"It's never too late to start your life over."

You know how it is, you're just minding your business, doing whatever it is you are doing and all the sudden, something catches your attention, be it a car, or a woman, or an airplane at 30,000 feet and BANG, you aren't doing what you were doing before, you are distracted by said shiny thing. Yea, welcome to my life.
"I'm not stupid, I'm easily distracted."

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

On the road again

On the road again
I'm back in the road. That isn't such a bad thing. I planned this trip much better than the last. 
The last trip was to Seattle. I tried to maximize my time in the office and in so doing, well, screwed myself. 
I went to work early that morning after getting up at 5:30 am. I worked until around 1:30 or so and hopped on a flight to Seattle. The plane landed around 8:40 pm and I then had time to rent a car, drop my bags at the hotel and then drive 2 hours to the job site where I was meeting the crew. 
I got back to the hotel around 6:30 am and had to be up at 10:00 am to meet the crew for some training. So a 25 hour day followed by a "full" 3 hours of sleep. There's a good idea! 
The rest of that day went fine but I only managed another 3 hours of sleep before I headed off to meet the crew at another job site about 1.5 hours away. 
I did finally manage a few hours of sleep that week. No workouts though. Only 2-3 meals. 
I followed that week with the LA 13.1 mentioned in a previous post. I did fine. 
So this week is much better planned. 
First, the job sites are within 30 minutes or so of the warehouse and they don't start until 5:00 am. I am using today to travel and visit some previous job sites and I will get to bed early after a short run.  Tomorrow will be an early morning but the day won't be too long.  I will visit the crew at a job site, do some more store visits, and drive to Colorado Springs. I have one more store to visit there but that will be a fairly short trip and then I am done. 
Much better planned. And besides, killing yourself for a boss who doesn't even know you are gone seems silly, don't you think?

On a side note. I'm a bit worried about this flight. They said it was full but there are only about 7 of us here at the gate. I got a seat at the "back" and I'm in isle 4. This should be fun. At least we don't have to go over any mountains to get from LA to Denver.     

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Success!!!

There are various kinds of success when it comes to sport. Most of them are related to finish times. You want the best one you can get, usually. I had a different kind this weekend when I did the Los Angeles 13.1. The kind of success I had isn't graded by my finish time, which was a PR by the way, but was graded by my ability to stick to a plan.

I had a few people comment to me something along the lines of, "You sure do blow up a lot," and "Why do you keep doing exactly the same thing and hoping for a different result? If you go out too hard you are going to blow up."

Amazingly, I took this to heart.

I decided that instead of trying to "race" the LA13.1 I was going in with a plan!

PLAN:
Run 10 miles at a 9:00/mile pace.
Run 3.1 miles as fast as I could.
Do it in that order, not the other way around, like you usually do.

RESULT:
Ran 10 miles at an 8:57/mile pace.
Ran 3.1 miles fast as hell.

Success!!!

Final time, not that it matters was 1:53:39. Most importantly, I ran really strong at the end of 10, I have never done that before, and I ran my desired pace and proved to myself that I could do it. Pacing and patience, never really a strong suit of mine. I know I have a long way to go before I can say that I am good at it but this was a huge step in the right direction.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Writing blog posts in your iPhone sucks.

No really. It sucks. I say this not only because of the difficulty of typing on this litle tiny screen bit also because, aparently, if you don't finish your post before you have to go find your gate, it erases the entire thing. Well, that would suck if I had just finely crafted a brilliant blog about why my travels suck more that yours. Of course that would be whining and self serving so I probably didn't do that. Probably.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Of things learned, and then forgotten.

I ran today. It went terribly. Oh, the first part of the run was good. You know, the first half, the part where you run as far as you are going to be from where you are done. That's the beauty of the out and back, you have to run back.

It's also the pain.

I started the run around 11:00 AM. I went down to Santa Monica with Charrissa and we met up with Eve. It was a beautiful day, as soon as we got there we started stripping off layers. It's January for god sake, we should need layers. I had an 8 mile run. 4 miles of warm-up and sub-tempo pace and then descending pace on three of the 4 miles back with a 1 mile cool down.

I should have figured something was up when I was about to start and I realized that I was thirsty. Oh, there's good news.

I felt good at first, easy miles, had to hold myself back to keep my pace where it was supposed to be. Then at about mile 3.5 everything fell apart. Just before my turn around the wheels came off. The respiration rate shot up, the legs felt a bit wooden, and I was no longer having much fun. It no longer felt as though I was running with a tail wind, it felt just the opposite.

At the turn I did stop for a second and get a drink from a fountain, my second stop, but at this point I think it was already over.

Post run analysis: I ate about 1700 calories yesterday, didn't drink enough water, and had dark urine when I woke up. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, especially when you combine it with a rough bike ride spent mostly in zone 4 two days prior. Not a good idea, not a good time.

Positive observations:
1. I don't suck. Well, I do, but mostly because I can't seem to remember simple things like, "You should not be dehydrated before you start running and you should probably eat enough that you don't bonk." As for the not sucking, well, I felt great and ran well until I ran out of calories and fluid.
2. My new shoes rock! They are like strapping pillows to your feet. I felt no pain, and for the first time in a bit my Achilles didn't hurt at the end of my run, good news.
3. It was 72, sunny, and beautiful. What a great run in Santa Monica. This is one I won't forget for a while. Oh, don't worry, I will likely forget the lessons. That seems to be what I do.

Ok so lets have some beer then...

Here is the workout on TrainingPeaks.