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August 27, 2004

Marathon Running

I'm stressing a bit right now because I need another driver. Tomorrow is the team's 14th annual relay marathon. The good news is that we'll likely have 3 teams this year, the bad news is that we only have 4 drivers, which will make everything more complicated (since the drivers all have to run legs too). I can organize with just four drivers, but I'll have to try and recruit a parent in the morning. My other stress is that the team keeps getting bigger and bigger and if more than 16 show up tomorrow I won't have enough seat belts. I feel like someone new joins the team everyday. We're officially over 20 on the team! That's definately a record and we could be up to 25 by the end of next week, we haven't started school yet so I haven't had a chance to recruit some dark horses.

Today I finally got a real second run in. We ran 2 miles in the morning, did calistenics and played 30 minutes of team handball. This afternoon I ran another 7 miles. I had to cut it shorter than I wanted becuase I didn't feel great (speed yesterday) and I might end up running a lot in the relay marathon tomorrow...I'm toying with the idea of making a 2-man team (1/2 marathon each) between J. and me.

I'm only at 33 miles for the week so I'm shooting for a 22 mile+ weekend to salvage some good mileage. I've been packing and and cleaning all week - it never ends, that's what I get for being such a pack rat!!

Posted by at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2004

A little Speed work

Today was the first speed work day for the team and I was able to get into the workout too. I had one of our injured runners do the timing. I couldn't find my measuring wheel before the workout so I just made up a cross country loop and guesstimated the distance based on our times. I ended up running 3:53, 3:47, 3:18, 3:42, 3:18 for what I would guess was a little under 1000m. It was good to get some race pace running and a couple hard ones in. I ended up with 6 miles this morning and should have time to get more in later today.

Posted by at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2004

Wednesday Evening

So far this week has had a pretty slow start. Monday was the first day of cross country practice for my team. We ran 3.5 miles in the morning and then another 1.0 mile in the evening with Light Impact body weights and abdominal exercises. I didn't have time to do any other running so I also only ran 4.5 miles for the day.

Tuesday was the team time trial. The time trial is a ~2-mile loop through the woods near the school. I ran 11:17 for the 2 miles, which was one of my better times on the hilly course. I ended up getting about 5 miles for the day because I didn't get a second run in.

So far today I have an easy 4 miles in the bank and should get another 4 miles this evening, 8 for the day. I have not done a good job of getting miles in so far since practice started. Hopefully tomorrow will be the start of a good finish to this week.

Posted by at 5:14 PM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2004

Moving days

The last 3 days were devoted to packing and loading all of my roommates belongings into a trailer and sending her on her way to Grays Harbor. I actually didn't do much yesterday besides sleep, alot! I was going to do an evening run but had to make and emergency rescue for a broken down friend in Moses Lake. So I listened to the Olympics on the radio and missed my run :(.

Saturday I ran an easy 8 miles downtown through Browne's Addition and Pleasant Valley. That gave me 50 miles for the week. I only ran 5 days though so it was harder than it sounds. :)

Friday, I ran 8 miles including the Mead High School river run.

Today was the first day of cross country practice. We didn't run much this morning because we're running a double today and most of the team is fairly out of shape.

My #5 girls' team runner sprained her ankle yesterday in dramatic fashion. She was Go-Karting with her 6 year old sister behind the wheel and they somehow ended up driving through a wooden wall! Poor girl will probably be traumatized for life and never drive again. When her dad called he said "I have good news and bad news. The good news is that K. is out of the ER." I should have asked for the bad news first so my imagination wouldn't have freaked me out so much. The bad news was that she had sprained her ankle and was going to miss practice. My advice - don't let 6 year olds with vision problems drive Go-Karts!

Posted by at 1:30 PM | Comments (1)

August 19, 2004

Suffering

Last night I was inspired by Tyler Hamilton's time trial win in cycling. I'm glad that he won the gold after having to drop out of the Tour. The announcers kept saying things like the time trial event is all about riding hard and "suffering" throughout the race without letting it slow you down. I realized that although my running is going well that I have to eventually put in some runs that really hurt. Yesterday the hills were hard, but it was only like 12 minutes of suffering and split up with lots of recovery, so today while I was feeling inspired I decided to suffer.

I choose the 10-mile racecourse that I'll be running on Sept. 12th as the site of my suffering. I feel that it really helps me to have run the course a couple times before actually racing on it. In any case, I usually do better on courses I know well. I didn't want to run all out because that would drain me too much so I set out to run a hard pace, but not race pace, and focus on form and leg turnover. I only knew a couple mile marks so I didn't get all the splits. The first 3-miles were 6:17 pace with a significant downhill. I used the first mile to warm-up though so my splits were probably like 6:35, 6:15, and 6:00. The next 5 miles of the course are very uneventful and pretty much like running on a treadmill exciting. I really wanted to practice focusing during this part because it will be tough to stay focused during the race. I ran to the 6-mile mark still on 6:17 pace. After 7.5 miles, the course is mostly uphill and I didn't know any mile marks except the finish. I finished with a 26:56 for the last four miles (6:45 pace) which I wasn't too happy about, 64:38 overall. I definitely suffered though and my legs don't feel sore right now, so I guess I accomplished my goals for the day. It was also good to figure out some things to work on during the next three weeks. #1 on my list is Abs, I haven't been doing them while I built up mileage but my form definitely broke down during the last four miles and mainly because my core was too weak.

Tonight is packing night. My roommate is moving out this weekend and I am moving out the next weekend so there is a lot to do.

Posted by at 7:39 PM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2004

Reading, Running, and writing

I finally caught up on blog reading. It took me forever! It didn't help that I only read during commercial breaks during the shot put competition and Iraq soccer game. One disadvantage of being a track coach at a small school is that I coach or at least partially coach all the events. That means that I am drawn in by all the events and must watch them all, record them and try to learn something from each of them. Thankfully, I am still on pseudo summer break so I have time for all of them.

My run this morning went pretty well. I was inspired by all the workouts that I had been reading about and decided to do some hill work. I didn't want to do repeats though so I determined to run a hilly route and run all the hills hard. The first hill was about 2 minutes of difficult plus grade (meaning some hand plants were required). At the top I decide it was a good hill and I figured I could run a 1 mile loop to end up back at the bottom and run it again. The second time I ran faster than the first but had to stop at the top to catch my breath and get my heart rate back down under 180. After that I thought that was enough of that hill and headed onward towards some new ones that weren't so steep. After 2 miles I ran up a 3 minute hill that was steep but didn't require any hand plants. Then I ran to the bottom of Doomsday Hill, which is part of the Bloomsday course. I ran this hill with one eye on the watch because there is a marked mile starting about 1/4th of the way up the hill and decided to top off the hill and finish out the mile for time. I ran 6:15 for the mile, which seems pretty good because I think I ran it in 5:55 during the race last May. I ran the last 1.5 miles home and called it a morning.

Soon I have another run scheduled on the south hill. I figure I'll get about 3-4 more miles. I am going to ride my bike the 4 miles to the start for some bonus exercise.

Posted by at 4:20 PM | Comments (0)

Catching up on blogs

I'm reading the blogs in alphabetical order, catching up on the last week. I think we've reached a critical mass...if I read everyone's blog for the day it takes me like 30 minutes. Catching up for a week will take hours. With new bloggers coming on board I may not be able to keep reading them all, :(. Keep up the great work though, everyone's comments are very informative and inspirational.

Posted by at 12:06 AM | Comments (2)

August 17, 2004

A long update

Well it has been like a week since I've updated so this might get pretty long. Lucky for me I only have to write about 4 runs during the past week.

Last Wednesday I ran twice. My morning run was 10 miles on the Bloomsday Road Race course with lots of little extra loops to turn the 12K course into a 10-miler. In the afternoon I ran some trails on the south hill for another 5 miles. Then I went to the airport and hopped a plane to Seattle. From Seattle I flew red-eye to Boston...always nice to fly over Spokane three hours after leaving Spokane.

Thursday I arrived in Boston and took the Logan Express to Framingham where my friend N. took me to his house. I was a good house guest since I immediately climbed into a bed and slept for 6 hours. After my "nap" we drove back to the airport to pick up his friend K. who flew in from South Carolina ahead of Charley and through Betty…always nice to drive to the airport 7 hours after leaving the airport. We went out to dinner and running did not make it into my day.

Friday the three of us drove 5 hours to Kingfield, ME. We staked claim to our beds in the house rented for the weekend by several friends from Bowdoin. (Actually, we had two houses). Upon arriving we made a very large dinner (2 ½ lb. burgers, 1 large sausage, 1 bowl of spaghetti, 1 huge salad, and 2 beers for me.) After dinner the groom arrived and announced that we were to follow him to the local watering hole for an impromptu bachelor’s party. The town was so small though that the bridal party was also at the same watering hole. In any case it was nice to actually meet the bride and hang out with old friends. Running did not make it into the day’s schedule.

Saturday actually included some running! I ran with Boom-Boom and Mike P. (both former BBXC teammates). We found a pretty nice ATV trail and ran a 10 mile out and back, mostly uphill on the way out. The wedding was that evening and it was very short, like 5 minutes. At the reception there were quite a few friends that I had not seen in years and we danced, drank, and talked for over 7 hours.

Sunday we drove back to Boston, watch some Olympics coverage and went out to dinner for N.’s father’s birthday. Running did not make it into the day’s schedule.

Monday I slept in and mentally prepared for my flight home. I finally made it home after 12 hours of traveling. Unfortunately my bag is lost. Mainly just clothes, but with 3 pairs of running shorts missing…I’m not a happy runner. No running on Monday either.

Today I finally ran again. I ran 11 miles on the Centennial Trail near my apartment. After taking 4 of the last 5 days off I felt pretty rested and I’m hoping for a 50+ mile week this week and 60+ next week. Next week I start cross country practice with my team. My goal this year is to do doubles just about everyday so I can take it easy during the team’s practice.

Posted by at 4:17 PM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2004

Sleeping

I think I'm finally recovered from not getting any good sleep last weekend. It's a good thing too because I have an overnight flight flight to Boston tomorrow night. Why I do this to myself, I'll never know. At least it hasn't hurt my training too much. Of course, it helps to have my days free to take naps and run whenever I feel the urge.

Yesterday I ran 3.5 miles in the morning with some of the cross country team. Only 3 runners showed - the #1 boy and the #1 and #2 girls...hmmmm wonder what makes them so good.
In the evening I ran another 4.5 miles from home and for some reason felt like pushing the pace, I was probably running low 6s for much of the run.

This morning I needed to get some hills in since I missed the Mt. Spokane run this weekend. I decided that I could get a good workout on the bluff off the south hill. I only ended up running 6.5 miles, but I did get a lot of hill work and felt good on all of them.

This puts me a little behind already this week. No chance of running tonight since I'm going to a wine "tasting" and will probably be too intoxicated. I'll have to make sure to take it easy though because I really want to get in a long run tomorrow before I leave for New England. I'm still skeptical about how much running I will be able to do this weekend. It has been awhile since I really let my muscles recover though so I'm not too worried. I can always hit 40-50 this week and still be ready to hit 60 next week.

Posted by at 2:21 PM | Comments (1)

August 9, 2004

3 AM

It's 3 AM and I'm just getting home. It took awhile but I think we finally navigated every single street in the Grays Harbor area of Washington. My sister J. and I left at 4 AM on Saturday morning and arrived about 11 AM. After 4 hours of looking for someplace for her to live, we still hadn't found anything suitable. Needless to say, we were a little distressed. For some reason all of the property management places are closed on the weekend there so we were pretty much left wandering the streets of unfamiliar towns looking for "for rent" signs. You wouldn't believe how exciting it was for us to find a run down apartment building! Fortunately, we had much better luck Sunday and actually have a top 3 list plus some even nicer spots that we couldn't get into to check out or find a price for rent. In any case, I think it was a successful trip in the end.

Plus I was able to get a nice run in on the beach near Ocean City. This beach will definitely rank high on my list of best running beaches for some time. First it was flat...I mean some beaches have a severe tilt towards the water, this one did not. It was also very firm, meaning it didn't feel like I was running in sand, I was just running on it. The beach was also quite long; I ran 45 minutes south and didn't reach the end before turning around and running back. The only down side was that there were quite a few cars and other vehicles along the way. They were avoidable if I ran closer to the water, but then I had to keep jumping over little streams and that was annoying after awhile too. Thankfully, I noticed the wind before I started. When you run on the beach make sure you know which way the wind is blowing b/c if you're running with the wind on the way out you won't notice it until you turn around and it isn't a pleasant surprise! I did notice it and continued to notice all the extreme kite fliers so I was at least mentally prepared for a battle on my return trip. I finished in 1:31:00 and about 12.5 miles. That took me to 57 miles for the week.

I was hoping for 60 but just couldn't fit it in with all the driving time I put in this weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to come close to 60 this week but it will be difficult since I'm flying a red eye flight to Boston on Wednesday night (getting in Thursday morning), driving to Maine on Friday, going to a wedding on Saturday, driving back (likely hung over) on Sunday, and flying back to Spokane on Monday!

Saturday 8/7 - No running
Friday 8/6 - 3.5 miles + 2.5 miles in the rain and between lightning storms

Posted by at 3:11 AM | Comments (0)

August 5, 2004

Introduction to James

Introduction/About this Blog

James, referred to as "I" throughout this blog, currently lives and trains in Spokane, WA. I am 29 and do not have any immediate plans with my running other than getting faster and winning races. I would like to eventually break 2:30 for a marathon and if god is willing run under 2:20. My current PR of 2:40 doesn't really reflect my ability so that's why I've named myself a Slacker in this blog, slacker - underachiever, you get the correlation. In any case I actually do some pretty hard training at times and hopefully it will pay off with a quality marathon time in the future.

I love to write about my running so I'm very happy to be "blogging" my running log. Also, I've found that it's fun to think about what I'm going to write about while I'm running. (if you read that sentence a couple times it'll make sense)

In my spare non-running time I also coach a cross country team here in Spokane. It’s a small school, but they have been fairly successful for their size. You can follow their progress at http://www.sgs.org/webs/sgsxc/. I used to teach at the school too, but this year I am not. I took most of this summer completely off trying to figure out what to do with my life but still haven't figured it out. So now that I'm out of money I'll be working grunt labor jobs until I do. As long as I get to keep running, all is good.

Posted by at 9:41 PM | Comments (1)

Oregon Drills

I finally figured out this whole hotzone thing here in Spokane and actually can connect right here from my deck. I'm not actually in the zone but since I have a direct line of sight to some of the antenna I still get 42% signal strength, whatever that means. I'm new to the whole wi-fi thing and only tried it out because I thought I might be able to get internet for free - and I was right! Now I get to sit out on my deck and do the internet thing without having a 40' wire connected to my computer and even better I will get to tell Comcast to take a flying leap. I only get 2 hours free per day, but I think that will be enough until they introduce their rates for unlimited use which will hopefully be not very much. I also found out yesterday that one of my favorite coffee shops has wi-fi newly installed so if my two hours run out I can always go there. Anyway if you have a laptop and several opportunities to connect through wi-fi I would recommend it. It didn't take me too long to figure it out and works just as well as the cable modem - at least so far.

I can hardly believe the weather right now. Out here on the deck it's absolutely perfect. Weather dot com says its 73 degrees, 46% humidity, no wind and barely a cloud in the sky, plus its sunset to boot! It was especially nice to get to run in the afternoon. It gave me an extra 8 hours of recovery, which I needed after running more in the last 5 days than all of last week.

Today's run was a two-mile run to Corbin Park and then 30 minutes of Oregon Drills, followed by the two-mile run back home. Oregon Drills, for those of you unfamiliar - most of you, are 100m strides. You start with 100m of jog, followed by 100m of race pace, and then 100m of sprinting. This is repeated over and over until time runs out. I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but it isn't as boring as you'd think. Normally I do them on a football field and run down the sideline, up the middle, and then back down the other sideline. That usually gives me about 10-15 seconds of jogging rest between the race pace and the sprint plus about a minute of jog time between the sprint and the next race pace 100. Today I guesstimated 100m at the park, which is a little wider than a football field and did a similar pattern though the trees. I didn't work very hard except on the sprints so it really didn't feel like I did more than 14x100m hard, but in the end I had 8 miles in the bank plus some better leg turnover than I've had in awhile.

Later tonight I'm going to have to add an About this Blog to this blog. I've been putting it off for several reasons, mainly I assumed anyone reading the Blog either already knew me or probably didn't care very much. Both are probably still true, but I just in case someone does care, it will be there.

Posted by at 7:24 PM | Comments (5)

August 4, 2004

Dropped by the high school team

Today the Mead High School team flat out dropped me. Actually at least three of the 6 runners that dropped me are college runners, but it doesn't matter who dropped me so much as I was left to wither in the heat alone.

I intended to have an easy run this morning and run with some mid pack runners but all failed when the mid packers decided today was the day for them to stick with the leaders. Of course, twenty minutes into the run they started dropping off. I dropped back with them thinking they would keep up a decent pace. But when we hit some hills, I ended up leaving them and entered into a void. I was about 200 meters behind the lead pack after 35 minutes and decided that I wasn't running much slower than they were so I should just burn a mile and catch up. I got to about 50 meters back when we hit some more hills. As my pain level increased I suddenly realized, conveniently, that I wasn't sticking to my easy day run plan so I stopped my assault and just maintained the distance up the hills hoping to make the final leap once we got back onto some flats. Once at the flats we turned into the woods and I began the chase again. What I didn't realize is that we had more hills to come! I got to within about 25 meters at 45 minutes, then we hit one last big hill, and I bonked. By the time I reached the top, they were totally gone, not even a dust trail! I was not happy about being dropped, but it was actually probably best because I was able to run the last 10 minutes at an easy pace.

I've actually been avoiding the run with them since I've been back in Spokane because I know how intense their runs can get. Why I choose my easy day to join them I don't know. I guess I thought I could let the lead pack go and run with the second group and was lost when the second group never formed. Also, having not raced in awhile it was hard to keep my competitive side in check.

I'm pretty far ahead of my mileage goals so far this week and I have two cool days (highs only around 80) coming up. Tomorrow I have the 30 minutes of Oregon Drills plus two miles of warm-up and two miles of cool down. I plan to run the strides very conservatively. This week has been great for training so far but I'm starting to worry about doing too much and hitting a wall by next week. Hopefully I can power through next week and then I am planning a four-day break (~5 miles per day) while I travel to Maine (by plane!) for a wedding.

I have to give up my Saturday run up the mountain this week because I am driving over to the Washington coast with my sister J. to help her look for a new place to live. I'm hoping to do a 90-minute run either on the beach or at least partially on the beach.

Posted by at 7:58 PM | Comments (5)

August 3, 2004

Catching up with the ladies

So I felt almost as dedicated as Alison and Barb today. Not enough to change the name of my blog but still a big step for me. Today I was supposed to run the 7.5 mile Bloomsday course and then run 4 more miles with my cross country team. I didn't make it up quite in time though so I only got a 4 miler done before checking in with the team. Only C. and assistant coach J. showed up at the clock tower and we ran a fairly brisk paced 4 miles. When we got back M. was there "early" for the run. He thought we were supposed to meet at 9 instead of 8. I still had more mileage to do so I ran another 4 miles with him at a decent pace and then ran back home. Total for the day was 1:42:10 and about 13 miles. I'm still not running that fast or doing any speed so I don't feel to overconfident, but I have run 42.5 miles in the last 4 days and 57.5 in the last 7.

I'm not too sure about speed this week. I'm still thinking maybe Oregon Drills on Thursday but I was reviewing some of Jack Daniels book and I don't really think I have as much base as I should. My last 10 weeks are 33, 42, 36, 42, 46, 42, 15, 56, 50, and 51. I should really add two more weeks of 60 to my base before working on speed. JD does recommed strides during the base phase or phase I and Oregon Drills are pretty much strides if you don't kill yourself doing them. So that's going to be my compromise this week. I think the Mt. Spokane run will be a good strength builder this week anyhow. The Mt. Spokane run starts at 3200' and goes up to over 5200' and usually takes about an hour up and then 40-45 minutes down while taking it easy on one's knees. Its all trails but I don't know how many miles. I usually call it 13 just becuase of the time it takes to complete but it's probably less since the pace on the way up is close to 9 minute miles.

Tomorrow I've decided to run with the Mead high school team. It should be a good 1 hour run and if I run in the middle pack only 7 flat pace or slower. I really should take an easy day tomorrow with speed coming up on Thursday and a mountain run on Saturday.

Posted by at 2:38 PM | Comments (0)

August 2, 2004

another good cool run

Today's 9 miler was run on the Centennial Trail instead of the park b/c I woke up a little too late to make the 20 minutes of driving to and from the park feasable. I felt pretty good throughout the run though and measured one of the miles at 7:15 and actually picked it up more towards the end of the run. I'm definately feeling better and better about my running. The weather is cooling down sooner than expected with the high tomorrow only about 84 degrees. Hopefully the thunder storms will stay away until the evening hours. Tomorrow is another 10 mile run at comfortable pace including 3-4 miles with my cross country team.

Posted by at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)

August 1, 2004

This week's plan

So I'm writing down this week's plan to put a little extra pressure on myself to stick to it. It's nothing fancy, just my first week with speed and not much speed. Goal #1 this week is to bump close to 60 miles for the week. Goal #2 is to get some sub 5:30 pace running in, and Goal #3 is to not do too much. It is supposed to be 10-15 degrees cooler thursday thru saturday so I'm putting off the speed until then:

Monday: Riverside State Park Loop (9 miles)
Tuesday: Clock Tower Run (3-4 miles) plus Bloomsday loop (7.5 miles)
Wednesday: Browne's Addition or SGS run (5 miles)
Thursday: Speed workout - either 4x1 mile at 5:20 or 30 minutes of Oregon Drills (8 miles)
Friday: River Run (3 miles) and optional second easy run in the evening (3-5 miles)
Saturday: Mt. Spokane or equivalent Hilly run (10-12 miles)
Sunday: Easy morning run (7-10 miles)

Posted by at 5:59 PM | Comments (2)

finishing off the week

I finally motivated to wake up early enough to get my run in this morning. I ran at 7:30 AM and it was 66 degrees as I left and 70 degrees when I finished at 9:10. I thought it would feel better running in the cool temps, but I decided that I was still dehydrated from yesterday's 8 miles in the evening when it was 91 degrees. I finished this week with 51 miles. I still feel pretty sore from wake boarding and I'm probably going again tomorrow too. Hopefully like weight lifting it gets better instead of worse. This week I am actually going to make a workout plan. Not that I'll necessarily stick to it very well. Hopefully having a plan will lead to more mileage and better training.

Posted by at 5:53 PM | Comments (0)