I refer on the blog as Junior. Junior is healthy. Junior is cute as hell. Junior smiles and laughs a lot. For the first nine months of his life, Junior never slept. Okay…that’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. Junior never slept for more than 2-hours at a time at night. His naps topped out at 45 minutes. He would cry and scream for hours because he was so tired, but he just would not sleep. And since we were all living in a one-bedroom apartment at the time, Cupcake and I didn’t sleep either.
One of the consequences of not sleeping was, at least for me, not running. Another was eating a lot of take-out fast food. This will come as a surprise to exactly nobody, but I gained 20 pounds and completely fell apart physically. Once I got a little bit used to the not sleeping, the worst of my many aches and pains was in my lower back. It would come and go, but mostly it came and stayed. Initially I thought it was from the extra weight I was carrying (Junior), but eventually I formulated a ‘brown’ theory that it was the extra weight I was carrying (my gut). What “proved” my theory was a little experiment I did where I didn’t suck in my gut at all for a week. That was in November, and it seemed to help my back, and so operation get-svelte-again commenced. On December 1st, I was 170 doughy pounds.
At that time, Junior was doing a lot better with his night time sleeping. He would usually need me to attend to him only once or twice a night, and occasionally he would sleep solidly from 7 PM to 6 AM. Most importantly from a running standpoint, he was almost always asleep from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM, so I could get in an hour-long run every night without worrying that I was abandoning an exhausted Cupcake to deal with Junior’s night time adventures. I managed to run 173 miles in December (on 27 of the 31 days). On January 1st, I weighed in at 166 pounds.
Normally I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. In prior years, when asked if I had any I would reply, “Yes. Keep it rolling.” This year, however, I made one. I resolved to drink no beer until I was down to 155 pounds. Immediately I made an exception. Months previously our friend Scott reserved for me a spot on the Anchor Brewery tour for January 3rd, where there was much tasting. Yay! But besides that, there was to be no delicious, frosty beer for me until I was within spitting distance of my former racing weight. This turned out to be an accidental stroke of brilliance. Besides eliminating the calories beer so wonderfully supplies, there was an additional, psychological benefit. It turns out I love beer a lot more than I love food, so the beer-fast provided powerful motivation to lose the weight as quickly as possible. Another slice of pizza? No way, mang. Gonna have me a Fat Tire in a few weeks.
In January Junior continued to improve his sleeping and I ran 206 miles (on 30 of the 31 days). At my January 29th weigh in I was 162 pounds. Four pounds in four weeks…that’s pretty good.
In February I ran every day for a total of 217 miles, with the addition of tempo runs, track work, and fartleks on the roads. The hardest day of the month for me was the 5th. Super Bowl Sunday with less than four beers doesn’t feel quite right. Super Bowl Sunday with zero beers is completely wrong. Nonetheless, it must have scored me some karma points because, when I weighed in yesterday, the red LEDs on my cheap-ass bathroom scale from Target glowed with the digits 155.0. Seven pounds in four weeks…that’s good.
It’s over a day later but I still haven’t had my celebratory beer. I got a little rambunctious on the powerlines trail due to the incredible weather. I wound up pushing pretty hard but had a great time doing so. After that, and chasing Junior around for the rest of the day, I was way too tired to properly appreciate a well-crafted ale. It sure feels good to have that option again, though.
One of the consequences of not sleeping was, at least for me, not running. Another was eating a lot of take-out fast food. This will come as a surprise to exactly nobody, but I gained 20 pounds and completely fell apart physically. Once I got a little bit used to the not sleeping, the worst of my many aches and pains was in my lower back. It would come and go, but mostly it came and stayed. Initially I thought it was from the extra weight I was carrying (Junior), but eventually I formulated a ‘brown’ theory that it was the extra weight I was carrying (my gut). What “proved” my theory was a little experiment I did where I didn’t suck in my gut at all for a week. That was in November, and it seemed to help my back, and so operation get-svelte-again commenced. On December 1st, I was 170 doughy pounds.
At that time, Junior was doing a lot better with his night time sleeping. He would usually need me to attend to him only once or twice a night, and occasionally he would sleep solidly from 7 PM to 6 AM. Most importantly from a running standpoint, he was almost always asleep from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM, so I could get in an hour-long run every night without worrying that I was abandoning an exhausted Cupcake to deal with Junior’s night time adventures. I managed to run 173 miles in December (on 27 of the 31 days). On January 1st, I weighed in at 166 pounds.
Normally I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. In prior years, when asked if I had any I would reply, “Yes. Keep it rolling.” This year, however, I made one. I resolved to drink no beer until I was down to 155 pounds. Immediately I made an exception. Months previously our friend Scott reserved for me a spot on the Anchor Brewery tour for January 3rd, where there was much tasting. Yay! But besides that, there was to be no delicious, frosty beer for me until I was within spitting distance of my former racing weight. This turned out to be an accidental stroke of brilliance. Besides eliminating the calories beer so wonderfully supplies, there was an additional, psychological benefit. It turns out I love beer a lot more than I love food, so the beer-fast provided powerful motivation to lose the weight as quickly as possible. Another slice of pizza? No way, mang. Gonna have me a Fat Tire in a few weeks.
In January Junior continued to improve his sleeping and I ran 206 miles (on 30 of the 31 days). At my January 29th weigh in I was 162 pounds. Four pounds in four weeks…that’s pretty good.
In February I ran every day for a total of 217 miles, with the addition of tempo runs, track work, and fartleks on the roads. The hardest day of the month for me was the 5th. Super Bowl Sunday with less than four beers doesn’t feel quite right. Super Bowl Sunday with zero beers is completely wrong. Nonetheless, it must have scored me some karma points because, when I weighed in yesterday, the red LEDs on my cheap-ass bathroom scale from Target glowed with the digits 155.0. Seven pounds in four weeks…that’s good.
It’s over a day later but I still haven’t had my celebratory beer. I got a little rambunctious on the powerlines trail due to the incredible weather. I wound up pushing pretty hard but had a great time doing so. After that, and chasing Junior around for the rest of the day, I was way too tired to properly appreciate a well-crafted ale. It sure feels good to have that option again, though.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
More creamy track goodness
Construction continues around the track at Fremont High School here in The Vale. From the looks of things, I'm worried that I won't be able to use the track anymore once they're done. I sure hope I'm wrong. Signs posted about visitors having to report to the school office before 4 PM and about walkers and joggers using only the outside lanes of the track paint a more optimistic picture. We shall see. I'll always have a fartlek-on-the-roads backup plan ready for track nights that get shut down by locked gates and such.
Last night I got onto the track again without having to climb over or under any fences. I did have to squeeze through a gap in the temporary fence around the construction zone, but it didn't feel like trespassing.
The workout was a standard one (for me, anyway) in the style of my old coach, The Shoe Nazi*. The way he would describe it would be "12 by 150 with a 50, jog a lap, 3 by 600 with a 200, 6 by 300 with a 100." That means do 6 laps of alternating 150m hard and 50m jogging, then jog a lap, then do 6 laps of alternating 600m hard and 200m jogging, then do 6 laps of alternating 300m hard and 100m jogging. Generally there would be strides beforehand and something painfully fast after, but I'm not ready for that yet.
*No shoes for you!
Last night I got onto the track again without having to climb over or under any fences. I did have to squeeze through a gap in the temporary fence around the construction zone, but it didn't feel like trespassing.
The workout was a standard one (for me, anyway) in the style of my old coach, The Shoe Nazi*. The way he would describe it would be "12 by 150 with a 50, jog a lap, 3 by 600 with a 200, 6 by 300 with a 100." That means do 6 laps of alternating 150m hard and 50m jogging, then jog a lap, then do 6 laps of alternating 600m hard and 200m jogging, then do 6 laps of alternating 300m hard and 100m jogging. Generally there would be strides beforehand and something painfully fast after, but I'm not ready for that yet.
*No shoes for you!
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