Cheaters Never Prosper!

EZ Run: 4miles @ 8:54
Planned: 4miles @ 9:00

I am pissed!, I thought that my woes with the Nike+ inaccuracies were over with the cold. But for some crazy reason today's run was 1.6 miles off. It was a nice crisp 55f out, and I have not had any reel problems for the last month or so.

The thing that really chaps my hide, is that this misreported the first 3 miles so badly that I was bumped to 1st in the 5k challenge (16:58), I was quite happy with my legitimately earned 14th (22:00). So now I have to either delete my run, messing up my logs even more then 1.6 miles, or withdraw from the challenge. I think it is best if I just withdraw, I have no chance of even getting into the top 10 anyway.

Oh well, I wont be entering any more speed challenges as long as this remains a issue.

1500 Miles down.

Pace Run: 7Miles @ 8:22
Planned: 7Miles @ 8:30

Today I was not quite sure what to do. I am still planning my training schedule for The Detroit Marathon. And it looks like I am going to shoot for a goal time of 3:45. This is 15 minutes slower then I had planned to do LA, but I want to be sure I have a realistic goal this time. This would require me to do maintain a average pace of 8:30.

This brought me to my run today, I wanted to do a run long enough that I could get used to the pace and learn what it felt like. The run went well, it was not quite a tempo run, not quite a EZ run. It felt good to know that I was running at "the pace". This reinforced my plans to ad a pace run to my schedule each week. I will give it a bit more thought first.

Between Plans

EZ Run: 4miles @ 8:44
Planned: 4miles @ 9:00

Last week I was worried about the the Michigan Challenge 5k. Next week I start worrying about the Detroit Marathon. This week I got nothing to worry about. So I just went for a run. I was a bit worried that I would still be sour form Sunday, but It turns out that the nice thing about short runs is you recover allot faster. I Had no problem meeting my goal today and I could have done a few more miles had I had the time.

My only plan for this week is to come up with my training schedule for the next 16 weeks. I am going to use SmartCoach again, but I will be tweaking it a bit, to concentrate on the Long runs, and fit in a few races that I want to do this summer. I Will be posting it here once I have things worked out.

As for the rest of this week I'm just going to wing it. Not quite sure how that will work out. But Ill know soon enough.

5k of Grass and pain.

Michigan Challenge 5k Chase:
22:00 - 5k @ 7:05
Planned: 21:46 - 5k @ 7:00
Place: 43rd, 2nd in Age group.

I Have to admit that this was my fastest official 5k to date. So I should be quite happy. Over all I am, but I am a bit annoyed by the fact that I did not hit my goal time. I kept telling myself that I would be happy with 21:59, and since I missed that by 1 second I am allowed to be put out.

The Crazy thing about this race, for me at least was that the bulk of it was on Grass. I have never run more then a 100m on grass before. It was kind of nice as far as saving my legs some pain. But I cant help but feel it slowed me down a bit. I will probably never know. At least I did not feel the pounding I did last week on my Intervals.

This was the first time I have ever placed in my age group. 2nd place 1.15 behind the guy ahead of me. Of course the winner of the next age group up did it in 16:40. I even got a nifty stone coaster for a award. Its kind of cheesy but Its a first so I am kind of proud of it.

The only other thing of note is that my Garmin was off by .02 miles, and my Nike + was off by .7 k It reported my at 4.93. This is not bad except that I am in a 5k Nike Challenge and my 22 minute run was not recorded. Which would have brought me for the bottom of the rankings to some ware in the top 20. Oh well. I guess Ill just have to do another race before august.

Round and Round.

Intervals: 4.25miles with 3x800m @ 3:14
Planned: 4.25miles with 3x800m @ 3:20

I did not run in high shchool, except during PE and that was with no great joy. So today was the first time that I have ever done Intervals on a track.

Of course 20 years ago the track at my school was just dirt, if I recall. The track at our local high school is some sort of fancy rubberized stuff. I cant help but be amazed by the quality, I guess my property taxes are going to some were useful.

I am planning on running a 5k on Sunday, and this was my last run until then, and my second consecutive week of doing intervals for my speedwork. I cant say that I like them much. I know the point is to push back your limits, but I am always spent at the end, and to tired to feel any sort of accomplishment. After months of training for Marathons I think I prefer Tempo Runs for speed work, and am looking forward to getting back to them.

Over all the run went fine, I ran a bit faster then I was suppose to, 3:11, 317, & 3:15. I was trying to do 3:20, but it is amazing how much harder it is to cut 9 seconds of a 800m run then it is to cut 5 minutes of a Half Marathon. I don't know if I will ever be happy with my short run speeds. I think perhaps I just started running to late in life to ever get under 20 in a 5k. But I might as well give it a try.

EZ Run / Steam bath.

EZ Run: 4.0miles @ 8:47
Planned: 4.0miles @ 9:00

Nothing of note today except that once more the humidity is getting worse. 100% this morning, got a few sprinkles, but mostly just warm wet air. Its was only 72f but it sure feels hotter.

Oh well, that's what Gatorade is for.

And the Humitity begins.

10miles @ 8:51
Planned: 8miles @ 9:00

It is June, and I guess I have been kind of lucky to date, but today was a reminder that I am in Michigan. And summer in Michigan is Humid.

The Truth is it was not that bad today, I did get out early 7:00 but it was already a bit muggy. By mile 4 I was drenched in sweat and actually walked a 100m or so to drink some Gatorade. I have a bad habit of not drinking on my long runs, but I don't think this will be a problem as the humidity gets worse. Which I am sure it will.

Oh well I will be starting my training schedule for the Detroit Marathon next month, and the long runs will just get longer, and the humidity worse. Yet I keep running. ;)

4 miles is not the same as 8 miles.

run: 8miles @ 8:57
Planned: 4miles @ 9:00

It was just way to nice this morning, and I was ceased by the desire to put in a few extra miles. I don't know if it was smart. But I did not have any problems and It seamed to have worked out well.

I still cant get the New Nike+ widgets to work in by blogger post. JamesB over at Gorilla Hunting has already got it working so I will have to take a peek at his HTML. I think since I am going to have to mess with the code I am going to try and come up with my own template as well. But we shall see what I come up with over the next few days, or weeks.

3x800m with warm and cool dose not equal 5 miles.

Speedwork: 4.25miles (3x800m @ 3:17)
Planned: 5miles (3x800m @ 3:20)

As smart as smart coach is it always seams to lie to me about intervals. Yesterday I did my 3x800m @ 3:20. With 1 mile warm, and 1 mile cool. If you include the 400m jog
between repeats this comes to a total of 4.25 miles. Perhaps they want you to do 800m
jogs between but that is not what it says in the directions.

Beside that the run went well. I did 3:14, 3:16, and 3:22. I
don't mind missing by a few seconds on that last one because the lst 200m or so was up a hill.

Once more my Nike+ was close. Giving me a reading of 4.29. However the graph it
produces for intervals is pretty much useless. I am glad I have my garmin for these or I
would need a track or a treadmill to even have any Idea how I'm doing.

Nike has added Web widgets, Not sure how to use them yet. But I know it can be done, just need to mess with the default HTML that blogger kicks out.

Stupid Trees!

EZ Run: 4mi @ 8:55 (ish)
Planned: 4mi @ 9:00

Today's run went fine, even though I did not want to get out of bed. I did however notice a bit of inconsistency in my Gamin. Which seamed to be proved by reviewing my run on Google Earth.

It seams that the beautiful thick spring foliage can mess up a GPS as bad as a brick building. Normally I would not mind much, but I was tyring to control my pace. The result was can not really trust my results. I think I was more in the 8:40 to 8:50 Range. Oh well I can avoid that stretch of road in the future. At least when the numbers are important.

Nice and Toastie.

Long Run: 8.43 @ 8:54
Planned: 8.0 @ 9:02

Summer is near, and today I felt it. I decided to make the drive down to Kinsington Metro Park for my long run today. But before I committed to it I wasted 3 hours. So I did not even start my run until 9:45. This gave it just enough time to warm up. I was a beautiful day not even that humid. But After months of running in 20's - 50's it got a bit toasty. This would not be so bad except I managed to give myself a nice sun burn, and it none to comfortable. I will not be wearing shorts again for some time I think.

The run itself went well. I think maybe I should have kept it to 9:00 but I feel I need to start speeding up my long run pace just a smidgen. I might drop it to 8:55 or 8:50 in a week or so.

One other thing of note, My Nike+ was once again more or less accurate. Coming in at 8.32. I am going to just call that good enough. This goes to show all those who said that the problems I was having in the winter were not cold related. I think I have enough runs now to call it proof.

Recovery run, - Recovery.

Recovery Run: 7.25mi @ 9:45
Planned: 4mi @ 9:02

It seams that my Tuesday calibration took a bit
better then I thought. At least I am back in the ballpark, today's run was recorded at 7.47 miles, just a bit less then .25 of a mile over. Since Nike and apple only claim +/- 10% accuracy I am content. I was running a bit slower then normal so It will be interesting to see how accurate it stays when I get back to my normal 9:00, or even when start up speed work again.

Since I ran a 1/2 Marathon on Sunday, and pretty much at a all out pace, I don't know if today's run was the wisest thing to do. I don't know if I gave myself enough time to recover. I though since I was running free form, not paying attention to my pace, It would be easy. However at around 5 miles I started to feel a bit of discomfort. I would not go as so far as to call it pain. But It might have been smarter to stick to my planed 4 miles.

Calibration Day

After the Half Marathon last weekend, my Nike+ Ipod system reported 11.2 Miles. This was very annoying. Over the winter I was plagued with Nike+ problems, almost always It would recorder to fast for the first part of a run, then drop to a semi accurate state. Now that the weather has warmed up a bit I seam to be getting consistently slow feedback.

So this morning I decided to take advantage of my recovery week and recalibrate my Nike+. I Started by calibrating the walking time. I walked 1 mile, at something like 16:50. Then I calibrated to run, with 1 mile @ 9:12. Having completed this I decided to run back home (2 mile), and see how the calibration took.

As it turns out, It did not take well. I got to .71 miles by my Gamin, and when my Nike+ had done .5 of a mile. When I herd this I stooped, and decided to recalibrate. So I set up to run 1 more mile. After calibrating a 8:45 mile. I decided to run the rest of the way home. To see if it helped. It did not seam to help much, because in the .33 miles to the house my Nike+ returned .22.

I will try and calibrate with shorter distances next. Probably on Friday. The I only use the Nike+ to keep track of my over all miles these days. But I am not happy with it under reporting, messing up my averages, messing up my mileage goals.

13.1 Miles to go

What a difference a Year makes.

One year ago, on the 6th of June I ran my first race. The 5k portion of Dexter Ann Arbor Run. I had no idea what to expect and had only started running about 6 weeks earlier. I managed to run a bit over half of it, and finished with a time of 38:37 (Average pace of 12:26).

This morning I Braved the rain to run the Dexter Ann Arbor Run for the second time, However after 1 year of running and a bit over 1500 mile, I decided to tackle the main event. The Half Marathon. I have to admit I fell short of my goal time, but I finished the 13.1 miles with a respectable time of 1:46:02. (Average pace of 8:06). I was shooting for 8:00.

This Race also kicks off my 2007 running season. So I am using it an excuse to start a new blog dedicated to running. With a little help from blogger, I have decided to host it myself, here at www.odyssey-3.com/running. I will be using this blog to keep myself motivated, and let my friends and family know how thing are progressing. So feel
free to comment. And thanks for visiting.