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I don’t feel 100%, but this has been my best running week in quite a while.  I did 26.5 miles in 5 days of running.
Mon – ran 5.5 miles with Tex,  Jon and Cali around Camp Hill

Tue – ran 3 miles with Nate from Passage to India around the PennDOT/Greenbelt

Wed – ran 7 miles with Jon and Tex down to the Negley Park area

Thu – off

Fri – 3 miles easy around Greenbelt

Sat – 8 miles with the Crispy Balance group at Conewago.

Sun – off

I haven’t updated in a while, here is the blitz:

Running – I managed to somehow get a minor muscle strain in my back which took me out of running for about 10 days (possibly by overdoing in on the Wii Fit ‘Super Hula Hoop’ game).  I came back with a 6 miler @ Conewago on Saturday with the gang, took Sunday off, ran 5.5 miles with Jon, Tex, and Cali on Monday, and then ran 3 miles with Nate tonight. The Geisinger Humdinger race is coming up in about a week and a half. Hopefully I’ll be able to get in five or six solid runs in before then.  I definitely won’t be able to beat my time from last year, but I will be happy if I am able to push hard for the entire length of the race.

Finance – mint.com has added some nice new features, including being able to track off-line assets like houses, vehicles, or just accounts that can’t be accessed automatically.  They also prettied up the user interface a bit.

Zombie Killing - I started playing the video game Left4Dead with some friends online, which has been a lot of fun.

Programming – I’ve been checking out a new Java SDK for LDAP from the Unbound ID folks.  If you have been using the ancient Netscape/Mozilla LDAP SDK before, give Unbound’s a shot, it has a lot of interesting features.

Solaris – if you are troubleshooting anything relating to tcp listen drops, check out the ndd -get /dev/tcp tcplistenhash command.   One quirk I noticed was that if you aren’t root, it has some limit to the frequency you can run the command.  I assume the command is a bit expensive and they are trying to prevent a DOS attack, but the observability is excellent.

This week started off well, but I got busier than expected with work on Thurs and Fri and also had some leg pains so I ended up taking it easier on the later part of the week.  I did about an hour on the Wii Fit over the course of the week and got my best ‘Wii Fit Age’ so far (26, 10 years less than my current age).

Mon – ran 5.75 miles with Jon and James around Camp Hill

Tue – ran 3 miles with Nate at Run4Naan.  Our fastest run yet, 3 miles @ 8:51 pace avg HR was 135

Wed – ran 5 miles with Jon and James around Camp Hill

Thu – off – work got really busy in afternoon/evening

Fri – ran 1.25 miles on treadmill at home, felt horrible

Sat – 30 mins elliptical at home

Sun – ran 5 miles @ LA Fitness with Mark.  Right calf cramped up just after I finished, thought I had pulled a muscle for a second but then it felt ok

Total for the week: 20 miles + 30 mins elliptical

I just filled out my entry form for the Geisinger Humdinger 7.1 mile trail race which will be on March 7th.  I ran this last year and had a fun time.  Since the race has a ton of killer hills, I definitely need to start adding some hillier routes to my runs.

If you live in the Camp Hill/Harrisburg area and want to car pool up to Danville with Jon Laman and myself, shoot me an email.

My 4th 24 mile week in a row.   I did change up the frequency and distance of my running this week with 6 runs in a row and shrank my long-run to be a much more reasonable 25% of weekly mileage (versus 41% for previous weeks).

Mon – 5 miles easy with Jon and James around Camp Hill

Tue – 4 miles easy with Jon (and his dog Maple) around Camp Hill

Wed – 3 miles easy on City Island/Front Street seeing if I could intercept the Tenesday crew.  The bridges were super slick.

Thu – 3 miles at Run4Naan along Front Street with Mark and Nate.  Cold and windy, but good food afterward.

Fri – 3 miles along riverfront to PennDOT from City Island.

Sat - 6 miles on the Conewago with Mark.   I love running on trails that have a light covering of snow. We took it easy going out 3miles  and then kicked it up a notch (or two or three) during the way back. The last two miles were my first sub-8 minute miles in a while.

Sun – 30 mins on elliptical at home.  I felt like I could have ran, but decided to play it conservative.

On a slightly down note, I managed to hurt my shoulder last week, so I’m going to miss out on the start of the push-up contest.

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

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

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.