Archives

Last night we finally got a good rain as storms passed through the area. This also cooled things off a bit, leaving the temperatures around 75º at 5:45am. However, even though the temps were down slightly, the humidity was nasty.

As for the workout, things got cranked up another notch today with over 100 minutes of running, including 40 minutes of tempo intervals in the middle. Here’s a rundown of the schedule…

• 30 minute warmup
• 5 x 5 minutes at 6:50 to 7:00 minute pace
  -3 minute active recovery between each repeat
• 30 minute cool down

Nathan and I met at the Edwin Warner Nature Center and completed our warmup along the Harpeth River Greenway and within Edwin Warner Park. I felt a little sore from my two falls on Saturday, but nothing compared to what I was expecting. Overall I felt pretty good throughout the warmup, though I was really sweating with the humidity.

For the tempo intervals and recoveries, we ran these continuously out-and-back on the flat part of the Harpeth River Greenway behind Ensworth High School. Even with the muggy conditions I felt really good throughout, and didn’t have much trouble hitting the target pace each time. I did comment to Nathan that the coming back always seemed harder than the going out, but we were pretty consistent in completing the first two intervals with .72 total miles each, and the last three with .73 total miles each within the five minutes.

After completing the intervals, we finished up with our 30-minute cool down, which actually turned into a 35-minute cool down. We ran all the way to the end of the Harpeth River Greenway to take a peek at the construction that has been going on for some time. I had thought they were just putting in an access road to the cell tower that is back there, but instead they have built a small parking lot and trailhead for the greenway. It looks pretty nice.

In total we ran for 1 hour 45 minutes and completed 12.6-miles with warmup and cool down at an average pace of 8:21 per mile. Our average pace for the tempo intervals was 6:55 per mile, which was right on target.

Beast Mode…ON!

It has become somewhat of a tradition with our group to do a Red, White, and Blue trail run on or around the 4th of July each year. These represent the colors of all the major trails in Percy and Edwin Warner Parks, so the run involves completing all three trails plus the Candy-Cane connector trail which links the two parks together. This is quite a challenging run with almost 12-miles of trails and over 3,000 ft. of cumulative elevation gain…

Since my schedule called for 14 to 16 miles today I got to the park a little early to complete just over a mile on the blue trail before the group arrived. For the group run we started out from the Edwin Warner Nature Center on the Candy-Cane connector trail. Since I was already warmed up, I ran out ahead of the rest of the group on the Candy-Cane and then onto the Red Trail in Percy Warner. My legs were feeling fantastic.

However, as has become the recent norm, about two miles into the group run I caught a jagged rock with my right foot and went down hard to the ground. Thankfully my hand-held water bottle took the brunt of the fall, only leaving me we a few scrapes on the knuckles of my right hand, and a bit of soreness in my right hip. After taking a second to clean myself off, some of the group had caught back up with me, and I continued on with them.

With no lasting ill effects from the fall, I continued to run the trails pretty hard and ended up well in front of the rest of the group again. Just before we transitioned from the Red to the White trail I heard someone from our group yell behind me, and ran back to find that Sue Anne had also taken a tumble going into a hard left turn. She had a pretty good scrape on her left knee, but was otherwise OK. We continued on to the White trail, and again I went out in front.

However, after about a 1/2 mile on the White trail I realized there was someone coming up right behind me. I briefly turned around and was surprised to see Aine from our group. While Aine is a very strong runner, this was the first time she had ever run trails. Usually first-timers are very timid on the downhills, or underestimate how difficult the climbs will be, but Aine was tearing it up throughout the run.

We took a brief break at the point where the White trail connects with the Red trail to re-group and make sure we had not left anyone behind. From there we ran the second half of the Red trail. Again I surged out to the front, but this time Aine and Sue Anne stayed with me. We came to a section of the Red trail which is almost like a shale cliff. Most runners walk up this section, and I do frequently as well. However, today I was determined that I was not going to walk any part of the trails, so I began to weave back and forth like a billy goat up this climb.

I guess Sue Anne took this as a personal challenge, and powered up the shale face with me. Once we got to the top she powered past me and took off like a bullet. I had to pick up my pace just to stay within 20 meters of her, and she stayed out in front for the remainder of the Red trail. We again re-grouped with everyone before jumping back on the Candy-Cane connector trail to Edwin Warner Park. The connector is pretty flat, and I took it fairly easy to try and fully recover before hitting the Blue trail in Edwin Warner.

After a brief fluid stop at the Nature Center, we headed back onto the Blue trail and into a pretty difficult climb. Marc said something to the effect of “Tim you’ve been looking pretty strong today, you can lead us up this hill.” I went to the front, but by this point the combination of the heat, humidity, and hills had left my legs feeling pretty fatigued. I still had enough energy for the climb, but I was not picking up my legs like I should have been. Because of this I tripped and took a second fall on my way up the hill, this time scraping up my knee a bit…

After Kelly helped me back to my feet, I decided to just hang back with the pack and let Sue Anne, Aine, and Marc lead the group. By the time we finished the Blue trail I had completed 13 total miles, and was completely toast. Even though my schedule called for 14 to 16 miles, I just didn’t have another mile in me. I honestly think this is the most fluid I have lost on a run this year, and it was obviously a very challenging route.

Even though I did not get in my scheduled distance, I think I easily got in as much work (or more) as I would have on a 14 to 16 mile run on the road. I was on my feet for almost 2 hours and 15 minutes, and as I mentioned earlier, had over 3,000 ft. of cumulative elevation gain through the run.

The bad thing about only getting in 13-miles today, and missing my Wednesday run due to illness, and only getting in 6-miles at track Thursday due to the extreme heat, is that this broke my 9-week string of completing 40 or more miles in a week. I came in just short this week with 39.3-miles completed. However, I’m pleased with how well I felt today overall, and that I don’t seem to have any lingering effects from my mid-week illness.

Beast Mode….ON!

After last night’s boiling hot workout at the track, it was nice to get in a super chilled pace recovery run this morning with Nathan through Bellevue. This was the first time in 2 1/2 weeks that I’ve run in my Saucony Hattoris. I had taken a temporary break from “barefoot” type running since I started having shin splint twinges in my right leg. Now that I’m essentially symptom free I’ve decided to slowly start re-introducing it back into my schedule.

Even though it was not 102º like last night, it was still very warm and muggy even at 6am. This was probably the easiest paced run I’ve done on the road in 2012, but it felt really good to just take it very easy. The good news is that I didn’t feel any residual soreness from last night’s workout, and do not seem to be suffering any lasting effects from my brief illness in the middle of the week.

In total we finished 4-miles with an average pace of 9:37 per mile. Tomorrow, our group is planning on a long trail run, so it should be a good test for my legs.

Beast Mode…ON!

Yesterday, I ended up missing my first scheduled training run in more than 10 weeks. I woke up yesterday feeling pretty rough with a sore throat, headache, low energy, etc. My schedule called for 40-minutes easy, and I thought that if I just took it easy and drank lots of fluids I might feel better later in the day and be able to get it in. Well, at 7pm I decided that I was feeling worse instead of better and sent my coach (John) a text to let him know it was likely not going to happen…

While I expected a sarcastic response, I thought this was pretty funny. Turns out he was with another friend of ours from the running group who is constantly giving me a hard time about Boston, and was feeding him the quotes to send back. John went on to say that it was a “No Brainer” to take the day off if I wasn’t feeling well, so that’s exactly what happened.

Fast forward to today, and I have been feeling better throughout the day. By the time I needed to leave work and head to the track I was feeling good enough to give it a try. My biggest concern for tonight’s workout was not feeling sick, but the heat. This was what my phone said before I stepped out of the car and onto the track…

I believe this is easily the warmest track night I’ve ever participated in, and I could feel it from the first strides of the warmup. However, other than it being crazy hot, I felt really, really good. My legs continued to feel good, and my energy level did not seem to have been negatively affected by being under the weather the past couple of days.

Because of the heat, John led us through a fairly short workout tonight. Here is the rundown…

• 2.5-Mile Warmup
• 6 x 100m Stride Outs
• 3 x 400m (400m recovery)
• 2 x 400m (400m recovery)
• 1 x 400m (400m recovery)
• .82-Mile Cool Down

He told us to take the 400s very, very easy. We only had a few seconds recovery between each 400m interval within each set, so most of mine were in the 1:30 to 1:35 range. It was hot enough that I could feel my pulse pounding in my face, but otherwise I felt pretty good considering the heat and that I had not been feeling well. In total with warmup and cool down I completed 6-miles with a 7:46 average pace.

Beast Mode….ON!

A few days ago, the RW Daily blog on RunnersWorld.com posted a quiz which contained a mixed list of running shoe and prescription drug names to see if you could distinguish between the two. While I didn’t think this quiz was particularly hard, I did like the graphic that went along with it which is posted above.

This morning’s scheduled workout was new territory for me. It called for a 20-minute warmup at easy pace, followed by 35-minutes with my heart rate between 165 and 175 bpm, and then a 15 to 20-minute cool down at easy pace. To my recollection, this was the first time I’ve ever done a run based on a target heart rate range.

John’s specific instructions were “DO NOT WORRY ABOUT PACE,” so to that end I removed the pace and distance fields from my Garmin, and only left Current Heart Rate, Average Heart Rate for Lap, and Elapsed Time for Lap. I also turned off the “auto-lap” function so that I could manually make each segment its own “lap” for tracking elapsed time and heart rate.

Nathan and I met at the Forrest Home Church parking lot on Old Natchez Trace, and then completed our warmup through the Montpier Farms subdivision. After grabbing some quick fluids, we set out on an out-and-back down Old Natchez and Del Rio Pike for the 35-minute tempo segment. At first I had a really hard time getting my heart rate up above 165, and did not hit that mark until at least 3/4 of the way through the first mile. As a matter of fact, my primary focus for most of the way out was trying to keep my heart rate UP into the target range.

For a while I was thinking that John must have gotten my heart rate target mixed up with someone else he coaches. Even though I didn’t know my specific pace or distance, I knew that we were moving pretty fast. I almost never hear Nathan breathing heavy during our runs, but even he was laboring a little, and there was almost no conversation during this segment. As a side note, even though this part was very hard, my legs felt better than they have in a couple of weeks, and that was VERY encouraging.

Once we turned around at the halfway point my focus turned to keeping my heart rate DOWN into the target range, and I had to progressively drop my pace to keep it from rising too high. Before we started the tempo segment, Nathan told me he had set an alarm on his Garmin if his heart rate went above 187. I figured if he tried to stay with me the whole way he would be pushing that limit. This says nothing about his level of fitness, just that he is almost 10 years younger than me, and has a crazy high maximum heart rate. Sure enough, after about 25 minutes the alarm went off and he decided to back off a bit, though he never fell much behind.

From the moment during mile one that I reached 165 until the time I finished, I never left the target zone. One time I noticed my watch showed 175 on the dot, but it did not go any higher. Once we finished, we again grabbed another quick drink and then did our cool down out-and-back on Old Natchez.

Looking back now after the fact I noted that my average pace for the tempo segment was 6:58, though the first two miles were closer to the 6:30s. My average heart rate for this section was 167, with a maximum of 175. Overall we completed just under 9.75 miles with warmup and cool down at an average pace of 7:50 per mile. As I mentioned earlier, my legs felt fantastic throughout this run, and I’m very pleased to have bounced back from being so tired yesterday.

Beast Mode…ON!

Today the schedule called for 60 minutes at easy pace, so Nathan and I met at the Edwin Warner Nature Center for an out and back route to the model airplane field via the park roads and the Harpeth River Greenway.

Back when John started coaching me at the first of May, he told me not to worry too much about a target pace on my scheduled easy runs, but to just go with how I felt on that particular day. Well today I felt TIRED, and for the first time in a long time all of my mile splits were over 9 minutes (especially when I wasn’t wearing my Hattoris).

I guess this was to be expected after a full day of travel on Saturday, followed by a 15-mile run at 10:30pm and preaching the next morning for a church that is an hour away. I didn’t feel bad, just felt like I was low on energy. Recently my easy days have turned into progression runs because I continue to feel better throughout the run. Today, however, that didn’t happen.

In total we finished just over 6.5-miles in the 60 minutes with an average pace of 9:15 per mile. Hopefully the energy will be back tomorrow for my scheduled tempo run. This will be my first ever run with a segment based on a target heart rate range. Should be interesting.

Beast Mode…ON!

Since today marks the beginning of the third quarter of 2012, I thought it would be good to review my goals for 2012 and see how things are going:

• Goal #1: Complete 2,000 training miles. My total for 2011 was 1,763, so this will be a pretty big increase. Will take over 166 miles per month to reach this goal. I know it is attainable, but only if I stay healthy and disciplined.

  For the first two quarters I have completed 1,178.5-miles which puts me on pace for 2,357 for 2012. This is obviously well ahead of 2,000. Now that I have hired a coach to train for Milwaukee this fall, I’m thinking that 2,500 might be in my future for this year if I stay healthy. Incidentally, this is 438.5-miles ahead of where I was at the same date last year.

• Goal #2: Complete my “Quest for 3:15” in a full marathon. This has been a very public goal for quite a while, and I hope to break through in 2012. I would also like to take this a step further in 2012 and break 3:10 which is my Boston qualifying time. I know this is pushing it, but I’m dreaming big. Really want to run my first Boston Marathon in 2013. To do this I will not only have to be disciplined to my running schedule, but will also have to be committed to quality runs, cross-training, diet, and sleep.

  The “Quest for 3:15” was officially completed at the NOLA Marathon on March 4 with a finish time of 3:12:28. I am now only 2:28 from a BQ and have hired a coach to train for Milwaukee this fall. My training target for Milwaukee will be 3:05. 

• Goal #3: Finish at least 5 full marathons. I ran my first 2 full marathons in the fall of 2009, and then completed 4 full marathons in both 2010 and 2011. As of now I’m only registered for the Rock N’ Roll New Orleans Marathon in March, but I have also submitted my request to be the 3:45 pacer in the St Jude Country Music Marathon in May and have my eye on a handful of other races. Whether it is as a pacer or participant, I want to do at least one marathon at a slower, conservative pace where I can enjoy it.

  I have completed two full marathons in 2012, and am registered for two more. This includes the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon in October and the Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon in November. Whether or not I do a fifth marathon will depend completely on how I feel. Even though I really want to run five, I’m not willing to sacrifice 2013 to hit this number. As for running one at a slower, conservative pace…I was the official 4-hour pacer for the St Jude Country Music Marathon back in April and had a blast!
   

• Goal #4: Officially break 1:30 in a half marathon. I had an unofficial 1:29 finish in the Murfreesboro Middle Half Marathon in 2011 (due to course misrouting), but want to have it in writing in 2012. My best opportunities will most likely come at the 500 Festival Mini Marathon in May or again at the Murfreesboro Middle Half Marathon in October.

  I officially broke 1:30 for the first time at the Oak Barrel Half Marathon in Lynchburg, TN on April 7th with a 1:29:52. I was hoping to take it even lower at the 500 Festival Mini Marathon in May, but the 91% humidity throughout the race was a deal breaker on that front.
  

Well, so far, so good with regard to 2012 goals….Beast Mode…ON!!

Well, my week (8-days) of crazy runs continued last night with an effort that started at 10:30pm and continued well past midnight. Since we were traveling back home from the beach early Saturday morning, I either had to get in my scheduled 14 to 16-miles last night or early this morning. Early this morning was less attractive, because I needed to be in Lebanon, TN (about an hour away) by 8:45am to preach.

I decided to head out about 10pm to try and avoid the heat as much as possible (It was 104º when we got home late yesterday afternoon). I reached out to Nathan via text, and unbelievably he was also interested in getting in a run. We ended up meeting around 10:25pm at the start of Old Natchez Trace, and planned to run a little over 7.5-miles out-and-back on Old Natchez and Del Rio Pike.

Even at 10:30pm it was still almost 85º, though fortunately the humidity was not very bad. However, there was absolutely no breeze stirring at all, which made it feel like running with a blanket wrapped around you. We started out very easy and by mile 6 had worked our pace down to 8:08. I honestly couldn’t believe how good I felt considering the heat and a full day of travel.

However, sometime during the 7th or 8th mile, Nathan asked if we could back off the pace a bit, because he was having trouble keeping his heart rate down. We took a short break at the turn-around spot, and then headed back at about an 8:45 pace. After two more miles, Nathan said that he just didn’t have it tonight and needed to walk. Unfortunately with an out-and-back route there isn’t much opportunity to take a shortcut back. I told him that I would run out the remaining 6 miles and then head back in the car to pick him up.

Even though I was already feeling pretty good, this gave me a little bit of an extra push to pickup the pace so I could get back and pickup Nathan. I was honestly a little worried about him, but knew that he was smart enough not to push himself too hard, and it would be better for me to go grab the car than to stay with him and walk.

For those remaining 6 miles I did two in the low 8:00s, two in the 7:50s, and two in the 7:40s. All of these miles felt very comfortable, and other than being really HOT, I continued to feel really good all the way to the end.

I headed back down the route in my car to pickup Nathan and found him after about 3-miles. He said that his heart rate had come back down, and we both agreed that he was probably dehydrated. I hate that Nathan had a bad evening, but am grateful for his willingness to come out there with me, and that I felt so good on a very warm night.

In total I finished 15.36-miles with an average pace of 8:16 per mile. Since this was the last run of June (and technically the first one of July), this marked the completion of my biggest mileage month ever with just under 213-miles completed.

Beast Mode…ON!

When John gave me my schedule for this week he told me to feel free to move the days around as needed to accommodate my vacation. This morning I swapped out the scheduled 14 to 16 mile run for the 30 to 40 minute run which was down for Sunday. Our family planned to go out for breakfast today instead of eating in the condo, so I didn’t want to have to either get up super early or make everyone else wait on me to get back. Also, Olivia’s schedule called for a 40-minute run, so it worked out perfect for us to go together again.

We planned to both do a 20-minute out-and-back route along the ocean on Front Beach Road. While it wasn’t as hot in Panama City today as it was back home (new record high of 109 degrees in Nashville!), it again felt pretty toasty with no shade and little breeze. I also think that all this running in concrete sidewalks this week has started to take its toll. I felt terrible on the way out for the first 20 minutes. My legs felt tired and achey, and I just couldn’t find a rhythm.

Once I turned back for the second half my legs started to loosen up and I finally found a good running rhythm. Because of this I ended up getting back to the start a full two minutes before I had completed my planned 40 minutes. Olivia had finished just ahead of me at the condo, so as she waited I ran another minute down Front Beach and then headed back. After 40 minutes I had completed just over 4.7-miles with an average pace of 8:30 per mile.

Even though we technically haven’t been running together I have very much enjoyed starting and finishing with Olivia a couple of times this week. I think that is one of the things that helped with the second half of my run this morning….knowing that if I stopped and took a break she would have to wait on me at the end.

Tomorrow morning we pack up and head home to Tennessee fairly early, so no run on the docket for me. I do still have to get in my 14 to 16 miler sometime either late Saturday or early Sunday before worship. Either way it has to get done.

Beast Mode…ON!

This morning I slept in a bit later than I had the first few days on vacation, and ended up paying for it on my morning run. The schedule called for 45 minutes at easy pace with 6 x 100m stride outs at the end. By the time I started the temps were already well over 80 and there was no breeze to speak of and absolutely no shade.

This made for a very warm run, but my legs still felt pretty good throughout. Also this is the best my right shin has felt in the past two weeks. I didn’t even feel a twinge until I started my stride outs at the end.

In total I finished just over 5.7-miles with strides at an 8:18 average pace per mile.

Beast Mode…ON!

This morning Olivia and I did something that we rarely get to do…..we did our training run together. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say that we did them at the same time, in the same general location. Both of our schedules called for 60-minute runs, so we each decided to do an out and back route on Front Beach Road along the ocean. This meant that we got to start together and finish together. Since my parents are with us on vacation they were able to watch the kids while we were running.

Now that we are completely clear of the tropical storm, the climate has returned to normal for this time of the year. The temps were around 80 when we started with very high humidity and a steady breeze throughout. The breeze felt pretty good since there is absolutely no shade, but it does make it harder to find a rhythm and maintain good running form.

As has been the case every day this week, my “easy paced” effort turned into somewhat of a progression run with every mile, except for one, faster than the previous. Here’s a rundown of my splits:

I also progressively felt better throughout the run which is always encouraging. I knew that my pace was progressively increasing, so I decided to make the outward half 31 minutes before turning around, thinking that it was more likely to take me 29 minutes to get back than the full 30. With about 5 minutes to go I passed Olivia heading back toward the condo, and I knew that I was still going to have time left when I finished the route. It actually only took me 28 minutes to get back after taking 31 minutes on the way out.

To make up this extra time, I turned around and ran back to Olivia and then we walked together back to the condo. She commented about how hot it had been, but was encouraged that her shins had not bothered her after having some pain earlier this week. All-in-all we both had successful runs this morning.

In total I finished 7.29 miles with an average pace of 8:15 per mile.

Beast Mode….ON!

I need to find out what stride outs are!

Stride Outs are generally 100m repeats used as a final warmup before a full track or interval workout. The idea is to accelerate for the first 80m up to 85 or 90% effort, and then taper your speed to the finish. We usually do 6 sets of these before every track workout. I know that many times I may not feel great during my regular warmup, but then once we get through strides everything feels ready to go.

Also, my coach has me doing these at the END of at least two of my easy-paced runs each week, so that I get some extra speed work in on tired legs. Since my goal in running a marathon will be to maintain my pace even when my legs are toast, adding these to the end of normal training runs helps to simulate that type of effort.

Now that we are mostly clear from Tropical Storm Debby, this morning’s run was WAY different than yesterday. While it was still windy (though not as bad), about all I got today was full sun, full heat, and lots of humidity. In other words, about what you’d expect from a morning run on the gulf in late June.

My schedule today called for 45-minutes at easy pace with 6 x 100m stride outs at the end. Other than sweating like a dog, I again felt pretty good throughout the run, and my splits got a bit faster with every mile (9:16, 8:27, 8:20, 8:12, 7:55).

I did my stride outs across from the condo in what used to be the parking lot of the old Miracle Strip Amusement Park. I went there a bunch as a kid, but there is absolutely nothing there now. The pace for my strides was right at 6:00min pace. In total I finished 5.74-miles with an 8:14 average pace per mile.

Beast Mode…ON

This morning I checked another item off of my running bucket list (not really)…..Running in a Tropical Storm. With tropical storm Debby bearing down on the gulf coast, I took off along Front Beach Road for my scheduled 70 minute run at easy pace. Nathan….would this also be considered crazy?

I’ll have to say this was one of the strangest runs I’ve ever experienced as far as it relates to conditions. For most of the 70 minutes I faced constant strong winds with gusts of 40+ MPH. Sometimes it felt like I was being shoved forward, sometimes it felt like I was running in place, and other times my feet were landing way left or right of where I took off. When the run was finished I was covered by a nice layer of sand from all of the wind. The weather would also go from cloudy with no rain, to periods of pelting rain, to periods of full sun.

As for the run itself, I felt pretty good throughout, though I did get fatigued from constantly fighting the wind. I tried to maintain a consistent effort even though the conditions made my mile splits bounce all over the place. In total I finished just over 8.5-miles in the 70 minutes at a pace just under 8:15 per mile.

Now that it is later in the day, Debby has taken an unexpected turn to the east, which left us with clear skies and a beautiful sunset on the beach. Olivia and I along with Kate and Sara took the opportunity to enjoy a very nice walk together. While this is good news for us, it will be a tough couple of days for those in Central Florida.

Beast Mode…ON!

How bad do I want this? Bad enough to start my scheduled 15+ mile run at 3am this morning so I could get it in before our family left for vacation at 7am.

How good of a friend is Nathan? Such a good friend that he got up and ran it with me!

How CRAZY are we? INSANE!!

I honestly didn’t know when I was going to get my run in this weekend, but I knew one way or another it was going to get done. Yesterday Nathan texted me about running this morning with our running group. I said that we would be on our way to the beach while the group was running, and then half-jokingly threw out there that we could start at 3am! While I expected a “Thanks but no thanks,” he actually expressed some interest, and after a few more texts we had agreed to meet at the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center at 3am.

Because of packing, I was not able to get to bed last night until 11:30pm, so this was little more than a nap. Even though I was very tired when we started, it turned out to be a very good time to run since the temps were fairly mild (around 60 degrees).

With night-time reflective gear and head lamps equipped, we took off on a route that included Edwin Warner Park, the Harpeth River Greenway, and a very large section of the Bellevue community where we live.

After a very, very chill first mile, we settled into a nice rhythm with a pace in the mid to low 8:00s the remainder of the run. Even with the lack of sleep I felt very good throughout, and we just kept clicking off mile after mile.

A few highlights from the run…

About 3/4 of the way through the 5th mile I noticed a small object on the side of the road. I couldn’t really tell what it was, but assumed it was a piece of trash. As I stepped beside it I heard a sudden noise and then looked up to see a dove a few inches in front of my face flapping wildly. I jumped and screamed like a little girl, even causing Nathan to jump. This scared me enough that my heart went racing, and it took a couple of minutes to settle down.

A few minutes later we saw a woman standing in her front yard with a man laying down in the grass beside her feet. Even before we said anything, we assumed that one or both of them was very inebriated. Nathan made a comment that their reason for being outside at 3:45am was about 180 degrees different than ours. They were outside laying in the grass because they were plastered, and we were outside because we were in the middle of a 15+ mile run. Then he pointed out that we might be similar in level of craziness.

Near the end of the run, Nathan pointed out that we had set another “PR” this morning. He said the before today the earliest we had ever run together was 4am. He also said that our temperature “PR” for training was 9 degrees, which was two winters ago. Our previous 4am run was the day before the 2010 Marine Corp Marathon. Neither of us were participating, but our friend Paxton was going with some other members of our running group and needed a ride to the airport. In order to get our run in before I needed to pick him up we got up to run the Percy Warner 11.2-mile loop in the dark at 4am. That was a pretty interesting experience. The trees on that route are so dense that very little light can get through from the night sky, and taking on those massive hills in the dark was a much different perspective than running in the daylight.

As we finished up the run this morning in Edwin Warner Park, the sun was just beginning to come up over the trees. Nathan later posted this on Facebook…

There’s just something about watching the sun rise across the tree tops of Edwin Warner Park that makes you appreciate life and know undeniably that there is a creator. Praise God!

Couldn’t have said it any better myself. Even though it was early, it turned out to be a very enjoyable run with a really good friend. In total we completed 15.25 miles with an average pace of 8:29 per mile.

Beast Mode…ON!

With John (our coach) out of town for the next two weeks at the Olympic Track & Field trials, and not receiving an official workout from Jim Spivey, Dan suggested the group do 400m intervals at track tonight. However, our normal 400m workout is 3 sets of 3 x 400m repeats, but tonight we did 4 sets of 3 x 400m repeats! This is almost 4.5-miles of intervals, which is pretty long for our group. On top of this it was still 95º at 6pm, so needless to say it was fairly tough.

Here’s a rundown of the night…

• 2-Mile Warmup
• 6 x 100m Stride Outs
• 4 Sets of 3 x 400m vf (200m recovery / 400m recovery)
• 1/2-Mile Cool Down

For a normal 400m workout we will do a mixture of “fresh” and “good” paced repeats within each set. However, with the very high temps tonight, and the longer workout, Dan advised us to do each one at “very fresh” pace which should be 3 to 5 seconds slower than “fresh” per interval. Recently my “fresh” paced 400m splits have been around 82 to 84 seconds, so tonight I was shooting for something between 86 and 88.

As has been the case for the past few weeks, I basically ran tonight’s workout by myself. While my legs felt pretty good throughout, I did have some difficulty dealing with the heat and this led to a little less consistency between repeats than I would have liked. This was especially true during the first one and last one. Here is a rundown on my splits per set:

• Set 1 (86, 88, 84)
• Set 2 (88, 88, 86)
• Set 3 (86, 88, 89)
• Set 4 (88, 89, 90)

By the last set I could feel the heat pulsing in my face, but tried to stay as consistent as I could until the end. I lost a couple of seconds during the final two repeats, but overall I’m pretty happy with the workout and how I felt. Just like last week I drank 64 ounces of fluid during the evening + a little bit more from the water fountain at the track, because it was HOT! Final total with warmup and cool down was 8-miles completed at 7:35 average pace per mile.

My daughter Kate came with me to the track tonight, so we got to enjoy another impromptu daddy-daughter date night after the workout. We had dinner at Pei Wei followed by FroYo at Sweet CeCe’s. Great night!

Beast Mode….ON!

This post’s title is one of my favorite Tony Horton quotes from P90X, and has very little to do with our run this morning except that we did see a Tin Man hanging from a tree (more on this in a bit), and we did talk about Tony Horton quotes (though not this one).

Today’s schedule called for 60 minutes at easy pace, so Nathan and I decided to run the reverse of a route we used for a 60 minute run a couple of weeks ago. We started off very, very conservative with an opening mile of 9:29. From this point forward every mile got progressively faster. This wasn’t planned, but just happened that way. You can see our splits below…

I was actually surprised at how good I felt, especially after the first 3 miles. At no time did the pace feel fast or forced. It just felt comfortable throughout. My shin continues to improve, and only felt like a slight twinge this morning. We completed the route in 60:57, which is almost 6-minutes faster than two weeks ago (though that was a Hattori run, and this was not). Our final total was 7.44-miles completed at 8:12 average pace per mile.

As for the “Tin Man,” during our second mile I looked over and noticed about a 3-foot tall tin man hanging from someone’s tree that was made entirely out of old cans. I’m guessing that it was a bird feeder, but looked kinda strange.

Anyway, it was another good run with Nathan in the books!

Beast Mode…ON!

Even though my right shin has been doing better than last week, I’ve been trying to be as cautious as possible. To that end, Nathan and I did today’s scheduled 40-minute, easy paced, run on the grass surface at the Steeplechase course in Percy Warner Park.

This course is a great surface for running and is the site of the annual Iroquois Steeplechase equestrian race, which is one of the oldest and most prestigious steeplechases in the country. The ground is very soft and consistent, with no rocks, roots, or holes. The only downside is that the grass is EXTREMELY thick, which forces you to work a bit harder than on the road.

Overall the run felt great, though we did have to deal with very humid conditions and soggy turf (from the dew). By the end of the run my shoes and socks were completely soaked through, but my Dry Max socks again kept me from getting any blisters. In total we ran just under 4.5-miles during our 40 minutes, with a pace right around 9:00 average per mile. At the end we did 6 x 100m stride outs on the grass, which felt a little strange in high grass with wet shoes. Our final total with strides was 4.81-miles completed at a 8:51 average pace per mile.

Beast Mode…ON!

Lolo Jones on HBO Real Sports – Very compelling interview with American 100m Hurdler Lolo Jones. The interview originally appeared on HBO Real Sports, and was conducted by former tennis player, and current sportscaster, Mary Carillo. I for one will really be pulling for Lolo this week in the Olympic Trials, and hopefully all the way to London for the Gold! Definitely worth a watch!

Go Lolo!