Monday - New Year's Eve

"Run slowly, run daily, drink moderately and don't eat like a pig." -Dr. Ernest van Aaken

Lift in the morning, Swim at lunch, Run after work.

With that last run out of the way, I'll know my total 2007 mileage!! I think it will be 1,463 or close to that. Better than previous year, but I'll try to improve it for 2008. I'm coming up with my 2008 New Year's Resolutions.

These are my tentative running, swimming, and cycling goals:
1. Run 2008 miles or more.
2. Run 2 or more marathons.
3. Swim 200 miles.

(to be continued)

Saturday - Long Run

The holidays are just killing me. That and the weather. I ran three times this week, 6,6, and 12 for a measly 24 miles. I did get to the weight room a couple of times and I did swim a couple of times... so I maintained my place. But I'm not in better shape than I was a week ago, and that's always the goal.

so 12 miles this morning. Next Saturday I'm still planning to do a 26.2 mile training run. I did some 20's and then a 12 today, so if I run a couple of times next week I should have no trouble. I'm still planning to do the Snickers Marathon Bar marathon in Albany on March 1st, so this run is just part of my training for that event.

Thursday

Went to the gym this morning. I must be getting old... Take a few days off and it's like taking 4 giant steps backwards, in terms of my workouts. Sort of. At least in the weight room. I did OK with the bench but really ran out of gas on the ab stuff. No sweat, it will come back. I'll make it up over the weekend.

I'll swim at lunch and then run 6 easy miles tonight after work.

There's a good article on nutrition in Runner's World. The article was published in 2004, but I got it in my inbox this morning. Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong's coach and nutritionist, discusses nutrition during high intensity training. Lance was eating 70% carbs during the Tour...

What I do is in way comparable to participating in the Tour de France, yet his carb intake at 70% underscores just how skewed your diet has to be to maintain energy levels for extended periods of time. Low-carb diets? Not for me, thanks.

Wednesday

Grrrrr

Work in the AM, swam a mile at lunch... and then ran 6 miles when I got home from work. 46° out this evening, blustery for Bozeman MT but a bit nippy for Columbus, espescially when you add the 10mph wind in my face.

My daughter bought me a Road ID bracelet. I've been hinting around and did everything short of setting the Road ID homepage as her computer's homepage. She had the opportunity to add the last, bottom-most line on the ID, so she added "Isaiah 40:31" which is,

"But they that wait upon the LORD
shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as EAGLES
they shall run, and not be weary;
and they shall walk, and not faint"

I'm very happy with the bracelet and very proud of her. She knows that now that it's on my wrist, it's like my watch, or my ring... it will probably never come off.

Having the Road ID or similar bracelet is a good thing. I've passed out a few times and have been very lucky that I've been near people who knew me; it could just as easily happen when I'm running by myself early in the morning, or swimming... it's important to keep some ID on you. This bracelet is just a very handy way to make sure the information is always there.

Red Nose Marathon details

Heidi, from the Columbus Roadrunners, emailed us the route for the Columbus Red Nose Marathon and Half Marathon... so here are the routes:

Red Nose Marathon

Red Nose Half Marathon

Both runs start and finish at Fountain City Coffee.

Since I have to work that day (at Below The Knee), I'm planning to start at around 5am so that I'll be finished and at the store by 10am. My only goal is to finish the run and then be able to work all day, so I'm just treating it as a longer training run. I've been doing 20 & 21 mile runs for a while now, so I don't anticipate any problems other than getting lost when I get to Fort Benning.

On my long runs I normally turn around at the 10 mile point, which for me is where the Riverwalk trail crosses 10th Division Road. I've crossed the road before, but I always seem to lose my way once I get up the hill. If you look at the course map, we go across the street and then follow the path all the way to the intersection of Baltzell & Bergen St, right by the Follow Me Golf Course. So that part will be new to me. I might go to Oxbow Meadows this Saturday and incorporate that part of the course into my run.

So my plan is to start at 5am, run the thing by myself, finish it in around 4:20, then shower and get to work by 10.

Saturday - Long Run

Man, the holidays are tough! Work parties, stuff to do at home, errands to run. Crikey.

Still, this week I did manage to run a couple of times, lift weights M-W-F, and swim 4 times. And I did a 20.5 mile run this morning. I'm going to try to run Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, since the gym won't be open much.

So next up on my calendar is the Columbus Red Nose Marathon on January 5th. I'll need to start very early and try to finish up and get to work by 10 am.

Tuesday

Lower body & abs at the gym in the AM, plus 1 mile swim at lunch. The new goggles are working, my last pair were old and really messed up. Had a work commitment last night.

*****warning: nerd alert******

in other news, I finally got off my butt and forwarded the Treo 700p phone number to my Blackberry Curve, so it will answer both numbers. Since I run a blackberry server and a Windows Sync Enterprise Server I need to have both phones up and running all the time to help monitor the servers. But it's an embuggerance to carry both phones,and now I just have to carry the Curve. I can leave the Treo charged up in my bag, or whatever.

I can post photos from the Treo directly to this page by emailing a certain address. They automatically show up here. The Blackberry Curve, on the other hand, has a different phone number and in fact my Curve photos go to a different site. My goal is to get that fixed so that I can post pictures from the Curve straight here. The Curve's camera is better than the one on my Treo.

Saturday - Long Run day

This morning I ran from the Chattahoochee River Club to Fort Benning & back, so a total of 20.6 miles or thereabouts. Followed that with a shower at the Y, then a trip to Starbucks, home to grab my bag... than off to work.

Last Saturday I was running on the Riverwalk and was running in the soft ground off to the right of the actual paved trail, since my knees were hurting a little. It was still pretty dark. All of a sudden, I was poked in the eye by something, either a stick, a branch, an owl, some hidden guy's finger, who knows, but it literally dropped me to the ground. It hurt like hell. I got to my feet and staggered around and finally finished the run, but ended up going to the opthalmologist to have it looked at the following Monday.

The opthalmologist's office was a trip. I got there at 2:15, like I was asked, and left just before 5pm. I'm guessing that elderly people are an opthalmologist's bread and butter. I think I was the only one in there under 65 years old. Glad I went though, my cornea was scratched and infected.

I'll be at Below The Knee from 10-6 Saturday and 1-5 on Sunday.

Friday

Made it to the gym at 5am for my strength workout. 35 minutes, then back home to get ready for work.

Ran at lunch, and I think it was about 65 degrees. I ran with no shirt- the sun was out, the weather was just about perfect. I ran from Bibb City Mill to Phenix City Amphitheatre & back, about 5.7 miles @ 8:20 per mile.

What's with the homeless on the 14th Street Bridge? I have nothing against homeless people, my heart goes out to 99% of them, but the dipsticks on that bridge need to be moved out of there. I ran past them and then they yelled at me (love that- they wait until you're about 50 feet away before they say things.). I'll keep running past and just closer and closer. What a mess.

WCAP Runner's blog - Thursday

Swam 1 mile, ran 6 miles. I'm really enjoying the swimming again. I swam last winter too, I need to go back through my entries to see why I stopped... but I'm liking it again so far.

When I had my store in Auburn, College Street Sports, I was lucky to have some great athletes work for me. Brian Abshire, Carlos Gibbs, Demarcus Curry, Leonard Thomas, Jenna Yancey to name a few (google them- Abshire ran a 13:20 5K at Carlsbad, then ran in the Olympics... Demarcus played for Tampa Bay... Leonard played CFL...Jenna's done the Hawaiin Ironman numerous times)and actually helped place Carlos into the Army World Class Athlete Program. At that time (1996) there were a bunch of WCAP guys in Auburn training for the steeplechase. Quite a few went to the Trials, although none made the Olympic Team.

Anyway...I just ran across a post in the Runner's World forums and found Nate Pennington's blog. He's a WCAP runner, a marathoner, and he was the the fastest American at the California International Marathon just a couple of weeks ago. Ran a 2:19:35 in that race. We'll be looking for him in the 2012 Olympics???

Wednesday

Swam 1 mile.

One thing about weightlifting, at least the way I do it: I hadn't been to the pool in a month and went back in last week, swam 1/2 a mile like it was nothing. Could easily have gone a mile or more.

Tuesday

Well, I was gonna swim at lunch today but my son borrowed the car, and.... so I was stuck. Ended up running 6 miles after work. I'm enjoying running in the neighborhood when I get home. It's dark, I can wear my AirDrive earphones and still hear traffic, and then I get to enjoy all the holiday decorations. I'm listening to an audiobook now, Ken Follett's Hornet Flight. Each chapter lasts just over an hour. So I run 6 miles and do some cool down & stretching in the driveway while I wait for the chapter to finish.

It's still shorts and no shirt weather here. Supposed to cool up next week.

Monday

2 or 3 things planned today:

- run 5.7 miles - the weather looks awesome, shoes shorts & no shirt run at lunch...
- lift weights
- swim

and oh yeah, the eye doctor. I called and got an appointment for 2:30, told to be there at 2:15. I got there at 2 and left just before 5. My eye was scratched and infected.

But I did get to lift today, and I ran 5.6 miles around 7pm after I got home from work.

Eye Pain

I was running yesterday morning in the dark, on the side of a path, and got jabbed in my eye by part of tree branch. It hurt like hell and I walked for a couple of minutes until I could see out of my (now very painful) right eye again, and then went on and finished the run.

Last night I woke up every 30 minutes with a lot of pain. I even filled up the sink with warm water and stuck my head in, opened my eyes, moved them around etc in order to clean it... but it's still really painful today.

I'm going to see an opthalmologist tomorrow, but I'm wondering if there's anything I can do today to help. I think I scratched the eyball, and that there might be some dirt or something in my right eye, still.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Mike

Saturday

10 mile run this morning.

I'll be helping out at Below The Knee today until 2pm and then on Sunday.

Thursday - Friday

Less running, more swimming.

I plan on doing my long run on Saturday, but this week I spent more time lifting and swimming than running. And swimming with the world's crappiest goggles, I might add. It takes forever to get them to seal correctly, and on Friday, I made it halfway down the pool when the strap broke! I stood there in the middle of pool tying the strap in a knot... finally got them usable again, but they fog up badly about 2 laps into it, I can't see anything, it's a miracle I don't just smash into the wall at the end of the pool.

I'm getting new goggles this weekend.

I am running at 6am Saturday at the Riverwalk, starting from Rotary Park and heading south.

Sgt Jill Stephens - Miss Utah

I know who I'll be rooting for in the Miss America pageant: Miss Utah! Sgt. Jill Stevens is a medic in the Utah National Guard's 1st Battalion, 211th Aviation Regiment. She's also completed 9 marathons, most recently the Marine Corps Marathon.

Mon-Tues-Wed

Have you read the Runner's World article on General Petraeus? Wow. He took his staff on a 5.7 mile run and averaged less than 6-minute miles... then did 17 reps on the pullup bar where he touched his feet to the bar... pretty amazing. Read it if you get a chance.

So after reading that on Sunday, I'm doing the Crossfit 'knees to elbows' exercise in between decline bench and bench sets at the gym. I still did a couple of sets of the glute-ham situps. I can do 10 of the knees-to-elbows. I'll just keep doing them and see how much I can improve.

Mon- weights, no running
Tue- core, 6 mile run
Wed= weights, 6 mile run, maybe 1 mile swim added tonight

Saturday

Got to the Riverwalk at 6:30 this morning, running a bit late. I saw quite a lot of Columbus Roadrunners running club folks at Rotary Park, then saw another big group of runners coming from the River Club area... so it was pretty busy.

I went out 6.5 miles & turned around. I didn't run many miles this week, but I've promised myself to do better next week.

When I get in the habit of lunch runs, or evening runs, my mileage goes down. I have to run in the mornings & then add other workouts to that in the remainder of the day. So my goal for next week: 5 runs totalling 40+ miles, swimming & weights.

The AirDrive earphones are working great. Half marathon distance today, 18 miles last Saturday, never once had to adjust the earpieces and I could talk to people while listening to my music. It's pretty amazing that you can hear all the ambient sounds while listening to your mp3 player with these earphones.