Treadmilling

I am a member of Snap Fitness in Valley Lakes which is convenient and walking distance from the house, they have treadmills which are nice with TV's. However management does not do much in the way of fixing broken TV's and audio issues, which can be frustrating for those long runs. The treadmills work fine however.

Most of my runs have been indoors on the treadmill since the weather has been unpleasant and cold out. I can time my runs and record them with the Garmin, although splits and pacing are not recorded.

I am not sure if its me, or just an illusion I always seem to run further and faster outdoors, perhaps the treadmill is off when it comes to pacing itself, anyway since my marathons are outdoors I am not going to complain.

Missed Workouts

I have only had to miss a couple of work outs so far and I have been able to shift the weeks schedule to accommodate them. However the more worrying thing is that in some I just can't continue at the proper pace to the end.

This seems to be mostly in the longer runs, however intellectually I know that I need to build up my base slowly, the emotional side of me, is like how the hell can I run a half marathon when I can't run 3 miles without walking? However a few weeks ago that would have been I can't run 2 miles without walking so I am improving.

Defeating the Dark Lord

For those of you who have been around me for any length of time know that I love my Diet Coke. So this morning I drank my last Diet Coke and or anything caffeine related. This is a big step, since I love the dark lord from Atlanta!

I have read all the literature on the evils of caffeine, and while I know it, its very hard to put into practice.

UPDATE: One month later, still clean, the only side effect I felt was sleepiness, rather then 7 hours a night it was nearly 9-10 hours for about a week, which has gone away.

UPDATE #2: Still ticking although I unthinkingly ordered one at a McDonalds and had two sips of it before I realized what I was doing, talk about a habit. Sorry to the Libertyville sewers since I poured the offending liquid right out the window in a dramatic gesture worthy of an Oscar.

Trailbreaker Half Marathon

So I finally pinpointed a half marathon to point towards. I decided on the Trailbreaker Half marathon in Waukesha, Wisconsin on April 6.

There is approximately 9 miles of improved/asphalt trails (including the Fox River Trail & Glacial Drumlin Trail). The trail is subject to only gentle grades with the scenic views of the historic City of Waukesha, the Fox River and the Kettle Moraine scenery of southeast Wisconsin countryside. The trail crosses city streets and country roads.

It seems pretty low key and without a massive amount of people plus its a 930am start so we can drive up. Also if weather or injury pops up, it has day of race registration as well.

As a back up there are a couple of other half marathons the week afterwards relatively nearby as well.

Grant Woods Run

Weight Issues

The primary reason I decided to try running with a goal attached is to lose weight. After having lost about 80 pounds back in 2005-06 on the Atkins Diet, I had but about 35 of it back on since then. So candidly my clothes were not fitting as well as I might have liked, and I am not getting any younger!

Rather then diet this time I decided to focus on fitness, since I referee HS soccer and club soccer I need to get into a certain level of shape, but that was generally easy to meet the minimum standard for fitness. A hard varsity game is maybe 3-4 miles over a 2 hour period, with lots of pauses, so the effort was not supreme.

I have tried periodically to diet but with out much success since the Atkins success in 05, however I do like my pasta, bread and sauces!

The Running Plan for the Half Marathon

I am working towards a half marathon sometime in early April and am using a beginners half marathon plan I got from the book Marathoning for Mortals which was an excellent read. The plan is straight forward enough and fits with my schedule.

Basically I have a long run on the weekend, with three smaller runs focusing on different aspects of the run during the week. With some adjustments the program looks like this.

Tuesday-- Easy Run for x amount of minutes
Thursday-- Cross training or run for x amount of minutes at 60-70% of max heart rate
Friday-- Form run focusing on technique for x amount of minutes at 60-70% of max heart rate
Saturday-- Moderate effort run for x amount of minutes slightly higher pace then Fridays run.
Sunday-- Long run at a slow pace for x number of miles.

In this plan I have made some modifications, since I just can't (because of work) do 4 runs during the week I don't do the rest day I should have on Saturday after the moderate effort run. However I try to do longer run later in the day and Saturday run early to give me as much rest as possible.

GPS watch coolness

So for Christmas I got a Garmin Black Forerunner 10 GPS Running Watch. Its pretty cool, I am looking forward to using it. It has a very nice web interface that tracks your runs down to, as best I can tell, the foot! I could tell when I veered wide around a car blocking the sidewalk. (Isn't there an ordinance about that?)and it was perfectly recording on the map on the MyGarmin site.

I enjoy the splits the watch saves, as well as the pacing information. I am sure as I use it more often I will enjoy the other features as well. I am really looking forward to it while I referee HS soccer this spring. This should be quite interesting to see how much I really run on the field, something I have always wondered about what the physical requirements of that actually are.

If you are interested in the watch, click on the picture below for more details.

First run!

So using my new Garmin Forerunner 10 GPS watch (thanks Santa) I am able to track my workouts via the very cool Garmin Connect webpage.

So while the headline says "first run" it was more like first "walk/jog" of the marathon program. It was challenging and I used my heart monitor to watch my heart rate as well, which I maxed out and averaged 148bpm, which is a tad bit high for doing a marathon, but its a start!

Marathon Man

I am a big believer in having large goals. If a goal doesn't scare the hell out of you its probably not big enough! To that end I have decided to run a marathon this year. I have not decided which one yet but will shortly. The obvious one is Chicago, but I am pretty sure we will be on vacation then so I might have to look elsewhere for a local marathon.

I have been thinking about it for awhile now and of course New years is a great time to set goals!

My marathon thinking is as follows:

• Health Benefits
• Weight loss
• Fitness
• Challenging

Seems like a good mix of positives! So follow along on the Blog Mark 2.0 or should I say version 26.2!