Month: August 2004

Ran to work this morning. 5.05 miles, 47:56.47 total time, therefore a 9:29 pace. Arrgh, can’t seem to achieve a 9:00 or better pace for the longer distances. I was doing close to a 9:00 pace for the first couple of miles but had to pull back a bit.

My hamstrings are tight; especially my right one. I used to be able to touch my toes pretty easily but lately not so much. I need to focus on stretching more, maybe during like Deb does. Stop at the halfway point and stretch out. At any rate, that might be part of the problem.

I think I’ll call Jessica and schedule another massage for the week after the Tillamook run. That might help, too.

Ran up Terwilliger Blvd. yesterday morning. Do I need to post the details? I’ve written about it before. About 5 miles round trip, Dunniway Park up to the Charthouse restaurant and back down again. Ran with a friend, kept a pretty easy pace, legs felt tired and a little sore but overall it was a good tired. Oh, my hamstrings (especially my right one, the leg that’s a little longer than the other) were tight and hard to stretch out. I’ll focus on stretching them better before and after my next run, which will be tomorrow morning to work, another approximately 5 mile run.

Diet-wise, as of last night I’m about 100 calories over for the week starting Monday. I went over yesterday by 150 or so, but that’s OK because my energy output was higher yesterday due to the run. I have noticed a slight downward trend, already, in the running average of my weight, so it’s having an effect. Yay, me.

My weight has snuck up over my pre-determined upper limit (limit was 175; my average weight over the past week has been 178.5) so I’ve put myself back on maintainence. That means I’m limiting myself to around 2500 calories for a month. Only exception will be race days. Any day I race I don’t keep track of calories.

Last night, my first full day on the new restricted diet, I had exactly 2500 calories. Funny how that worked out, especially considering I had been starving all day long! OK, not really. I’m sure it was psychological, simply because I was thinking about food again all day. Focus on food, get hungry. I mean, my normal eating pattern is 3000-3100 calories per day, so I’m not reducing it that much.

At any rate, I’m going to focus on eating enough protein this time around, which, for a 175 lb. male is around 75-80 grams per day. I’ll calculate it for yesterday; so far today I’ve had 4. I’m going to have to really chow down to make my goal today, huh?

Exercise-wise, I ran in the hot hot heat yesterday. I was going to get up and run in the early morning, which is the best time during the summer, all that nice cool air, and little to no traffic, but decided to sleep in instead. I packed a bag of running clothes to take to work, but it was way way too hot at lunchtime. Thought about going to the gym and running on the treadmill… but that wasn’t appealing. Only as a last resort. So I ended up waiting until after sunset and running a short 2 1/4 mile course in my neighborhood. And it was still hot hot hot outside. Bleh.

Haven’t been posting a schedule because I’m not working towards anything. Got some races coming up (and if the guys buy into my suggestions for the road trip, I’ll have some very grueling races coming up! See yesterday’s post) but I’m just running for fun and fitness right now.

Every year, me and my buddies go on a road trip. The rules in the past have been simple: we drive as much as possible, we sleep as little as possible, and we drive for at least a 3 or 4 day weekend. Oh, and it’s almost always in late August or early September, due to school (not me, but my buddies).

Year before last, our goal was Mt. Rushmore, and we also managed to work in the South Dakota Badlands, Devil’s Tower, get very near the Geographic Center of the United States (there are rattlesnakes at the ACTUAL center!), and we covered something like 3700 miles.

Last year we only covered 3000 miles or so, and went to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and came back through the Canadian Rocky Mountains. So beautiful.

This year, for some reason, the rules aren’t enough. We want more. So an idea was kicked around, to wit: we drive somewhere far away, run a 5K race, and then turn around and come back (there was also the “eat some pie” idea but I’ll save that for another post). I think the running idea came up because I’m now running; my friends have been running for years.

So I was doing some research last night and found a couple of cool races that fit in the criteria.

Oh, and also, I have a secondary plan. Our previous two road trips have been across the US and into Canada. Wouldn’t the next logical place to visit be Mexico? I call this “completing the NAFTA trifecta”. I’m still trying to convince my buddies that it’s a good idea.

First up I found Cloudcroft, New Mexico. There’s a 10K race there on September 19 that’s billed as “the highest 10K in the world!” Cloudcroft, you see, is around 9000′ above sea level, up in the mountains. Just imagine: late summer, no oxygen, sleep-deprivation from the nearly 1800-mile drive from Portland, and then running a 10K? We would so earn that t-shirt. Y’know, if we didn’t die.

Second, I found an 8K in El Paso, Texas. The coolio-est part of this race is that it’s at night, which, if you think about it, is really the only way they could run a race in Texas in late summer. This one is on September 26.

Both of these places are within 50-60 miles of each other, but in the moutains. Cloudcroft is near places like Roswell, NM, or Carlsbad (where the caves are), and El Paso is near the Mexican border, which means it would be a simple matter to cross over and complete the trifecta.

I haven’t heard back from my buddies yet but I’m hoping they like these ideas…

Haven’t posted in a while. Although… I’ve written two posts, and they’re in the queue to be posted, I just… haven’t actually posted them. Not yet. It was good to have written them, I’m simply not ready to share them with the world just yet. Patience.

Normally I’d break different subjects up into separate posts but not today.

OK, in a recent issue of Runner’s World I read an article weighing the pros and cons of running barefoot. Then, while looking for something else, I stumbled across a website devoted to the subject — unfortunately, I can’t link to it this morning because for some reason the page is missing today.

After thinking about it for a while, I think I’m going to try to work in at least a mile or two of barefoot running each week. For one thing, it sounds fun. For another, there’s a visceral feel to it that appeals to me; the people who write about it talk semi-mystically about being connected to the earth and your body in a way that running clothed (shod?) just doesn’t do. There’s also a (probably really minor) safety issue, but, honestly, is nature that much safer? There’s sharp rocks and twigs and cooled lava… granite slabs have less give than any asphalt or concrete surface.

I’m planning on running a Tillamook trail run in a couple of weeks; that might be a good one to try barefoot, huh?