Monday, April 22, 2013
A Different Direction
Up until the past year, my life had been fully devoted to running. I was also a student but an average one at best. I had other hobbies but everything took a backseat to running. Don't get me wrong, I still love running but it's time to start living! I have many different hobbies that I presently enjoy and would like an arena to talk about; mountain biking, bouldering, mountaineering and backpacking (just starting these ones in the spirit of Wyoming), disc golfing, brewing, eating well, traveling, and anything else that I would like to do. I am also considering going back to school to pursue a few interests and it will be nice to be a true student and I look forward to soaking up the student experience that I deprived myself of. I loved my 4 years at SDSU but I am looking forward to more adventures of a different sort as well as continuing to run. As I take this different direction I am looking to take on a different name for my blog. I would like it to be something simple yet creative and still encompassing my hobbies. It will be difficult to find the right phrase or name because my hobbies are fairly diverese and ever expanding. I am looking forward to the future and will take any suggestions!
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
April 15-21st Training Recap- The Hay is in the Barn
April 15th- Went out for an easy 4 with Alex. Windchill around 0. I thought this was Spring? Only 12 days out.
April 16th- Didn't run
April 17th- 6 miles at a decent pace.
April 18th- 4 miles.
April 19th- 4 quick miles!
April 20th- Ran a 5k, it felt too fast from the start. I guess that's what happens when you never do workouts. The high school team took off at a very unsustainable pace. I finished 6th in 17:52. It was 4 loops around the park and the race was large enough that we lapped people as we started. They also devised a system to help you count to 4 by handing you a different colored ribbon each lap. It was bad. But it was for charity and Alex won $30 for his efforts.
April 21st- 2nd attempt at getting out to Curt Gowdy State Park for a trail run. We've given up all hope of being on Happy Jack's trails for awhile, they're still enjoying good xc skiing there! We made it to Gowdy and attempted to run on the trails for about 2 minutes. There was 6" to 12" of snow on the trails and it was icy due to melting and refreezing a few times. Surely not runnable. We took to the road through the park. It was very scenic and the way out very enjoyable. We turned around after nearly 40 minutes. The way back was much harder as we had gone downhill about 300 feet including some long climbs and were now running into a 35-50 mph wind. It took 4 minutes longer to get back with a much harder effort.
32 miles on the week, ironically too similar to the distance I will be attempting to complete in about 4 hours on the 27th.
April 16th- Didn't run
April 17th- 6 miles at a decent pace.
April 18th- 4 miles.
April 19th- 4 quick miles!
April 20th- Ran a 5k, it felt too fast from the start. I guess that's what happens when you never do workouts. The high school team took off at a very unsustainable pace. I finished 6th in 17:52. It was 4 loops around the park and the race was large enough that we lapped people as we started. They also devised a system to help you count to 4 by handing you a different colored ribbon each lap. It was bad. But it was for charity and Alex won $30 for his efforts.
April 21st- 2nd attempt at getting out to Curt Gowdy State Park for a trail run. We've given up all hope of being on Happy Jack's trails for awhile, they're still enjoying good xc skiing there! We made it to Gowdy and attempted to run on the trails for about 2 minutes. There was 6" to 12" of snow on the trails and it was icy due to melting and refreezing a few times. Surely not runnable. We took to the road through the park. It was very scenic and the way out very enjoyable. We turned around after nearly 40 minutes. The way back was much harder as we had gone downhill about 300 feet including some long climbs and were now running into a 35-50 mph wind. It took 4 minutes longer to get back with a much harder effort.
32 miles on the week, ironically too similar to the distance I will be attempting to complete in about 4 hours on the 27th.
Friday, April 12, 2013
800m Training
This summer I would like to break 2:00 for the 800m run. Having only run the event a handful of times, ever, I believe my personal best is 2:03.1. I know I ran a few 4x800 splits faster than that but I don't know how fast. Those times were all from high school. I may have been able to run slightly faster in college but with less races, there was less time to expiriment with an event that I am not overly good at. In addition, due to the volume of my overall running and lack of anything truly fast, I don't know if I would have gone much faster at all.
You may be thinking, why would he want to do this? My reasons mostly come back to time and motivation. In my mind, 6 x 150m, no matter how fast, is mentally much easier than 10 x 1k, especially alone. Clearly it will also consume much less time. Another reason I want to do this is that I was always envious of the guys with the natural leg speed that I lacked. Plus, everybody knows that going fast is fun.
For now, I am just going to keep running as I have been until my April 27th 50k. After that I will lightly jog for awhile and focus on recovering from that race and getting mentally ready to tackle this new type of training. I haven't decided on an actual course of training yet, I am still doing my homework. It will probably be a little higher mileage than most 800 training plans because I still want to be successful at trail races this summer and the SDSU Classic 8k in the fall. I think for awhile I will plan to do weeks that include hills, fartlek, and a long run with strides after most easy runs. I am also going to focus on the whole body with lots of cross training in the form of bouldering and mountain biking.
You may be thinking, why would he want to do this? My reasons mostly come back to time and motivation. In my mind, 6 x 150m, no matter how fast, is mentally much easier than 10 x 1k, especially alone. Clearly it will also consume much less time. Another reason I want to do this is that I was always envious of the guys with the natural leg speed that I lacked. Plus, everybody knows that going fast is fun.
For now, I am just going to keep running as I have been until my April 27th 50k. After that I will lightly jog for awhile and focus on recovering from that race and getting mentally ready to tackle this new type of training. I haven't decided on an actual course of training yet, I am still doing my homework. It will probably be a little higher mileage than most 800 training plans because I still want to be successful at trail races this summer and the SDSU Classic 8k in the fall. I think for awhile I will plan to do weeks that include hills, fartlek, and a long run with strides after most easy runs. I am also going to focus on the whole body with lots of cross training in the form of bouldering and mountain biking.
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