Saturdays workout on Friday

So I have thought today is Saturday all day for some reason, so when I glanced at my workout schedule I ran Saturdays workout. Doh! Nice day however for a run, had a steady pace, only slowed down to talk to a friend who was driving by and then at Nippersink so I wasn't run over.

Virtual 10K on May 11th

I was listening to a running podcast Runcast which is chock full of good information and I heard about something called the Virtual 10K which is based in the UK (I think) and I am going to participate in it. I have the course already marked out. I decided to run in it. Then it dawned on me how much I enjoy getting the community involved in things like this.

So I am going to start from my house at 7:30am, I will make sure there are run maps and if I get enough competitors maybe I can talk the girl scouts living in my neighborhood to man an aid station at the halfway spot. If you are interested get a hold of me to register. The race is in Round Lake, Illinois, about 45 miles NW of Chicago.

Good run/workout today

I was going to out on Fish Lake Road and park at Nicasa and run the short rolling hills that go on for about 3/4 of a mile then turn arround and run back to get some hill work, but it was wet and cold. So instead I ran on the treadmill today, bright and early, for 30 minutes. I went at it a faster then my goal half marathon pace as well, running 10:50 pace for 2 miles, with a short warm-up and cool down.

Then I did my upper body workout that I am going to integrate into my marathon training starting in April.

The upper body work out consisted of 3 x 10 of the following:

• Assisted Dips
• Assisted Pull-ups
• Seated Rows
• Lat pull downs
• Curls
• Shoulder press
• Bench press
• Crunches

Overall a good day coupled with yesterday's run I am feeling pretty good. Tomorrow I have a 6 mile long run, if its decent weather and not wet, I will do it, my right ear is a little clogged today so I might just stick to the indoors version of running as a precaution. I have a nice 2 mile loop I can run so I can check in for my drinks and gel after an hour.

Post workout/workout blues

So after yesterday's epic rubber legs performance I ran 40 minutes today with little to no discomfort at my goal pace (12:45 pace). After I was done I ran through a light set of dips and pullups on the assist machine at the club. I also did some squats at 67% of body weight. I am exploring a weight training component to my marathon program (not the half marathon build-up) so I am experimenting a little with it in the build up to the half.

Bottom line a good workout today, I am very pleased, I also went and looked at running shorts with pockets at Running Unlimited in Palatine. I had found some nice running shorts with lots of pockets for gels and other goodies from a company called Race Ready which I really liked (shorts and store). My daughter helpfully vetoed poorly conceived length decisions I was attempting to make, and I went for longer rather then shorter.

Only downside was they did not have any my size and length, so those are on order for me in about 10 days. I want to have them in plenty of time, because the one marathon adage I have seen more then once is "no new things on race day" and I want to make sure I can break them in so to speak sooner rather then later.

Travel and Running

I have been traveling quite a bit, Washington DC and Seattle Washington, during this running plan and will hit Seattle twice and Austin Texas as well as Springfield in the next few months. So I need to get organized when I am on the road, which oddly enough the first time I was out in Seattle was harder then I thought, because since it was 40 degrees and wet I did not pack the proper "keep warm" wear! So I ended up a $19 retail version of a treadmill in the hotel for an hour.

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.

Grant Woods Run

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.

Wellness Plans Make the Paper!

Some coverage of the the Wellness program in today's Daily Herald. They took a picture of me as well, but I have not plowed out my driveway yet to discover it.

They were size 48 pants, and I wish they had not mentioned the 300 number so prominently!

NOTE: I slogged out to get the paper and found this picture, which I had to scan because the Daily Herald has fiendishly clever write protection on its pictures.

Wellness-- Tenatative 5K dates and "Run with the Mayor"

I spent the morning trying to figure out a schedule that works for my life and 4 Saturday's for the Mayoral 5K series. I think I have come up with something that might be workable.

The Mayoral 5K series will be 4 races held in the 4 majors areas of the community. (Valley Lake's, Lakewood, Madrona, and Downtown.) The dates will be Sunday's February 11, May 13, July 22 and September 23. These race dates are up in the air still, if you have an event for your HOA that might partner up with me, I would love that.

If I can get sponsorship to cover it, I am going to try to make the race free to Round Lake residents and $15 to non-residents or something like that. I also would like to award trophy's to the winners and the overall champions in the various age groups.

I am setting aside the first Saturday of every month at 7am for the run/walk with the Mayor. My goal is to run 2 miles from 7:00am to 7:20am at a nice steady 10-12 minute mile pace (closer to jogging) that way I can talk (assuming anyone wants to talk) and run at the same time. The from 7:30 to 8:00 walk the same course. So if you compete in both you will get four miles in. I am going to move these around from neighborhood to neighborhood. I think its an excellent venue for people from other areas to learn about and meet there neighbors, plus I can listen to issues and hopefully solve some of them.

The first one will be January 6th at 7am and I will do it in Madrona, meeting at the park.

Happy Thanksgiving (600th Post as well)!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone in Round Lake has a wonderful filling day with family and friends. I know I am going to. I am running in a 5k for a food bank in Crystal Lake that I actually ran in last year in the cold. NOTE: I have sore knees today from a run earlier this week when I pushed to hard and fast so I may not go, its a game time decision! NOTE NUMBER 2: I did not run, but rather walked the distance instead.

Today is the 600th post of this blog, I thought I had missed the actual date, because I actually have 624 posts, but I counted earlier this week and 24 of them are drafts. I have so many draft posts, because until the events are over, I will not reveal my thoughts. Its awful when you have a big mouth and you have to learn to keep it shut!

Huge blog traffic this last week, I will reveal its reason on Monday's post I think, although I may write something sooner.

Is a Healthier Round Lake Possible?

For quite awhile I have been mulling around a Mayors Fitness Challenge series of events. I always am a fan of wellness programs for companies. I looked into some national programs for wellness and got some ideas. The central thing was fitness and exercise.

Which got me thinking about having a series of 5K Run/Walks. I spent a few minutes diagramming a couple on this marvelous google based software that I use called www.mapmyrun.com that measures runs using GPS. I designed three 5K routes and would propose a fourth, there are some logistical issues route design must take into account as I discovered when I worked on these.

• Tour de Lakewood & Prairie Walk (route here)
  
• Tour de Madrona (route here)
• Tour de Valley Lakes (route here)
• Tour of Old Town and Bright Meadows (not done yet)

Would you run or walk in a 5K in your Neighborhood?
	Yes
	No
Free polls from Pollhost.com

I also would love to have some feedback on other ideas for health based programs in the community. One excellent suggestion I got from local business man Doug Dortch of MVS Molding was to have a run/walk in the various neighborhoods with the Mayor on Saturday mornings or some predetermined date.

Would you join the Mayor for an informal run in your Neighborhood?
	Yes
	No
Free polls from Pollhost.com

If you have any other wellness ideas please forward them to me at bgentes@eroundlake.com

Thoughts on Blogging

I have been reading the comments and have been wondering what I should do about them if anything. I have had this discussion before on the blog about comments and I still think that as long as you follow my relatively simple rules its okay. I do cringe at some of the comments about people on here but I do believe it's a free country.

As a rule of thumb I never respond to comments in the comment section, but I did notice that a thread was broached a few days ago about this blog being a personal vehicle for me. I do recognize that I have an ego, and I can tell you that you better make sure the next mayor has one as well. I digress. I went and counted the last 300 posts I have done which went back roughly to December 2005. I looked for something that did not talk about the village and I counted them.

I found 25 posts or 8% that were all about me with no village influence, and I was scoring generously since I would argue that I appear as the Mayor in a few of the 5K races which made up a few posts and of course the fantasy football posts which are self serving. Most of these posts appear on a weekend as well. The most over the top one is of course the butter post and the egg post that along with this post have gotten me the most comments and traffic.

I also have been told that some people believe that I am going to use this blog as a place to grind home my political agenda during the upcoming trustee elections. Tempting as that is I made a conscious decision a long time ago to say nothing pro or con about trustees, I have broken that rule a few times but I generally think twice and take it down or edit it quickly. I try to just list people who attend events and besides this blog is about me not them. I will write nothing here about the local elections other then a post reminding people to vote.

As many of you know I participate in partisan politics at county, state and federal levels so I went and counted how many posts had a partisan bent to them, I found 2 of the total out of 557 total posts since the inception of this blog that's less then 1%. Those posts by the way were listing a "meet the candidates" before the primary.

I think these numbers indicate that I am meeting my original goals of what the blog should and could be.

Lastly this blog is hosted by Blogger a free software on the internet, we use a pointer off of eroundlake.com to get to it. When I decided to do the blog 2 years ago I could not make up my mind if I wanted it to be attached to the village web site or not. My choices were as follows:

• Link off the eroundlake.com page (the current format), the challenge here was that since it would be hosted "quasi officially" I would have to be under control therefore no partisanship, no venting about trustees etc. I ultimately decided that this was the best thing for what I wanted to do with the blog, the blog is about the village and me as the village's Mayor. I think the blog has changed to something different over time which I actually appreciate more then I thought. I also thought that this way would hold down my readership because it would be more corporate.
• The second method was to do it off site via blogger as something like mayor.blogger.com and vent what I really think. Those of you know me well enough know that with friends I have a sly sense of humor about village business. I ultimately thought the sly, acidy, "call it like I see" it blog would be much more popular. However I also thought that it would not be as effective towards what I wanted to do which was inform people about Round Lake and the surrounding area and let people know what its like to be Mayor.

If you have an issue with what I am trying to do then I am sorry. However I can tell you that I have never received one negative comment to my face nor other then a few comments negative comments about the blog in any other forum. I get more people coming up to me saying "I love the blog keep it up". Or better yet giving me ideas for posts with there questions and concerns. Which of course is ultimately what its all about.

T-Shirt Raffle

The Village sponsors many things, among the recent things we sponsored is the Grant Township 5K Field of Dreams race. As a perk of sponsorship they sent me an extra shirt. Its a white XL T-shirt with the race logo on it, and the sponsors in back. I got one for my plodding finish in the race 49th out of 120, and don't need another T-shirt in my closet.

So if you look good in white, promise to use it for its intended purpose, and are the 3rd emailer, its yours!

Please note the winner was Tom Lake who was emailer number 3 out of 15.

Round Lake 5K Yesterday-- Huge Medal Haul for Village Officials

We shoveled some serious hardware out of the Round Lake Park District 5K on Sunday morning. From left to right, Village Engineer Erika Frable holding her gold medal won her age division and finished 13th overall. Michael Blum holding his silver medal for his age group, Al Villasenor holding bronze for his third place and his 17th place finish, lastly me clutching my silver medal in my age group, which is one color better then last years bronze medal.

It was wet and chilly, and I was slow, but still smiling at the end as you can see. As always the Park District did a nice job!

Round Lake 5K Coming Soon

Just a friendly reminder that the Round Lake Area Park District has its 6th annual 5k Run/Walk coming up on September 10th at 8am. It's tons of fun and I will be back to defend my 45-50 age group third place medal (see picture). By the way that's former Trustee Dale Multerer Current Police Commission President and Round Lake Park District Foundation Board Member in the background. Hopefully I can better the time of 30:47 that I had last year! Proceeds from the race benefit Special Olympics for the Round Lake Area as well. So it's for a good cause as well!

The Frosty 5K on the same course earlier this year was not very good for me, as I was soundly whipped by the entire distaff line (all 3 of them) of Trustee Bob Del Prato's family.

If you are interested in registering for the Run/Walk here is the link to a PDF of the entry form. A few hours later there is a doggie walk as well! I will write more on that later.

More Bike Racing Today

Interesting day today, I am going to see the 1 day Inaugural Grayslake Cycling Classic at Prairie Crossing in Grayslake. It's Chicagoland's newest and most unique criterium, featuring a fast, flat horse-shoe shaped 1.1 mile course! There are all sorts of age group and gender related races throughout the day with the professionals riding last around 4pm.

I have often thought the village of Round Lake should sponsor a race, although my thinking was a 5K run through Round Lake's neighborhoods, the logistical problems are bigger then you would imagine. How do you cross Fairfield, and 120? I think it would be cool to race right down Cedar Lake through Bright Meadows, Madrona and into Lakewood, or then up to Valley Lakes. Although that might be a 10K. The other thought I had before one of the parades is run the Round Lake Mile...start at Washington and Cedar Lake and run north of Cedar Lake right over the hill and down into Round Lake Beach. Be kinda cool with all the people lining the route waiting for candy. I tried convincing the park district about that one, but no takers there!

I also thought of a beat the Mayor race for charity, but that might be to charitable, judging by my slow run this morning!

Award from NICASA

A few weeks ago I ran in the first annual NICASA 5K and fun walk at Independence Grove (recording a personal best in the 5k I would note). The village sponsored a couple of kids to participate and I volunteered to be beaten by most of them. On Thursday I was invited to the District 116 to get a very nice plaque that looked like Nanci Radford who presented it to me had made with a stamp kit. It is the single coolest plaque I have recieved as Mayor!