Speed Week II

General

Ran tonight. It’s still Speed Week! (or …Weeks! since this is the second one) so I’m still doing track intervals and stuff like that.

Today was track intervals — 1.4 miles to warm up (and get to the track), then alternate single laps (400 meters) at better than an 8:00 pace with walking fast/jogging for 2-3 minutes, then run home. Here’s my times for each stage:

  • Warm up run — ~15
  • Lap 1 — 1:49
  • Lap 2 — 1:53
  • Lap 3 — 1:42
  • Lap 4 — 1:52
  • Cool down run — ~17:30

My best lap was around a 6:50 pace; my worst lap was around a 7:34 pace. My warmup time = 12:30. My cool-down time = 10:42. Yay, me! Total mileage (including my fast walking laps) is 4.8 miles.

End of Bambino’s Curse

General

Wow.

The Boston Red Sox won.

They went to The Show, and won it all. With a sweep, no less, of the Cardinals.

Wow.

I have mixed feelings about it. I mean, great, it’s cool, the Curse is lifted, over with. I got some email buddies in Boston that I don’t expect to hear from for at least a couple of days (you guys have voted already, right? Right? You’ve got to vote, you know, I don’t care how hung over you are). Peace out, dogs, and all that.

…on the other hand… Don’t get me wrong. I’m a traditionalist. If for no other reason than that, that’s why I love baseball in the first place (note to Caleb: yes, I can be a traditionalist and still respect baseball for changing the type of baseball; they make changes every 20-30 years or so, just to mix it up a little. Baseball’s more than a century old, you know). But, butbutbut… the Curse is part of that tradition. It just doesn’t feel right to have it end.

I mean, what’s next? The Cubs?

On the other other hand, lunar eclipses (like the one last night) are supposed to herald great change. And this was a pretty great one.

I guess I was just hoping for the eclipse to mean a change for someone else. It can still mean that, right? Right?

Hill Repeats, ugh

exercise

Tonight was “hill repeats” — the plan was to run about a mile to warm up. The mile ended at Sellwood Park, where there’s a trail leading through the park and it’s uphill. It’s a medium slope. I have no idea what the grade is, but it’s “Baby Bear” — not too hot, not too cold. Just right. From where I start to the top of the hill is around 300-400 meters, as near as I can tell. So I was going to run up to the top of the hill, then jog back down… four times total.

I only timed my runs to the top. My times were: 3:16, 3:21, 3:15, 2:57. Yay! From worst to best I improved by 24 seconds!

If I take my best time, and assume it was about 300 meters, that puts my pace at… let’s see… carry the one… Yikes! 15:49!! I have to have been moving faster than that. 400 meters makes it 11:52, 500 meters makes it 9:29. It felt more like a 9:29 pace, to be honest.

But pace isn’t important. Strengthening my legs and improving my speed is what’s important. So I’ll just focus on best time. Yay, me!

I haven’t added this to my running log yet because I’m going to change how I record Speed Week! and right now there’s

  • a total eclipse to look at,
  • World Series Game 4 to watch,
  • friends to chat with,
  • and food to eat (’cause I’m starving!)

PITA

General

Smacky was a huge PITA last night. I was trying to drink a beer and eat some chips and salsa and watch the game and he kept trying to knock over my beer or get in the bag of chips or step in my salsa or walk on my laptop (it’s never far away from me)… Finally I broke out the water bottle, and he finally got the message and laid down on my lap.

…soaking wet from the bottle. But it was better than the alternative.

Speed Week!

exercise

I was supposed to run yesterday. Was going to get up early. But I slept in instead. It was cold. I was tired. Mostly, I was tired. Bleh. So I told myself I would run after work.

But after work it was pouring down rain. Double-bleh. No good. I toyed with the idea of going to the gym, but I hate the gym, so I puttered around home, cleaning stuff, and went to bed early.

Got up this morning, 4:30 in the frickin’ AM, and it was still cold, and still kind of raining, just that stupid misty kind of rain that’s heavier than fog, but not heavy enough to be, y’know, actual rain. I was going to go back to bed, but then I realized that a) it would really put me off my schedule I had planned for this week, and b) it could very well be full-on raining tonight when I get home from work, just like yesterday. So I threw on my running clothes, fed the cat, and headed outside.

This is going to be Speed Week! What a poor kick-off, huh? A day late. Oh, well. The plan was this: run down to the local high school, about 1.4 miles according to Mapquest, as a warm-up. Then alternate a lap on the track (400 meters) at at least an 8:50 pace, which is about 30 seconds faster than my normal race pace, with 2-3 minutes of fast walking (jogging if I can handle it). Then I’ll head home again.

The run to the track was about 14:10. The pace calculator told me that 400 meters at an 8:50 pace would mean one lap is about 2:11. So I set the timer on my trusty Timex Expedition to 2:11 and aimed to finish each lap before the beeper went off. And I did! My worst time was about 2:00 even, which means I did about an 8:00 pace or better. Yay, me!

Then I tried to run home. Triple-bleh. The run home took 17:07. Still, it was a good workout!

Tomorrow evening I’m doing hill intervals. Friday I’ll do my long run, and practice speeding up for the middle 3 miles. Then it’s back to the track on Hallowe’en… spoooooky.

Good cat

General

Is this weird?

My cat smells really good. Kinda smoky and spicy.

Since I bathe him in lemon-flavored dishwashing soap, I’d expect a lemon-y scent. But, no. Of course, he’s overdue for a bath and scratching constantly from the fleas, poor thing.

Bookstore haul

General

Score! Stopped by Powell’s City of Books tonight, and someone must have sold back their Phil K. Dick collection, because they had a metric tonne of old used paperbacks. I picked up a bunch.

Here are the ones I got:

(I swiped the images from PKD’s website; they have an archive of scanned covers of his work, donated by fans from all over. If I’m stealing and they tell me, I’ll take them down).

First day running this week

exercise

I decided to take last week off from running. Tired, felt like I was coming down with a cold, blah and meh. Just didn’t have the energy for it.

So today was my first day running since last Friday. Last Friday I felt really fast, on a long (5+ mile) run. But after taking a week off, I was slow on a shorter route (3.5 miles).

I’m going to throw some days in next week that focus on speed. At least once next week I’m thinking of running from my house to Milwaukie High School (about 1.4 miles one-way) and doing some intervals on the track there. And another day I think I’m going to do hill intervals. Yeah. That’ll be good.

The weather’s been icky; cold and showers off-and-on. Hopefully I can keep my motivation to run now that it’s not warm and sunny. I ran in January, February and March this year… but I can’t remember what the weather was like then. Had to be cold and rainy, right? Right? So why’s it affecting me so negatively now? Might be the stoopid election draining away my motivation. I’m obsessed with watching the news, trying to catch the Republicans trying to steal the election. There’s signs of it everywhere (head over to Geeks Against Bush and dig through the posts there for some details, I’ll keep that stuff out of my personal blog for now) and it’s consuming all of my attention.

Whoops! Started out talking about running and ended on politics. See? It’s all I can think about!

There is no three

General

An inside joke few will get. Over at the Long Winters’ website, John Roderick has made a post!

A nice long post explaining where the hell he’s been all summer, and where the hell their third album is. And, buried deep in the post, he shows that, for better or worse, he thinks just like I do:

Well-meaning friends have encouraged me to strike while the iron is hot, to not be gone too long so that people forget about the Long Winters in their rush to buy the hot new releases, but I feel no panic. First off: to hell with everyone. Secondly: go ahead and buy the hot new releases, we’ll all be dead in seventy years no matter what you do. And C: whither thou goest, go thither, or whatever.

Note: there is no three!