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Another 24 mile week.   I was originally planning on backing down a few miles, but felt strong towards the end of the week (and Jon bribed me with a Neato Burrito during Saturday’s run to extend it from 8 to 10 miles).   I’ve also been putting in a fair amount of work doing Wii Fit balance, strength (and a touch of yoga) exercises and using my foam roller once or twice a day.  I would like to slowly increase my mileage, but right now I think my biggest limiter is my weight.  I am up about 6-7%  over my previous steady-state weight and need to start getting back on track.

We had a new person, Sarah , join on the Saturday run.  She is training for a 50 mile trail race in September.  I hope she enjoyed the outing.

Mon: 2 miles on treadmill at LA Fitness w/ Mark

Tue: 3 miles on Front Street w/Nate before eating at Passage to India

Wed: 4 miles on treadmill at LA Fitness w/Mark

Thu: off

Fri: 5 miles with Jon at PennDOT

Sat: 10 miles around City Island, Lemoyne and Harrisburg with Jon, James, and Sarah

Sun: 30 mins on the elliptical at home

 is don’t mention it on a blog.  Doh.

At work a few co-workers and were talking about push-ups and we decided to hold a contest where the first person who can do 100 push-ups in a single set will win the grand prize consisting of $5 from everyone that enters (similar to Eric’s, although now that I re-read and saw his is $20 a person, I feel cheap).   We are going to start a baseline test in two weeks  where everyone will do push-ups until failure.  Every Monday we will run another test, and whoever has made the highest percentage gain over their previous max will get $1 from everyone.  This way it keeps people motivated even if there overall numbers don’t lead them to be in the running for the big prize.

I’ll consider it a personal victory if I can eventually hit 50, since the most I’ve done as an adult is 40.  I did 20 push-ups today while we were talking about the contest.  I didn’t quite go to failure, but I am pretty sure I couldn’t have gone past 25.  As a historical footnote, I did 55 push-ups once in high-school Spanish class, to avoid administrative punishment for having skipped a class.  I had trouble moving my arms for the rest of the day.

Another 24 mile week, but I definitely feel my long run (10 miles) is way too much compared to the rest of my volume.  I felt really beaten up on Sunday.  This week’s Tenesday loop 10 miler has a lot more elevation change than the City Island/Harrisburg 10 mile run that I did with Jon the week before.

Sun:  off

Mon: 5 miles around Camp Hill with Jon and James

Tues: 3 miles with Nate on Front Street in Harrisburg (and then ate at Passage to India)

Wed: off

Thu: 6 miles with Jon around Camp Hill

Fri: off

Sat: 10 mile Tenesday loop around Camp Hill, Harrisburg and Lemoyne with Jon

I subscribe to the IT conversations podcast stream and listened to an episode today about a physical therapist that uses Ninendo Wiis as part of their practice.  When I was going to physical therapy for my leg earlier this year, I mentioned the Wii Fit to my PTs, but they blew me off.  I think if they had a chance to see how good some of the feedback is, they might change their mind.  The Wii is also (relatively) cheap and fun enough that it can encourage people doing PT to continue working on their exercises at home.  The excellent feedback the Wii gave me when I was performing balance exercises was way better than anything I saw at my PT’s office.

24 miles for the week.  First time in a while that I worked out enough that it was worth recording.

Sunday: off

Mon: 6 miles with Jon, James, and Cali around Camp Hill (weather was awesome)

Tues: 3 miles with Nate in the snow along Front Street

Wed: 20 mins on elliptical at home (almost 2,000,000 strides on the equipment so far!)

Thurs:  5 miles with Jon and James around Camp Hill

Fri: off

Sat: 10 miles with Jon around City Island and Harrisburg.  It was cold and windy but the run went well.  I consider 10 miles my minimum distance for a guilt-free post-workout Neato Burrito.

I’m going to use the elliptical machine for a bit tomorrow and hope to hit a similar workout volume next week.

Exercise

Had a great run tonight with Jon, James, and Calli.  We enjoying the wonderfully freakish 60 degree weather at 5:45 and ran about 6 miles around Camp Hill.  In general my running has been more off than on lately due to various leg issues.  I’ve definitely pushed it too hard a few times when I’ve been feeling good, which caused my to wise up and put in place a ‘no miles under 8:00 until 2009′ rule.   I’ve been using an elliptical trainer at home to supplement my aerobic conditioning.  At this point I’m just aiming towards being in good enough shape to have a decent race at the Lehigh Valley Half Marathon in the beginning of May.

Ironman

No, I don’t have any intention of trying to become a triathlete, but I do enjoy reading the slowtwitch forums and the training advice of people like Gordo Byrn and Mark Allen.  I just watched a recording of  the 2008 Ironman championship.  The men’s race was interesting, but my favorite person to watch was Chrissie Wellington, who is just an incredible athlete.  She lost about 15 minutes due to equipment (and bike repair skill) issues and then came back to win by about 10 minutes. It was amazing to see her do her thing.

Computers

I spent a day at my parents this weekend hooking up their new iMac and showing them some of the newer Mac and internet features.  The equipment is definitely beautiful, but there are some trade-offs for the aesthetics.  The USB ports are only on the back of the machine and underneath the ends of the keyboard which makes it awkward if you want to plug/unplug devices like flash drives frequently.  I’ll probably add a USB hub during my next visit to make it more convient.

As the days have been getting shorter, my occasional weekday runs at 5:30 with my friend Jon have been plunging into darkness sooner and sooner.  At this point, it is already dark out when we start.  We are usually running around his low-traffic Camp Hill neighborhood, which is pretty runner friendly, but it is still important to make sure that you can see any obstacles in the road (like potholes or those wacky ball shaped seeds from some trees), and that vehicles can see you.

To handle the “can be seen by vehicles” part, I bought two of the Nathan Clip-On Deluxe LED Safety Strobes.  I can clip these to my wrists via my road-ID and watch.  Given my wrist movement in the arm swing, these can be seen from the front, side, and rear and the multiple LEDs blinking is very eye-catching.   I think I’ll also pick up a reflective vest the next time I see one that fits well.

To help see where I’m going I picked up a Petzl E47 PS Tikka Plus headlamp.  It is light-weight but really bright.  A feel somewhat like a coal-miner when wearing it, but it definitely does the trick.

I broke down last week and ordered a Garmin Forerunner 405 (the black watch above).  I’m not quite sure what to think of it yet. The 405 definitely looks a lot less dorky than my trusty 305 (red one above), but the 405 has its share of quirks and limitations.

Pros

• While still bulkier than the average watch, the 405 can actually be worn while not working out and people won’t wonder why you have a brick with an LCD strapped to your wrist
• The wireless syncing is neat (sent workouts to computer when I set it on my desk and even did a firmware upgrade that way)
• A few new options (like showing a graph of your heart rate)

Cons

• They definitely had to make some usability trade-offs to ensure the battery life isn’t completely horrible when in normal watch mode
• You perform many functions on the watch by touching the bezel (like an iPod).  Unfortunately like an iPod, you can’t be wearing gloves.
• The elevation accuracy appears to be much worse than the 305
• You have to push the ‘start/stop’ and ‘lap/reset’ buttons at the same time to lock the bezel.  I can see myself easily dorking this up during an event and either stopping the watch or adding an inadvertent lap
• I had a weird lock-up occur and had to dork with the watch for a few minutes to get it to come back to life

After uploading data tonight on the 405, I got a notice that a new firmware update was available and installed it.  Hopefully that will fix some of the quirks.

Note that even though the 405 looks less dorky, I am sure I looked like a complete tool tonight when I wore both of the the watches while running.  I lucked out in that it was almost completely dark out by the time I ran, thus hiding my gadgetry shame.  I did have a real goal though, I wanted to see how close the two devices would be for my run.  From a distance measured perspective, they were pretty darn close (and I’m sure I added a second or so on stopping and starting since I couldn’t hit them both at the same exact time).

Garmin 305: 5.03 miles (auto-laps of  8:00, 7:51, 7:40, 7:13, 7:03, :08)

Garmin 405: 5.02 miles (auto-laps of 8:02, 7:50. 7:42, 7:12, 7:03, :07)

(Side note, best run in months!)

From an elevation perspective, the 405 was chock full of fail.  It showed about 3 times the elevation variation that the 305 had (and the 305 isn’t super accurate elevation-wise to begin with).  I really hope Garmin is able to update the firmware to deal with the elevation better (or at least at their MB gravity service to Garmin’s Connect service).

Update: To be clear, if I didn’t already have a perfectly functioning device, I think an argument could be made for the 405.  If you do already have a 305 that works fine, it is hard to make the case for the 405 except out of love for gadgetry.

I’m happy to say I’ve had my best running week in at least two months. I’ve also started getting back into push-ups and sit-ups on a most mornings.  My best effort for push-ups so far was 2 sets of 20 with a break in between for 50 situps.

What $300 orthotics look like

On Friday I picked up my orthotics.  I’ll be breaking them in by wearing the orthos for increasing periods of time over the next week while walking and then start phasing in running with them the week after next.  It feels weird to have something touching my (high) arches, but the pressure distribution graphs at the PT sure looked a lot better when the orthotics were in.

Mon: 3.25 mile run w/Jon and Mark around Camp Hill

Tue:  3.6 mile run w/Jon and Mark around Camp Hill

Wed: After work got dressed to run and drove to PennDOT to put in a few miles on the greenbelt. After getting out of my car decided I my legs were feeling kind of beaten up so just headed home.  I wish I had decided this before driving to PennDOT, but I think not running was the smart move.

Thu: 3.1 mile run w/Jon around Camp Hill

Fri:  1.6 miles on path outside work (2 loops). Forgot HR strap and pushed the pace.

Sat: 6.6 mile long run with Mark at Conewago.  I was pretty cold in the beginning but warmed up about 1/2 through.

Sun: Successfuly resisted urge to workout since Sat was my longest run in a while

Weekly total: 18 miles

I’m not sure what this coming week will be like.  I’ll be down in Columbia MD Mon-Fri for a training session, and then in Baltimore Fri-Sun for a company meeting.  Hopefully I can find a nearby park or trail to get some running in.

I went out for a run today after work and it turned out a better than I expected.  There is paved loop that circles a field out behind our building that is just over .8 miles long and I ended up running it 3 times and then adding on a few seconds to make the run as close to 2.5 miles as I could get.

I started out running pretty conservative for the first two minutes, and then realized I was annoyed at running slow all the time, so I decided to change it up.  I picked up the pace and was pleasantly surprised when I hit the first mile in 8:07.  This was the fastest mile I’ve ran in quite some time (and if I hadn’t dawdled during the first two minutes I’m sure it would have been significantly faster).  I tried to keep an even effort and hit the second mile in 7:15, and then I put a bit of extra effort into it (but not close to 100%) and ran that last .5 miles at about a 6:52 pace.

I’m definitely not in anything like 5K PR shape, but I also haven’t lost as much conditioning as I feared.  The experiment is over though, back to slower running for a while.

Summary: 2.5 miles in 18:50 (7:32 average pace)

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