My Team Is Falling Apart Already!

I'm once again getting addicted to this running thing. I spent most of today talking to one person or another about training or the Sawtooth Relay or injuries. I figure that's a good thing, but I also figure that my friends are going to get pretty tired of me if I don't knock it off.

I'm also at the stage that I get pretty angry at myself if I miss a scheduled run. See, I have to schedule them or I just go ahead and skip them if I'm tired or if I had a long day at work or the wind's blowing or the couch feels comfy or... Sooo, I skipped my scheduled run for Friday. It was supposed to be a seven-miler at 10.5 minute/mile pace - nice and slow. See, I had a headache that wouldn't go away from the long week of work and besides the wind was blowing. You know how easy it is to convince yourself to stay on the couch.

So I had to run on Saturday. I chose to run 3.5 miles up the Sunnyside hill, which is a big hill east of IF. It climbs about 1,400 feet over six miles to top out at about 6,200 feet. It was hard, although the run back down was actually harder, I think because I was running into the wind and going down made my feet and hips hurt. Not the knees though, which is good.

At about the turnaround point, I ran into one of my Sawtooth teammates who was driving down from his run at the top of the hill. He had run into one of the other team members on his drive up and had to drive him back down because his Achilles tendon was bothering him. Uh oh, one down. But one's easy to replace if need be.

Then, today at work, I talked to another of the team members and he told me he'd strained a quad playing soccer in the powerful wind we had Sunday. Ah crap, that's two. Then, a third runner told me he was exhausted from the 35-mile bike ride he did, also in the mighty wind on Sunday. I hope these guys aren't trying to train too hard too fast. I don't want to have a whole team on the injured reserve come June 14th.

So, it looks like I was the smart one who avoided exercising outdoors in that punishing wind on Sunday. I was scheduled for an easy two miles, but I knew that there would be nothing easy about running in that awful gale. Which meant that I'd skipped another run. Today, I made it a point to leave work a little early and hit the road with the intention of doing a little extra because I'd been "lazy". Well, that nasty wind was still blowing and the little extra became one of those runs where you go faster than you want just to get it over with. If I was looking to punish myself, I accomplished that goal. Should make tomorrow's run interesting - a four-mile tempo run at nine minute pace.

Today was NOT a beautiful day!

Ahhh April... Spring has sprung... the grass is getting greener, the flowers are starting to come up, the birds are singing, the snow is blowing sideways at 30 mph... Wait, what?! Oh yeah, this is Eastern Idaho. Winter's not really over until Memorial Day. The high temp yesterday was 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Today, the high was 40. That's a difference of 35 degrees for those of you who aren't mathematics subject matter experts. It snowed off and on and the wind blew more than 20 mph all day today - April 15th!

Kinda stinks to have a five-mile tempo run planned for a crappy weather day like today. I know myself - if I save it until tomorrow, I'll start to take my training plan for the Sawtooth Relay less seriously and probably skip more workouts. So I hit the road after work. Notice that the Weather says "Mostly Cloudy and Breezy". Twenty-three mile per hour sustained winds with thirty-three mile per hour gusts is just a breeze around here. That wind was brutal any time I was running West, which was a good portion of the run. The plan was a mile warm-up followed by three miles at ~9:00/mi pace and a mile cool-down. The first tempo mile pretty much sucked with the wind and freezing rain/snow in my face, the second was way better with the wind at my back and the third hurt, I think because I was worn out from the first. My cool-down was slower than I have run for a long time. Probably a good thing. I hope Friday is more like last Sunday than today. Seven miles in this crap might just kill me (at least all my motivation).

That water's cold. I wouldn't recommend swimming right now.

Man, do I suck at updating a blog. It's just that I can't find that much good to write about.

March was a really bad month for me. I sprained or broke or something in my wrist on that skiing trip back in February and thought I would wait until it healed before lifting weights again. Well, it still hasn't healed so I'm going to have to see a doctor about it. Then, I got the flu and it of course moved right to my lungs, so that kept me from running for a few weeks and made it really hurt when I did start back.

Now, the good news. I have started training in earnest now for the Sawtooth Relay, which is in the middle of June. I've gotten a team together from guys at work who are or have been runners. I'm the captain, which is something I've never done before, always preferring to let someone else do all the organizing. There's a lot more to this than I ever would have realized. So far, I've gotten half of the $330 entry fee from the project we all work for (The AMWTP), which is surprising in and of itself. We've got about two months before the race, and I'm looking forward to bugging the crap out of my team to get them all to train since they're all older than I am and have wives and kids. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

I went fly fishing last Friday, a pastime that always reminds me why I like living in this area. It was a gorgeous day (a little windy, but that's normal) and we floated the South Fork of the Snake River from Shelley to Firth, ID.


We didn't catch a lot of fish, but it was good to just get out and be on and in the river, and we did each catch at least one fish.


The best fish of the day was a 17-inch brown caught by the owner of the drift boat, which is as it should be, but he caught it on a spin-casting set-up, bouncing a big night crawler off the bottom of the river. That'll break the heart of any fly-fisherman. Yes, that is snow at the back right of the picture.

After we got done floating, I decided to go wade a spot we call "The Demon Fish Hole". Last fall we went fishing there several times and got to watch a whole bunch of giant trout jumping out of the water after some kind of flies. We could never get them to take anything we were casting. It was very frustrating. So, I hike out to the spot and get in the water, which is lower and slower right now than it is in the fall. That's a good thing. As I'm wading to a promising-looking riffle, my foot slips on a rock, then slips a bit more and I'm putting my left hand down and bending my knees to keep from going over backward. That's never a good thing when you're standing in three feet of river. I was soaked with cold water and had small streams of it running down the back of my legs. Fortunately, it was a fairly warm day and I kept fishing for about 20 minutes, until I started to feel really cold and I figured it would be a good idea to head back to the car and change into the warm, dry extra set of clothes I always bring with me when I go fishing. Now I know why I do that.

OK...

Now I have been a slacker. However, it was a planned slackerhood. Well, most of it. Last week was a "transition" week in my weight training cycle where the goal is to take it easy and recuperate from the last couple of high intensity weeks. I took it a little easier than I intended to, but I somehow tweaked my neck at the beginning of the week and didn't feel like making it worse. I ran a tough four miles on Friday for about the only exercise I got the entire week. It was really only tough because we've had a lot of melting around here lately, but it still gets really cold at night and re-freezes all the roadways. I was slipping and sliding all over the place because I didn't want to wear my YakTrax on all the clear pavement. That and the fact that no one clears the sidewalks and in fact the city plows the snow/slush/sand right up on them. I ended up running down the driving part of a very busy street. This is not something I would ever recommend doing, especially since these days everyone seems to need to be talking on their cell phones while driving. I didn't make an exact count, but I must have seen at least 30 people yakking away during the less-than-a-mile I ran along Sunnyside. Scary!

I spent all day yesterday snowboarding at Pomerelle Mountain Resort with a couple friends from work. Pomerelle is a nice little family-style ski hill that gets lots of snow and has some pretty good terrain. Nothing too challenging, but since I hadn't been boarding in a couple years, it was perfect for a tune-up. I wish I'd brought my camera because it was an absolutely gorgeous day and I'd have some great pictures to post. At about lunch time we were actually almost too hot and had to start peeling off layers. In the past, I've had a hard time skiing all day because of fatigue and I've been really sore and tired for the next couple days, but not this year, because I've made and effort to regularly exercise throughout the winter. I blew away the guys I was skiing with (admittedly, they are both 20 years older than I am) and wasn't the least bit tired at the end of the day. My calves are a little sore today, but not enough to keep me from running another slippery three-miler after work tonight. It's great to see even little improvements.

I'm not a slacker, I swear...

I haven't posted a thing for more than a month. That doesn't mean that I haven't been exercising, although the weather has been colder than I like to run in around here. I'm really glad I spent all that money on warm clothing last fall because if I hadn't, I'd be really fat and lazy right about now.

My little bro got me some Yak Trax for Christmas this year (I asked for them). Here in the frozen desert of Idaho Falls, Idaho, we tend to get only a little snow in the winter, but with the low temperatures, it sticks around for three months. I don't know how I ever ran in the snow without these traction devices. Oh yeah, I didn't. They're great on solid packed snow or ice, but I can hardly feel them through the soles of my shoes. They seem sturdily built and the traction coils cover pretty much any part of your feet that you would want to run on so they would work well no matter what type of gait you have. The only problem I've had is that they don't give any improvement on loose, thick or slushy snow, although I can't imagine anything that really would. It still feels like I'm running in sand. I would wholeheartedly recommend Yak Trax to anyone who lives in a snowy climate that wants to continue to run outside in the winter. It's not supposed to hit 30 degrees Fahrenheit until at least February around here, so I'll definitely be getting plenty of use out of them.

Runnin' like Michael Jackson

Over the past few days, I've experienced the whole gamut of emotions. Getting ready for the Jingle Bell Run on Saturday, I foolishly tucked one of my gloves under my arm so that I could set up my phone to record the run. These gloves were a Christmas gift from my brother and I absolutely love them. I always used to have ice cube hands when I ran in the morning, fall or winter. Since these gloves and I have become running partners, frosty fingers have not been a problem.

Before starting a run, I usually place one glove safely in the pocket of my jacket while I press the tiny phone buttons, but before this one, I was talking to another runner and wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing. After the run got started, I reached into the pocket looking for the glove, and it wasn't there! I had dropped it as soon as I started to stride into the run. I assumed that one of the other runners or more likely one of the walkers would pick it up and turn it in at the finish (no one wants a single glove), so I didn't go back for it and continued the race with one glove and one frigid hand.

After everyone had finished the race and we'd done a little raffle, the guy running everything asked if anyone had found a glove. No one said that they had, but one guy said that he had seen one right at the beginning of the race. I must have looked for my wayward glove in the biting wind and snow for thirty minutes to no avail. It had completely deserted me.

While I was in the gym, the race organizer called me and left a voice mail that he had found a glove after I had left. Some good Samaritan had left it on the crank to his trailer and he noticed it there when he hooked it to his truck. When I got the message, I was ecstatic. My glove would be recovered. I gratefully picked up a stray glove from his house later that day.

After work today, I came home and got all suited up for a short run, excited to run with my lost-and-found glove. It was very cold and there was about two inches of fluffy, white snow on the ground. I took special care to put my reclaimed glove in my pocket so that I could start the phone recording without fear of losing it again. I started running and reached into the pocket to get the glove and put it over my already freezing hand. It wouldn't go on my right hand; it was a left-handed glove! The glove I had picked up, thinking it was my own, is a nearly identical women's Manzella Windstopper glove. A woman had also lost a glove at the beginning of the race and it just happened to be the same brand and model as mine. Since there were only about 20-25 runners/walkers, this coincidence is almost too much to believe. I'm going to have to call the race organizer back and see if he can assist in reuniting two wayward gloves with their cold-fingered owners.

A Day Off

I've been lifting pretty regularly and heavily for the last several weeks. I'm seeing a lot of the muscle mass that I lost in the last three years come back pretty quickly, although it's hard to both run and lift and keep up with all the other stuff I like or have to do. A coworker told me about the Jingle Bell Run on Thursday this week. I decided to go ahead and run it on Saturday. I felt slow and heavy for the last two miles and finished a lot slower than I think I should have. I don't know if that's because of all the lifting or because it was snowy, windy and cold out or what. It was still fun to get out and run with other people. We all had to wear bells on our shoes and they had hot chocolate at the aid stations.

I went to the gym right after running and further wore myself out. Thus, I figured that doing nothing was in order for today, and it was wonderful. Next week is the third week of the hypertrophy phase, which is supposed to be a very intense week. I don't know if I can do more than I did last week, but I'll give it a go. The following week is an easy week, so I'll have plenty of time to recover.