Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Cycle, Cycle Too

So I’m catching up on my paper exercise log for the last week, and it hits me: I am absolutely terrible at following through with stuff. Like really following through. My entire life is a string of events where I am able to make initially great progress through luck and natural ability, ending in missed opportunities because I was too eager to relax and sit in the first patch of shade, so to speak, to which I arrived. I could list items ad nauseam, but that’d be dwelling instead of getting off my butt and continuing to soldier on.

What set me off was the three day gap from the easy 3 miles on Wednesday of last week to the 5 miler on Sunday. The gap in and of itself was not so bad, but what killed me was remembering how psyched I was on Wednesday afternoon when I realized that I was only 5.1 miles short of hitting my first hundred miles for the year. I had been pumped, excited about how easy it was going to be to finish out the week with an honest century under my sneakers.

But then I gave blood, and the excuses for slacking added up.

I would have cut myself a bit more slack, but I also stayed out of the pool for the entire week. Grr.

Like I mentioned, this is just another example. The difference is that this time, it appears that I’ve been able ot identify why I continually let myself down. I’ve excelled when there has been someone else to hold my feet to the fire. I need to learn how to hold my own feet to the fire.

Sorry for the downer. In truth, I’m really happy that I’ve finally been able to identify my history of false optimism. I think it’s a good step. Life continues to get better. Why? Because I can make it better.

Good run this afternoon. I’d dropped my wife’s car off for rear wheel bearings (Click and Clack talked about them a couple of weeks back, that they could seize on the highway and pop off the wheel – my mind clicked that the mechanic had mentioned they needed to be fixed the last time the car was in, and they were noticeably noisy) on the way to work, so I worked through lunch, finished up, and headed out for a run.

No iPod, no Forerunner, just sneakers, sweats, and a changed Billy (that’s for Pam).

3 miles or so – right on track for the week. Still felt a bit … tired, but not as noticeable as Sunday’s run.

And I’m over 100 running miles for the year. Can I make 1,000? We’ll see…

177. More progress, slowly but surely.

Pics from NYC are over at Yahoo!. My Flickr Account is maxed out for the month.

Woke up early, same sniffles. Decided to gut it out and do 5 miles before heading into NYC.

Good Idea.

The run was really tough. I think donating blood hit me for a bigger loop than I’d though. My thighs were sore most of the way, and I felt … tired. Kind of in a funny way. Not in an out of shape kind of way, just … tired.

In any case, I finished a good 5 miles (Same route including River Road that I ran last weekend, ‘cept I did it the opposite way, so half of the hill climb was right at the start, and half was at the finish, instead of saving it all for the end. I didn’t feel drained at the end of the run, all the …tired was during the run.

Packed up Jake and my friend Christian and headed to NYC. Great time. I’ll post pics probably tomorrow. We took the train in to Grand Central Terminal (absolutely not Grand Central Station – the Metro North lines end at the terminal, but pass through many stations on the way), walked past the lions at the public library to the subway station in Bryant Park, took the train up to the American Museum of Natural History. The dinosaurs were great – like I said, I’ve got pictures.

We then had a great walk back to the Terminal through Central Park and the Gates. I’ll be honest – “The Gates” are ugly as sin – big orange monstrosities, and even a pretty terrible fabric used to make them. The Art, I’ve decided, was performance art in two ways – First Christo had to convince a metric ton of people to let him do this (almost all with private money, it should be noted, other than “rent” for the park). The second performance was absolutely packing Central Park in the dead of winter.

Stopped at the Cafe in the Sheep Meadow for coffee (and a potty break). Stopped at the Newly Redone FAO Schwartz – well, I can’t really blame it on The Boy, since I wanted to look at toys too (to see the $30K ride-in Hummer with the real stereo, and the $50K Ferrari), and stopped at about 52nd and 4th to get some Pizza before jumping back on the train. Very nice. Jake was way better than an almost 5 year old should be. And he kept on the same dopey grin that I’ve always got when I’m rolling in the Apple.

The upside – Made my mileage again for the week, one run shorter than planned. Gave Blood. Made Memories.

The Downside? I don’t have a puppy.

(not that I need one – I love our dog. I just had to find something to gripe about)

Woke up this morning with sniffles and an itchy throat, so I blew off today’s long run.

That’s not entirely true. Woke up this morning with sniffles and an itchy throat on a sub 20 degree F day. Had to go to a monthly meeting at work at 8:30, and wanted to be able to play with the boys before leaving. Meeting went long. Wife needed sanity time away from the boys. Aforementioned sniffles didn’t go away. Stories of running coaches getting lung-ectomies and other sick runners ran through my head. Planned Sunday trip to NYC to see “The Gates” and the Dinosaurs with Jake ran through my head. So I blew it off, figuring one week won’t hurt me.

We’ll see.

I’m ahead of schedule for the week’s training (Three miles ahead and one extra day of running), so today’s a rest day. Sort of. Even though hearing about Jeff’s flying run last night. RBF, y’all rock – every day, at least someone has a phenomenal run, which is incentive to get back out there.

The one thing I will nag y’all about is donating blood **. The clockwork blood drive at NUWC was today; I donated. Cheap way to lose a pound, and the red blood cells will be reconstituted out of other parts of my body assuming I don’t break down and get another Squishy (Icee, Slurpee – term is from the Simpsons) or otherwise compensate by extra eating. Here’s the Red Cross’ site. It’s also a great way to get a health update – BP was like 108/70, thanks to a month and a half of running. Only took an hour from walking in the door until walking out after cookies and juice.

I will probably go for an easy swim tonight. Though I cleaned out the part of the basement dedicated to bikes last night, and did an assessment of what needs to be done to the family’s five bikes (My beauty road bike, my beater road bike, my beater mountain bike, Missy’s hybrid, and Jake’s tiny bike) prior to spring. Although the rains have washed much of the sand off the roads, and I may be sorely tempted to log a quick 15 or 20 miles on Saturday.

** The reason I nag is that I’ve had a couple of FOAF (Friends of a Friend) whose lives have been saved by donated blood. I understand that not everyone can give, too, and apologize in advance if for whatever reason you can’t.

Forgot to bring a drink for lunch today, so I stopped at the Circle K (or 7-11, or Stop ‘n’ Go). Picked up a Squishy. Did I break Lent? I vote no: the goal was to give up eating crap, and a Squishy is not food. Supporting the no vote is this morning’s unofficial weigh in somewhere south of two pounds lighter than Monday.

Quick run at lunch after two epics – Programmed the Forerunner for a 5K. Finished in 24 something, a 7:57 average pace. Yeah, baby, sub-8’s. I think I could have done a 7:45 if I’d pushed down to nothing, but it was windy, windy. The last mile was almost all into the wind, and was about an 8:20 pace.

Great run, although I’m kind of getting paranoid about having three strong runs in a row and still feeling gooooood.

And Reida and Jenna at the former Motorola Marathon

Oh, yeah, baby – today was 50’s, and ended up sunny. I waited to run until the afternoon, and was not disappointed. Since the weather was impeccable, I figured I’d head over to Newport’s First Beach and run the World Famous Cliffwalk.

The surf was huge! The parking lot at First Beach was packed with folks in wetsuits trying to catch a little winter surfing action. I had a buddy in Sub School who swore up and down that the only time that New England was worth surfing was in the dead of winter – today I think I may have believed him. I don’t surf, though. There was a break off of whatever the end of Middletown is, too. I hadn’t seen that during the summer.

Dig the size of the rollers:

Tons of runners out, looked like most were from Salve Regina, and almost all were wearing shorts. And there was still a bunch of snow on the walk:

I always dig this building:

The tiny black dots on the waves are surfers. The water temperature cannot be too much above freezing. Wetsuits are, apparently, wonderful things:

Big waves for New England. And, yes, that is France in the background. Way, way, way in the background – That’s what I love about the sea – pick a direction and go. When you hit land, get out.

Again, not really enough zoom, but the waves exploding off these rocks was spectacular –

This was the view at the turn at 2 miles out. I had thought a 4 mile round trip would turn at the point just to the right of the big house. But I was wrong. And not sad at all…

This one? Nothing but nice shapes and colors.

Most of the Cliff Walk is pretty easy to run on. This is not as bad as it looks. I channeled Chris and called it Plyometrics. Then I said “Screw that – I’ll just call it Fun.”

For a decent stretch (tenth of a mile?) I ran atop the retaining wall so as not to get my shoes too much wetter. Again, this was filed under “Fun”. There have been a couple times, though, coming around this corner on the wall where I feared that a wind out of the west would push me down to the rocks. Not today. Today? Perfection.

This guy was waiting to catch some waves.

Back where I started

I thought this would be cool – a series of footprints in the wet sand, what with the reflected colors of the sky and all. Didn’t work out so well.

This one was much nicer.

Run stats? Who cares? (actually, I do – 4 miles, sub 9 minute miles). Positive splits, but who cares! I think I was still a bit drained from my trail run on Monday, and the mud blister was acting up a little. Wednesday is swimming.

All the pictures link to larger images. They were all taken with my $60 Oregon Scientific camera. And the group is also posted to Flickr. If you’re into that sort of thing. Any quality issues are strictly due to me not breaking stride while shooting. Got to love the tiny camera.

So I think I’m over the whole “fiasco” of not upping my mileage last week. Weight this morning was on the light side of 179, and that’s after being not so good food-wise over the weekend. No machine or convenience store candy – the Lenten vow is still intact. But we did Pizza Saturday night on the way back from Ikea in New Haven, and Sunday night was Steak and Mac and Cheeze (AKA make everyone happy night). But the weight is heading the right way. Yippie!

One of the side effects is having the areas of fat really start to stand out as my muscles get back in shape. I swear it’d be not too hard just to, say, lop off a butt cheek and drop 5 pounds without affecting endurance at all.

Oh, sorry – was that too personal? Sorry.

Great run today. Sort of. It was supposed to be a rest day, but after making yesterday an unplanned rest day, I figured I ought to get ahead for this week. I had a meeting in Newport in the morning and in Waterford in the afternoon, so I said “Hey, let’s do a quick lap at Bluff Point between meetings.” Another aside – I’m currently in euphoria stage as far as running is concerned. My love affair is peaked since I’m back at the point where I set a reasonable goal that’s got some zazz (lap of the state park through the woods; run down scenic road), I accomplish it, and I feel reasonably good while doing it.

Anyhow – today was grey

and muddy

Yeah baby.

My Forerunner doesn’t like Bluff Point – much like the XC ski trip, it died about halfway through. I hadn’t charged it again, so I can’t really blame the gear. Rough stats are distance closer to 4.5 than the 4 I thought it was in about 50 minutes. The first two miles rocked! I was flying, keeping my feet pretty dry, and having a blast. Then, I hit the really, really squishy mud (would have been great if I were running through my garden – good mix of humus and inorganics, nice and black). Some of it got into my shoe – I have a mild blister on my left instep.

Favorite mishap? The puddle of water I thought was about an inch deep was about 6 inches deep. Melt water is awfully cold.

Great run overall. My shoes are a wreck

Saturday was another milestone day – I did the route I’ve been meaning to do ever since we moved into this house. Left the driveway, ran to Old Mystic, hung a right down River Road, ran towards downtown on the Groton side of the river, hung a right up Cow Hill Road. Over the hill past the fire station and back to the house. Wonderful. Oh, and forgot to mention the 1/2 mile of trail run. Beautiful.

Tough, tough run – from River Road up Cow Hill Road is pretty much straight up hill. Ouch. Especially after three plus miles and the long run on Tuesday.

So I took today off.

In hindsight, I’m kind of disappointed – I ended up with the same mileage (give or take) this week as last week. But I think it was the right thing to do – I do not want to end up sick, I do not want to end up injured, and I’m still on track mileage-wise for building to a 20 mile base.