Definition of a good day

Distance: 5 mi.
Miles to go: 1684

Today was one of my best runs ever. Not because I had a great clock time. Not because I had a huge kick at the end. Not even because I ran a distance or a race I have never done before.

Today, for the first time ever, I ran 5 miles with my best friend. My partner. My soul mate. My darling wife of 16 years. Happy anniversary my love. I hope this is the first of many times we can sneak away and share our two favorite things together. Running, and being together.

Yep… today was a good day…

Anniversary run

No run today but I did manage to get 60 miles in on the bike this week. This is my first +50 mile week and it felt pretty good… Especially after I raised my seat up a half inch so my knees would stop hurting… Ahh.. the things you forget about a sport when you lay off of it for a while. My commute is about 12 miles and then I usually add an extra 4 or 5 in the afternoon to ride over to where my family meets me and picks me and the bike up and takes me home. It’s not that I don’t want to ride home, it’s just that at around 4 or 5 o’clock, Columbia shows it’s “urban” side and traffic is horrible. Not a time to be riding through the heart of it, which is my only way home. The mornings aren’t so bad because before 7 there isn’t much traffic, which makes the ride really nice. I am still very slow, averaging about 14 mph on what is admittedly a pretty hilly route, but the point is not speed, but rather commuting and maintaining fitness. I’m sure eventually I will start to do some organized or group rides, but right now I just want to get used to commuting to work.

On a running note, I am looking forward to my next two runs. The first one, tomorrow morning, will be with my darling wife. For the first time (ever?) we will be going for a run together. This is our anniversary (16 years!!) weekend and of all the things we could do, we decided that, since she has started running recently, it would be great if we could just hit the trail for a few miles together and then grab some lunch. It’s going to be wonderful. I hope it’s the first of many.

The next run I take will be on Monday morning and it will be on the River Walk in San Antonio… How cool is that? I am going to a conference down there and our hotel is right on the River Walk, which is a very cool place by the way, and the concierge at the hotel says it’s a fun run so I’m going to give it a shot. If it works I may even get up and do it again the next day (and the next day!). If it goes well (or not) I will blog about it. I do know it’s going to be hot down there so if I’m going to run anywhere but on a treadmill, I’m going to have to do it EARLY. And I will probably need to run every day just to work off all the awesome food (ahh… TexMex…) and Shiner Bock…!

My way.

Distance: 4 mi

Miles to go: 1689

As much as I want to think that I am in shape enough to ride the 20 miles to work/traknight and then run full tilt for a speed workout in 90 degree heat… I may just not be able to handle it.  The last 2 workouts have been over 90 degrees and I have wilted somewhere between the last mile of the bike ride and the second interval on the track each time.  Last night I alternated between light headed and nausea for most of the workout.  I was pretty disappointed.  But it just lets me know that I’m not in as good a shape as I thought.  Guess I need to work harder…

For those of you who don’t watch the news, the midwest is drowning.  Here in central Missouri we don’t have it as bad as our friends in Iowa or points south on the Mississippi, but it is miserable, nonetheless.  Don’t sit in one spot too long or you will start to grow mold.  The trails here are very good at shedding water, but even they have become overwhelmed in spots and just can’t dry out.  Now I have trail shoes and don’t have a problem splashing through puddles, but I’m getting sick of torrential rain, lightning and 50+ mph winds.

Such was the case this morning.  Now, I am a “no excuses” runner and will generally go out in the rain, snow, etc.  But there is nothing that pisses me off now more than having my alarm go off and immediately hearing thunder and sheets of rain on the roof.  Some would say “yeah… but you have to train in those conditions so that if it does (X) in your race, you will be ready for it.  That’s fine but there is just one little flaw with that line of reasoning for me right now… I’m not training for anything.

I am running…. just to run.  For exercise.  To get outside.  Because it is the right thing to do.  Because if I don’t, I’ll get fat(ter) and die young(er).  So the rules have changed for me just a bit.  As much as I felt bad for not being one of the hardcore group that ran anyway (about 40 of them… in a severe thunderstorm) for training glory (and a bad weather bead…), I just rolled over and went back to sleep.

Why?

Let’s just say that I can be a little more “flexible”.  I’m just going to run this afternoon (in the oppressive heat and 210% humidity…!) instead, in between rounds of storms…

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m still dedicated to running and have even redoubled my efforts of late to stick to it.  But if I’m ever going to recover fully and get back to the running joy I knew so recently, I need to do it on my own terms and make it something I have fun with.  Not something I “HAVE” to do.

So, I’m off to run 4 short miles one a favorite trail.  Through the mud, humidity and heat…

…W00T!!!

Redneck heaven and buried treasure

Distance: 8 mi

Miles to go: 1693

Between the house (roof leaked on my new hardwood floors), work (3 days in lovely redneck Vegas… err… Branson MO), having my one and only post for the week get eaten by iGoogle, and life in general, I have had no time to run.  The 8 miles I ran was in two measly runs over the last week.  Disgusting…  Oh… and I tried to post about my run (on a really cool trail in Branson… see below)

Actually… last week was disgusting.  This week seems promising so far.  I rode my bike to work (20 miles) yesterday and ran 5.25 mi today… so things are looking better.  I should get a solid week of workouts in and then I leave Sunday for the NECC conference (education technology) in San Antonio, which should be fun.  Especially if I can figure out how to wiggle in a run… in the 100 degree heat… blech…  umm… treadmill?

So… Let’s talk about Branson.  To say that this town is… umm… “slanted” towards tourists would be a HUGE understatement.  Think “gawdy cross between Vegas and Nashville”, or “LA traffic… two lane roads”, or, better yet, “where old country acts go to die… and do a variety show”.  I stayed in Branson because the town I was teaching in was too small to have a hotel (that I would ever dare stay at…!).  If you have never been to, or even heard of, Branson, it used to be a quaint little town nestled in the Ozarks that sat on a beautiful lake.  Then a theme park moved in called Silver Dollar City.  A couple of country acts played there and somebody thought… ya know?  Wouldn’t it be great to take a big crap on the surrounding countryside and put up a mess (redneck term) of show halls so we could play bad music and sing off key for the rest of our lives and never have to leave here???  *sigh*  What a great idea!  Thus, Branson, as we know it, was born.  Now?  It’s a gawdy, bloated tourist trap filled with aging country acts, tour busses, blue hairs, bubbas, and 20 foot banjos sticking out of the tops of ice cream/pizza parlors.  Now THAT’S progress… redneck style.  As an example, I stayed on the same floor as the Oak Ridge Boys (MAN… they look old…) and waived politely to Mickey Gilley in his Daytona Pace Corvette as he allowed me to cross before pulling on to the main drag.

So… what the heck does all this have to do with running?  Ohhh man…  Lemme tell ya.  Prepare for old, jaded recreation professional rant…

See… I got my degree in recreation from Oklahoma State.  I was going to design and build handicapped accessible trails and parks.  Noble, eh?  So that fell on it’s face… but anyway…  I still look at every city I go to with a recreation professionals eye.  How many park acres does it have?  What kinds of facilities?  Are there bike paths?  Multi-use trails?  …and so on.  This is the main reason I chose Columbia as a new home.  Fantastic parks and rec.  So imagine my dismay… horror even… when I went to the City of Branson website to look for local parks and trails to run on and found… nothing.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s there, but it’s buried… and “nothing” is what was on it.  The MENSA that designed this page should be ashamed.  A brief and vague description of each park, no pictures and… NO ADDRESSES!!!  You gotta be kidding me…  No maps, other than a very vague and not even to scale color job that represented the parks as green blobs with NO ENTRANCES MARKED!!  What?  …Am I missing something?  I looked all over for more information.  But I found it very much easier to get a show time in October for the Baldknobbers variety show than I did to find information about the parks and trails in Branson.  That’s sad.

So.. armed with my vague and not to scale map.  I headed out in Jabba the van (15 passenger monster not ideally suited for the narrow, bus filled roads of Branson) in search of a big park that appeared to be very close to my hotel.  I got on the road that looked like it ran right next to this trail and… nothing.  Five miles of nothing.  No signs, no parks… nothing.  So I gave up and headed back.  As I am pulling up on the main road, it runs just behind my hotel.  Out of the corner of my eye I see a dilapidated, overgrown sign for the trailhead, which points down what, for all appearances, looks like an access road long dead.  You gotta be kidding me… I drove right past this thing and went on another 10 miles?  This is ridiculous…

I pulled into the parking lot, now very uncomfortable.  I was greeted by an old porta potty sitting on a slope (fun ride!) and what appeared to be a trailhead, however poorly marked.  I knew from my criptic description of this trail that it was a wilderness run and it was a loop… cool… I can do this.  So I took off…

By this time, if your still here and not asleep, you are probably thinking, oh boy, here it comes.  He got lost or bit by a snake or mugged, etc.  And as much as I would like to say so… It’s not true.  What Branson loses in advertising and publicity for it’s parks and trails, it makes up for in beauty.  This was 1.7 miles of heaven.  A real buried treasure.  Critters everywhere, smells of deciduous forest and pines, rocks and great views between the trees.  And all on a wood chip single track trail that was like running on a sponge.  It was yummy.  I’m only sad I didn’t get to run on it more than once.

So if you are ever in Branson (and you should go, if only to shake your head in disgust) and want to get away without leaving town, look for the Lakeside Forest Wilderness Area.  The easiest way to find it is to get on the main drag headed toward downtown and look for the Ramada Inn and a place called Area 57 (no… I’m not kidding).  There is a road behind it known as “The Yellow Route”.  Get on this road and go 1/4 of a mile.  If you go past the end of the Ramada property you have gone too far.  Look for the entrance on your left.

In other news, the run this morning was Hugh’s Hulen Hills.  The best things I can say about it are that 1.) It’s over and 2.) We won’t have to run it again for another 6 weeks or so.  Highlights included me getting lost, seeing my lungs come flying out of my chest on the last hill and meeting a new friend and my new personal Sherpa… Carl.

If anybody knows a good place to run in San Antonio, I’m lookin’!

Running around the kitchen

Distance: 15.5 mi

Miles to go: 1701

After my miserable run(s) last week, I decided to back off for a while as I desperately tried to finish up the kitchen (for the uninitiated, I am remodeling my kitchen from the floor up). Ok… maybe not “finish” but at least advance the cause greatly. I finished my flooring, installed all of my cabinets, finished staining them and got my plumbing issues solved. The end result was several 14 hour days that left me too tired to even think about (much less blog about) running…

Saturday I decided to test the waters and see how I felt so on a MUGGY and warm morning I plodded out for 6.2 miles. Whatever was wrong with me seems to have cleared itself up and I had a pretty uneventful run although I did see just about everyone in Columbia that I knew. I said “hi” so much I was kinda out of breath at times!

This morning’s run was SUPPOSED to be 7.8 miles… more on that in a minute. We ran a good, tough route that involved several hills and I was a bit tentative at the start. I am just never sure how I am going to feel and as I explained to one of the people I run with, I run alone a lot now because I have no idea how I will feel. Some days I run 7:45 miles, some days I run 10:00s. And there is no reason for either… It makes it hard to run a group pace… Anyway, I decided to risk it and ended up running with an old running buddy who just PR’d at a very tough half marathon in Kansas City (Hospital Hill) and I wasn’t sure if I could keep up, but I decided to see how long I could go. Another guy who is older to the group but new to me ran with us as well. He is funny and keeps it light but you have to completely ignore him when it comes to pace. He is all over the place. He, however, had directions for this route since it was new to us for this distance. This is where that “SUPPOSED” comes in.

After my initial burn in miles, one flat and one BIG hill, I seemed to be feeling fine although I knew I was running faster than normal for me. It felt OK so I kept going. We ran the usual part of the route and then made the turn onto the unfamiliar part. Since we were running a bit slower than the rest of the people who usually run this route, we had no one to follow. After a right here and a couple of lefts there, we ended up in a completely unfamiliar neighborhood and failed to negotiate our next turn because the street sign was covered by trees. But instead of running for a bit and then just turning around when we realized our mistake… we kept going… and going…. until finally, the voice of reason told us we weren’t in Kansas anymore and that we should turn around. A mile later we passed the street we were supposed to turn on, but just headed back out to the main road to finish the run. I was rapidly running out of gas. No food, low miles, still recovering… not good. The run finishes on a huge downhill and I thanked the gravity gods for carrying me down it and then there is about a 400 yard stretch to the parking lot. My two running buddies were playing with each other and stepped on the gas in a giggling sprint to the finish. I stepped on the gas to go with them but the motor stalled and backfired… so I cruised in, pooped, but happy. About an 8:30 pace for what ended up being 9.5 miles was a good… if exhausting result.

You get what you deserve

Distance: 6.66 (how ironic…)
Miles to go: 1736.5

Haven’t posted much lately because I am desperately trying to finish my kitchen remodel. I know it’s not the same as running, but you try laying hardwood flooring for 14 hours a day and see if YOU feel like running…!
My floors are done and I have most of my cabinets made and installed, so I should be able to get back to a relatively normal routine soon. I only ran once last week due to remodeling and some travel for work, so I’m not sure why I’m surprised by my poor result.

If I could split this run in half I would say it was a great run (part one) and a miserable run (part two). I started off feeling fantastic. No pain, easy pace, barely breathing hard. We were running in a light rain (seems we ALWAYS run in the rain, lately…) and other than feeling muggy, it was nice. We came up off the trail and onto the road and I started to feel winded. Then stomach cramps. Then dizzy. It was lovely. The run finishes on a huge downhill and I usually blast down it in celebration of gravity, but not today. I limped home, clumsy and stumbling.
Afterwards I hurt all over. It seemed like every old injury I had flared up at the same time, and brought friends I didn’t know about to the party… And I was physically spent all day. I had no energy, couldn’t concentrate and felt weak. I’m not sure that I might just be fighting a cold or something, but whatever it is, it has 12 hours to go away. I’m riding to work tomorrow…