#rcnovember2016

[kcowgill]

11/30/16 3.11 miles Another treadmill 5k YTD: 1169.53 miles 334 days in a row

Maybe I’ll just make all the (non-Saturday) days 5ks.

I started out trying to match the mile splits from yesterday. Probably not among the best of my ideas. I’ve got a google spreadsheet that lists all the treadmill speeds and all the corresponding paces:

... so I figured I’d just match the mile splits and be good. Right? So from yesterday that amounts to a mile at 6.8mph, a mile at 7.2mph, and a mile at 7.5mph. After a half mile I could tell it was a bad idea. I started bargaining with myself as far as how closely I’d match the last minute plan. I settled on maintaining the speed through 8/10 of a mile and then dialing back .5mph to finish out the mile. So .8 at 6.9 (yeah I cheated), then .2 at 6.4. I dialed it up to 7.2 for the second mile and kept it until 1.8, then dialed it back to 6.7. By the time mile 2 clicked over, I just didn’t want to go fast again. So I slowed down to 6pmh. And gradually slowed every quarter of a mile after that.

I still ended up with a decent 5k time, and it was only about 2.5 minutes slower than yesterday.

But really, I should know better than to try a hard(ish) effort two days in a row.

About my headphones. They turned on great, paired with my phone. At some point the music stopped - or so I thought - until I realized the song I was on just started again. I think the contacts under the buttons are suffering from a little moisture damage. Then at the end of my workout when I was getting ready for the shower, I couldn’t turn them off. So I just let them stay on.

I intended to try to turn them off again afterwards, but never got around to it. Tried to turn them on after I got home. No dice. Either the button wasn’t working, or they had stayed on and drained the battery. So they’re charging again, and will hopefully work well enough for tomorrow.

Taekwondo with my kids tonight. My wife had a work dinner so couldn’t attend. Pretty low-key class. There’s a belt promotion test next week, so today was really just a session concentrating on things we’d need to know. Which is a little tough to coordinate among the various belt levels, but the instructors today (Mark and Tom) managed fairly well.

Tom had some nice words for me today - in fact he suggested I could try to double promote since (his words) I’m a quick study and seem to be getting this stuff down pretty well. Trouble is I’d need to work on Taegeuk 1 and get it down to the level I’ve got Chun-Ji. Fortunately I’ve found a great tutorial video so I can practice at home.

(I had tried to get my son to help me after dinner, but he was having trouble remembering the exact sequence.)

I’ll have to see if the guy who made a video for Chun-Ji that helped me so much has as helpful a video out for Taegeuk 1, because he specified a lot of things that helped me remember a few things to make it easier.

As silly as his “blinkers” thing is, it’s super helpful.

Later in the evening I practiced chambering my legs for a bit. I want to get at least my side kick a lot better, especially since that’s what I need to do for breaking a board for my belt test next week.

[cmjhawk86]

Late night run, after all the work I do for a living and the labor of love called coaching was done. It had been a warm day and it was still warm in the evening, but with thunderstorms rolling in I opted for the gym. For the first time since my #rnrnola training cycle I got on the #woodway and did my "boiled frog" run. Start at a leisurely 6.0 mph, add 0.1 mph every 400 meters. I usually do a 10k which means finishing at 8.4, about 7:08/mile. For me that's a little faster than #marathonpace and I'm getting just beyond lactate threshold. But it's the slow buildup to that effort that matters. If you want to learn how to finish fast, try this workout. Pick a slow jog effort to start and build up from there to just a little faster than your goal MP. #runblr #fitblr #marathontraining #rcnovember2016 (at Life Time Fitness)

[noahs-kayak]

5 miles on my decorated trails. Wasn't feeling this run mentally but it wasn't too bad.

[learningtolovetherun]

Quick update of my last 2 November runs. We had a decent snow storm here on Monday so obviously the logical next step was to go run in it lol I ran with a friend of mine and man was it cold. My shoes were covered in snow afterwards (top right picture) but I was so happy to have done it. We did an easy 3 mile loop and made snow angels afterwards (: 

I wasn’t originally planning to run today but knowing that I was really close to hitting 50 miles for the month even though my goal had been 40 I knew I needed to get out there. So, a quick 4.5 mile loop and I’m at 50 miles for the month!! (: 

Also, a picture of my new shoes. Saucony Peregrine 6 for trail and Mizuno Wave Rider 19′s for road. 

[acidspider]

I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts regarding this weekend. The marathon was on Saturday night so this is a lot late and I still haven’t gathered the courage to publish this.

Let me start by saying I finished the race and that was the ultimate win in the end of that day. By many people standards that’s good enough but this race was so frustrating so… so… I don’t even know man. I’m disappointed to say the least.

The weekend started well. We took the bus trip to the city where the race was going to be held and fortunately we managed to get a place to couch surf and even luckier the girl that was letting us stay was ALSO Going to the race. We arrived the day before because we had to go pick up our packages and so we went and took some pictures and then grabbed dinner. There were some kids on the streets selling things and asking for food and we decided to treat them to dinner (hence the four kids in the pictures).

I’m gonna put a keep reading here for the people who are squeamish about that thing that happens to people who can bear children once every month. (Or those who can’t be bothered to read about that stuff)

Saturday morning I woke up feeling bad and I was really begging my body not to be an asshole and do the whole cycle thing in 30 days instead of 28 but noooo, it was revenge time for me not eating well. So, yeah, that happened. I got the fucking bleeding thing (which joy oh joy makes me a nauseous, puking, cramping mess for the first three days). It started Saturday morning which might give you a clue how the racing thing went. Still, I was going to try my best at ignoring that so we went out for breakfast and some sightseeing. We walked a bit but I was feeling like crap so we decided to go back to the place where we were staying and sleep a bit. We overslept, we managed to sleep past our lunch time and with only 1.5 hours left to the race we had no choice but to keep the eating light (extremely light).

Race was at 7, it was cold. I had cramps. I wanted to vomit. I noticed there were few racers for the half marathon distance (I counted 100). The race started and there we went. We were supposed to have hydration points every 2 km and the organizers didn’t deliver. We were supposed to have isotonics every 2,5km from the 10th onwards and we didn’t get that either. There were 4 different distances (21km, 15km, 10km and 5km) and the distances got split and rejoined and everything was a mess.

I had the fucking sweeper behind me the whole fucking race. No, that’s wrong, sorry, not the whole race just until the guy who was ahead of me started cramping at the 14th km because of the cold, lack of hydration and dunno salt imbalance? and that’s the only reason I didn’t finish dead last. Also, there were hills. They weren’t steep but man, I wasn’t even prepared for that.

In the few hydration points we had I managed to save two water bags for later and there were other points where they just picked their stuff up before we even got there. When I got separated from the sweeper I discovered the surprise. The cherry on top. The traffic was being allowed on the streets before the allotted time and I had to avoid cars so I wasn’t ran over by them. Fortunately they had a motorcycle guy escorting me but I was really scared for a whole km before I got that guy (like thank you, you rock man). I was just pushing myself to finish thinking about just giving up the whole time. I felt horrible, about to faint and because it was nocturnal there weren’t a lot of people cheering on the streets. I grabbed one of my stashed water bags and started squeezing and it burst. It spilled. I didn’t get a mouthful of water. Right then I wanted to give up. The guy in the motorcycle noticed and he went a little ahead and came back. He just started getting the bike really close and he reached his hand and –I swear that guy deserves a hug or something- he had scored some water for me. I just kept going not feeling like I was going to finish but just eating up the km. I managed to end the race. The place was almost deserted. I didn’t get a recovery kit (water, some food). I had to ask around for my medal. I felt like the worst thing on the universe but my running buddy tried to lift my spirits saying I finished. The guy behind me arrived and we ran with him the last 400 m with him. I was feeling horrible. I didn’t want him seeing the finish line alone and with nobody cheering like I did. He hugged me and my buddy and we went to sleep. Just like that. Done.

Like, I’ve seen people complaining about their timing and stuff. And here I am with a 2 hours 46 min timing watching it XD. I’m seriously contemplating this running in races thing. I have fun but I can’t compete. I can do distances but I can’t up my pace. Yes, this was a running nightmare for me but I can honestly say that I can’t run above a 11:30 min/mile pace. So yeah. Whatever.